So much can be written about Germany rearming, hosting the nukes. All of those EuroTrashLandians flipping the switch, and we know they are more than just closet fascists. Amazing, now, the schizophrenia of military bases on Japan soil, and then the PFAS’s, poisoning the people, and then Japan getting that Imperial war saber rattling.
Targeting China
Japan’s military expansion fits in with Washington’s aggression aimed at China, the DPRK and Russia. U.S. strategists’ goal is to use the U.S. alliance with Japan, South Korea and Australia, just as it uses the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe.
The doubling of NATO’s membership and NATO’s targeting of Russia have led to war in Ukraine, when the U.S. government imposed thousands of new sanctions against Russia, and the U.S. has ruptured the European Union’s mutually beneficial trade with Russia.
In February, residents of Kailua Bay, north of Honolulu, were advised to avoid the namesake waters after a leak from a US Marine Corps wastewater treatment facility released water contaminated with unsafe levels of fecal bacteria into the bay. In March, the Defense Department announced that it would permanently close and defuel the Red Hill facility. (source)
The source above is Grist, and not my favorite greenie weenie place, and look at their Ukraine coverage: Grist, Ukraine.
As Gabor Mate states, there is a myth of normal, but in fact, the elites, the psychologists, the mainstream media, the economists, the Administrations in DC or in your local community college, the sellers, the marketers, the creatives, the lot of them, their normal is? Read and weap:
From Totalitarian Paranoia to Authoritarian Madness
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / December 28th, 2022
“The danger signs were everywhere in 2022.
With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.”
The shifting baseline disorder, coupled with mass hysteria, mass brainwashing, mass propaganda, mass marketing, mass anxiety, the lobotomizing media, the miseducation in k12 and higher education, the end of knowing history, the drone deliveries, the self-driving cars and trucks, the airports filled with lost people, lost luggage, the entire blizzard of broken and more broken infrastructure, yet, a creep like Grist and 350 (dot) or Bill McKibben vaunting Biden for pushing climate killing, people killing, land polluting, city destroying weapons for the Nazi Regime which is Ukraine.
The end of history, and the geeks talking out the sides of their mouths. Actors telling us who to vote for, what to think about the globe, what to do with the shrinking middle and lower economic classes for the sake of their lifestyles, the billionaires and the Ukro ZioAzovNaziLensky.
Read the Whitheads’ headings for that end of 2022 danger signs piece:
Totalitarian paranoia spiked.
The state of our nation suffered.
Thought crimes became a target for punishment.
Speech was muzzled.
Kill switches aimed to turn off more than just your car.
Currency went digital.
The government spoke in a language of violence.
Cancel culture became more intolerant.
Homes were invaded.
Political theater kept the public distracted. .
Bodily integrity was undermined.
The government’s fiscal insanity reached new heights.
Surveillance got creepier.
Precrime became more fact than fiction.
The government waged psychological warfare on the nation.
Gun confiscation laws put a target on the back of every American.
The burden of proof was reversed.
The Supreme Court turned America into a Constitution-free zone.
The FBI went rogue.
The government waged war on political freedom.
The military industrial complex waged more wars.
The Deep State went global.
Authoritarian madness escalated.
AGAIN, cognitive dissonance:
“One thing that has always baffled me is why do Jews drive BMW’s, or Mercedes Benz, or Volkswagen? It would seem to me that a priority would be placed on boycotting companies that employed Jewish slave labor in WWII. Thousands suffered and died at these plants, yet well-to-do Jews think nothing of driving these automobiles in their quest to achieve a social status. It appears the Holocaust has lost it’s place in the pecking order on what is considered important to the Jewish community.”
Ahh, then those Japanese goods, uh? And those Israeli goods, no? Spain and their dirty hands. France and Italy and Britain in India? Ahh, what did Madame Butterfly say?
As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East — he’s already confused. The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. …Basically, ‘Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.’ The West thinks of itself as masculine — big guns, big industry, big money — so the East is feminine — weak, delicate, poor…but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom — the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated — because a woman can’t think for herself. …You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men. ― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
Go to Larry Johnson, 2 hours in, about his Jewish friends in La-La-Land.
GABOR MATÉ: There are many conditions in a society that are completely unnatural and unhealthy. But we mistake normal for healthy and natural. The way we live, the way we raise kids, the way we deliver babies, the way we go to work—we all assume them to be normal, and therefore natural and healthy. But it’s a bit like studying zebras in a zoo. You can study zebras in a zoo and learn things about them. But you’re not learning about them the way they naturally are in a context that is naturally healthy for them. It is the same with human beings. To assume that this society, because it’s the norm, is therefore natural and healthy, is a really false and dangerous assumption. That’s the one sense in which I am talking about the myth of normal.
The other is that we have this idea that those who are sick are abnormal, and the rest of us are normal. Whereas I think there’s a real spectrum of well-being and ill-being that runs through society. There are no clear lines between normal and abnormal.
And then the third sense in which I mean it is that the people who are ill—mentally ill or physically ill—they’re not abnormal. These are normal responses to abnormal circumstances.
And yet, once back from the hike, the low tides churning up as the tide shifts toward the rising tide, the news is never ending. The insanity of the West, the insanity of the lies, more lies and black magic lies of the US media, as well as the zombies walking the streets and even hitting the king tide Devil’s Churn, hoping 2023 will be brought in with booze, football, firecrackers. That the world will be a better world.
I challenge the reader to tell me — my 18th birthday, 1975, being the starting point — when a new year from 1975 to 2022 was a better year. Be careful to look at history, the world’s history, all the completely rotten politicians, the rotting policies, the complete slide of the American worker, and the incredible lightness of better dying with chemistry?
After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.
Those king tides are a time to reflect upon what the average ocean level will be in 10, 20 or 30 years for now. Call it ocean expansion or ocean rise, but it is happening, even as we watch the celebrity worthless ones gain more and more money and media power; as the space race continues at break-neck speed for no results, i.e. better crops, better cities, better health care, better durable goods, better politics, better education, better mind care, better food and farming, better resilience, better global cooperation to increase the quality of life for all, as well as keeping ecosystems hardy, strong and vibrant.
Even if world manages to limit global warming to 2°C — the target number for current climate negotiations — sea levels may still rise at least 6 meters (20 feet) above their current heights, radically reshaping the world’s coastline and affecting millions in the process.
That finding comes from a new paper published on Thursday in Science that shows how high sea levels rose the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high.
Nations with the Most Population on Affected Land
COUNTRY
POPULATION AFFECTED
% OF NATIONAL POPULATION
1. China 2. Vietnam 3. India 4. Indonesia 5. Bangladesh 6. Japan 7. U.S. 8. Egypt 9. Brazil 10. Netherlands 11. Philippines 12. Thailand 13. Myanmar 14. Nigeria 15. United Kingdom 16. Mexico 17. Italy 18. Germany 19. Malaysia 20. France
It is insanity what captures the “news” aggregators, the mainstream un-News, and what propaganda is fed 24/7/nanosecond daily: Lies, complete reversal of the truth, sick stories, propaganda, up is down, lies are truth.
Ukraine is losing. Amazing how weird the stories get about Putin, the people of Russia. Very very weird. Cold, death, blizzards, etc. Consuming any of this stuff will turn a steel stomach into a hissing haggis.
Get on with arming yourself against this perversion. Truth:
Russia Now Says Ukraine Losing 2 Battalions per Day in Donbass, 2nd Ukrainian Drone Attack on Engels
you were carried home baby’s room already sniffed by two dogs named Mako, Orca ironical since mother, son were German Shepherds
You went to the river with them, that band which snakes along artificial border Rio Grande, Rio Bravo
dogs swimming at the edge, reeds on one side, Mexicans on the other all of us mojados checking each other father speaking Spanish, you blonde daughter and hellacious “police dogs”
you were in diapers mother breast-feeding camping in Apache land when four freaks four-wheelers drunk and methed out coming through campground
Mako and Orca barked wanted to come with me as I followed white crazies past midnight
those dogs spent hours with you, in El Paso, in campgrounds then we moved to another border near Canada, Spokane, woods snow, the clean river
they’d dive for stones man, another crazy dog story after dog story you had them, and then they were put down, hips shot through
then there was Spokane-born Rio, named Tank by the breeder then Katie came, amazing two Shepherds from El Paso underground, hard basalt as a forever bed, then Rio, down for the count so Katie, mixed breed, held her own
old lady as a youngster always a smile, Katie, always ready to tag out other dogs, then the Otis Man who grabbed entire trees loved water, trees hit once by porcupine
Otis, Katie, those other dogs long gone, until the Marley came to you, tender hearted a soul from an abused home, he was loyal to both you and mother and skittish but your friend, another smiling mixed-breed, tail wagging ears up, down not digging guys so much
he is another tail tale holds the quantum power of animals alive and gone particles at the subatomic level his float, inside air near you, in your own blood
that boy will be always gravitation pull now you have years under your belt sweet daughter stories hold the tears at bay smile at all the seasons you and Marley walked together the ice, how the sky in Spokane has four seasons, listen and taste the air next week, in a year the air and forests will forever hold Marley’s bark
+–+
Note: I wrote a piece in my column over at the Pacific Northwest Weekly Inlander about our dog Rio, and holding him while he died. He wasn’t that old, and a twisted stomach was the cause of death.
I can’t find the piece, as those days in the early 2000’s are somewhere in the digital gulag, though there are articles and columns here: Paul Haeder, Inlander . It was actually a great piece, not mired in my sustainability days over in Spokane with all my work on Earth Day, teach-ins, and my radio show, the college teaching at two community colleges and Gonzaga, and my other graduate degree work at EWU in urban and regional planning.
