I just got back from the Lincoln County courthouse. Supporting a victim of BWS, battered wife syndrome, also called domestic abuse, spousal abuse. The punk was arrested Nov. 12, 2022, and he is still in county jail, on $750K bail.

“Waldport man in jail on second-degree attempted murder, 9 other charges” Nov. 14, 2022

All cases of women who are in a relationship — my friend was in this abusive marriage almost 5 years — who return to the abuser (in his case, verbally and economically abusive, to the point of triple woman hating and keeping bank accounts in his name, including keeping the vehicles and house in his name) are different on many nuanced levels, but they all have that case of Stockholm Syndrome, that case of once being full of chutzpah, but something inside them has caused them to not see the destruction of a killing inside their boyfriend or husband.

The case is meandering in the judicial system. The public defender (my money, tax payers’ money) can get extensions on this case. More discovery. The grand jury indicted the guy three days after the attempted suffocation and other charges. He’s not out, and the DA forwarded a 5 year prison plea (down from a lot more time if convicted by 12 member of a jury and the book thrown at him). However, this guy is such a narcissist and know-it-all, he is probably conjuring up all sorts of machinations.

In the end, the victim, my friend, is in hyper-vigilance even though both of them have no family or friends or any roots at all in Oregon. He’s in jail, and while his mother hired a private investigator to go fishing for character witness statements, the bottom line is what happened Nov. 12 is on the criminal justice record.

Yet, today, more crap, more bogged down systems. Over 26 cases heard by one judge from 9 to 11 am. Many have been given extensions for more time to have paperwork and evidence forwarded. It is a bogged down system of judicial inertia and lawyer lagging.

She’s divorcing him, so that is a separate case, again, heard today, but forwaded on for more extension, and because this guy is in jail, things get slowed down.

She got a restraining order approved with a measley $1000 payment to keep the hous in order, but the previous judge failed to initial that section of the Protection Order, and so she is back filing another one. He did not contest the first one, but now he is contesting this exact same one, under the orders of his mother, or someone. The judge warned that if he gave any statements in this protective order that it could have some bearing on his criminal case.

That’s messed up, this judge giving this fellow legal advice. Told him to plea the Fifth.

So, here we have a divorce, civil protection order and criminal trial.

She’s got her green card, and she finally has a counselor working with her on domestic violence with C-PTSD as the main issue. Her father from Canada visited and so too did her sister. For years my friend did not tell them about the full extent of this guy’s abuse.

I know the judicial system, but each new year, the system gets further bogged down, and the public defenders as a group are in crisis — not enough money made and absolute triple the caseload which should be allowed.

Broken broken broken. Remember Ross Perot, and NAFTA and that famous (among other things) statement during the 1992 presidential campaign that if NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was not a two-way street, it would create a “ giant sucking sound ” of jobs going south to the cheap labor markets of Mexico?

Think of Capitalism as that broken broken broken sound. As in broken down to our bones broken by over policing, over taxing, over burdened, over worked, and under represented to include that tearing sound of social services safety nets frayed and almost immolated. Broken!

So here we are, no, with May 3 set for a settlement conference? This is something initiated some 26 years ago, since the court systems are broken and clogged, so now, this guy did not accept the plea, and so the judge stated that she will schedule the criminal case for trial, but a settlement conference is possible, so the ADA and the PD agreed to meet. The courtroom would be a neutral one (sic) and a judge would hear the strengths and weaknesses in both the prosecution’s and the defense’s cases. The defendent would be there in orange jumpsuit and shackles, and my friend would be there too.

A bargaining game, a sort of please settle (plea dice throwing) theater between the DA’s office and his Public Defender. Imagine that. All this time, all the time deputies came out, served a warrant on him, all the jail paperwork, the court paperwork, all the money paid for judges, clerks, ADAs, support staff, all the cops and all the infrastructure keeping this dance going.

Very hard indeed for someone, my friend, who is getting counseling now, after having one counselor who just stopped answering phone calls (that’s medical abandonment, but that’s a civil matter, yet another labyrith to course through).

Healing is a singularly tough thing in Capitalism when money buys power, representation, creates all the bells and whistles, etc., for the rich.

Ahh, broken criminal justice system 101.

Here, from Cindy Sheehan, an example of the criminal injustice system and the medical injustice system killing an elderly woman who was having a stroke. This is what needs defending, this broken, corrupt, polluted society? If you do not hate the thought of Zelensky in yet another photo op, yet more trillions to that country, then you are subhuman, like the Ukrainian leadership and Nazified military. Here, read this an weap:

I really don’t have too many words for this horrid event.

This poor lady apparently had a stroke and broke her ankle, and she was asked to leave the hospital, but she couldn’t.

So, what happened then? The compassionate (Nazis) workers at the hospital took pity and decided to treat her? Nope, they called the gestapo, I mean police, and she died in their custody.

Wait, I do have words—-remember during the past three years when we, the ones who rejected the Devil Juice, or rejected the dirty face nappies—were told that we were going to “kill Meemaw,” even if we were those Meemaws?

Remember when we were told that we could not go see our loved ones in hospital, or nursing facilities, so they had to die alone to prevent us from killing them? Or, grandparents and grandchildren were separated, not by miles, but by government diktat?

We live in Garbage Land where the Garbage People’s hospitals don’t heal, they kill, and where law enforcement doesn’t protect us, it protects the killers!

Don’t go to the hospital? We know that thousands of people were killed by stasi-protocol during the “pandemic” and counted as Covid deaths.

What if we lived somewhere other than Garbage Land and this poor woman could have been the one to call law enforcement and they would have come to help her and force the ER to treat her? Fuck.

I am distraught over this, but how many times does something like this happen off-camera? (Sheehan)

Oh heck, I can end this short diatribe with the end of the English Major. Sure, I got a couple of those degrees. Sure, not all in these humanities departments are stalwarts, but compared to S.T.E.M. folk, who will do any Eichmann thing to make bucks, to have job stability, to keep in the slipstream of the American Dream, they are not bad. Drugs, chemicals, applications, drones, rockets, surveillence tools, missiles, propaganda, all those amazing things that have intended and unintended consequences, so making bank means keeping silent, so S.T.E.M. are the quiet ones, the scientists and technologists and engineers who for the most part keep their mouths shut . . . for a price . . . a Bargain . . . . Faustian Bargain!

According to Robert Townsend, the co-director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators project, which collects data uniformly but not always identically to internal enrollment figures, from 2012 to 2020 the number of graduated humanities majors at Ohio State’s main campus fell by forty-six per cent. Tufts lost nearly fifty per cent of its humanities majors, and Boston University lost forty-two. Notre Dame ended up with half as many as it started with, while suny Albany lost almost three-quarters. Vassar and Bates—standard-bearing liberal-arts colleges—saw their numbers of humanities majors fall by nearly half. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point briefly considered eliminating thirteen majors, including English, history, and philosophy, for want of pupils. (source)

“Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened? by Nathan Heller

Imagine, forever chemicals in all living things. Science. STEM!

A new analysis finds that more than 330 species of animals across the globe – from polar bears to squirrels – carry in their bodies a class of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called PFAS.

Known as “forever chemicals,” because they do not break down as many others do, the substances have been linked in humans to risks for cancer, low birthweights, weakened childhood immunity, thyroid disease and other health problems.

Research has already shown that 99% of Americans have PFAS in their bodies. But this report released Wednesday by the Environmental Working Group shows more than 120 different forever chemicals were found in the blood serum or bodies of birds, tigers, monkeys, pandas, horses, cats, otters and other mammals.

Over 12,000 products have this shit in them. And the diseases? Studies have linked PFOA to kidney and testicular cancers, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and other serious ailments in highly contaminated communities such as Parkersburg, West Virginia. Very low doses of PFAS in drinking water have been linked to immune system suppression including reduced vaccine efficacy and an increased risk of certain cancers, studies have found. PFAS are linked with reproductive and developmental problems as well as increased cholesterol and other health issues, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

You will not see some efficient, for-by-with-because of We the People judicial system holding to account these monster companies, again, companies that depend on, well, S.T.E.M. students. The humanities? Well, it is more than “just” English lit majors. In fact, if done right, the entire college and K12 systems would be integrating languages, arts, history, writing, literature, anthropology, and of course music, dance, theater and philosophy and ethics and so much more into an across the curriculum template, but instead, we have this sickness for more more more to keep the engines of capitalism going, a predatory and casino capitalism which is now bio-security, security, surveillence capitalism going. Until we have this disjointed and bizarre religion of science and engineering and technology as some panacea for the crumbling American empire.

Without the “A” in S.T.E.A.M, all we have are Eichmanns from a different mother. Arts.

And it all comes down to those in STEM who don’t give a shit about discourse, debate, history, knowledge outside their fucking field of intended and unintended dirty consequences. I have said this a hundred times in hundreds of articles, it all comes down, now, to that Freudian slip, that dirty man, Edward Bernays:

It’s not like they even hide their intent. The notorious World Economic Forum has been forthcoming about their plans for the rest of us. The forum’s founder, Klaus Schwab, even wrote a book about it, titled “Covid-19: The Great Reset.”

Within his vision of how society should be engineered going forward, Schwab’s stand on “stakeholder capitalism” sounds altruistic at face value. But what he doesn’t mention is that his vision includes the same group of elites controlling even more aspects of our lives. Envisioning themselves as “trustees of society” they will continue to profit from the results of that expanded control. He recently publicly stated at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:

“What the fourth industrial revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity” explaining how upcoming technology will allow authorities to “intrude into the hitherto private space of our minds, reading our thoughts and influencing our behavior.”

This concept does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling…

These elite decision makers don’t hide their hypocrisy either. When these elite groups meet to discuss (our) future, they often talk about how we (the Masses) need to reduce our carbon footprints. No mention that they arrived to their mountaintop retreat meetings individually, in their own private jets, (no jet-pooling for them!) wasting more resources in one event than the average person ever could or would in their day to day lives..

Like it or not, or believe it or not, social engineering is not new. For those who don’t believe in or understand the concept of social engineering, I suggest watching the 2002 BBC Documentary “The Century of the Self” about the life of Edward Louis Bernays (1891-1995).

It’s fascinating, enlightening and to be honest, more than just a bit creepy.

Bernays, the Austrian-American nephew of Sigmund Freud, was almost single-handedly responsible for re-purposing the concept of “propaganda” in America into “Pubic Relations.” Sounds much more innocent, doesn’t it?

In his first campaign, he was recruited by President Woodrow Wilson to Wilson’s Committee on Public Information created in 1917. Wilson tasked Bernays with intentionally using propaganda to influence the American population to willingly engage in World War I. (source)

Until we are here, where judges still wear black robes, and where the systems deem us as children, or as sheep. This courtroom was with a judge who treated the people on the other end of the phone line (it gets phoned in now, injustice) like imbeciles or children. Bernays is the monster of the century. That 2002 documentary is rough and out of favor now, but telling.

Students have neither the wisdom nor the experience to know what they need to know.

— Gregory Petsko.

STEM will do shit for humanity. Truly. Listen to my interview of Gregory Petsko, “Science and the Arts/Humanities: A Marriage Made in Heaven” — scroll down:

https://paulhaeder.com/podcast/podcast-2/

We talked about this essay, “Save university arts from the bean counters” by Gregory Petsko Nature volume 468, page1003 (2010) Scientists must reach across the divide and speak up for campus colleagues in arts and humanities departments, says Gregory Petsko.

March is National Disabilities Awareness Month

Teamwork, physical activity, positive reinforcement and community recognition and participation.

This year’s Lincoln County Special Olympics basketball teams will be hitting Turner, Oregon for state wide championship games.

Getting there has been a team effort: state level Special Olympics staff and administrators; our local Lincoln County directors, Donna and Eric Thorpe; family and friends; volunteers; and the players.

From 2020 up to part of 2022, the face-to-face S.O. games and practices were put on hold. This year, the basketball participants in Lincoln County number more than 20. Our Saturday practices have parents, grandparents and supporters watching these athletes hit the court and do their warm-ups, skills activities and scrimmages.

Did I mention FUN? As one of the coaches, I have seen these participants go from reluctance to beaming happiness to get energized by safe fair competition.

As part of Disabilities Awareness Month (March), all people celebrating the gains made with such legislation as the Americans with Disability Act understand how difficult it has been to get young and old living with developmental, physical, and intellectual disabilities into the hearts and minds of mainstream society.

My early work was with United Cerebral Palsy of Oregon and Southwest Washington. My clients were people with an array of disabilities, not just cerebral palsy. My training was centered around putting people first, working with clients on their dream jobs, and helping shift a prejudicial culture into a fair one. That is, I worked with Portland area employers and businesses to encourage hiring clients with dreams and aspirations of independence through a job.

My work was around “carving” jobs or “specialized” employment. There were really only two or three degrees of separation: many of the hiring managers, business owners and workers in these businesses have lived experiences with family and friends who have a disability.

People first language is about thinking of young and old as people “living” with a disability, which isn’t the only defining factor in their lives.

There are five important federal laws protecting individuals with disabilities from discrimination in employment and the job application process: Americans with Disabilities Act; Rehabilitation Act; Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act; Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act; Civil Service Reform Act.

This is just a short list of the protections this society has decided are important for our fellow citizens living with autism,  fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Fragile X and a number of other developmental/intellectual disabilities.

Shifting from housing, employment, and education rights for all citizens including those with developmental-intellectual-psychological disabilities, we grasp the importance of activities of daily living as another engine of inclusion. The arts and athletics are part and parcel of inclusion.