Rio was amazing, a black Shepherd, and we picked him up from some family north of Spokane, and we were on our way to camp up north, near the Canadian border. He was black, big, radar giant ears, and he was car sick for a good six months. He was fearless, went after black bears, and swam in rapids to pick up balls I had that sank.
Even a few camping trips with him are the elements of molecules in my own cortex. The entire personality and his wiley ways and how he worked with people, children, babies, all of that, again, a master of a friend.
So many shepherds . . .
Too all dog lovers . . .
Second Note: Here, a couple, former “junkies in Seattle,” caring for those street cats: “Two souls, nine lives“!
[Seattle residents Joe and Nellie Salinas take care of more than 70 ‘street cats’ by setting up feed stations through the area. (Paul K. Haeder / Down to Earth NW Correspondent)]
Headline news, no: “AOC Casts House Democrats’ Sole Vote Against Omnibus Spending Bill: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez cited “the dramatic increase in DHS and ICE spending” as the reason behind her vote.”
Oh, wouldn’t be a fine thing in the neighborhood, if this AOC, went rogue, Independent Party, on her hands and knees, and abplogizing:
I should have never supported any 350 (dot) org or Al Gore or Hollywood “new green deal” because it’s all smoke and mirrors and carbon credits and more millionaires and billionaires making hay on the big green lie
I should have called out the accused rapist Biden as “not in my name, not in my party,” early on and just weathered whatever storm would follow
I should have never supported one dime for Israel or the Hebrewization of Politics-Business-Media-Finance-Banking
I should have called out Pelosi for what she is — stock investor (sic) in war, chemicals, energy, and of course, recepient of inside trader dealing for her hubby
I should have brought Cynthia McKinney and Jill Stein into my fold
Oh, cry for me Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran: should have showed guts and not supported regime change
Should have called a Jewish Conspiracy Spade a Spade with the Maidan, with Nato, with EuroTrashLandia’s sickness and hate against Russia
Should have stood against corruption and thieving and murder and cancelling parties that Ukraine is all about
RE: Green as the New Black, Resistance is imperative | A panel discussion on dismantling the “New Normal” nightmare
Cory Morningstar has very meticulously, and very brilliantly, analyzed the deep connections that Greta has to the many power-structures, all of which seek to change the world. This excellent research should be widely read.
But why Greta? Why her photo? The clue lies in what she really advocates – the Fourth Industrial Revolution, aka, the New Green Deal. This is, very simply, transhumanism, which is the creation of a bio-digital world, where technology merges with humanity.
The oft-heard mantra of the environmentalists, “Change Everything,” means changing what it means to be human, what it means to work, what it means to be free, what it means to live a happy life. In short, it is Neo-Eugenics – or, the improvement of humanity by way of technology. This gives a whole new meaning to Greta’s iconic phrase, “I want you to panic.”
But why Greta? Because she belongs, as it were, to global warming “royalty,” being directly related to that very Swedish scientist who, a little over a century ago, invented, and then popularized, the concepts of both global warming and man-made climate change. His name was Svante August Arrhenius (1859–1927), and his mother was a Thunberg.
A NEW PIECE of evidence has emerged buttressing the credibility of Tara Reade’s claim that she told her mother about allegations of sexual harassment and assault related to her former boss, then-Sen. Joe Biden. Biden, through a spokesperson, has denied the allegations. Reade has claimed to various media outlets, including The Intercept, that she told her mother, a close friend, and her brother about both the harassment and, to varying degrees of detail, the assault at the time. Her brother, Collin Moulton, and her friend, who has asked to remain anonymous, both confirmed that they heard about the allegations from Reade at the time. Reade’s mother died in 2016, but both her brother and friend also confirmed Reade had told her mother, and that her mother, a longtime feminist and activist, urged her to go to the police.
Hebrews and Nazi’s = “Medvedev: Israel arms shipments to Ukraine will destroy relationship with Russia — ‘If they are supplied with weapons, then it is time for Israel to declare Bandera and Shukhevych their heroes.'”
Listen to Matt on how all of this is an Anglo Saxon conspiracy . . .
Pelosi = “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accrued millions from husband’s trades: report”
McKinney =
In April, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., got in a whole heap of trouble after she called for a thorough investigation of what George W. Bush knew before September 11 about the potential for the sort of terrorist attacks that would shake the nation and the world on that fateful day. McKinney is one of the most outspoken members of the current Congress and her statements were typically blunt. “We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th,” she told a radio interviewer.
“What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?” McKinney’s call for a real investigation of what Bush knew — along with her parallel suggestion that it was necessary to conduct a review of possible war profiteering by members of the Bush administration and corporations with close ties to the president — drew a firestorm from pundits and partisans. By John Nichols
Jill Stein =
Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua =
U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral U.S. sanctions, which are illegal according to international law. (Ben Norton)
Nuland and Kagan and Blinken and . . .
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
Nor do they know that from 2003 to 2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.
You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying “Fuck the EU” during a February 2014 phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be plotting to replace or undermine elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for favoring former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko to take over as prime minister, instead of the U.S. first choice, Artseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed took power after Yanukovych was ousted about three weeks later. (source)
Although many of you have heard about its Trotskyite origins, the neoconservative movement as we know it today dates mainly from the 1960s. It was in that decade that you see the startling rise of Holocaust consciousness beginning with the Eichmann trial and the Oscar-winning movie Judgment at Nuremberg, both of which had a major impact not only on the Jewish community but on the general public here as well. These events were followed by the rise of the New Left, the Counter-Culture, and the anti-war and Black Power movements, as well as the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. All of these left a number of mainly—but by no means exclusively—Jewish public intellectuals and liberals feeling, in the words of Irving Kristol, “mugged by reality” in a way that launched them on a rightward trajectory.
That trajectory gained momentum in the early 1970s, when the anti-war candidate, George McGovern, won the Democratic nomination for president, and when Israel seemed to teeter briefly on the edge of defeat in the early stages of the 1973 war, which itself was immediately followed by the Arab oil embargo. Two years later, the UN General Assembly passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution, and U.S. power globally seemed in retreat after the collapse of its clients in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. These all created a context in which neo-conservatism gained serious political traction.
At this point, it may be useful to address an important ethno-religious issue. Neoconservatism has largely been a Jewish movement. By no means, however, are all neoconservatives Jewish. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, former CIA chief James Woolsey, and Catholic theologians Michael Novak and George Weigel are just a few examples of non-Jews who have played major roles in the movement.
That said, it’s true that most neoconservatives are Jewish and, increasingly, Republican.
Ukraine and murder incorporated?“Ukrainian Regime Led by Media Darling Volodymyr Zelensky Kidnaps Student Dissidents, Bans Opposition Parties, Shuts Down Independent Media, Commits Egregious War Crimes and Imposes Regressive Labor Laws”
Oh, well, AOC is not made of that fiber, and she is not anything special, and she is a product of celebrity cultism, backroom dealing, and, well, who the hell would okay a Netflix documentary (sic) on her so so short life?
And what does the DSA have to show for a half century of working within the Democratic Party? The party has abandoned any pretense to social reform, it has waged permanent war and overseen a massive growth in social inequality. The “realignment” strategy paved the way for the Democratic Party’s rapid movement ever further to the right. It succeeded in facilitating the Democrats’ adoption of identity politics, based on doling out privileged positions to corrupt representatives of various racial groups, and a more open acceptance of human rights imperialism.
Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA are carrying forward their pro-imperialist, anti-communist traditions into the 21st century. Their main role, as expressed in the interview, is to serve as gatekeepers of the bourgeois political left, channeling social opposition into the Democratic Party and placing its left opponents beyond the pale. Those who fight to mobilize the working class (“class essentialism”) for a break with the Democratic Party are “cynical bad faith actors” who want to “destroy.” (source = “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounces socialists and praises Biden administration, Democratic Party”)
Oh well, just a thought experiment for my blog, really, just 15 minutes of ruminating. Now get back to your day!
You and I, dear reader, if you are of the composition of say Rosa Parks, or Rachel Carson, MLK, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis (or, fill in the social justice champion of your choice), did not sign up for this, or approve of it, or okayed it in our name:
Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads.
Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field. (A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate)
There are so many words and concepts that can be leveled against these people, and there a literally millions of millionaires and billionaires and the legions of BlackRock/Forbes/City of London/JP Morgan Chase/Blackstone economic hitmen and hitwomen on board with pummeling planet earth, planet people, planet biodiversity with their venereal disease of the spirit. Economicus-Sapiens.
Many of my colleagues and I believe that our global civilization is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, one that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse… Our global situation is incredibly challenging today because of the adoption of the western economic model (e.g., materialism, consumerism, and throw-away mentality) throughout much of the developed and developing economies of the world. (Kitty Hawk Apollo 14 lunar captain, Edgar Mitchell — inspired by Robert Hunziker’s Dissident Voice piece, “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s “State of the Planet” Message Revisited”)
Robert cites a bunch of UFO activity in 2022: LiveScience article — “US Military Reports ‘several hundred’ UFO Sightings in 2022, Pentagon Officials Claim” — “UFO reports from U.S. military personnel are flooding the government’s new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S government’s brand-new UFO-tracking office has been open for half a year, but business is already booming.”