I’m working with athletes as part of the Special Olympics program, but I have attended competitions in what is called Special Olympics Unified Sports. Right now, 1.2 million people worldwide take part in Unified Sports. Unified Sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team.

This blending of those living with and those without intellectual disabilities creates a win-win-win situation. This program puts these participants in a unique position of support, understanding each others’ unique talents and certainly teamwork.

Unified games include highly skilled basketball players assisting those utilizing wheelchairs and walkers. There are “able” bodied athletes who guide individuals with Down syndrome take shots. Even the officials allow for leeway with traveling and breaking of the three-second rule inside the key.

When I was a high school wrestler in Arizona, one of the most rewarding and challenging matches I had was with the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind in Tucson. I was grappling at 163 pounds, and my matches with ASDB were tougher than some of the ones I had in mining towns like Globe and Ajo.

I did follow through later at university volunteering with judo and swimming coaching for youth with disabilities. I even had the opportunity as a dive master to assist an organization providing specialized underwater wheelchair-dive equipment for divers who were physically challenged.

Eunice Shriver founded Special Olympics in 55 years ago. Shriver (1921-2009) envisioned the impact sport competitions have, believing the same positive influence would benefit people with disabilities. The creation of S.O. at the first Special Olympics Games, held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 is the athletic competition’s birth.

Tim Shriver put it best: “If you look at her brothers and sisters and all that they accomplished, no one will stand any higher than my mother.” (source)

Life changing, life enhancing, life affirming. Special Olympics Oregon serves over 12,000 participants each year through sports, education, and athlete health programs at no cost to the athletes and their families. That’s the win-win-win we can all celebrate in March.

More on Disabilities:

More and More Boys are Coming Home from School with Behavior Sheets!

When an Alien is Our Brother, Son, Friend

Working with individuals with psychiatric disabilities is pretty challenging, i.e. since getting folk housing and work is almost impossible because of the triple bias of our cutlure around: The National Institute of Mental Health reports that as many as 1 in 4 adults in the United States will suffer from a diagnosable psychiatric condition in any given year. Being in a college environment can be helpful to students with psychiatric disabilities as it often provides a structure and routine that aids students in the recovery process. Many psychological conditions are treated using a combination of medication, therapy, and support. Because of the social stigma that often accompanies psychiatric disabilities, students may be reluctant to disclose their needs for accommodations. (source)

• Anxiety / Panic Disorders
• Depressive Disorders
• Eating Disorders
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
• Personality Disorders
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorders
• Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder
• Substance Abuse

Amazing how many people live with these, and we can see that there are co-occurring disorders. Imagine, being born with an intellectual disability which is categorized as a developmental disability.  For example, within the context of education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that aims to ensure educational services to children with disabilities throughout the nation, the definition of IDD and the types of conditions that are considered IDD might be different from the definitions and categories used by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to provide services and support for those with disabilities. These definitions and categories might also be different from those used by healthcare providers and researchers.

It might be helpful to think about IDDs in terms of the body parts or systems they affect or how they occur. For example:

Nervous system
These disorders affect how the brain, spinal cord, and nervous system function, which can affect intelligence and learning. These conditions can also cause other issues, such as behavioral disorders, speech or language difficulties, seizures, and trouble with movement. Cerebral palsy,Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are examples of IDDs related to problems with the nervous system.

Sensory system
These disorders affect the senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) or how the brain processes or interprets information from the senses. Preterm infants and infants exposed to infections, such as cytomegalovirus, may have reduced function with their eyesight and/or hearing. In addition, being touched or held can be difficult for people with ASDs.

Metabolism
These disorders affect how the body uses food and other materials for energy and growth. For example, how the body breaks down food during digestion is a metabolic process. Problems with these processes can upset the balance of materials available for the body to function properly. Too much of one thing, or too little of another can disrupt overall body and brain functions. Phenylketonuria (PKU) and congenital hypothyroidism are examples of metabolic conditions that can lead to IDDs.

Degenerative
Individuals with degenerative disorders may seem or be typical at birth and may meet usual developmental milestones for a time, but then they experience disruptions in skills, abilities, and functions because of the condition. In some cases, the disorder may not be detected until the child is an adolescent or adult and starts to show symptoms or lose abilities. Some degenerative disorders result from other conditions, such as untreated problems of metabolism. (source)

In a society with all priorities upside down, where preventative health care is counter to capitalism, where precautionary principle is laughed at, where war against nations and war against ecology-community-culture-people-thought prevails, imagine the uphill battle in the arena of recognizing people born with developmental disabilities, and the entire suite of challenges with mainstreaming, inclusion, respect.

Did that human stain get disqualified for making fun of a report with a disability? Remember?  Trump waved his arms in an bizarre and mocking manner at a rally in South Carolina while talking about a comment made by Serge Kovaleski. Kovaleski has a chronic condition called arthrogryposis, which limits the movement of his arms.

No immediate calls for him to stand down and go the way of the Dodo. All those Trump supporters living with adults and youth with developmental disabilities. All those veterans with physical disabilities. Imagine how easy it would be to disqualify all these human stains for who they really are.

Here, the trailer of Alien Boy:

You have to feel rage after watching Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse, a feature-length documentary six years in the making by director Brian Lindstrom chronicling the life and death of Portland, Oregon, punk rock poet James Chasse, whose life ended on September 17th, 2006 at the hands of Portland police officers following “behavior” that they deemed “suspicious” enough to warrant a brutal beating that Chasse with 26 broken bones in 16 of his ribs and with a punctured lung. Chasse was also tased during the altercation. Within an hour of this one-sided altercation with Portland police, Chasse was dead in a cell where he’d been dragged unmercifully despite his own pleas of pain and suffering. Even in a world where we know those living with mental illness are often misunderstood and mistreated, Chasse’s encounter is particularly devastating and horrifying.

Chasse, diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, was 42-years-old on the night that he died in an altercation that was seen by dozens of witnesses and captured on video casting significant doubt on the testimony provided by the Portland police officers involved in the altercation. Where they reported a man to be “combative,” most witnesses described Chasse as far more frightened. Hospital security camera footage shows some of the main officers involved in the altercation bragging about the incident and treating the obviously suffering man with continued brutality.

Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse vividly and painfully captures Chasse’s lifelong struggles with schizophrenia while also examining in detail the actions of the police officers responsible for his death, officers who were never charged and never held accountable nor whom never accepted any responsibility for his death beyond stating that they followed police procedures.

It never ends, these stories of how people with disabilities are attacked verbally and physically. On March 18, 2006, Otto Zehm was beaten, shocked and hog-tied by police officers in a north Spokane Zip Trip, after he was accused erroneously of theft. He died two days later at a Spokane hospital. Thompson was the first responding officer.

On March 18, 2006, Zehm was in a Zip Trip in north Spokane when he was confronted by Officer Karl F. Thompson Jr., who was responding to an erroneous report that Zehm had stolen money from the ATM where he cashed his checks. After a struggle that included police baton strikes, Taser jolts and the arrival of six other officers, Zehm was hog-tied and a medical mask intended only for use with a dedicated oxygen supply strapped over his nose and mouth. He stopped breathing and died two days later.

Then, on May 21, 2012, the Spokane City Council closed one chapter of the excessive force case by finalizing the $1.67 million settlement with the family of Otto Zehm. The deal was reached in mediation between city representatives, including the mayor and Zehm family attorneys.

The idea is those working with youth and adults with disabilities, including Special Olympics, get more out of the experience than the actual athletes we coach and mentor.

We all start out as kiddos:

Growing up: Otto Zehm in a class picture at Stevens Elementary during the 1977-78 school year.

What is being paid for being sick . . . a human right, the right thing to do, a luxury?

Again, these missives by yours truly do not rattle the world in terms of prominence and great analytical deft tied to geopolitics, politics, global issues, the proxy war(s) and more. It’s called Ground Truthing, and for some, it is BORING, unseemly, just plain old pedestrian.

However, I disagree, making a point to push the POV, the narrative, the autobiographical as true journalism, true discussion of how rotten and rotting Capitalism is, and then how each step/rung of the broken ladder is emblematic of how disaster and usury and casino capitalism does its dirty deeds. Sy Hersh may have a story that is making the rounds, even though the logic and the tell-tale historical comments from neocons proved beyond a doubt the private pipeline was blown up by USA, a la collective lackeys in NATO.

So here it is, simply: I had to throw in yet another towel, this time for a part-time gig in crumbling Lincoln County (certainly reflective of other crumbling counties, except this one has multimillionaires building milion dollar-plus homes on the sea while the county is being gutted worker wise because there is NO housing for slave wagers.

That gig was school bus driver. I have friends who have done that gig, and my hat is off to them. But, alas, one slice of one job pretty much can be scaled up to the fact that capitalism is about absolute exploitation, to the point of murder in the name of working sick.

Here we are, with drivers, many of whom are over 62 years of age, many in their late 60s, and some in their seventies. And, the work conditions include working inside closed in offices that are petri dishes and cesspools for viruses. Imagine that, a school bus driver working while coughing and spitting up green and black mucus. Here, the barely one hour (2/17) old resignation letter:

Dear So and So:

Yes, I’ve put my feet into the First Student pond and have learned this is not my best option for part-time work. The main reason is drivers working sick and passing along those so-called “colds.”

The reality has been made clear to all of us by First Student employees that Lincoln County has a driver shortage. That is the unfortunate nature of this coastal location. However, when a driver is sick, he or she should take days off to recuperate and to not pass along the disease. Ideal? That’s an entirely different discussion. Furthermore, I have observed many times just at the Waldport yard, drivers push through and continue working while sick.

My issue is being stuck in an enclosed tiny yard office with no open air circulation and the heater blasting with sick employees. Add to that scenario, the enclosed buses and sick drivers. You know all about these conditions as managers.

Look, I have worked in many places, including K12 schools in several states, in prisons, and in twin plants with hundreds of workers in Juarez, to name a few congested places. I’ve never gotten sick!

However, the so-called crud that has been circulating here in the Waldport (it’s a viral upper respiratory illness) yard just continues to get passed on to the next and the next driver. Exposing myself to enclosed small spaces isn’t my idea of getting better and well. One driver I monitored with was hacking up so much that he looked pretty pale; unfortunately, that gentleman told me he had the lung infection for weeks. On top of that, the poor gentleman ended up with cardiac issues and had to stop driving his route.

And, of course, we have youth riding the buses, and just yesterday one student was spitting up pretty nasty mucus and when we picked him up from Excel, the paraeducator who released him stated he couldn’t come back to school until he was seen by a doctor or greatly improved. She stated this poor youth was spitting up black mucus in the classroom. 

I never get colds, the so-called flu or respiratory illnesses, UNTIL now. Coughing bus drivers packed into a small space at 6 am, well, that’s more than some petri dish incubating a virus ready to be passed from one driver to the next. 

In any case, too bad for me. I was enjoying the possibility of getting behind the wheel of a bus. I knew the risks there with students, but I was assured that I could open windows and blast the driver fans to circulate the stagnant air (not foolproof to avoid a virus, or fungal infection, but still, better than nothing).

Am I too sick to do a two hour run today? Of course not, that is, I am not in bed and running a fever. Am I contagious? Of course I am, that’s how viruses work. How long are we contagious with the so-called crud?  You can spread the common cold from a few days before symptoms appear until all of the symptoms are gone. Most people will be contagious for up to 2 weeks. Symptoms are usually worse during the first 2 to 3 days, and this is when you’re most likely to spread the virus.

Staffing shortages, determined people who work through all their illnesses and ailments, and a system — First Student — that seemingly forces contagious people to work and then possibly pass around a mutating virus is not the rodeo I want sign up for.

This is much more worse than some thin skinned punk like me jumping ship. In reality, the revolving disease conveyor belt is what is killing people, old people, and again, there are special needs youth who are especially vulnerable, and in the mainstream classrooms, there are many many youth with allergies, chronic illnesses and compromised immune systems. The sprays, the antimicrobial junk, the stupidity of closed in classrooms, or classrooms in general, all of that, plus bad food, bad air and bad medicines and jabs, we have these super varients and super bugs and new bugs, all mixed up because US is a society of closed in thinkers, broken on every level, both in preventative medicine, and just working with people with major physical and psychic issues.

There are no free clinic, no free dental outfits, for people who do not have insurance or anything that covers preventative and immediate ailments, so we work sick. Again, I could have stuck it out, but truly, I have had this crud for a week, and this morning, I didn’t think the upper respiratory system would be so clunked up since I take a million micro grams of amazing supplements and tons of veggies and fruits in smoothies and get outside and find sun hitting my face whenever I can.

This entire planned bioweapon has done the first stage of a five stage freefall. First, messing with bat viruses and messing with gain of function and serial passage and so much more tied to mRNA and DNA morphing has created this new stage of the next stage of making people pawns in the controlled demolition of work, safety nets, food safety nets.

Now, I’ve written about my job applications here over four years, and the interviews, and then, the rejections. Amazing, no, and I have yet another today, from the same County outfit for the same position I applied for and interviewed for less than a year ago. I went onto that Oregon government jobs page, logged in, and, bam, I see (it’s depressing) dozens of job applications since 2013.

Well, I am not a lying, cheating dude like King Sisyphos, but it seems so apropos the image above.

Again, so many people in the billions have it so much worse than I do, don’t get me wrong. Yep, and here we are with my country (sic) that sanctions Syria, that is playing this CosPlay with Elensky (remember, ZioAzovNaziLensky banned the letter “Z” in his comedy central country). How many dead or soon to be or long to be dead in Ohio? While Biden and his Bumblers shoot down weather balloons, and while the EU sanctions Russia in the form of “no more toilets of port-a-potties”?

Hundreds of thousands on the brink of death and disease in Turkey and Syria, while the weather balloons get shot down:

But really, AMR — There’s even an awareness week in November, and then, see the dumb-downed video below informing adults about AMR!

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) happens when microorganisms (such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites) develop the ability to continue to grow, even when they are exposed to antimicrobial medicines that are meant to kill them or limit their growth (such as antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, antimalarials, and anthelmintics).

As a result, the medicines become ineffective and infections persist in the body, increasing the risk of spreading to others.

Drug resistance is one of the most serious health threats facing humanity. It could cause 10 million deaths per year(link is external) and an overall cost of $100 trillion to the global economy by 2050(link is external).

World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) is celebrated from 18-24 November every year to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance. The 2022 theme is ‘Preventing Antimicrobial Resistance Together’. It encourages all sectors to use antimicrobials prudently, to work together and strengthen preventive measures addressing AMR.

Now, I wonder why workers go to work sick? Cuz they miss the office, the driver’s seat, the forklift, the hospital food? Never ever do these oppressors ask what is wrong with the SYSTEM?

Year after year, as cold and flu season approaches, employers, their managers and their HR departments remind workers to stay home if they’re sick.

Year after year, employees come to work anyway—with bad colds, full-blown flu and other maladies.

In fact, 9 in 10 employees admit going to work sick, according to new research from global staffing firm Accountemps, a Robert Half company.

They do it despite warnings that by coming to work, sick employees risk infecting others, who, in turn, can go home and infect their families. All it takes are cold or flu germs left on the workplace’s microwave or elevator buttons, bathroom faucet handles, coffee machines or refrigerator handles to spread illness.

Accountemps’ online survey, which included responses from 2,800 workers employed in offices in 28 U.S. cities, found that:

• One-third said they always go to the office with cold or flu symptoms.
• Most employees who admitted to going to work while sick live in Charlotte, N.C., and Miami.
• 54 percent of those who report to the office with cold or flu symptoms said they do so because they have too much work to do. Most respondents who said they report to the office while ill because of an overwhelming workload were from New York City, Minneapolis and Miami.
• 40 percent said they went to work ill because they didn’t want to use a sick day.
• Miami, Phoenix and San Diego professionals felt the most pressure from their bosses to be present when sick.
• More employees ages 25 to 40 reported going to work sick than respondents of other ages. (source)

Look, being part-time (that’s the gig that First Student has set up so there are NO benefits, including paid sick leave) is what the USA and the Billionaires and the Manipulators want. Work sick or lose pay? The high cost of being sick when you don’t get paid sick days

Well, let’s deep six this piece now. I could go on and on about collective bargaining (this outfit, First Student, is anti union, though there are school districts that get the unionization as part of the deal). Go to the Cinncinattie headquartered First Student and see what they do by gaming the tax payers, since this is that famous (infamous) public-private partnership, AKA ripoff.

The PR spin makes it sound like a philanthropy: “Today, First Student, the leader in home-to-school transportation in the Northwest, announced it has agreed to assume 30 school bus routes initially awarded to its competitor Student Transportation of America (STA), acknowledging it could not provide the district with sufficient drivers or buses to fulfill the terms of the contract awarded in April 2021. First Student delivers reliable, quality services, including full-service transportation and management, special-needs transportation, route optimization, and scheduling, maintenance, and charter services with a fleet of about 44,000 buses. (source)”

Let me say that for Lincoln County School District, the contract, I was told, was $1 million for 2022, and will be renegotiated for more. That’s 11 schools, and the diesel is paid for by TAXPAYERS. And, this million dollars doesn’t include field trips and sports trips. Those are extra gravy train.

It is all a fraud, and when you figure out First Student is a Belgium equity firm, you get the picture: With a workforce of 50,500 employees and a fleet of 44,050 vehicles, the company bus fleet drives over 550 million miles every year. Formerly a division of FirstGroup, First Student was sold to EQT Infrastructure on 21 July 2021.

One of the great enduring disasters over the last half a century is the relentless assault on the notion that government is, in fact, an *efficient* force for good. That attack has been carried out by the endless droning on by media talking heads, politicians and “economists” that somehow the private sector is more efficient and better managed than government services. No matter how many times CEOs bankrupt their companies or loot companies for outrageous pay and benefits, the myth of private sector “efficiency” continues and also, as an aside, breeds the unconscionable attack against government workers.

It’s almost comical actually and exposes how deeply ideological the canard of private sector “efficiency” really is. It’s an attack on government as an idea by those who want to enrich themselves endlessly and want no countervailing force to slow down their robbery of the people. It’s a fraud—on the facts, on the numbers. (read on = source)

Oh, we are all pawns in this madness, in these billionaires’ and millionaires’ schemes to steal from the public, and boy do they steal. First Student was involved in a lawsuit in Oregon, class action, involving wage theft. This is a rampant problem with bus drivers who show up early, have to get the bus through an 90 point inspection in the dark, and have only so much time to do that before the route starts.

Here, the letter response to my resignation. It could have been worse:

Thank you for your detailed account of the situation at the Waldport office. When I am not on route myself, I make it a habit to visit all areas and check in with our employees. As I am currently driving a bus, I am not able to visit while employees are on the premises. This means that I need to rely on lead drivers and other staff to provide operations reports to me on a regular basis.

I am also sorry that your experience with First Student has been so negative. I understand your concerns; however, I do not agree with your statement that we force ill employees to report to work.

I expect an employee who shows any symptoms of an illness that could be contagious to inform management within the parameters of our Attendance Policy. This way we can be prepared for the next run that needs to be covered. Of course, there are moments when we have last minute callouts, during which we have to make quick coverage decisions. Another issue is that employees/areas decide not to report any illnesses to management. As already mentioned, I rely on those reports to make the decision to send someone home…and I am known for sending people home when they are sick. 

Again, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, as they lend themselves as points of constructive criticism, and opportunities for improvement. I wish you the best for your future.

Your final check will be processed today.

Respectfully, D

There you have it. As if I didn’t know the attendance policy or that last minute cancellations due to health occur (there were many in my few weeks with the company). As if I don’t know what “forcing” people to work sick really means when you are flagging and in need of income in a place where prices are out the roof, and when a company like First Student DOESN’T pay for sick leave early in our tenure. And what is PTO, that formula, after a year, working 20 hours a week, plus or minus?

Later: “US Workers Need a Non-Accrued Paid Sick Leave Guarantee/ A social insurance model would protect all workers against sickness.”

Terrell Owens: ‘I love me some me’

Oh, the trillions poured into war offensive machines and bombs and weapons, and, USA is using Civil War era braking systems. Now, where is ZioAzovNaziLensky to the rescue? Can he beg from London and Berlin for some millions to help the Yankees fix their old, broke train and rail systems?

Railroad workers have warned people in power that a disaster of this magnitude could happen without stricter rules and safety measures on trains. We need the Department of Transportation to take this seriously and force companies to use braking technology that will save lives. Right now, most train companies, including the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in Ohio, use braking technology from the Civil War (yes you read that correctly).

So extrapolate from one incident, one train, one derailment, and then build upon the scaffolding: America is broken, but intentionally and with criminality at its core. With the lobotomized populus in various forms of Infantilization, Stockholm Syndrome, Battered Worker Syndrome, as well as GAD — general anxiety disorder — how difficult is it for Mad Men and other Marketers, propagandists, behavior manipulators, endless Presstitutes Spewing Viral-Tinged Lies to pull a million things over the collective eyes of the citizens?

The C19 game, the planned pandemic, the incredible death of the old, isolation, thuggery and outright fascism, no wonder now the USA will accept any stupidity the media feed them — Chinese tactical war balloons; aliens in our midst; Ukraine is winning a war; a nuclear attack by the USA will not result in counter-measures, so, a limited nuclear was is completely acceptable; unlimited taxdollars moved away from the possibility of good, of infrastructure, of health and mental counseling safety nets, of all those issue easily addressed — poverty, a majority of older Americans withOUT enough money to make it into old age and decripity, failing education, the dropping out of teachers and doctors and nurses and so many other necessary professionals — into the pockets of the most corrupt CEOs and middle managers and that old Comedy Team of Zelensky and the Azov!. Oh, this is the corruption on every level that is capitalism. Corruption to the point of a declaration of war, i.e. planning, setting up, conducting and finishing up the blowing up of a pipeline (Imagine if Russia or China sent underwater torpedo drones to the USA’s Gulf Coast looking for Shell and Texaco pipes to blow up!).

[Note: Norway and the U.S. are of course the two countries that have benefitted financially, to an enormous degree, from blowing up the pipeline.

Not only have both gained huge export surpluses from the jump in gas prices, Norway has directly replaced Russian gas to the tune of some $40 billion per year. From 2023 the United States will appear in that list in second place behind Norway, following the opening in the last two months of two new liquefied natural gas terminals in Germany, built to replace Russian gas with U.S. and Qatari supplies.]

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

In a sick sort of way, this is A-Okay, under a Republican POTUS or Democratic POTUS. “If we don’t do it, get it, steal it, destroy it, then China will. It’s all ours to do with what we want.”

This is the Americanism spewed daily, and I will highlight my own disgust watching the Stupor Bowl Sunday sickness, a first for me in over 20 years.

But continuing looking at the managed decline of USA:

My fellow struggling folk and those with a few more shekels in their retirement accounts, believe in the possibility of the end of the world through nukes or climate chaos, but no way in hell seeing/imagining the end of Capitalism — it is casino, predatory, syphillitic, disaster, inverted totalitarian CAPITALISM I am talking about, no doubts about it. Daily, the examples pop out like hernias in old working men and women as they toil away in their 70s and 80s until they plop dead or stroked out on the job. These are the bus drivers, the school bus drivers:

• they hate unions
• the hate progressivism
• they long for a time (their past) when there really were things better for the majority (Not True) — it’s a psychological impediment, sort of a glorification of the past even when the past was messed up and full of turmoil and struggle

• they are working sick, daily — for example, these school bus drivers . . . . A million dollar annual contract to service 11 schools, and the company gets the diesel free from the county, and that annual contract is only for school days and school, back and forth. Add on special events and sporting events where kiddos and their teachers and coaches need to travel to another town, another county, and that too is another add on, separate contract.

Do you see how much it costs just to live in the 80 Percent Group? How much money is siphoned from worthy projects into war and the whoring world of politics and pork barrels and out and out graft and cost overruns and missing tens of billions of dollars unaccounted for monthly.

So, you end up with transportation — just one modality — completely broken by CAPITALISTS and Capitalism:

+–+

Again, one example, one group of circumstances, and then extrapolate these into all the other arenas and issues in this country. Does it make sense that 69 year olds are working with pleurisy, pneumonia, heart disease . . . hacking, coughing, feverish, spitting up sputum galore? They are short handed, and the system of Capitalism ruling a public contracts — public school transportation — is made to fail, made to break. Without strong public service and community service ethos, without a system of managing resources and managing human “resources,” and spending to keep youth educated (yes, we need total revamping of K12, and community colleges and state universities need major overhauling), we will never have people thinking driving a bus for a year or two to make money and get experience and to give back to the community is an absolute grand thing.

Instead, we have retired folk, some scraping by badly, others not doing terribly poor economics wise, waking up a 4am to get to work at 6 am. Try being on a bus with Covid19 unruly youth, hacking up all sorts of new diseases because of lockdowns, antibiotic resistent microbes and those new and more powerful vaccine-induced varients.

Note: I do not get sick, yet, after a month of hundreds of students on busses, 6 to 18 years of age, and then all these old people hacking up amazingly disgusting nasal, throat and lung matter, I have a “cold” of sorts — a ring around my throat and in the upper bronchial area, tightness and some of that hack-up ugliness. Throughout the entire 2019-2022 planned demic, no colds, gut issues, nothing, and I have been exposed to hundreds of people.

These issues — working sick, working almost dead — just are never put into the equation of Capitalism Kills . . . or, A Military Industrial Complex Lust Destroys. There is always talk about the Half Time show, or those leeches — actors and celebrities — acting as Dunkin Donuts workers, or drive thru burger servers and how cute and cool those Pizza Hut ads are . . . And did you see the child slavery and economic war ads for EV cars by Kevin Bacon and his daughter (Hyundai — that company you know, the one with the child labor issue — Hyundai Motor Co said it is in talks with the U.S. Department of Labor to resolve concerns about child workers in its U.S. supply chain, and the company is taking corrective actions after a Reuters investigation found children as young as 12).

Well, no, multimillionaire talentless Bacon did NOT do THAT public service ad, but the same old dumb-downing infantile ad pushing EV automobile hell is what he soft shoed like a bloody elementary kid.

While there are all sorts of containments in society (see Forte’s list below), the worst kind is cultural.

The kettling of free speech. The horrific bandwagon propaganda, forcing youth to never color outside the lines, or to deviate from the redneck line of thinking. And when I mean redneck, it’s Democratic party stuff, the rednecks like Pelosi or Schumer or Biden, not just the Duck Dynasty freaks. “Redneck” I have reappropriated to mean, well, just plain old American — white, brown, Native, Asian Black. Anyone who wakes up every day and believes no matter what and no matter how bad things are that America — U$A — is invaluable to human and other animal kind.

Forte discusses the next manufactured virus, as in SARS-MERS-Watch OUT Krakan. However, the real virus which is spread liberally, and has been since the founding slave owners, has been a belief in property rights above all else (except in cases of takings, emminent domain), and the rights of Corporations hands down do supercede the rights of the public, the environment, communities. We might not be able to fight city hall, but trying to fight GM, GE, GMOs, Bayer, Pfizer, you name the grand wizards of unethical and illegal finance and capitalism on steroids, impossible since they have the lobbies, the lawyers, and the politicians, and they write the laws.