Imagine, the idea of all of us being connected through quantum mechanics, consciousness, those waves and particles that we in our ignorance call instinct and ESP. You do not have to go onto the Internet too long to find dogs, with cameras and mics in the house, tracking their activity when the “masters” are on their was, or about to get on their way, miles from home, at random times, before getting inside the car and putting pedal to the metal.
Dr. Mitchell founded Noetics Foundation to investigate consciousness, ongoing for 38 years, eventually coming up with a quantum hologram. “The universe is self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial and error interactive learning participatory informationally nonlocally interconnected evolving quantum system. . . .
“Energy, we know is the foundation of all matter; information is the foundation of knowing. Both were present at the moment of creation, whether in a big bang, or in a continuous process of creation in galaxies. It is likely that just as energy produced the physical structure that we recognize as waves and particles, in our macro-world, the seeds of consciousness were also present to produce awareness and intentionality.” Ibid, p. 196. (Source: Edgar D. Mitchells’ Consciousness Presentation, University of Advancing Technologies induction into the Leonardo DaVinci Society for The Society of Thinking, 2011; from the Hunziker piece)
This is the time of the prince of peace — “Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace because He restores every broken relationship, provides a well-ordered and balanced life, and offers the assurance of eternal life.”
Think about the “economy,” the driving force of Civilization after we pummeled our hunter and gatherer lives, after mother culture was fenced off for wheat and meat.
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world.”
“The gazelle and the lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn’t massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger, and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go on grazing with the lion right in their midst.” (Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael.”)
Ahh, the collective consciousness of humanity, with that belief in our interconnectedness, oh where oh where is that in this world of planned pandemics, bioweapons from hell, or ferrets a la bat cornonavirus manipulation? All those bioweapons labs in Ukraine, run by the DOD/CIA, and alas, that precautionary principle and do no harm ethos?
In a world of PayDay loans (as in loan sharking) and one where a fine of $1000 for front yard grass too long, or homes and land forefeitured for back taxes unpaid, for all the uglinesss of millions spent on ZioAzovNaziLensky to get into jets for shopping sprees or photo ops with the Demons of Peace, the US Senate and US Congress and US Administration and the MIC, we are at a point where most people give up, tell me there’s nothing they can do about another trillion dollars for war, or nothing they can do about the homelessness issue, or climate disturbance, etc.
Hands in the air all the way to the Post-Christmas bargain basement sales.
I am hearing from so many people who are damaged, full of the trauma of capitalism, of daily living in a world of dog-eat-dog, where the concept of taking a village to raise a child and taking a village to protect the infirm, old and sick is laughed at. We can get a crypto coin guy a bail hearing for $250 million, and we can see the obscenities of the Wolves of Wall Street dictating who and when and how we, the 80 Percent, pay pay pay for their dirty deals, and we can get Sunday Un-News shows yammering on and on on why there is a food crisis, why there is an energy crisis, and on and on, but what do we really need to solve the problems.
Steady State Economics, as the Apollo 14 pilot might have advocated:
A steady state economy features relatively stable size. It is ideally established at a size that leaves room for nature and provides high levels of human wellbeing. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economy of a city, region, or the entire planet. The size of an economy is generally determined by multiplying population by the amount that each person consumes. This quantity in a steady state economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year. Herman Daly, the dean of ecological economics, defines a steady state economy as… “an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.” (Source)
This is not the wet dream of Kissinger or the World Economic Forum or the Billionaire Gates Class . . . not of eugenics, not of one world government, one NeoLiberal Dictator determining who gets what, where we live, how much space is too much space, etc. It is the classic, connectivity, the interconnectedness of us, the universe, the mountains, forests, plains, wetlands, coral reefs, and on and on. Again, the Apollo pilot:
Mitchell listed critical planetary boundaries under siege: (1) rapid population growth beyond sustainability: 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 8 billion in 2022; (2) degradation of life-sourcing ecosystems; (3) excessive resource depletion such as shrinking forests; (4) eroding soils; (5) failing freshwater resources; (6) more frequent crop-withering heat waves; (7) collapsing fisheries; (8) expanding desertification; (9) frequency of extraordinary powerful storms; (10) shrinking natural resources; (11) melting glaciers.
Again, thinking and acting globally, but also being and believing as a nationstate, and binding cultures and languages as closely to what a people’s worth is. Out with the dirty and old, but in with the retrofitted, the classic and the things that make sense for clean air, clean water, clean soil, peace and as disease free as possible.
But letting science run amok, well, that is the current state, and the economists and propagandists and marketers are believing in their own religious capacity to pull the wool over the collective eyes of us, the 80 Percent.
“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email. The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords or scientific bodies. “To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.
Shuchi Talati, a scholar in residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on governance and justice in solar geoengineering, says Make Sunset’s actions could set back the scientific field, reducing funding, dampening government support for trusted research, and accelerating calls to restrict studies.
These are very fragile times, and if indeed there is more UFO “activity” for 2022, I wonder what those star people are seeing in us? All those radio and television signals out in space of Hitler, of the killing fields of World War I and II, and Vietnam, and the genocides throughout just the last 122 years. And now, all that negative energy coming from the Nulands, Kagans, Blinkens, Zelenky’s, this Herbewization of war-economics-poverty, and then all those useless generals and CIA, both the political parties, goy or Jew, it doesn’t matter.
This nuclear posturing by Biden, and now talk of winning and controlling a controlled strategic nuclear strike into Russia, we can you imagine the universe feeling the pain of Homo Bellum (war) never learning, always destroying, until we have every fetus incubating inside human or mammal or other species with dozens of forever chemicals, PCBs, hormone disrupters, neuro-destroying toxins.
Shall I repeat how destructive this species is, without the Prince of Peace or MLK or the lot of them being listened to and shepherding us into a state of collective whole consciousness. “Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system.”
Go to my blog, and look for Charles Miller and the Law of Time Interview.
Here is another hyper-fear but creative look at how to get out of this mess: (Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD)
I’ll take all this with a grain of lithium salt, as we know the greenies like 350.org and Bill McKibben as all for Biden-Blinken-KIagan-Nuland warmongering. Read Matthew Ehret:
Prince Charles has just given the world 18 months to save the world. Over the past years, the prince and his father (among other inbred aristocrats of Europe) have taken an incredible interest in the safety of the earth from the pollution emitting machines who greedily consume and reproduce without any consideration for Mother Gaia. In recent months this green transformation of the globe has taken the form of the “Green New Deal” promoted in the U.S. by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. A children’s campaign endorsed by pope Francis and led by Greta Thunberg has spread across Europe and America while a Billionaires Club under the guidance of Al Gore, and George Soros is funding a Sunrise Movement to fight global warming.
Is this passion to save the planet from humanity genuine? Do these oligarchs and billionaires really care so much that their support for a Green New Deal is as benevolent as the media portrays… or is something darker at play? To answer these questions, we will have to first quickly review what the Green New Deal IS, then where it came from and then finally what its architects have stated they wish to accomplish with its implementation. (source)
Again, science, with no limits, with no deep holism, without any regard for consequences is devilish. But expecting Indians and nations in Africa to stay in the mud, in huts, with no technology that the West has, is the ultimate of racism.
“It is not the growth of industry which destroys the world’s forests. In most cases, the cause is a lack of industrial output, a lack of good industrial management of the ecosphere. Over the past fifteen years, the greatest single cause for destruction of the world’s “ecology” has been the toleration of the policies demanded by the so called “ecologists,” the so-called “neo-Malthusians” of the Club of Rome, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), of the World Wildlife Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Ford Foundation, the ‘Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Sierra Club, and so forth and so on. We are not putting enough industrially-produced energy, in the form of water management, chemicals, and so forth, into the farming of the Earth’s biosphere. At the same time, we are using biomass for fuel and other “traditional” uses, in cases we should be using nuclear-generated energy supplies, and using modern, industrially produced materials in place of timber for housing and so forth.”
Case closed now. There is no balance, no alternative view, not robust critical thinking, no deep teach-in’s, no debates, no smart people with different perspectives in the same room. We are held captive by the monsters, and you know who they are: So, climate change, and no new deal for nature, and really this lock up of the world for the West is the same chavanism of the West and Russia. There is no Plan E for a planet run by Hollywood, Banks, Military, Media, Billionaires, Rotten Digital Gulags.
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa? ― W.E.B. DuBois
Well, it’s not over until the fat lady sings! And, in dead-end USA, where we bomb, sanction, pollute, dictate, kidnap, bulldoze over, imprison, we can’t use that saying anymore.
It ain’t over until the calorically challenged female/LGBTQ+ non-binary person sings?
“It ain’t over till (oruntil) the fat lady sings” is a colloquialism which is often used as a proverb. It means that one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress. More specifically, the phrase is used when a situation is (or appears to be) nearing its conclusion. It cautions against assuming that the current state of an event is irreversible and clearly determines how or when the event will end. The phrase is most commonly used in association with organized competitions, particularly sports.
The point is we see this concept time and time again, as we now are just getting done with the debriefing ZioAzovNaziLensky from his bizarre and pathetic trip to the people’s chamber, i.e. the Lobby Lounge, that is, both houses of congress?
Embarrasing is not the word.
A bloody laugh fest, while this dirty little man hangs with the dirty old man, and he is greeted as some sort of lord, knight, king?
The US and Wester Press (sic) pump up this criminal (on the left) while they forget to parse what is happening to the other criminal (on the right). So, this fool on the left looks like a strip club little man bouncer, and can you imagine those rednecks and woke-necks allowing someone in that people’s house without coat, tie and skirt and dress? But this dirty little man gets in like Flint.
Criminals, one and all. This is the Nuland, Hillary, Albright fabric of the new, old dead in the head Amerikkkan female?
Again, smiles, all fun, while the Donbass gets plastered with USA-French missiles, and of course, death, maiming, PTSD for children. Hitting hospitals, schools, apartment buildings. These people, every one of them in that ugly Lobby Lounge, are criminals, and they need the Marie Antoinnete treatment:
This freak of a Jewish Something gets his fourth passport — and the flag, man. Imagine that, this thief, this Pandora Papers thief.
While his, “wife,” shops while she doesn’t drop: Sick. That perversion Pelosi handed the ZioAzovNaziLensky an American flag, one that is folded for those who died in wars i.e. USA uniformed soldiers.
“Ukraine Dictator’s Wife Caught Dropping 40,000 Euros on Christmas Presents in Paris”
This is so so warped. The so called people’s chamber sullied by the thief and murderer, ZioAzovNaziLensky, and those warped republicans and super-warped democrats applauded while pushing out crocodile tears.
Yeah, the devil wear prada. The ZioAzovNaziLensky’s have villa in Monaco, a mansion in Miami, and millions stashed around the globe in those shadow banks, those Panama-Monaco-Delaware-Swis accounts.
So, yes, curtain call, we can only hope for these Republicans and Democrats to get down and dirty with their Bioweapon and that mRNA poison.
As the country — the 80 percent of the country — lives in fear, teetering on eviction-foreclosure. Teetering on health uncaring care bills from hell. This is the devaluing of the public, and here, another show with the Dirty ZioAzovNaziLensky getting his 4 hours of news (sic) cycle fame.
And, I have written about domestic abuse. About being trapped by your abuser. About the Stockholmd Syndrome aspect of this PTSD. Battered Wife Syndrone is not yet in the DSM-V as a stand-alone, but PTSD is the overarching diagnosis. “Black and Blue: The Many Ways of Domestic Violence World” November 28th, 2022
Each story I can cite from the ground, from us, the 80 Percent, can be a plethora of teachable moments about how Capitalism is so corrupting, and how the political class, the Harvard boys and girls, all the Holly-Dirt and Celebrity Crack Cocaine we are fed, all of that, it has created more than depression and fear. It is a sickenss at the epigentic level, as each year, our people have mutations in their DNA, from Womb to Tombstone.
Here, another one story with a thousand tendrils. DOmestic Violence, marriage, children, that Xmas season, subsidized aprtments, and then the rules rules rules will get this victim evicted? Oh, Charles Dickens, man, where are you now to write about this injustice?
After attending her husband’s arraignment last Thursday, Kim Segaline returned home to find a note on her door instructing her to call Jerry Mascolo, manager of subsidized properties for Coos Bay-based Grand Management Services.
“Failure to do so will result in an eviction,” said the typed note signed by Grand’s site manager Laura Tommila.
When she called, Segaline said, Mascolo told her that because she and her daughter lived in the apartment through Reimer’s job there, she would have to be out in five days. She could only stay if he was there.
The complete blashpamey and inhumanity of this country, and yet, we can’t expect clean water, decent housing, safe food, real people’s health care, public transportation, safety nets for air travel, real control of FIRE — finance insurance real estate. This is the jungle, AmeriKKKa, and of course, Klanada and EuroTrashLandia and U-Inbred-Kingdom, more of the same dog-eat-dog treatment.
Lies, and the curtain call, we can only hope, is for those Five Eyes and Israel and EU-UK-USA!
Patrick Lancaster is an American video-journalist and U.S. Navy veteran fluent in Russian who has reported from the Donbass since 2014.
His latest video posted on March 10 shows how people living on the edge of Donetsk, one kilometer from the Ukrainian position in Peski, have been subjected to constant shelling by the Ukrainian military over the last eight years and have had to survive living underground in bomb shelters.
Last Thursday, Ukrainian army shells struck a children’s playground, a football field and state building near the post office—prompting residents to flee as it was “scary to stay here now.” Earlier a residential neighborhood had been struck by a grad missile, while other Ukrainian army attacks destroyed schools.
According to Danya, a young man Lancaster interviewed, the Ukrainian army did not have exact targets but “just shoots and don’t care where it lands.”
Another woman said that the targets that were hit “were not new targets. In 2014, they shelled here too. Exactly in this place. The same coordinates. Torturing us all these eight years.” (source)
This is a sad sack country, stripped of agency, so dumb downed, so broken with chronic illnesses, broken to the point of distraction from history, truth, critical thinking, in order to go through the Black Mirros scrolling and scrolling into lobotomy hell.
Until children and women are evicted on rules, fines, codes, contracts, technicalities, laws, regulations, fine print, tickets, penalties, outside the box. Hell. Do you recognize any of your neighbors and members of the Chamber of Commerce or business community here?
How about a circle tree ring like image? See anyone you know or have read about?
In 20 years of teaching at Doane University, Kate Marley has never seen anything like it. Twenty to 30 percent of her students do not show up for class or complete any of the assignments. The moment she begins to speak, she says, their brains seem to shut off. If she asks questions on what she’s been talking about, they don’t have any idea. On tests they struggle to recall basic information.
“Stunning” is the word she uses to describe the level of disengagement she and her colleagues have witnessed across the Nebraska campus. “I don’t seem to be capable of motivating them to read textbooks or complete assignments,” she says of that portion of her students. “They are kind kids. They are really nice to know and talk with. I enjoy them as people.” But, she says, “I can’t figure out how to help them learn.”
Marley, a biology professor, hesitates to talk to her students about the issue, for fear of making them self-conscious, but she has a pretty good idea of what is happening. In addition to two years of shifting among online, hybrid, and in-person classes, many students have suffered deaths in their families, financial insecurity, or other pandemic-related trauma. That adds up to a lot of stress and exhaustion. In a first-year seminar last fall, Marley says, she provided mental-health counseling referrals to seven out of her 17 students.
Oh, so much to unpack just in these paragraphs, let alone from the report. Hmm, so, since 1983 I have been teaching at colleges and universities, both community colleges and state universities, and even a private high end (sic) college. Seattle, Auburn, Spokane, El Paso, Las Cruces, and, other places, including Portland and Vancouver. I have also been a graduate student twice, with two hard-earned master’s degrees, while teaching at the same time.
Disengaged is another term for dead-end capitalism. Or, go follow the money. Or, the rich get richer and the poor get nothing. Amazing how quickly the baseline has shifted: When I was an underegraduate, I could fill up the car for $9 bucks, drive to Mexico, do a diving trip, get on a train and hit up Chihuahua and Copper Canyon and end up spending $50 with some good tequila and food thrown in. That was a trip that enabled culture, man, cross cultural learning, and using a language other than my primary one, and interacting with people, sea, land, and getting life to the fullest.
Not really possible today without a big wad of Benjamins, and, yes, there are no sleepy little calm fishing villages in Mexico or Central America anymore. It is a war zone for most traveling on the cheap.
This world, now especially, is part of the quickening, as youth are seeing the collapse of so much around them. Parents are on meds, and so much work is needed to patch up communities. Disengagement is also seeded throughout the public. Stay at home and slutp up terrible flicks on Netflix and see your life flittered away. The backyard is the playground. Go out to eat through the drive thru, or do take in. The fabric of a community has always been frayed. Columbine, you know, suburbs of ennui and sick video games.
The K12 schools are rotting to the core, and that includes so much politicalization, so much mediocracy, so much empty heads, rah-rah, political incorrectness, so much cancel, litigation, and the end of history, so to speak: right wing nuts are always right wing nuts, and the liberal class is ugly in shutting down debate, so ugly on the PC and cultural vapidity. It costs money to do basketball or baseball since summer leagues are what it’s all about. Sick capitalism.
Main Street is rolling up, thanks to on-line hell shopping, and meds are the way for 50 percent of the peeps, and, the oppressive politics of dementia at the top, war mongering in the middle, and even the metro sexuals and the middle of the road “liberals” have created splattered thinking. No one wants to be involved, and TikTok is Jerry Springer on steroids. Sick, painful, hurtful, prat fall, bridge jumper fun for all. That also has created a toxic background noise.
What to know, what to learn, how to move one step ahead? So, this is a racist country, but the new and next gilded age and classism are also on steroids.
It is one giant psychological experiment, swarm fear thinking, hive bandwagoning. Just one big event — Ukraine’s racism, attacks on civlians, the American Coup of Maidan, all of that, while this creep and smoke and mirrors criminal, Zelensky, gets more and more bucks, propaganda kudos and a complete psychological training on how to manipulate his own people, the gentiles, the Nazis — it is emblematic of the entire grift. And then what is happening in Europe, and in Canada, and in the USA, how this dialing for war lord bucks game never ends, nary a protest launched, and then the absolute corruption in that country, the new Jerusalem, and then the 24-hour news covering it, as in lies and bigger lies 24-7; and then China, and then COP26, and then the economy, stupid, and the celebrity venereal disease that is marketing and info-tainment and coverage of the most meaningless stuff. How can youth get a handle on anything, and so why is poetry important or learning what photosynthesis is? Where is the job and money in that?
How to bring a classroom into the community, and how to engage across all disciplines, and how to respect faculty, how to downgrade the institutional learning-management departments, and how to defund the Admin Class? Sports and campuses that are going hybrid? This must end before learning can begin.
Yep, being a true blue radical faculty is tough because careerism and the death of the true liberal class have created a campus and set of cohorts who are in many cases checked out and co-opted by capitalism.