So bad the mess we got ourselves into that we end up in self-constainment . . . .

Until we have this national religious holiday, this Stupor Bowl, this 12 hours of coverage on the day of, and a whole year leading up to the Bowl of millions of minutes of TV or digital ink covering College and then Professional Football. Children (aldults), wearing 4X jerseys with whichever racist mascot fits their particular multi-billion dollar team, with team owners and overlords and media monsters who might make them blush if they really knew who they were, their heroes too.

The players? All pawns, all lackeys, but highly paid ones. This pissing contest, the guys and gals who know players, their stats, their lifestyles, their religions, their families, the whole shooting match, oh, this is the stupor in the toilet bowl and in professional and university-college sports. Taking the mind off the prize, that is, distraction, but worse. Containment.

You have to have skin in the game, a dog in the fight and some commitment to something during this sick day. As I stated before, I put myself through the pre-game and some of the game to just see what sort of crack and opium and booze and sedatives are being delivered by Madison Avenue, the Stenographers, the bombast of entertainment and info-tainment and sports entertainment.

Imagine that, the first time two people identifying as Black on opposite teams as starting quarterbacks — Eagles and Kansas City. The personal profiles of those heathens were sappy, and the worst I have seen ever.

The Fake Woke Bowl. And, all those hundreds of thousands of dollars for fuel and flight crew, for the flyover, yet another Woke Moment:

“For the first time in a Super Bowl, we will have an all-female flyover crew to kick off Super Bowl 57”

Here an African-American writer:

Super Bowl 57 is the Blackest, most woke Super Bowl ever. Sorry haters! | Opinion
We had the Black national anthem, Rihanna and two Black starting quarterbacks for the first time ever. This wasn’t the Super Bowl. This was Wakanda.

In the first half, after Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce scored, he broke out a highly NSFW version of the “stanky leg” dance. I’m going to count that as part of the The Black Super Bowl, too.

Yes, some of this is tongue-in-cheek, but a lot isn’t. The Super Bowl has become not just a game or a party, but also in some ways a mirror for us all. It reflects what we love, what we believe in, what we hate, what we want, what we don’t. (Freeman, U$A Today)

You get it, right? Amazing stories of derailment (one in Ohio, daily many times around the world). You get more and more evidence of the planned pandemic as a huge PSYOPS and military operation, both the SARS-CoV2 and the jabs. You get the fake war in Ukraine, with a dirty poliltician, a thief, an abuser of his people, of the Slavs, or the Goyim — Zelensky — getting onto every Zoom giant screen TV event on earth; into all the chambers of the Anglo Saxon powers, and the Jewish ones, too. Imagine that, a stupid dirty thing, the super bowl, reflecting “what we love, what we believe in, what we hate, what we want, what we don’t.” This is from a Black man, my word.

Alas, the containment is in the hip-hop, the jazz of old, the thieves who stole the money of Black musicians, and the white muscians who stole the lyrics and music of Black musicians. And entire fleets of aircrafts craft carriers chugging along with those middle men and middle women, all snuggled together with the Crypto Cool Ones, with the PayDay Loan fellows, plotting to strip every penny from us, the Contained. It is a giant pawn shop, USA, a giant Repo outfit, and we have the performers (everyone in this racket is a thespian).

Oh, the irony, oh the containment. Rich and famous, loud and luscious, overhyped and undereducated. Millionaires. Billionaires. And, again, the redneck, too, singing bombs bursting in air:

Oh, three fellows stood up in the Moose Lodge, with the beer, the green tinted big screen, the crappy speakers, and alas, tears in their eyes, and others stood up too, and they all put their hands over their hearts, you know, pledge allegiance to the flag.Or, oh say can you spy, by the dawn’s early robbery . . . they vauntingly swore to send havoc and war from sea to shining sea!

Man oh man, it’s all in the method, in the madness of saying you’ll bomb, and then denying, and then a few months later, regaling in the destruction of Germany’s (an ally?) pipeline!

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

We are being contained, and with the next and the next manufactured virus, things will be worse:

“What is a public health approach to crime?”

We have a basic outline of an answer. A “public health approach to crime” involves:

Hierarchy: white collar crimes are excluded; the focus is on crimes alleged to have been committed by members of the working class, particularly youths.

Emergency: implementing extraordinary measures, which can venture into the extra-legal domain; also, this heightens executive power. Democratic debate is neither invited nor factored into any of the decision-making.

Totalitarianism: crackdowns combined with surveillance, are an attempt to close down a social system. Police become the new instruments of “public health”.

Lockdowns: borrowing from/imitating the Chinese–originated and Chinese–promoted policy and practice implemented to “fight Covid,” which Trinidad like so many other countries imported, there is an invention of an existential crisis that requires radical containment measures.

Indiscriminate Punishment: collective punishment, on all members of a designated socioeconomic sector, without any evidence or formal charges laid, without any trials, and even without a logic that rationalized the action as fair or appropriate.

Economic intervention: the state assumes the right to intervene in an industry, by force, and cancel the exercise of the right to private property.

Confiscation: the state then places itself in charge of the occupied industry which was targeted by the lockdown. (Max Forte)

Well, enough said. I had all sorts of tangents and meaningful critques on that Stupor Bowl to carry forth with. A million teachable moments. But I am too tired of the railing today.

Tied of the United States of Amnesia:

NSA spying row: Denmark accused of helping US spy on European officials. The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information, according to Danish public service broadcaster DR. Intelligence was allegedly collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway. Similar allegations emerged in 2013. (BBC)

Oh yeah, the billion dollar distraction festival was about the 51 commercials aired:

The Farmer’s Dog used a heavy dose of emotion to claim the crown of USA TODAY Ad Meter champion in its Super Bowl Sunday debut.

The brand that promotes itself as a fresh-food alternative to mass produced pet fare was founded less than a decade ago and prevailed as the first of its kind. It was also the first “sentimental” ad to win since 2015 with Budweiser’s “Lost Dog.”

Ad Meter panelists were tasked with voting on all 51 commercials from Super Bowl Sunday, rating them on a scale from 1 to 10. Below are complete results in order of average score. (here, and it is disgusting, man, that Americans and U$A Today concentrate — confusion, distract, contain — Americans with this shit!) source

At least I received a few emails on Super Bowl Sunday regarding some of my missives here. Read those fans’ notes:

RE: More and More Boys are Coming Home from School with Behavior Sheets!

Hello- Nine years ago I was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability. I am now pushing 62, and in reality no better off. I mean it is better to know what it is that’s derailed so much of my life, but without NLD being in the DSM, there isn’t much help out here for us well into adulthood.

I don’t know about some of the stuff in the article, like the pollution and politics, seems to me since I was born in ’61, not much progress has been made in helping those of us born with this sort of crap. I will say, as far as politics go, the conservative would have no problem withholding or restricting aid and killing a thousand of us with real developmental disabilities to keep one person who does not deserve such aid from getting it. I also have PTSD from my fourth grade math teacher throwing her stapler at me for not understanding long division and percentages. Seriously, I had a nervous breakdown at nine years old because of the way I was abused by my goddam teachers.

I have been perennially underemployed and undereducated, have no savings to speak of or any real hope for a meaningful future. That’s life in the most ‘civilized’ nation in the world living with a Nonverbal Learning Disability. I know some fare better, some fare worse, but for me this description is accurate.

Regards, D—, Augusta GA

+–+

RE: Let the Bandwagon Play On!

Paul

Ever notice that all these Quote “health professionals” at the CDC, FDA on down to the local Health Department wonks that pushed like crazy to force everyone to get vaccinated with the experimental mRNS vaccines have fallen silent on the greatest threat to health there is? Talk about a Bandwagon. Every one of them parroted the Bullshit coming out of Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci’s mouth. But not a single one of these health care providers at every level said a damned thing when Joe Biden told the citizens of this country and the world to prepare for nuclear Armageddon.

The greatest threat to not only human health but to all life on the planet including the planet itself and these health care officials are totally silent.

Am I the only one on earth that noticed this? What the fuck is wrong with these people? What the fuck is wrong with humanity that the greatest threat to their existence goes completely un-noticed and allowable? Do they really believe vaccinations are more important that a chickenshit deranged banty rooster president like Joe Biden’s nuclear mission to wipe Russia off the face of the earth thereby killing life itself?

The western world has truly lost its mind.

J–

+–+

RE: What’s It All About, Alfie?

Great piece Paul! Thank you. You are fighting the system in a war that involves attempting to work with it, and in the messages you spread in the process. A never-ending fight, of course. Have you thought of putting a well-chosen collection of your essays into a book, in order to reach a larger audience, one that involves more people than those already in the choir?

M—

+–+

Buffalo Wings, Super Nachos, Bud, Bacardi, Bombs Bursting in Air. Imagine that: a religious holiday, come rain or shine, 9-11 or Maidan, as Americanos sit like rendered meat watching meat get crushed while hundreds of thousands have been burned and ripped apart in America’s Complete Proxy War in Ukraine. Imagine that, hundreds of thousands dead, three times as many wounded, and an entire country and certainly Russia, traumatized by America’s total war.

Set in postwar London, “Alfie” features Michael Caine as a chauffeur bent on promiscuity. After impregnating his girlfriend he takes off on vacation. He continues his life of womanizing, but he can’t hide forever. A misfortune strikes and Alfie is forced to face the product of his ways.

This not the crux of the question, since I was a monogamous dater and monogamous husband. It’s more centered around the discordance and dissheveled nature of humanity in the Western world, which unfortunately is the litmus test for much of the world now, which is another conundrum for me: why the hell would Japan or Oaxaca or Istanbul give a shit about McDonalds, Disneyland, Top Gun and disposable diapers? How viral is Western consumerism and retail disease? How diseased are the people of the world to buy into a disposable culture, from the ketchup containers to the children to the old people?

Marketing, man, and that is a very sophisticated psychological end game. The end run around is the pervasive marketing of everything, and the fake quality of modern humans. All about selling or acting or putting on a show.

Yeah, I’m writing this on the heels of yet another attempt to have a job tied to some civil and social justice gig. I got the call for a 15 minute interview Tuesday, with the fair housing coalition of Oregon, working in four rural counties as an outreach-educator specialists, getting stakeholders (I dispise that term) to get around a table, or in a room or on Zoom to understand the rights of renters, tenants, and home buyers.

Up my alley, and alas, I have worked around the housing “issue” for several decades, as an urban and regional planning grad student, and then with clients in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Vancouver, and on the Oregon Coast.

Two people interviewed me, and one big question was what I thought of how poverty has come about. Oh how it all ties into Capitalism, about the Gildeed Age, about the first Anglo Saxons coming to this “New World” and exploiting the original peoples. Exploiting as in murdering. Stealing land. Polluting the land. Moving them off the land. Re-educating them. Turning the real people into savages. Enslavement and dedigration. Haves and haves not. You know, workers, laborers, even the professional managerial class, at the whim of the One Percent and the Five percent. You need poor people to make a buck, and you need poverty to be rich. You know, toil and labor to make the gilded ones money.

But it is deeper, sort of like economic sanctions on countries like Cuba or Venezuela — sanctions against the majority of people in Capitalism to pay the fines, fees, tolls, poll taxes, taxes, add-ons, service fees, tickets, violations, late charges, penalties, and the mortgages.

All those millions working hard to stay afloat, and then some medical emergency, some run-in with a lawyer or insurance company or the law, and bam, the semi-stable household is put into a spin — economic, spiritual and existential spin.

There will always be a PayDay monster lurking in Capitalism. There will always be scammers and legions of thieves who get away with it in CAPITALISM. Poverty makes millions money — cops/pigs, courts, judges, schools, governmental program managers, workers in all those so called welfare divisions. You get it! Take a child out of a home, and you will find dozens of workers and managers managing that Child Protective Services intervention-destruction.

In any case, I got a second interview, this time in front of seven people and with an hour to dog and pony my self into their midst. Provide a seven minute Zoom teaching modality or Power Point. Also tell us what a strategy would be to undertake an outreach program in Clatsopo, Tillamook, Lincoln and COlumbia Counties. One educators and outreach honcho, and what would you do and who would you engage to get this off the ground?

One hour equaled five hours or more of prep. I actually called county commissioners in two of the counties. I did much research on all the places that might be engaged with low income folk or people of color. The obvious thing is to get into the faith communities, with support services like work source and Department of Human services departments, and even school districts and landlord groups.

Here, what I was being asked to get ready for:

Here are some details about the interview.

• It will be about an hour long. The whole team will be there.
• One question for you to prepare in advance: Talk about how you would conduct an outreach campaign to raise awareness of fair housing in rural Columbia, Clatsop, Tillamook and Lincoln Counties. Who do you think would be most important to reach and what would your strategies be for reaching them?
• At the end of the interview, we will ask you to conduct a seven-minute training on any topic you like. We want to see what your facilitation style is like. We will make you a cohost on Zoom so if you have a PowerPoint to share, you can.

I talked to one woman originally from Michigan who was a county commissioner in Clatsop COunty. She had spent much time in Portland, and she told me that she had lived experience in Lansing, Michigan as a white woman who witnessed red-lining and major discrimination against Black Americans in their attempt to get affordable housing.

She had that poster of Che on her wall.

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

― Ernesto “Che” Guevara

She gave me great insight into her county, and how the rural-urban divide has a crass and prejudice guiding mark — “These trust fund babies or super rich come into our Oregon Coast Communities and think that the IQ for our rural residents is 30 points lower than from their urban locales. Everyone comes here to be served and waited on, even for a couple of days. Everyone, even the struggling middle class, want that two or three days of pretending to be like the rich — fancy food, big hotel, and loads of beach fun and trinket buying.”

I even talked to the president of the Landords Assocation, and I interviewed another commissioner, with the eye toward their opinion on how an outreach campaign might work in their respective communities — counties with 27K, 50K, and 42K populations. Rich homes, arts, retired, and then the linen changers, the cooks, the medical technicians, the teachers, you know, coffee shop workers, bussers, cooks, even the simple laborers to keep those amenities and Martha Stewart homes, kitchens and decks prettified.

The lack of housing is huge, and affordable housing is few and far between. Of course I am a socialist, and these systems of oppression and exploitation have to go. Homes and apartments and mixed neighborhoods have to be run by us, the people, the new American government, and, sure a few can get in on building and designing, but there should never be a society where rents are artificial for investment and profits. A one bedroo apartment for how much in Seattle, Chicago, here? And what are those wages of the linen changers and hotel cleaners?

It will take so many tens of millions to strike against this super exploitative system, and we need a public commons, public utilities, public health, education and transporation. Housing has to be part of that, not some bogus HUD lie, which is predicated on which insane political party is in office. Safe, affordable housing. That human right!

Fact: In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), recognizing adequate housing as a component of the human right to an adequate standard of living.

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 
• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. (source)

Oh, well, that job went the way of the Dodo, as many of my job applicatons have: “Hi Paul, Thank you so much for your time and energy today in the interview and the obvious passion you have towards social justice. We didn’t feel that you were the right fit for this position at this time and we are going to continue our search. Again, thank you for your time and energy. Sincerely, S”

There are thos buzzwords — “energy” and “passion” and” social justice.” AND, “not the right fit.” I will not get into the errors of their ways, or the dynamics of being 66 and being interviewed by all women except one, but all in their 30 something age range, two hitting forty something. Spilt milk? Sour grapes? Come on, that missive tells me shit about the interview, about anything, really . . . Me thinks there is prejudice here, including age, gender and alas my white skin. I’m a communist, which I did not disclose, but certainly they might have Googled me, and then, you get the semi-half picture of me (right . . . little of what I write or how I express myself gives anyone doing a cursory search of men much to know about me . . . . the real me).

How do I then deftly move from housing as a human right, and the discrimination of this culture on all levels, but also in housing, against the non-White non-Hispanic, into the next and the next topic, and how will I be able to tie in what I have expressed above into issues around, say, the County where I live giving students-parents until Wednesday proof of up-to-date vaccinations, or some sort of exception? While the Covid Crack Shots are not mandatory, but imagine what sorts of shots these kids have received outside of the mRNA madness, and to honest, most kids have been double boosted.

Oregon requires immunization against 11 vaccine-preventable diseases:

• Tetanus
• Pertussis (whooping cough)
• Polio
• Varicella (chickenpox)
• Measles
• Mumps
• Rubella
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis A
• Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type B) – only for children under five years old

Source: The COVID-19 Global Pandemic`

Get into the weeds to understand this SARS-MERS thing, the Covid 19 thing, those bio-tech untested mRNA jabs:

When “Mutated Lab Made Viruses” Are Used on Captive Monkeys…

Don’t judge! Science is hard.

Sasha Latypova

Less humorous explanation of the monkey business: the C-19 potions are designed, financed, and made by DARPA/DOD/BARDA and related clown agencies via consortia of defense contractors including Pfizer who are paid huge sums of money, are not in control of the entire supply chain and product, and are promised protection by the government. The paperwork Pfizer submitted to the FDA reflects this fact: it is a prop in a play called “vaccine development and approval” and that’s why it looks so unprofessional, full of gaping holes and obvious fraud. The FDA is of course fully complicit in this and continues to pretend to “authorize” these military biowarfare agents as pharmaceuticals.

“But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity)

Even Hegel understood the problems engendered by Capitalism. And in the sixties Debord tracked the direction of western capitalism and sketched with remarkable clarity the history and also created a sense of aesthetics that felt innately radical and subversive. Seeing the fundamental sickness of the Capitalist system was not new. Today, nothing is left of that radical quality, certainly not in the arts or academia. Increasingly there is a rote reflexive hatred of Marx, Freud, Communism, Mao, Stalin, and Fidel. The Frankfurt School is attacked, more from the left than the right, and self identifying left publications embrace the most reactionary of positions (Jacobin comes to mind, of course) on the pandemic protocols. And capitalism is viewed as if it is Nature, a god created fact. (John Steppling)

But, in the end, what is this all about, Haeder? I have been interviewed more than a dozen times here in the last 24 months. Every interview “team” has been comprised of 100 percent female (she, her, hers) about 90 percent of the time, and then other times, six out of seven, she-her-hers. I grew up with strong women — my mom had to divorce her first husband because he had Vancouver, BC mafia after him for gambling debts. She was an amazing force in Paris when we were kids over there, and amazing in Tucson, when she ended up there after divorcing my father, US Military. She had to bury her daughter at 23 after she was struck on her motocycle in Kamloops. My grandmother Kirk, another strong Scottish woman, who ended up in Canada working her tail off. Aunt who opened a fancy resturarant with two other strong women. Aunts that were midwives, and aunt who was a nurse who managed her husband’s surgical and general medicine practice. Strong women left and right. My wife is an incredibly strong woman on many levels, not just because she puts up with me, but her entire life has been struggle and trauma and success!

Ahh, but now, in my world, with so many not-so-strong women in my midst interviewing me, which is a form of critical judgement, and to be truthful, the fix is in when it comes to me, one lone guy, now older, applying for case managers and non-profit this or that position, and the team that interviews me and for which would be working with the new hire are all women.

Again, this is all speculation, but you gotta be me to know speculation is also reality!

But, here I am, working with mostly women, as a special olympics basketball coach. And, while I get turned down for a four-county kick-ass job I am more than passionate about and qualified fo, I am on the Special Needs bus to learn how to drive that bus and get to know the routes and students.

Now now, there are many parents coming out to support these teams, and while there are two-gender homes, many of the special youth have been growing up with moms, aunts, grandmothers.

Facts: The unfortunate correlation between a child with special needs and a marriage, though, is that the amount of participation from each parent can vary based upon how they are handling the issue emotionally. Tragically, there is a high rate of men who simply focus on work while leaving a mother to raise the child at home, creating a distance. This is not true for all fathers. However, far too often we receive phone calls from mothers who find themselves addressing their child’s needs on their own, either due to divorce or simple emotional distance.

Not all men are the ones who cave and leave, that’s for sure. But I am seeing over several states a majority of women caregivers, parental figures, and social services providers, aides, teachers, and such.

I wouldn’t exchange all the rewarding work I have done with both youth and adults with developmental disabilities for this kick-ass job I just got “railroaded out of.” You see, the job I applied for was compliance worker for Fair Housing Coalition of Oregon. That was Oct. 2022. No word until two weeks ago, 2/2/2023. Asking me if I’d put my resume and cover letter into the ring for this outreach specialists since the person writing me thought I was definitely qualified to do the job.

Oh that web so many people have woven in their personal and work lives. Tangled when we practice to deceive is what Walter Scott had as one famous lines in Scott’s epic poem, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field. My entire life has been that complicated web, but not because I have gone out to deceive, but because I have not set forth deception, and I have been true to myself, honest with others, and forthright in a world where more and more people are “acting” and playing roles with a modicum of heart in their work if it involves social work. There are great people in social services, don’t get me wrong. But more and more the world of that arena is all about acting, Thespian crap, show and tell, bells and whistles, and now “Your Zoom Presence — How to Make Yourself into a Star” is what rules.

I could go on and on, but this is a minor speed bump in my road called life. Pissed off? Sort of, but not really, though angry at the systems of repression and oppression and how the world I sort of run in is now made up of the ghosting and cancelling and intolerance of this modern end game of confirmation bias and only listening to what one bandwagon is blasting on it’s Propaganda Speakers.

Until I am still working as a school bus trainee in progress. With old people with their biases and backward thinking, and me, again, not on their bandwagon. Imagine, old guys telling me they hate Russia and Russians. No, they are not from Russia, nor did they have anyone from Russia or who fought in the Great Patriotic War. They just hate people they have never met, rendezvoused with or broke bread with. All those horrorific propaganda movies, all that Russia Gate lunacy, and yet, these 77 year old old truckers who are now school bussing, hate a people and country they never knew or will never know.

Oh,m they are equal opportunity racists, because they hate China and Chinese equally.

And they hate their $19 an hour part-time bus driving gig, with precious K12 cargo, but they will never begrudge a dollar to the obsene pimps of war:

All that money going to new nuclear missiles, strategic bombers (the newly revealed B-21), submarines and so on, which in total will cost $1.7 trillion, according to congressional numbers—all in all an impressive escalation. So, $1 billion for each bomber made by Northrop Grumman (the Air Force began planning for the B-21 in 2011 and awarded the major development contract in 2015. The B-21 is expected to make its first flight in 2023 and enter service by 2027) is no big deal. Imagine that, one guy has to pay for hearing aids, at age 77, to the tune of $7000 or $9000 for a pair. Imagine the cognitive dissonance and retrograde thinking and imploding critical analyses skills with that two plus two equals three equation.

So it goes, sisters and brothers. You get older, you get more radical with each day, you get tired of lies, fakes, faux concepts, marketing, and merchandizing death and co-option, and then you, or I, become not jaded or cynical, but emancipated. Or even more decoupled from the fraudulent nature of almost every angle and every silo this sad sack of a country has propped up to destroy the world.

This is 24 years behind the times: ” A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present” by William Blum, June 1999. And I know several of the parents today wondered why I left my cap on, turned away fromt the American flag, bowed my head, and looked sad when the stupid Star Spangled Banner came on the speakers at the beginning of the tourney. I was already standing in the bleachers, but I usually sit, bow my head, and leave my hat or cap on.

One of Blum’s last points in 2017: “The Anti-Empire Report #153: Cold War Number One: 70 years of daily national stupidity Cold War Number Two: Still in its youth, but just as stupid”

The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”⁶

Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”

And there this rambling essay ends. Stupidity and cancel culture and ingrained hatred of Russia and Venezuela and Cuba and Nicaragua and Iran and Chine and North Korea, those are the drools coming from a half-brained rabid society. The spiritual rabies crosses all political boundaries, all camps, all silos.

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature.

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”

― W.E.B. DuBois

“It’s liberty or death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.” …. “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”

— Malcom X

1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime

by Paul Haeder / February 5th, 2023

Note: This piece has been sent to the local newspaper, Newport News Times, which is not a shadow of a shadow at once a week hard copy. Imagine that, no? Death of newspapers because? Social Media? Internet? No more readers? Bad management? Gutting of newspapers for stock holders? What the heck?

Valentines Day, for me, is that Vagina Monologues. Sure, we are on the brink of nuclear disaster with this great Grand Old Flag land pushing and pulling for Russia responses for all that shaking going on in Ukraine and Russia.

Published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries and recently heralded by The New York Times as one of the most important plays of the past 25 years: Ensler’s hilarious, eye-opening tour into the last frontier, the forbidden zone at the heart of every woman. A show that’s rocked audiences around the world, this groundbreaking piece gives voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, and thoroughly human stories, transforming the question mark hovering over the anatomy into a permanent victory sign. With laughter and compassion, Ensler transports her audiences to a world we’ve never dared to know, guaranteeing that no one who reads The Vagina Monologues will ever look at a woman’s body the same way again.

Performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, the 22-year-old global activist movement to end violence against all women (cisgender and transgender), those who hold fluid identities, nonbinary people, girls and the planet.

The movement has grown, unfortunately, since violence against girls and women continues. Acid throwing freaks. Rapists that get off scott free. The dirty Netflix shows of sex-ploitation and exploitation. It is a seesaw world, with more and more women excelling in college/university, in sciences, in other arenas, some not so hunkydory:

From the executive leadership of top weapons-makers, to the senior government officials designing and purchasing the nation’s military arsenal, the United States’ national defense hierarchy is, for the first time, largely run by women.

As of Jan. 1, the CEOs of four of the nation’s five biggest defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defense arm of Boeing — are now women. And across the negotiating table, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer and the chief overseer of the nation’s nuclear stockpile now join other women in some of the most influential national security posts, such as the nation’s top arms control negotiator and the secretary of the Air Force.

It’s a watershed for what has always been a male-dominated bastion, the culmination of decades of women entering science and engineering fields and knocking down barriers as government agencies and the private sector increasingly weigh merit over machismo.

And, as Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson told POLITICO, it’s also the result of “quieting that little voice in your head that doubts whether you can do that next job or take on that special assignment.”

“I think there’s critical mass, where you have enough women that they’re getting noticed,” said Rachel McCaffrey, a retired Air Force colonel and executive director of Women in Defense, a career development and networking organization affiliated with the National Defense Industrial Association, a leading industry group.

Nearly a dozen female executives and defense leaders who spoke to POLITICO said having more women at the top affects companies and defense agencies in ways large and small — from questioning stale assumptions about the smartest way to develop weapons and provide services for the military; to negotiating better deals for the taxpayers when buying airplanes, tanks, rockets and ships; to recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest engineers and policy wonks. (source)

I’ll let the piece below rest as it may or may not get published in our wee dwindling newspaper. I doubt it will be run since there is less space for deeper (1,000 word) analyese; and more and more people want to use the Op-Ed space to yammer on about short term rentals, complaining about Californians coming into our county and raising real estate prices, and timber and fishing industries.