As I’ve said many times — we need education that is cooperative teaching and mentoring across curriculums, and we need the business schools to go the way of the dodo, and why in hell are their ROTC programs in these schools, and what the hell are the drone degrees doing in schools? How much influence do those private and government grants have on the ethos and philosophy of a school?
K12? A complete overhaul, and then again, end Capitalism. You see, the people in a representative democracy need their own lobby, i.e. the poor people’s lobby, and the getting poorer lobby. End the tax abatements, the tax dodging, and alas, really, end shit jobs. Bring together the many generations, and of course, this is about dental-health-mental health-nutrition clinics in all neighborhoods, and then flip the curriculum and have those places as incubators of youth helping their communities. End this for-profit-everything/anything mentality.
Engaging youth in college? What the hell, man? So many chronic illneses, GAD (general anxiety disorder) and so much collective Stockholm Syndrome. The people in the Yale-Harvard-Elite Schools camp are running roughshod over us, the people, over the youth, with all of this techno hell, all of this tracking and Chromebook-soon-to-be-at-home-miseducation. Imagine a world without art classes, music, hiking, botany, learning city zoning by walking the hoods. Imagine a world that is 3D manipulated, thrown onto a digital dashboard, VR and AI and AR, where digital tokens are there for crumbs of incentives while the digital master metaverse mind and AI gatherers work out more ways to put youth into a digital gulag?
There should be a million boats, safari jeeps, teepees, tents, community school gardens, K12 and intergenerational stage plays, poetry slams, bio-blitzes, and so much more. We are atomized, and snookered by the pigs of Capital, all of them, telling us we need to work for them more, to devote 60 or 80 hours or a 100 hours a week to them. Musk, Bezos, Buffett, Walton, et al.
On shifting responsibilities —
“Our administration has shifted responsibility onto faculty more and more. I am now expected to be an instructor, career counselor, mentalhealth adviser, and personal coach.” —Biology instructor at a California community college
“Who is caring for the faculty who are supposed to be doing all this extra stuff for students without extra (or even adequate) compensation?” —Literature professor at a public university in North Carolina
“I fear it will take some time to bring us all back mentally and emotionally to the campus life we experienced before the pandemic. Administrations can speed this up by devoting time and resources to support all of us. They can also be creative about incorporating what we’ve learned about learning and mental health in the pandemic into a “new normal” campuscommunity life. Are there campuswide actions that could be taken to support the grown-ups on campus in their efforts to reach and support students? It feels like so many things are siloed when it’s becoming apparent we’re dealing with a systemic concern that very likely would benefit from some systemic interventions that support everyone.” — Beth McMurtrie, senior writer at The Chronicle.
Disengaged means stripped of the ability to put sweat equity in your neighborhood, town, zip code, public spaces. In fact, public spaces are stripped away, public transportation is a living hell of a joke, and the silos in society — those who dictate to us — have become more drachonian with computing technololgy. The planned pandemic and shut downs and sickening measures to social distance, to pull the Covid19 lie wool over our eyes, were just trial balloons in the capturing of more people into this world of fear-anxiety-selfdoubt and bowing to the masters. We are in a constant airport line, shoes off, bodies scanned, eyes captured, treated like cattle, manure, and we have accepted this as the price of being Homo Retailpithecus, Homo Erectus Consumopithecus.
This is not a Larson haha:
We have broken pipes and leaky roofs and dams about to burst and rivers drying up and toxins by the dozens in fetuses and unimaginable brewing chronic illnesses because of food, air, water, drugs, vaccines, and more. Yet, we have that time to spend trillions on war, and then, the cultural wars, while people die or freeze and get amputations or, well, the anxiety is the gift that keeps on giving in Capitalism as Inflammatory Disease:
Sign up for this one coming Jan. 2023:
Join our SAND Community Conversation with guests Raj Patel & Dr. Rupa Marya as they illuminate the hidden connections between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. What is deep medicine? How can re-establishing our relationships with the Earth and one another help us to heal? We will combine Patel’s latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with stories of Marya’s work with patients living in marginalized communities to begin to grasp the deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world. (SAND — and, you can put 0[zero] into the $ for a ticket and still get the Zoom Link, if you are financially struggling!)
Like a said in a past piece, A Bird of a Feather — Unexpected Africa — there were 60 people at this amazing photo-slide show/talk, on a Thursday, 6:30 pm. and no one under age 55 showed up. Imagine that, a perfect opportunity to talk to an artist, photographer, bird guy who grew up in Oregon and became an illustrator. No kiddos, no college students.
There is a crisis in the home, inside the family, and throughout extended families which are spread like knapweed seeds all across the land. There is no cohesion and no multigenerational connectivity. Having kiddos play the K12 idiota game is yet another way to strip away any interest they might have or what might be developed to go outside the boxes we have set for them to, well, fail, or become great consumers.
Engaged means dynamic, loud, sometimes over the top faculty like me being supported to be that, and to do some PT Barnum teach-ins, and have people from outside the education system come on campus.
SFCC presents tree seminars
Spokane Falls Community College presents a demonstration by Northwest Plant Health Care, a local tree service, on growing healthy ponderosa pines at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the cluster of ponderosa pines, southeast of the athletic field, adjacent to parking lot 9P, 3410 W. Fort George Wright Drive.
Participants will learn how to remove dead limbs from their trees. Arborists use ropes and no spikes to scale the tree and the dead limbs are cut to the trunk of a limb or the tree itself.
The event is free, and refreshments will be served.
On Wednesday, a panel discussion on the significance of trees takes place at 11:30 a.m. in SFCC’s SUB Lounges A and B, Building 17.
The panel members include: Rich Baker, working arborist; Carrie Anderson, Urban Forestry Council; Jim Flott, private tree consultant and former Spokane City forester; and Joe Zubaly, owner of Northwest Plant Health Care Inc.
This series of food-related columns by Haeder continues with: Jobs Not Jails – Riverfront Farms is About Digging the Soil; Urban Gardens Make Community – Pat Munts, mini-farm advocate; Flat Out Community Partnership – Vinegar Flats and East-Perry Market Are Value Added; Unmasking the Food Sleuth – Melinda Hemmelgarn on Food Media and the Balance of Power
You probably remember Winona LaDuke as the two-time Green Party vice presidential candidate, running with Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004. You probably didn’t know that she’s an enrolled member of the Anishinaabeg Tribe from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, where she’s locked in another tough battle — this time against huge multinational corporations that want to change her tribe’s traditional way of life.
At three engagements in Spokane last week, and in some private interviews, LaDuke talked about the need to defend native peoples’ rights to the Earth. And this epic debate can fit into a single grain of wild rice — the Manoominike-Giizis strain, or the “wild rice moon” grown by her people for many generations.
This small grain of plant life serves as a microcosm of the entire sustainability challenge we all face: making sure future generations — all peoples and all species — will have a planet worth living on with ecosystems and resources to achieve spiritual and material prosperity.
LaDuke has proven to be so much more than a media darling — she’s a spiritual guide for her tribe and for the thousands she’s come across along her journey. Mixing humor with a shaman’s intensity, LaDuke has written books like All Our Relations and Recovering the Sacred.
LaDuke sees the Minnesota reservations’ practice of harvesting wild rice as vital: “The wild rice harvest of the Anishinaabeg not only feeds the body, it feeds the soul, continuing a tradition which is generations old for these people of the lakes and rivers of the north.”
It struck me last week while spending time with LaDuke that her tribe’s battle to keep their wild rice wild, free from genetic manipulation, is a much more far-reaching illustration of what sustainability activists consider the struggle of our times: How to create an America that respects the land.
Many of us think along systemic lines, attempting to understand the steps the globe probably has to take to solve the collapsing systems, both environmental and societal. Yet we need reminding that this struggle to work with a burgeoning global human population — 9 billion by 2050 at the current 1.2 percent growth rate — needs nudging from storytellers like LaDuke.
Her struggle — our struggle — is tied to the biodiversity of wild rice, a sacred food. There are more than 60,000 acres of natural wild rice growing throughout the lakes and rivers of her tribal lands. But there are troubling parallels drawn to what’s happened to the sacred corn of Mesoamerica at the hands of the agri-business multinationals, where corn has been patented, controlled and even turned into what some call Frankenfood.
Domestication and genetic modification of wild rice threatens the genetic integrity of this plant. For more than 30 years, plant breeders have developed wild rice for commercial paddies. So today, most of the wild rice on the market comes from these paddies, almost 70 percent of it from California. “Millions of pounds of California wild rice comes into [Minnesota] to be processed,” says LaDuke, “some of that rice, if genetically engineered, would irreversibly contaminate our manoomin.”
LaDuke’s tenacity in understanding the sacred and reclaiming the wholeness of her people’s food is a valuable lesson for our times. She’s up against the juggernaut of Monsanto and Dupont, the largest seed companies in the world. Monsanto has spent $8 billion in the last few years buying up United States seed companies, while Dupont purchased Pioneer, the second largest seed company in the world.
“This concentration of control over world seed stocks is alarming to farmers on a worldwide scale, especially considering that the closer seeds seem to be held, the fewer there are.”
LaDuke puts all of our struggles into a feedback loop, connecting wild rice in Minnesota to sustainability in Spokane with the goal of creating a more independent, safe and stable food supply. “However you cut the statistics,” LaDuke says, “from the villages of India to the villages of northern Minnesota, there is a marked loss in worldwide biodiversity, and a closer hold on who controls the remaining seeds of the world.”