In 2011, City of Joy opened its doors in Eastern Congo with the goal of building a peaceful and transformational community for women survivors of violence.

V-Day is not Just a Valentine for your Sweetheart

Okay, so this newspaper is almost down for the count, limited to a once-a-week hard copy publication. Therefore, I know my viewpoints better be good, hard hitting and relevant.

Not all topics are going to be warm and fuzzy. On this Valentine’s day, attempt to think about violence against women. The significance of V-Day is a response against violence toward women, girls and the planet. Here in Lincoln County women and girls face all levels of violence.

The V-Day movement is tied a 1996 one-woman play written by Eve Ensler, called the “Vagina Monologues.” She interviewed more than 200 women from a wide range of ages and cultural backgrounds, whereupon so many of them opened up, baring their souls tied to sexual violence.

One key question was, “What would your vagina say if it could talk?” Over the years, V-Day has become a catalyst promoting creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations.

The Monologues also generates broader attention to stop violence against women and girls.

So what’s a white male writer stepping his toes into these waters? First, let me say that if you read the police blotter in this county, or if you attend public criminal hearings at the courthouse, you will see the level of violence in the household in general is skyrocketing.

Police calls cover the gamut, but one ugly reality is the number of spousal violence calls, especially violence against wives and girlfriends. My own early roots as a reporter in Tucson were ensconced into the music scene and the police beat. That entailed covering a special rape squad set up by Linda Ronstadt’s brother Peter who was the Tucson police chief for more than 10 years.

I was 19 covering a lot of sexual violence against both students and young/old women living around the University of Arizona campus. I covered Take Back the Night rallies – started in the early 1970s in Belgium, but quickly spreading to college campuses and across global communities: from remote Canadian towns to bustling Calcutta streets, from Ivy Leagues to military bases.

While doing my judo and scuba diving thing, I also took a few feminist literature classes, volunteered with Rape Crisis organization, and assisted my sensei with grappling classes, as in self-defense for women.

Fast forward to Spokane, Washington: I was teaching at many venues as a composition and writing instructor, to include Gonzaga University. There, a “Vagina Monologues” rendition was being rehearsed by various students, including those in the Women’s Studies Club.

That was 21 years ago, and the president of the Jesuit University banned college sponsorship of the “Monologues,” citing Christian values and supposed pushback. One of my cohorts, philosophy professor Mark Alfino, argued against the banishment, telling a standing-room-only crowd of 200 people the ban was a threat to academic freedom.

“It’s a weak faith that doesn’t welcome challenges,” Alfino said. “Academic freedom is not an open-ended license to say anything without impunity. Academic freedom is an openness to the responsible expression of ideas.”

Here’s the deal – some of my students asked me to pen an opinion piece supporting the “Vagina Monologues” held on campus, as a way to bring in the Gonzaga community and public in by both attending the play but also opening up dialogue around campus rape.

That same semester one of my students (she told me in an office visit) had been the victim of campus rape, unfortunately, the type of violence seen on many campuses: fraternity parties, lots of booze and frequent spiking of women’s drinks with “roofies” (Rohypnol, a clear liquid 10 times stronger than Valium).

I also had a weekly hour-long radio show covering public affairs where I interviewed many heavy hitters in the sciences, publishing, arts, and social justice fields. I didn’t get Eve Ensler on the show, but I had two guests talking about sexual violence and the power of the “Monologues,” as well as one woman from Somalia who talked about her own forced female genital mutilation.

I discussed both in a written Op-Ed and on my radio show my own issues with the clergy. I had come from El Paso, and there as a reporter, I covered two cases of Catholic priests charged with child rape. These fellows from the Spokane Diocese were accused there, so both were sent south to the border;  back then I didn’t know Spokane from Shinola.

I went on to discuss the Catholic Church’s “penis problem,” getting into some of the history (in the thousands) of priests around the US and Canada and world with multiple accusations each of sexual assault. I brought up the Indian Boarding Schools, too, where sexual assault was occurring.

I took the banishment of the “Monologues” on campus seriously, and I even questioned the president’s claim that “many boosters and supporters” had spoken to him about their concerns with the play being performed on campus.

Oh the irony: the Gonzaga students put on a wonderful performance, and the public, the GU community, including staff, faculty and some priests, were just a few hundred yards off campus at a hotel ballroom for these young women’s performances which helped as a fund-raiser for the V-Day nonprofit that works to stop rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and other violence against women.

I am a better person for doing my little part – a published viewpoint and radio rant. Not so ironically, thought, I was told (off the record) by my department chair I would not be hired to teach at GU, per the “upper administration’s orders.”

V-Day for me also means Cancel Culture Day.

The insanity of America just never slips, as the men and women who have done an amazing bunch of PSYOPS on the American public since, oh, hell, before Randoph Hearst’ and Pulitzer’s Yellow Journalism, are coming at us like gangbusters.

They are graduates of Ivy League, degree holders from those power house schools that have visiting adjuncts from the military, from Neocon and Neoliberal institutes, from previous administrations, from industry, from the shadows of the world, i.e. unprosecuted war criminals. Just see which law schools the Supreme Court injustices are graduates of and you get that picture of how the country is run.

Peer into their backgrounds, their families, their histories, their origins, their clans, their relationships, their networking, their peers, their inside jobs, their vaunted lives. The place for, by and with the people is run like a giant K-Street Lobby for the Top 1,000 corporations. With all the fanfare of a military parade. Tears in our eyes with rockets bursting in air.

Until we are here: General X says USA is at war with China by 2025. General Y puts that war with China by 2027.

I like this photo cutline blurb: Rockets have hit peaceful neighborhoods once again. Why does Kiev continue its policy, if not purely out of hate?

The question being posed above comes from Vladislav Ugolny, a Russian journalist based in Donetsk. (source)

At least ten rockets hit central areas of Donetsk on Saturday morning, damaging three residential buildings, a local Russian official has reported in his Telegram channel.

One of the projectiles fired by Ukrainian forces hit an apartment building in the Kievsky district. While rescuers continue to search for survivors under the rubble, preliminary information suggests that there were three people in one of the apartments.

Now now, this is a regime outfitted, trained, directed by the EuroTrashLandians and Americans. This sort of terror into civilian neighborhoods is the Israeil Project of Hell and intimidation against Gaza and Palestine, but just a different culture, different race. And from my perspective, the average Joe and Janet shopping for eggs is not about to question the trillions spent for war monger Military Offensive Weapons manufacturers, and these citizens/consumers will not question the hate we are told to biol up toward that Axis of Evil, a la George W. Bush. You wake up hating Russia and hating China, because that dictum and order are spread like manure in the news, on TV, in movies, and in the schools and bars and cafes. That is the only way in America to get through the day at a shit job with a shit boss with shit wages under a shit storm economy, with the winds of contaimination about to whip up more people killing and plant stripping fun. Just don’t give a damn.

War with Russia. Why? Because of a Jewish President in Ukraine huffing and puffing like Woody Allen in some two-bit role with a penis and a piano? This is 2023, and Blinken and Nuland and Kagan and Garland and Yellen and an entire audience of Jewish folk raised to think, plot and laugh are chuckling at this irony: This guy is running an Azov and SS and Nazi loving crew of supremacists and Russia haters in Ukraine, and he too is part of the Jewish Clan of Peculiar Off the Rails Humans:

If you are not sickened yet from the above, then you are sub-human? Checked out? Just a consumer? Food in, manure out? For sure. How many thousands of celebrities and rich guys and gals go to Zelensky’s knees to pray and beg for some of his mojo? This is the leader of the most corrupt country in Europe. He’s a murderer, thief and helping the USA proxy nuclear death. What a guy.

Doc Sarvis on “The plastic dome” and civilization:

“The anthill,” said Doc, “is sign, symbol and symptom of what we are about out here, stumbling through the gloaming like so many stumblebums. I mean it is the model in microcosm of what we must find a way to oppose and halt. The anthill, like the Fullerian foam fungus, is the mark of social disease. Anthills abound where overgrazing prevails. The plastic dome follows the plague of runaway industrialism, prefigures technological tyranny and reveals the true quality of our lives, which sinks in inverse ratio to the growth of the Gross National Product.”

Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang follows four unlikely companions who– angered by the destruction of their beloved southwestern American desert by ever-expanding industry– turn to sabotage.

The gang is comprised of the wise and eloquent Doc Sarvis, the strong-willed Bonnie Abbzug, the “incorrigibly bucolic” Seldom Seen Smith, and the brutish, testosteronic Vietnam vet: George Hayduke. These characters come from diverse backgrounds, but are unified in the conviction that no one has a right to destroy the the impeccable and essential wilderness they cherish.

So they disassemble bulldozers, they blow up assembly lines, they uproot survey stakes… you know… eco-terrorist stuff. They come together to strike back against the oil companies, coal companies, and mining companies destructively extending their greedy paws into the pristine desert of the American southwest.

These are the crimes of the future, now, eco-terrorism:

“To those who have studied radical movements, the unprecedented prosecution of environmental activists represents the end of an era,” Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote in Rolling Stone in 2006. “Four states have already passed legislation—drafted by a right-wing lobbying group that represents 300 major corporations—that classifies any act of property destruction motivated by environmental beliefs as ‘ecological terrorism.’”

When Grigoriadis wrote that, FBI had recently called radical environmental activists “the number one domestic terrorism threat,” despite the fact that damage was suffered by property, and human casualties were rare. (That description has since been downgraded to “one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats in the U.S. today.”) (Source)

Here’s the FBI’s bullshit on, Testimony: Animal Rights Extremism and Ecoterrorism

Imagine that: dozens of years in federal prison for burning up some SUV’s, or burning down some property owned by a Confined Animal Feeding Operation. Imagine being thrown in jail and prison for filming abuse of animals in cages and pens. Imagine that, these Cheeseburger laws, so called food disparagment laws: The “Cheeseburger Bill” which makes it illegal for people to sue food companies for making them obese.

Yesterday [10/19/2005] the House of Representatives once again passed the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, which purports to protect food sellers from liability for the consequences of their customers’ overeating. I say “purports” because I’m not sure the bill (which has not been considered by the Senate yet) would make much of a difference in the sort of litigation that inspired it.

Right. Fat, sugar, salt, and artifical flavorings and High Fructose Corn Syrup Super Size drinks, and the endless jocks and celebrities hawking this junk food, and then, of course, normalizing pizza for school lunches washed down by chocolate milk and with a side of French fries, none of that causes diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity! Imagine that, food deserts, and food price gouging where an apple or pre-made salad is more expensive than a burger and fries from one of your favorite national dirty chains.

Imagine all of this advertising and subliminal mind warping and behavior modification happening at age 10 days, whenever the baby sitter puts the TV on while rocking baby to sleep. There is no conspiracy for HFCS and sugary drinks and processed foods and sat, sugar, salt and other secret ingredients that get the average five year old lusting after Twinkies, 7/11 hotdogs, bags of Doritos and a Big Mac or Whooper. Nah, how dare we journalists put two and two and two together. We can get sued.

Just dig into journals, mainstream and obscure, and you will find the dirty tricks of the food industry cooking up more ways to get young tongues habituated to overprocessed food, crunchy potato chips and gooey gunk. A fresh tomato or cabbage is like poison to these kids. Wonder why?

Here, I had Howard Lyman staying at my house in Spokane. He was on my radio show, and he was interviewed by me for a stage presentation, and he was also written about by yours truly:

“My name is Howard Lyman and I am a recovering meat eater … dairy consumer … factory farmer.” Something for an Oprah show? Dr. Phil’s forte?

The Oprah reference is an accurate one for Lyman, the former operator of a super-industrialized livestock lot and dairy farm, now author (Mad Cowboy and No More Bull, both co-written with Glen Merzer) and advocate of vegetarianism, animal rights and stewardship of the land through sustainable agriculture. It was during an April 1996 Oprah show that the fourth-generation Montana cattleman — now living in Ellensburg — “let the cattle out of the bag” by confronting a spokesman for the National Cattleman’s Beef Association about the practice of feeding vegetarian ruminants their own kind. He suggests that the practice is a bizarre cannibalistic ritual set upon the industrialized meat-raising system to satisfy greed and the bottom line.

On the show, Lyman asserted that he and thousands of other cattle operators had been feeding their herds dead cows — downer cows put down because of cancer, viral diseases, genetic anomalies and mysterious neurological ailments — mixed with parts from butchered cows, including pulverized cow manure.

The proverbial cow pie hit the fan when it was acknowledged that this practice had rendered America’s beef supply susceptible to Mad Cow disease (BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy), which had already taken its toll in the United Kingdom just a year earlier. Lyman, known as the “Mad Cowboy” or the “Vegan Rancher,” continues to speak out about abuses in industrial diary and beef operations like the one he ran outside Great Falls, Mont.

Lyman saw the light after more than 20 years of using road-kill and slaughtered cows as ground-up feed. After hundreds of gallons of antibiotics. After daily chemical fogs to douse flies — the No. 2 bane of feedlot operators “after bovine diseases in their various forms.” In the feedlot business, that pesky fly takes a toll on huge operations because of all those cattle unnaturally crammed into one small space.

“With every cow in a pen producing 25 pounds of manure in a day,” Lyman says, “the flies can get so thick that they actually threaten a cow’s ability to breathe.”

“Better farming through chemistry” was Lyman’s mantra before his transformation, so he attacked the insect problem on an industrial scale.

“Early in the morning I would fill up a fly fogger with insecticide and spray great clouds of it over the whole operation,” Lyman writes in his book. “The insecticide would of course fall into the feed and the water of the cattle, as well as on the trees and the grass and the crops.” (source: Haeder, “Cowboy Critic”)

Here, some comments I made over at Hormones Matter:

The proverbial tip of the iceberg: Artificial estrogen DES, nuclear winds, hormone disrupting plastics, vaccines, insecticides, GMOs, etc. And we are now in a time of Ag-gag laws which are in the news around animal cruelty cases, but much worse, we are in what Will Potter calls, Green as the New Red.

Like communist witch hunts by McCarthy, today for-profit felons and their felonious associations like the Cattleman’s Association and the entire alphabet soup groups that are bribe-minded lobbying organizations are going after people — researchers, scientists, citizens — who would dare expose the massive environmental pollution and human harm these industries have promulgated.

Call it the Cheeseburger bill or food disparagement laws. I brought Howard Lyman to my college as a faculty member. Remember him? Sued along with Oprah Winfrey for talking about “mad cow disease and our meat industry?

Twenty-two years ago:

Look, when a society — the entire Trumpland and Obamaland — can tolerate children, adults and the aged being poisoned by lead in Michigan, and then no heads rolled, and no trial for the governor, well, we are in a time of corporations ruling us all through their henchmen and henchwomen: politicians for sale. When we allow, now under the current administration (sic), offshore oil platforms to reduce blowout safety, well, we are in a time of insanity.

We’ve allowed education to teach our children how to NOT think critically, and how NOT to become participants in democracy. We are in a time when a bad TV reality show host is leader (sic) of the free (sic) world. The Rock and Facebook’s Zuckerberg are now putting their toes into the 2020 presidential run up. Whew! DES is the tip of a continental iceberg of people, animals, land being toxified! Our famed nuclear tests?

Quote:

New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.

The study, performed by University of Arizona economist Keith Meyers, uses a novel method (pdf) to trace the deadly effects of this radiation, which was often consumed by Americans drinking milk far from the site of atomic tests.

From 1951 to 1963, the US tested nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada. Weapons researchers, not understanding the risks—or simply ignoring them—exposed thousands of workers to radioactive fallout. The emissions from nuclear reactions are deadly to humans in high doses, and can cause cancer even in low doses. At one point, researchers had volunteers stand underneath an airburst nuclear weapon to prove how safe it was. (source)

My own life here in the Pacific Northwest intersects with that big lie — a little radioactive fallout is good for you. My two-part story below:

I won a first place big time journalism (mainstream) award for these stories above, but, alas, I am wondering exactly how effective any amount of written commentary/ investigative journalism or documentary film recording the crimes of the capitalists and chemical purveyors and punishment profiteers, et al, really does to change people?

I remember the 2011 Academy Awards given out to Charles Ferguson for his documentary, Inside Job. While he attempted to say something at the microphone, like, “Not one economist who was part of this economic meltdown has lost his or her job,” the band struck up loudly and Oprah Winfrey scuttled him off stage.

Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” is the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, “Inside Job” traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Very few people I know saw the movie, and alas, we are in 2023 which is a time of economic cholera — the rich steal more and the middle class and poor class and working class lose it all.

There are no new disasters about to unfold. They are already here, man! I hate to be a harbinger of bad news, and it’s difficult being in this role because Americans, I find, want to see a silver lining in dark clouds and believe they might be touched by an angel. If it’s American, then all things will fix by themselves with the elites shepherding it all into righteousness. But we need more critical thinking and more exposing of the crimes of the few onto the masses, us, the people!

Example of this time of environmental cholera:

Pollinators dying, and they account for 75 percent of all food grown — i.e. pollinated? Do we have a massive movement to ban the culprits of bees’ natural and unnatural colony collapse?

“How fungicides kill bees is now being studied, but is likely to be by making them more susceptible to the deadly nosema parasite or by exacerbating the toxicity of other pesticides.”

The widespread decline in bees and other pollinators is worrying because they fertilize about 75% of all food crops, with half of pollination being done by wild species. Pesticides, habitat destruction, disease and climate change have all been implicated in bee declines, but relatively little research has been done on the complex question of which factors cause the most damage.

So what kind of species are capitalists who would create chemicals that poison air, water, soil, and the entire food web? The DES scandal is one in a million, some of which have been documented with little mitigation or remediation; most not exposed in any sense of the word through the mainstream or side stream press.

+–+

I was listening to Cory Morningstar this morning, and it was great to hear her recommendation at the end of the interview when the interviewer asked her what can people do to stop the juggernauts of 6 G, crypto cages, social impact bonds, digital dashboards, compliance computers, WEF, Davos, You will Own Nothing, Sucker mentality of the elites, and the Internet of Nano Things, Internet of Bodies. Her answer was refreshing — Learn about demolition. The interviewer asked what she meant, and Cory stated as I paraphrase — Get some background in learning how to create, set, and detonate things, since the juggernauts are all in forward motion, and Minority Report came and went and then got better for the billionaires to watch us all and predict which people are eco-terrorist that, anti-government this.

Cory Morningstar joins us to discuss Climate Activism/Green New Deal, The Great Reset, Digital ID systems, Public Health, Smart Cities, and more

Read Cory Morningstar’s work here 

Follow Cory Morningstar on twitter 

“We are embarking on an inescapable and irreversible technological enslavement… This we know: the planet will not be saved by those that have destroyed it.” 

Cory Morningstar, ‘The Great Reset: The final assault on the living planet’

Well well. I have had lots of “courses” on how to set Claymore mines, how to work with dynamite and with some other stuff like grenades and even C4. I’ve been around Rocket Propelled Grenades, and M-60 machine guns, and, more, which I will not talk about here. I taught college courses to military, and I am a sponge. So, this commie teacher even got to have fun in the desert (New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, Tucson, other places) with some of my students who brought out the “toys.” Yes, I have had my time in the US military, and that is a whole other story, dishonorable to me. My father was in the Air Force and Army for a total of 32 years. I have messed with many things. I have been exposed to sniper weapons, SWAT crap, more.

The problem today is that the demolition squads are now hobbled and registered and held at bay with surveillence and such. Oklahoma City bombing? Inside the vehicle was a powerful bomb made out of a deadly cocktail of agricultural fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other chemicals.

Again, though, go deep, pull back the covers and body bags, and you get:

However, Brigadier General Benton K. Partin (USAF, Retired), after carrying out a detailed study, told members of Congress that “the damage pattern on the reinforced concrete superstructure could not possibly have been attained from the single truck bomb without supplementing demolition charges.”

At most, the truck bomb would have taken out the flooring on the first and third floors. Partin believed that bombs were placed inside the building at key points to destroy its supports.

A subsequent series of Air Force test blasts on concrete structures corroborated General Partin’s main contention that air blast from a truck bomb outside of the building could not possibly account for the pattern and magnitude of the damage to the Murrah Building’s superstructure.

Read all about it: “Oklahoma City Bombing: Was Timothy McVeigh a Patsy in a Sinister Black Flag Operation?” By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Cory might want some folk to get ready for bringing down the towers and 5 G mini convex units, but the CCTV and Keyhole Satellites and RFID chips, man, we are fucked.

Here is the fall out, and no hell to pay from the scientists, pencil pushers, politicians, corporations, military:

But for now, let me repeat: the world’s richest 85 individuals do not have the same amount of accumulated wealth as the world’s poorest 50 percent. They have vastly more. The multitude on the lower rungs—even taken as a totality—have next to nothing. — Michael Parenti

Funny stuff seeing the MoveOn outfit go after ONLY the one percent who are tax dodgers, tax sheltering criminals:

• Sign the petition: Don’t let House Republicans undermine the IRS for the benefit of the rich and powerful.
  
  Dear MoveOn member,
• Republicans are trying to cut $80 billion in recent investments designed to strengthen the IRS and its ability to crack down on millionaire, billionaire, and corporate tax cheats through the Inflation Reduction Act.¹ In other words: As per usual, Republicans want to issue handouts to their wealthy donors and leave working families in the lurch. 
• In 2019 alone, the richest 1% of households evaded $163 billion of the total of unpaid or underpaid taxes that year.²When we allow the ultrawealthy to evade paying their fair share, we place that responsibility on regular working people. Donald Trump’s recently released tax returns are a clear example of this corruption and greed.³His returns expose overseas bank accounts and manipulative real estate evaluations that effectively allowed him to dodge taxes.⁴ This is exactly why Democrats included funding for the IRS, to ensure there were people within the agency that would hold the wealthiest people in this country accountable.⁵ We cannot allow the GOP to tank our efforts to lessen the tax burden on the working class. 

Sources:
1. NY Times, “House Republicans Vote to Rescind I.R.S. Funding,” January 9, 2023.
2. The Independent, “Trump had foreign bank accounts in China, UK and Ireland as president and one year paid more foreign tax than US,” December 30, 2022.
3. CNN, “Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns,” December 30, 2022.
4. Reuters, “Fact Check-The IRS is not hiring thousands of armed agents, job ads show opening for specialized unit,” August 17, 2022.

Fun stuff, you know, since we are getting close to USA shooting nuclear weapons, utilizing the dirty tricks of CIA and false flags and dirty bombs. You know this country’s history, yet the Democrats, the MoveOne outfit, is going for the One Percent.

You know, since these companies are as honest as a nun (not). Imagine, the amount of US taxpayer money paying for fraud, crimes, endless and meaningless and worthless reports, hearings, white papers, investigations, stalling tactics, cover-ups, PR spin, all of it, including the dirty, polluting, community-breaking externalities of these corporations. And how many of these corporations have GOVERNMENT contracts in the hundreds of millions and billions?

How many dual-income earners in the Five percent — $208,000 x 2 – $416,000 yearly income — have trouble sending their kids to Yale and Harvard, uh?

I am getting $19 an hour as a school bus driver trainee, mother effers. With two undergraduate and two graduate degrees. No school debt because I got scholarships, got tuition waivers for being a teacher, and got awards for winning writing and essay contests.

The book, Dream Hoarders tells a picture of those Five and Ten Percenters and the Twenty Percenters x two incomes ($97,000) = $195,000. But here, the irony, at the most elite-sucking, exceptionalist outfit locally, Aspen Institute:

https://www.youtube.com/live/pTgpgMzs5sU?feature=share

NOW, now. I have a 77 year old fellow with all sorts of medical operations under his belt driving a bus, me as his monitor. There are older people driving school buses where I live, one aged 81. You know, high winds, in a tsunami zone, earthquake zone, king tides, ice, fallen trees, fallen power lines, rain rain rain. You know, that precious cargo — children — and we get $19 an hour, with three camereas on board, a tablet that marks our stops and time, and, well, you can imagine the lack of trust this huge corporation has in us, the lowly guys and gals. Precious cargo my ass!

Truckers in the world, got .06 (cents) a mile in the 1960s. And when you are owner-operator, you pay pay pay for expenses, upkeep, maintenence and more. IN the old days the idea was to get to New York from Portland, Oregon, as quick as possible with that load of seafood. One fellow told me he took ZipLock baggies with him to urinate on that 72 hours one way from Oregon to NYC. And, the pills. The uppers. Keeping awake.

This is, alas, Capitalism with a capital “c” for corruption, collusion, chaos, criminality, contraband, crassness.

But alas, MoveOne is going after the One Percent, because of course, all those Five Percenters working for the One Percenters in high level jobs, all those 10 Percenters who are hoarders and vote to not have an extra percentage of tax put upon them, all the Eichmann’s and Faustians, all of them, love the idea of becoming rich and famous too, or just rich. They think being part of the 80 Percent is a crime against their egos and sensibility.

There is only so much of the good money to go around to the One Percent and up to the 19 Percent, right? Just talked to a 51 year old who gave me a ride back home since my ride was indisposed in Newport. I had to get to the bus driving gig. I stopped someone coming from the hospital, and he gave me a lift. He grew up in Toledo, Oregon, and had a year’s worth of wages saved up for Oregon State University, but he opted to work. As a lineman for the local central utility district. His brother went to college, and even called him a loser. Just a few years ago, the brother apologized to this man, who has worked 32 years for this company, and he said he’s making $150,000 a year as he is in management. The brother never got that income with his college degree.

Yes, there have to be options for young people. Yes, everyone needs to go to a cool college, for history, for the arts, for writing, for sociology. Yes, there should be contruction courses in college. Yes, there should be a way to get those who might have a proclivity for hands-on high IQ stuff to get that hands-on education, but all junior and senior high school students should be exposed to Oceanography, Orwell and Organic farming. In addition to, Reading and Writing, but also, learning what soil is and is not. What a forest is. What the jet stream is, and what weather is and is not. Hands down, the only way humanity is going to solve the crimes of capitalism and the savagery of capitalism and the barbaric acts of the One Percent and maybe another 5 percent, is to arm ourselves with thinking, caring, community-driven people.

Out here in Rural Oregon, we have those rugged (sic) individuals looking for acres and a place to put some chickens and cool motorcycles and jungle gyms on, and a place AWAY from humanity. Imagine that.

Some of those homes I pass by in the rural landscape are 6,000 square foot lodges that would look like they fit in Aspen or Jackson Hole.

Here it is, then, the shifting baseline disorder. Up is down, and somehow, Nazi History is Okay History. Ukraine is a country with a violent and racist history, and now, worse than ever. But these kids and these linemen, well, they do not want to know about THAT.

As we drain the tax coffers for ZioAzovNaziLensky, for all those military industrial complex big boys and little ones.

This is fact — Russia-Soviet Union beat the Nazi’s then:

The Battle That Changed the Course of WWII: 80th Anniversary of the Soviet Victory at Stalingrad

On February 2, 1943, Nazi forces trapped in the ruined city of Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) by the Soviet Red Army surrendered, marking the end of one of the bloodiest and most intense battles in history – the Battle of Stalingrad.