This issue of control took me back 32 years, to the time I was a newspaper reporter in the middle of a struggle for the soul of a mountain.
Environmentalists were trying to stop my school, the University of Arizona, from building roads and locating a large mirror telescope on Mount Graham, a 10,000-foot sky island sticking out of the Sonora Desert. Mount Graham was named after a white man who rode through the area many years ago, a Colonel James Graham, but for generations the San Carlos Apaches had referred to the entire range as “Pinaleno,” meaning “many deer.” It’s the holiest place for the Apaches, who acquire the power to become medicine men and women through singing and collecting herbs and water on that mountain.
Despite the importance and traditional use of the place, roads were cut and the telescope went up. LaDuke and I talked about that struggle, and she shared many similar struggles currently unfolding in Indian Country and elsewhere.
LaDuke’s power is in her ability to unearth the history of Native people’s struggles — and how that history is relevant today. There has been a lost connection between how the land should be used and how it actually is used — from wild rice in Minnesota to telescopes in Arizona. Reconnecting with the land is another step in the process, as her book puts it, of reclaiming the sacred.
**Paul Haeder is the sustainability liaison at Spokane Falls Community College, where he also teaches English. His KYRS radio show, Tipping Points: Voices on the Edge, covers sustainability issues.
For years I worked my ass off creating special events, and bringing people from outside whichever college I was working at to engage with ideas, with students and faculty. It was an uphill battle, and being in the English Departments at respective institutions, I was not dealing with people who had a full deck upstairs, if you know what I mean. I did radio weekly shows, interviewed so many people I helped to bring to town. I helped create a Vietnam 20 Years After the Fall event, with dozens of venues and speakers and events and films.
The entire mess of USA is bleeding into everything, really, until we are at 2022-2023 with a world about to implode here there everywhere, and our youth are bogged down with commercialism, dead end education, foggy brains, endless lies and Orwellian Big Brother moves, until we have generations in the main fagged and ready to throw in the proverbial towel.
That’s not to say those rich kids, those kids in bigger cities, with government or academic or big player parents guiding them into special trips, programs, coaching, are not getting to the top of the Predatory and Insane Capitalism that is always vaunted, no matter which criminal billionaire or multimillionaire is put ont he pedestal. Imagine all the Eichmann Faustian Bargains, and these valued children of the upper economic class, the rich, will then in turn be the master blasters of the majority of good, decent youth who must follow the Dystopian Blues.
Yeah, Master Blaster a la Road Warrior:
Almost everything I did above and beyond just teaching would be disallowed today, and much of what and how I taught would be trigger warning material, stopped, and then, here we are, 2023 on the solstice horizon. Hell, most k12 kiddos don’t even know what a solstice is. Sad, destructive, anti-human.
So, we can’t talk about Brittney, Alex Saab, Julian, Gary Webb, Snowden, Leonard, Mumia… so we can’t question who, what, where, why, when, how this basketball star gets out of jail free card others rot
so we can’t look into the belly of the beasts the USA, the WNBA, sports and million dollar paydays, or how Biden roared when he said, more blacks and mexicans in jail that 1994 crime bill he authored for more prison cells, more aggressive policing
more broken windows, broken families Biden
no, the episode of hash oil in Russia the LGBTQ basketball star no talk about anything, as the cancel culture trigger warning thespians and poets announcing anything parsing the world of politics and democrats, that it means racism, hate, homophobia, when in fact
the opposite is true, and this poem Leslé Honoré pens it’s about keeping dialogue shut down yammering about doubting toxic spills and they are not illegal
her lines kill: Be silent Or we will know That you hate Women That you hate Black People That you are Homophobic That you should be silent
but poet with Facebook following will pronounce all is done, cuz the poet loves anything that moves from a Biden mouth, and the lady is back in USA, and there it is
USA USA USA, more people incarcerated 98 percent plea “deals,” Innocence Project on steroids, and, damn, that poet jumps up and down for a star celebrity cult, and fuck the people too poor to leave debtors’ prison
and the poet says only those in diplomacy and international relations can speak about Griner,
as we have another woke-unwoke person running at her mouth sayin’ “only those I approve of get to speak.”
**Note: This poem is a reaction to put downs and shut ups for anyone doubting the Biden White House and this basketball star and the Lord of War swapped out story. Any discussion, verboten, or, if you critize the event we/you are a racist, a hater. This is the way, man/woman, and there will always be blood now when a man, woman, child doubts any narrative.
Read, “Brittney Griner and the U.S. State” by Margaret Kimberley. Note, the Lord of War (he did deals with USA, too) is free to talk, while Brittney? “Brittney Griner ended up being freed because the Russians were angry about Bout’s imprisonment. Biden eventually agreed to Russia’s terms, staged a photo opportunity with her wife, and then whisked her off to an army base where she is being reeducated, or rather reintegrated.”
There were more than 60 folk showing up in Newport, OR, at the extension center, OSU.
Yaquina Birders anchored the presentation, and there was a guest presenter with hundreds of photos at the ready. He was funny, profane, full of comedic relief, and his photos from Tanzania and Uganda, March 2020, are amazing.
I did a story on him two years ago . . . . going on three: “Doctor Dolittle with Brush and Easel.” Ram Papish is a visual artist, and you can find some of the stuff in my piece, and go to his web site.
My first observation was how the crowd was made up of participants and interested folk all in the “old” gray panther category, many older than I am: 65. No one was under the age of 55, for sure, and many people were in their 80s. All of them have aspirations for doing what Ram did — a photo safari in Tanzania and a side trip to Uganda. Again, I have harped on this fact: young people do not participate. Young people throughtout decades of my own teaching and mentoring have to have incentives and repeated harping to attend live events, sometimes events that are one of a kind with amazing authors and figures that will never come back to say, Spokane, El Paso, Las Cruces, etc.
Extra credit, a free day off from class, food, what have you.
There were no school busses, even with a few K12 science-focused kiddos for a field trip (it was 6:30 pm, Thursday night). The fact that these old folk, birders, were there, and most looked Anglo-Saxon, and then most seemed to talk about trips they have taken, you know, birder trips to Central and South America, and African countries, well, skewed toward that demographic, but what a great opportunity for kiddos to engage multigenerationally. Ram’s presentation was full of verve and vigor, and double entrendre’s.
The folk with this birder group stated it was the first in person meeting since March 2020. And, Ram and his wife Dawn and the family (aunt, uncle, brother) just got back to the USA March 15, one day before air travel was cut off and entry into Europe blocked during the Covid Madness.
The Yaquina Birders voted in a new president (Ram stepped down). It’s obvious Ram knows a lot about birds, and while he draws and paints and illustrates, this safari with his 600 mm lens and springing for a true organized photo safari with Land Rover outfitted with roof viewing got him going with amazing shots of birds and the quintessential icons of scrubland and savana: Check out that here, Flora and Fauna of Tanzania.
Here, a few iconic and exotic birds (not from Ram’s digital archive). Check out — Birding in Tanzania.
The event went on from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The show was colorful, set up by Ram in comedic chapters, and his commentary made the ornithological reality fun and full of anthropomorphic fun. The family headed back to the US, and Ram took a trip to Uganda, and he was after the dinosaur bird, his favorite, Shoebill:
There you have it, a fun night, lots of images, lots of context and scene setting, and biology.
Ram and Dawn live in Toledo, Oregon, a few miles east of Newport. They have love birds they are fostering:
Of course, both Dawn and Ram spent time with love birds in Tanzania, photographing them in an old dead tree. His favorite birds, he confessed, are hornbills, and that I can second from my trips to Indochina.
Always tell the truth. Always take the high road. Live each day like it could be your last. Drink it in. Be adventurous, be bold, but savor it. It goes fast. — Ben, from the movie, Captain Fantastic.
Once you drive down the road overlooking Olalla Slough, you end up on a 6.7-acre paradise. Before humans emerge from the ranch-style house, the visitor is greeted by clicking of tongues, screeches and whistling.
Ram Papish and his wife, Dawn Harris, have a residence that includes an outbuilding called “The Love Shack.” No, the B-52’s song is not on a loop. Rather the colorfully painted aviary is home to a dozen parrots affectionately named, Love Birds (genus Agapornis).
There are other avian family members on the property, in another aviary — blue fronted Amazon parrot, Solomon Islands eclectus and an orange winged Amazon parrot.
I am first greeted by Dawn who has a cold soda for me in hand. I recognize her from one of the trainings I was a part of with the Oregon chapter of the American Cetacean Society as part of my certification to become an ACS naturalist. That was March 2019.
She works as the visitor services coordinator for the US Fish & Wildlife Service.
Then Ram emerges with his N95 mask in hand — we all three agreed to the interview and photo session outside.
I first met Ram at the State of the Coast conference at the Salishan Resort in Lincoln City, Oregon. That was November 2019. He imparted a tidal wave of facts and riffs about what it means to be an artist. He is king of anecdotes tied to a life as an illustrator and field biological technician.
Today, on a sunny late June 2020 day, he reiterates at his home what he told the large group at Salishan last year: He considers himself “an illustrator . . . and artists look down their noses at illustrators.”
At the State of the Coast conference, young people abounded, including youthful scientists presenting their research through the elegant process of postering, a mix of science and illustration, something very close to Ram’s heart as he considered in these parts, “The Wayside Interpretative Panel” impresario for the Oregon Coast.
The State of the Coast crowd was in awe of Ram’s hand-painted pants — colorful tufted puffins adorning his trousers is one way to get an audience’s attention.
On the minds of many at the breakout session was, “How do you become an artist?” First, Ram answered in the negative:
“When I went to college, I didn’t think I could make a living at it. I sent out dozens of portfolios to publishers and children’s book publishers. I was really naïve.”
The introduction to art class at Cornell was a turning point in his pursuit: “The professor was basically trying to teach us how to be a snobby artist. I wasn’t going to have any part of that.”
Without question, Ram’s personal and professional drive is to connect people to nature. He works on commission — paid gigs assigned by Oregon State Parks, other agencies and publishers. His drawing avocation started when he was very young; by age 14 he was designing nesting dolls.
Birds of a feather…
Ram and Dawn met in 2002, at the Newport Christmas bird count. He was a single guy and she was married at the time. The three were friends until her divorce. Ram and Dawn eventually dated and then tied the knot.
Dawn beamed ecstatic about their birding trips, including one to the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) where penguins and albatrosses were part and parcel on their birder’s log.
She’s from South Carolina, having attending K12 in S.C. Ram is originally from San Diego from a hippie family fulfilling a vagabond lifestyle.
“My father considered himself somewhat of a poet, a man of letters,” Ram says, smiling. They lived in a tent and spent time in trailer parks. “I was outside all the time.” In eighth grade the family ended up in Eugene.
He is one of five — four boys and one sister. He laughs as Dawn relays how they range in age from 40 to 50.
“Outside” for Ram meant observing nature.
Dawn’s community college years encompassed Manatee Community College in Sarasota, Florida. From there, a BS in wildlife ecology from University of Florida and an MS in the same field from Oregon State University. She ended up as a seasonal employee with US Fish and Wildlife doing work in California on seasonal wetlands and mallard duck transitional ecosystem research.
Ram, the archer
Pronouncing his name means knowing Ram (variant of Rama) is the most common male name in India, the Sanskrit origin meaning as “archer; pleasing.” Think “raw” plus “hmm.”
We have much territory to traverse around Ram’s incredible illustrations and his early proclivity for and talent with drawing.
As a couple, they fit perfectly, as Dawn, 48, and Ram, 47, frequently finish each other’s sentences. It’s obvious Dawn is his biggest fan. I ask them what makes for a good marriage, or couple. Dawn seamlessly states: “We have so many shared interests.” Those include gardening, landscaping, bird watching and travel.
While she has no artistic bent, Dawn supports spiritually and emotionally Ram’s commissions, which include wayside panel illustrations up and down the coast. He has painted more than 100 panels reflecting the area’s diverse ecosystems and flora/fauna.
His interpretations entice the visitor to reflect on the ecology but also to realize the illustrator behind the images is deeply ensconced into the land. It’s a case of love for and deep reflection of nature.
Anyone hiking around Toledo high school might hear those love birds (the parrots) and other rescued parrots this birding couple has helped settle in this exotic land (for an Amazonian bird, yes, Toledo is super exotic).
I try and find more than eight feeders and eight bird boxes on the property. As I leave their home, Dawn shows me the mason bee box they made. I am happy to recall that this April, the couple came in second statewide with 48 bird species sightings in the backyard one-day bird count.
“The earth is what we all have in common.” — Wendell Berry, Naturalist and writer
There are questions about what comes first, art or the environment. There is a passion in art, and yet for Ram, it’s nature that he works with as his universal canvas. Berry’s comment isn’t lost on Ram.
He uses water color techniques with acrylics. He is in his studio showing me the new iteration of his techniques using a computer screen, program and smart pen to design and illustrate work.
He’s working on a junior biologist book for K3 youth. It’s a cool learning tool, sponsored by the Alaskan Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. He’s got one double-page ship cut-away illustration with the goal for readers to spot 15 rats Ram has strategically drawn onboard.
As a panel illustrator Ram knows “less (text) is more.”
“No more do we have textbooks on a stick,” he stated at the conference about the old style of wayside or historical signage where page after page of text dominated markers and panels.
He utilizes the “Rule of Threes” — three seconds to read the headlines; 30 seconds to glance it over and get the gist; three minutes to read everything including the captions.
His work includes tidepool life in Pacific City, shorebird stop-over on the Bandon Marsh, tidepool explorer at Cannon Beach, sea bird islands at Ecola State Park. He has illustrations in field guides, to include Oregon birder books.
He’s a veritable encyclopedia of ecosystems, bird life and aquatic, river and terrestrial species.
In the field
The couple can’t wait for outdoor activities and group meetings to resume with the Yaquina Birders and Naturalists group, of which Ram is president.
Both Dawn and Ram have been speakers on separate occasions for the Oregon Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. Birds and their habitats are their focus, with Ram’s added panoply of art from the field.
Dawn has seen many changes in the Fish and Wildlife Services and her profession: more women. She reflects on what has influenced women to embrace nature and the outdoors.
She attributes this to the power of narratives of such female scientists like Rachel Carson (“Silent Spring,” 1962) who is considered the mother of the environmental movement and who also worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Add to that Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle and thousands of female scientists and educators growing the field to include girls interested in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math.
Obviously, the STEAM. movement — add Arts to STEM — links to Ram’s avocation.
For Harris, wildlife comes first. For Ram, art comes first but his art would be a shell of itself without the integration with and interpretation of the natural world. They have no children, and their lives are intertwined with landscaping, gardening and those darned long-living rescue birds.
The whimsy Ram imparts is universal. He has some amazing paper mâché masks and animals, such as a bigger-than-life turkey vulture. Two books he illustrated and wrote for children — “The Little Fox” and “The Little Seal” both published by the University of Alaska Press — captivate the child’s imagination and wonder for the seal’s and fox’s world.
Ram reiterates he’s always willing to go to public schools to wow youth with his incredible background in art and science, while deploying his flair for public speaking to captivate young and old alike.
A fast-paced PowerPoint with all his illustrations projected on a screen are both impressive and awe-inspiring for young and old.
The best things in nature
The biggest thing Ram misses in this time of lockdown is the summer sea bird camp coordinated through the Pribilof Island Seabird Youth Network, which covers four volcanic islands in the Bering Sea. He’s been the wildlife illustrator there for more than eight years.
The camp works with youth, many Aleut, covering these areas:
• Open doors to careers in science and natural resource management.
• Increase sense of ownership and understanding of local resources.
• Provide training in marketable multi-media skills.
• Provide education in seabird ecology, research and conservation.
Dawn reiterates how disappointed Ram is now that the camp has been cancelled due to Covid-19. The youth are big losers, since they will miss the collective IQ and creativity of the staff, the comradery amongst themselves, and the amazing ecosystem splendor including 11 species of birds that breed on the island.
As part of the team, Ram works in a partnership between the Pribilof School District, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the City of St. Paul, Tanadgusix Corporation, the St. George Traditional Council, St. George Island Institute, the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and the wider scientific community.
The program’s website, http://seabirdyouth.org/ shows the amazing facial and body language of not only the youth getting so much out of the time, but also people like Ram, who in many photos has these ear-to-ear grins while he’s mentoring and instructing youth.
Both Ram and Dawn assert this is the best way for young and old to learn, engage in life long critical thinking and to continue on as mentors and teachers themselves, whether they go into educational fields or not.
Where are people — students — going to get the in-the-field and on-the-canvas wisdom Ram Papish brings to the proverbial table unless they are there, hands on, with him, in a learning environment with the tools of the trade — camera, brushes, paints, photographs and field research?
Ram qualifies as a unique illustration instructor at the Sea Bird Camp because he has also had 20 field seasons working as a biological sciences technician studying birds and other wildlife, primarily in Alaska. He’s a hands-on artist who encourages youth to create art.
What’s more inspiring to youth than an illustrator who has his work published in books and publications, including the Handbook of Oregon Birds, Northwest Birds in Winter and Oregon Birds?
His last big outing was in January, at the OSU Extension office for a talk, “Drawing on Nature: Connecting People and Wildlife Through Art.”
From paperboy to illustrator
We’re looking at the round plates adorning the kitchen where Dawn is setting up some chips and salsa. It’s a new obsession Ram is involved in creating — sgraffito. These are amazingly simple images of nature, and birds, to include one of my favorites, a kingfisher. The word is derived from the Italian, “graffito,” a drawing or inscription made on a wall or other surface (think graffiti) .
In ceramics, sgraffito is a technique of ornamentation in which a surface layer is scratched to reveal a ground of contrasting color. Ram mentioned this at the State of the Coast talk, too.
Before Ram was designing dolls, he was a paperboy. He recalls how in Eugene he was throwing the newspaper on the lawn of who would be one of his illustrator idols — Larry McQueen.
“I recognized him from a biography of him I had been reading.”
McQueen is still around, and his biography and bibliography are deep when you go to his page on Artists for Conservation.
Here’s a snippet from McQueen’s page:
“I grew up in the small town of Mifflinburg in central Pennsylvania. Birds fascinated me from the start. With colored pencils, I attempted to draw birds that I observed on early morning forays around the neighborhood. One of the first books my parents gave me was “The Junior Book of Birds” by Roger Peterson, illustrated with a small selection of paintings done by several bird artists of the time. Each illustration in this slender book presents the bird in a full page of habitat. As a child, these images influenced my perceptions of the bird in nature, profoundly. Around the age of ten, I was given two books with impressive artwork: a 1937 edition of reproductions of Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ and another large volume entitled ‘Birds of America,’ with illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. I have since studied the original work of these great bird artists, with veneration. The inspiration of others continues and I regard as pivotal, the paintings of the great Swedish wildlife artist, Bruno Liljefors, of early 20th Century.
At age twelve, I was invited to be a founding member of the Bucknell Ornithological Club at Bucknell University, close to my hometown. Involved with regular meetings and field-trips, I was learning about ‘ornithology’ as a subject, and my birding skills greatly improved.”
At age 15, Ram tells me he worked at a public relations firm producing illustrations for brochures and advertisements. At 16, one of Ram’s paintings was hung in the US Capitol building.
He was the political cartoonist for the South Eugene High School newspaper. “I did a lot of political cartoons.” Pen and ink drawing was his forte.
He did illustrations of jet boats for a business on the Rogue River; wildlife scenery for different chambers of commerce; designed nesting dolls of endangered species for the Nature Shop. That was by age 16.
He’s still a lifelong vegetarian, incubated at birth by plant-based diet parents. “When you grow up without eating meat, you just can’t stomach it.”
Dawn bends with Ram’s dietary choices, but she still dives into BBQ pork when she ends up back in North Carolina. Ram is experimenting with sushi — tuna — and so far, he’s faring well.
Dawn and Ram’s last trip together on a flora and fauna safari was in Tanzania on the Serengeti plain during the heart of the migration. “The power of those herds of wildlife I have not experienced before. I took around one hundred thousand photos,” he tells me.
For most of us, we will have to vicariously live those trips, through the prism of colors Ram deploys and the interpretations he makes with brushstrokes as our naturalist guide to the art of nature.
Maybe Ram really is the Doctor Dolittle of the illustrator’s world, and he is in good company, with one of this country’s more well-known “illustrators” defining his art:
“Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I’ve always called myself an illustrator. I’m not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.” — Norman Rockwell
Q&A:
Paul Haeder: What’s the most difficult aspect of wildlife and conservation settings to paint?
Ram Papish: I find people to be difficult.
PH: What would you tell a young person wanting to major in and practice with art?
RP: Start networking immediately. I worked at many different agencies and companies as a biotech that later hired me to do artwork. That type of connection building tends to pay off in the long run.
PH: What animal in the wild would you like to see and why?
RP: Helmet Vanga of Madagascar and Blue Crane (most easily seen in South Africa) are high on my bird bucket list.
PH: Thought experiment — If you believed in reincarnation, what animal would you want to come back as and why?
RP: Great Sapphirewing. They live in the beautiful high Andes and spend their days in cool comfort sipping sweet nectar from alpine flowers. Also, they are relatively free of external parasites.
PH: What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?
RP: A rainbow of different artwork including different styles, more sculpture, paintings on glass, computer-based drawings, 3D murals.
PH: Wildlife illustrations can enhance the visitor experience by “adding an extra dimension.” Can you expound on this?
RP: I feel that one of the reasons art is appealing is that it depicts reality through the filter of another person’s vision.
PH: What’s your dream commission?
RP: A series of books called “The Secret Life of Birds.” Each lavishly illustrates the natural history of a different bird species.
PH: If you Google, “greatest wildlife illustrators,” it’s all men. What is up with that do you think?
RP: Like in many professions, traditional gender roles have a strong historic influence. This will change over time.
Ukraine has good reason to believe it will not be held accountable for using them against civilians, given its Western backers’ and their allies’ penchant for using prohibited weapons on civilians without repercussions–including Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq and Syria, and white phosphorous and dart bombs in Gaza.
The fact the Western media turns a blind eye is also a boon to Kiev.
This is what occurs with Empire, and we know the UK, USA, Five Eyes, EU, all bought and sold by the lords of war.
These people are the absolute worse people in the world, along with the engineers and technologists and scientists who will do anything to get a grant cool million here, fifty mil there. Anything to play god, play with humanity, play with the lethality of their wet horror dreams Do not let the skirts and skinny jeans fool you. These are hard, cold killers.
You can read that again. The idea is to proactively guesstimate the character and timing of oppositional narratives, and for the algorithms to produce NARRATIVE COUNTERMEASURES to stifle these embryonic developments of potential political opposition before they can even be coherently formulated and disseminated.
If that’s not the exact image of a boot stamping on a human face forever, I really don’t know what is.
And perhaps the most disturbing thing is that this entire project is (quite effectively, I might add) being sold in connection with narratives of liberalism. Of narratives pertaining to the increase of freedom, to the supplementing of individual agency, and to the bolstering of progress and human flourishing. (source)
Until we get this — dialing for war lords: one WNBA star for one Russian war lord who does business with EVERYONE:
And, the rot gut that is remore work for General Dynamics and others, I can attest, is so dispicable, since I have a family member who worked on GD web crap, internal, and he was laid off, terminated, at age 62, after more than 20 years with the company.
No severance, and in Arizona, General Dynamics forces those laid off to apply for Arizona unemployment, but, somehow, after six months or three months, GD will pony up something? This relative would have just given up, but he’s jumping through the ugly unemployment hoops, which make a person feel like he or she is a scab, a loser. And, then, the PTO check comes, and so his unEmployment was denied.
So many class action lawsuits against General Dynamics:
Former General Dynamics workers can move forward as a class in their suit claiming the company didn’t give them enough notice that they were getting fired, a Virginia federal judge ruled, finding their claims don’t require individualized inquiry.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne said Monday that the workers’ claims that General Dynamics Information Technology violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act by failing to provide them at least a 60-day notice they were getting fired can be resolved on a classwide basis.
“The GDIT policies in the record provide flexibility as to where the employees worked, and those policies apply to the class equally without the need for an individualized inquiry,” Judge Payne said. (source) (more)
Raytheon and Patriot missiles. I taught at Fort Bliss, home of the Patriot, “first to fire . . . .” English, that is, effective writing as an Army contractor. Amazing how that $3.29 bolt for the shrouding, somewhere around 16 total, for each missile, ends up costing us hundreds of dollars each. The graft, the triple-dipping, the entire scam that is the revolving door of lords/murderers of war and the private welfare cheating companies is also part and parcel here.
Despite being banned under the UN Ottawa Treaty since 1997, thousands of anti-personnel mines litter the parks, streets, schools and homes in Donbass. Residents risk severe injuries and even death if they happen to accidentally stumble upon the tiny ‘petal’ mines.
A ‘petal’ mine is a pressure-activated anti-personnel mine. It’s small and hard to see, making it the ‘vilest’ mine. Ukraine was reported to have disposed of some six million of these petal mines it had in service. But that is clearly not the case as it has been using them to bombard residential areas of Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities of Donbass for months. Dozens of civilians who accidentally came into contact with the landmines have been admitted to hospitals in Donbass.
Emergency services, sappers and humanitarian personnel have been working hard to clear the neighbourhoods of the insidious explosive devices, while the Ukrainian army continues to bombard cities with the mines. Brave civilians help sappers to spot mines, some of them even learn de-mining techniques themself.
It will take years to remove all of the mines, according to some experts. The Ukrainian army uses Uragan multiple launch rocket systems, which are able to throw more than 4,000 mines at a time.
The documentary takes a look at the arduous mission of the de-mining campaign in Donbass. Victims of ‘petal’ mines talk about the injuries they received, while sappers describe their work on the ground and underwater. (documentary, of course, banned on YouCIATube)
Again, I have mentioned this endlessly: the military industrial complex is the finance-insurance-retail-manufacturing-food-banking-education-pharma-ag-energy-mining-chemical-science-engineering-surveillance-et al COMPLEX.
Some of the largest companies that have declined to renounce future involvement in antipersonnel landmine production are General Electric, Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Thiokol. Some companies that have declined to renounce future involvement in production are now involved in developing technology to detect, remove, and destroy uncleared antipersonnel mines, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Mohawk, and Ensign-Bickford.
In the U.S., no single company is responsible for the production of antipersonnel mines from beginning to end. The Pentagon will usually award a contract to one large company which will in turn buy component parts from many other companies. Final assembly of mines is often done in government-owned, contractor-operated Army Ammunition factories. Thus, the landmine industry in the U.S. consists more of component suppliers than “mine producers” per se. Some companies that have supplied components for antipersonnel mines objected to their inclusion in this report by claiming that they are not “mine producers.”
The seventeen companies that declined in writing to renounce future involvement in antipersonnel mine production are: AAI Corp. (Maryland), Allen-Bradley (Texas), Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (Minnesota), also representing mine producers Accudyne Corp. (Wisconsin), and Ferrulmatic, Inc. (New Jersey), CAPCO, Inc.(Colorado), Dale Electronics, Inc. (Nebraska), Ensign-Bickford Industries, Inc. (Connecticut), General Electric Company (Connecticut), Lockheed Martin Corp. (Maryland), Mohawk Electrical Systems, Inc. (Delaware), Nomura Enterprise, Inc. (Illinois), Parlex Corp. (Massachusetts), Quantic Industries, Inc. (California), Raytheon (Massachusetts), Thiokol Corp. (Utah),48 and Vishay Sprague (Pennsylvania).
The thirteen companies that did not respond in writing to Human Rights Watch are: Action Manufacturing Co. (Pennsylvania), Aerospace Design, Inc. (California), Amron Corp. (Wisconsin), BI Technologies (California), Consolidated Industries, Inc. (Alabama), Day & Zimmerman, Inc. (Pennsylvania),49 EMCO, Inc. (Alabama), Formworks Plastics, Inc. (California), Fort Belknap Industries (Montana), Intellitec (Florida), Mason & Hangar/Silas Mason Co., Inc. (Kentucky),50 Primetec, Inc. (Florida), and Unitrode Corp. (New Hampshire). (source)