During the course of this battle, Soviet forces managed to trap a substantial force of Nazi soldiers inside the very city the latter wanted to capture. The Soviet’s also managed to repel all attempts by the rest of the Nazi war machine to relieve their trapped comrades, and to finally break the enemy’s will to resist.

This triumph allowed the USSR to seize the strategic initiative and effectively turn the tide of the entire World War II, paving the way for the eventual defeat of the Nazi Germany a little over two years later. (source)

You’d never know that istory talking to linemen or bus driver or high school teacher or city council or . . . . And youth in college or in high school who will never get to read this article and discuss: “How a Network of Nazi Propagandists Helped Lay the Groundwork for the War in Ukraine“

A mass grave of Red Army soldiers, executed on orders from Franz Halder, at Stalag 307 near Dęblin, Poland.

Don’t let MoveOn fool you — Liz Warren maybe a super capitalist, but that means she is for great wealth misdistribution, great land exploitation, the Monroe Doctrine on steroids, and of course, money, missiles and mush for Ukraine.

Michael Parenti — Peeling back those Shifting Baselines!

The world’s 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world’s population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me.  I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have far more wealth than the poorest half of our global population.

How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States. (source)

Most of the 3.5 billion earn an average of $2.50 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world population accounts for just 5 percent of all global income. About 80 percent of all humanity live on less than $10 a day. And the poorest 50 percent  maintain only 7.2 percent of the world’s private consumption. How exactly could they have accumulated an amount of surplus wealth comparable to the 85 filthy richest?

Hundreds of millions live in debt even in “affluent” countries like the United States. They face health care debts, credit card debts, college tuition debts, and so on. Many, probably most who own homes—and don’t live in shacks or under bridges or in old vans—are still straddled with mortgages. This means their net family wealth is negative, minus-zero. They have no  propertied wealth; they live in debt.

Millions among the poorest 50 percent in the world may have cars but most of them also have car payments. They are driving in debt.  In countries like Indonesia, for the millions without private vehicles, there are the overloaded, battered buses, poorly maintained vehicles that specialize in breakdowns and ravine plunges. Among the lowest rungs of the 50 percent are the many who pick thru garbage dumps and send their kids off to work in grim, soul-destroying sweatshops.

Yah, I am training to be a school bus driver. I’ve written about it in previous pieces, and that First Student outfit is in 49 states, 7 Canadian provinces, and it’s an equity firm out of Belgium. Bidding on school district transporation, and alas, this Belgium company is getting paid by guess who?

USA and Canadian taxpaers. This is what they call the public-private arrangement, again, what is a low level form of socialized payola for private companies.As if the public and the governments and the states and the national funding can’t take care of OUR own children’s food, education, and transportation needs. How long will I last is a crap shoot, since this is it for Lincoln County — no luck getting past interviews for county, city and state jobs as a case manager or services coordinator, even though there is that great 10 million shortfall of men dropping out of the workforce.

Oh, shit, I’m almost 66, too many college degrees and a resume way too long.

Ahh, I am a social worker, educator, writer, journalist and even someone in urban and regional planned, but I can’t get past the interview. Missing men, well, there are many reasons for this. In the uncritical thinking USA, we will not get much deep analyses.

+–+

The gender gap in college enrollment has been growing for decades and has broad implications for colleges and beyond: a loss of enrollment revenue, less viewpoint diversity on campus, and fewer men in jobs that require some college education. Some academics want to make clear that just because women outnumber men in college it doesn’t mean that gender-equity issues no longer remain.

This collection of Chronicle articles features news stories, analysis, advice, and opinion essays, including several articles that sounded a warning years ago. It also looks at how some colleges are trying to draw more men of all backgrounds — and help them succeed once they get there.

Section 1: Why Don’t Men Go to College?

Section 2: How Can Colleges Draw More Men?

Section 3: Deconstructing the Gender Gap

Don’t get me started on the nanny state, the reverse sexism, the anti-femism bullshit female empowerment. Don’t get me started on the battle of the sexes, and don’t get me started on the sheeple aspect of education, social work, and nonprofit work. Don’t get me started man.

I can go down a thousand rabbit holes or warrens, but the thing is I come back out, revitalized, smarter, and, sure more pissed off. This is the state of the world, under captialism. A Belgium company in the USA and Canada, monopolizing on school transportation. No union shop, $19 an hour here in Lincoln county where home prices and gasoline and food are outragous and where other districts might pay more per hour.

Again, it’s a bunch of older folk, mostly women, driving busses at age 67, 71, 78. What the hell is that about?

I have also been a substitute teacher in this district, and I’ve written about that too: “Take Down this Blog, or Else! No job interview, no job offer, targeting by city, county, state honchos, watched by the pigs, shadowed by all the sub humans”. Of course, I was and still am mad as hell and can’t accept it, or take it. Even writing this will get scrutinized by those overlords of the HR subhuman who spend countless millions on applications that do background checks, credit checks, employment checks, reference checks, drug checks, and of course, in my case, Google Checks, looking for any anti-this or anti-that diatribes or even plain old inverted triangle journalism.

Let’s scoot over to the issue of the failing male, the males in the womb, those just out of the womb, and then the developing baby, child, kid, teen, and we end up with 355 million Americanos and a shit load of chronic illnesses for EVERYONE, including the poor child, babes in the woods. The top ten:

What are the 7 main types of learning disabilities? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that developmental disabilities occur among all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. Children from ages 3 through 17 frequently have one or more developmental disabilities, such as:

ADHD
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Cerebral Palsy
Hearing Loss
Intellectual Disability
Learning Disability
Vision Impairment
Developmental Delays

In particular, psychology professionals should study these seven learning disabilities:

• Auditory processing disorder. …
• Language processing disorder. …
• Nonverbal learning disabilities. …
• Visual perceptual/visual motor deficit.
• Types of Learning Disabilities

• 

• Dyscalculia A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand numbers and learn math facts.

• 
• Dysgraphia A specific learning disability that affects a person’s handwriting ability and fine motor skills.

• 
• Dyslexia A specific learning disability that affects reading and related language-based processing skills.

• 
• Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities Has trouble interpreting nonverbal cues like facial expressions or body language and may have poor coordination.
• 
• Oral / Written Language Disorder and Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit Learning disabilities that affect an individual’s understanding of what they read or of spoken language. The ability to express one’s self with oral language may also be impacted.

• Related Disorders
• 
• ADHDA disorder that includes difficulty staying focused and paying attention, controlling behavior and hyperactivity.

• 
• Dyspraxia A disorder which causes problems with movement and coordination, language and speech.

So here we are at, now, in a society with so many epigentic, developmental, gestational, chromosomal and neuro disabilities. So many youth are faced with a lifetime of struggled, even before crawling, and then in pre-K and then K12, and then as adults. If this were a socially just society, there would be trillions spent on finding out the causes and effects and then the effects as new causes for new effects on the individual gestating, and what it is that makes this such a prevalent issue in our Western Society. Schools are warehouses, for sure, and the school to prison pipeline is not some goof-ball concept. We’d be looking hard at the chemicals, the stressors, the mother and father and their own stressors. All the toxins in air, water, food, drugs, including EMFs, and just the lack of nutrition, the fatty liver disease in 1/3 of folk, and the failing sperm counts in men since 1950, and, well, the discussion of who is that village that takes to raise a child.

Everything in capitalism is ANTI-health, ANTI-human, ANTI-Learning, ANTI-community engagement. More and more children, and yes, mostly boys, are monitored in the classroom, those prisons, and the effect or affect is that there is little significant learning and developing going on. They are a nerved out or nervous wreck, and they are watched and graded and sent home with behavior reports.

Now is the time to pity the child. Our children, and of course, all those children hit with the wagers of war, the wagers of sanctions, the wagers of economic and health and food sanctions. Depleted uranium or lead in the pipes. All of those realities also tie into the mental health, the pressures put upon mother, father, child, grandparents, the lot of them in education, et al.

This is the sickness of America:

In solidarity with Cuba, leaders and activists of all Left and democratic parties of India welcomed Aleida Guevara in Surjeet Bhavan.

To a packed hall, Aleida said that it is one thing to talk about an economic blockade and quite another to live under that blockade.

She narrated how no country was ready to even give easily available medicine for a five-year-old child only because of the fear of America. In spite of not being a milk producing country, Cuba supplies one litre milk daily for all children and the aged, by importing it from New Zealand which is expensive because of the high transportation costs.

They were forced to buy milk from far away New Zealand, as their northern neighbour, US is not ready to trade with Cuba. The sixty years of illegal and inhumane US blockade has taught Cuba to spread humanism through sending doctors to wherever they were in need. Cuba is just 90 kilometres away from the mighty imperialist super power US. Even then it can’t be defeated since it believes in the scientific principle of people’s unity and those who are united can never be defeated. “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido” (The people united, shall always be victorious). She said Cuba took arms for peace and defending their motherland. She asserted that Cuba believes in standing up for equality against any kind of barbarism in the world. Thanking the people of India for always standing with Cuba, she said that the people of Cuba will always treasure this solidarity and value it immensely. (source)

Milk, man, and the United Snakes of America is so so powerful, going after children far and wide. You know, Cuba never attacked the USA, never went to war, and alas, this is the power of the dirty capitalists, war mongers and some sick psychopaths. Medicines, medical equipment, air conditioners, food, and energy. This is the way of the rat, the USA RATON.

The entire psychiatry and psychology and sociology of oppression is what runs modern Western society. There are no right ways now to raise children, to support families, and to build community. It’s all about the private sector sucking up as much as the public sector can regurgitate to this thieves. While the children suffer, and while the entire shooting match is toast as we in a culture of pollution and gestational crimes and constant bombardment of children with poisons, from those in the plastics, chicken nuggets, lawn sprays, all the off gassing, all those artificial flavors, all the death traps that we know this society is unleashing at an earlier and earlier age.

We are in an age of behavior adjustment, brainwashing, mind control, sinister Stockholm Syndrome, general anxiety disorders. Checked out or challenged just looking at a book, we are in the new normal of trillions for the pigs of war, for SWAT teams, for the opposition to us, the family, the human and humane family. These kiddos come onto the bus with behavior plans, with their little classroom check slips for the parents to mull over at home.

Oh, what is enlightenment? “Behavior charts and similar public shaming methods don’t teach self-regulation. They mainly harm vulnerable learners.” The following is pretty light weight compared to the scenes I have been enmeshed in as a substitute teacher in special education and blended classrooms. Believe me.

Mr. Hill stops reading aloud to his 4th grade students and turns to Anisa. “Anisa, you’re off task. Change your clip. I asked you once and you are still digging in your desk. Walk over and change it now.”

Anisa stands and walks across the classroom. Several of her peers make condescending comments under their breath. Anisa moves her clip from green to yellow and returns to her desk and puts her head down. Her nonverbal behaviors indicate that she’s angry, hurt, and frustrated.

A few minutes later, Josh raises his hand. Mr. Hill calls on him and Josh responds, “Anisa is off task again.”

Mr. Hill looks at Anisa and says, “Again? Please change your clip to red. One more problem and it will be another call home. You have to learn to pay attention.” (Source: Tear Down Your Behavior Chart!
Lee Ann Jung Dominique Smith)

Read the book: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Freire gives the term “freedom” a specific meaning: it is the freedom to critically question and change the world. In other words, a person is free when they are able to understand and change their own conditions. For Freire, education and oppression are connected, since education can be used either as a tool for oppression or as a method of liberation from oppression. Freire distinguishes between a pedagogy (a way of practicing education) that serves oppressors, and one that helps oppressed people understand and change their society. According to Freire, “freedom” (the freedom to critically question and change the world) requires people to gain a new understanding of how reality works. Changing the dominant understanding of history is a key part of this process. Freire sees education as useful not just for individual growth, but also for achieving social change. To expand on this point, he discusses social change as a necessary tool to achieve freedom and overthrow oppression. Within Freire’s framework, systems of oppression try to prevent radical social change so that they do not lose power. Throughout Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire draws heavily on the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—especially the concept of dialectics. A “dialectical” way of thinking starts with a “thesis” (an initial idea or proposition) and an “antithesis” (an idea that opposes or contradicts the thesis), and the interaction of these two ideas creates a “synthesis,” or a new idea that reconciles the conflict between the two original ideas. (some clipped notes)

Feeling the burn yet, the absolute oppression instilled in the greatest country and system the world has ever seen?

Get a little primer on exactly what capitalism and inflation and the systems of Milton Friedman are all about here:

Hudson: Since the Democrats took power in the 1990s under Clinton, they’ve stopped the anti-monopoly regulation. They’ve stopped the antitrust laws from being enforced, and you have a great concentration of monopolies, and they can raise prices for whatever they want, as much as they want. For agricultural goods, the distributors have simply raised the prices without paying the farmers and the dairy farmers any more.

So when you say that inflation is only a monetary phenomenon, what Milton Friedman is saying is, “Don’t look at the power structure. Don’t look at how markets are structured. Don’t look at monopolies. Don’t look at how the wealthy corporations are inflating [prices]. Look at something that we can blame on labor.”

The inflation that Milton Friedman talks about — and you just mentioned my old boss’s boss Paul Volcker — is wages. So when the Federal Reserve talks about inflation, they say, “It’s really wages rising.” Well, we know that wages have not risen anywhere near as fast as the cost of living, so that can’t be the reason — that wages are rising.

But if you can claim that inflation is only caused by labor making too much money and hurting other workers as consumers, then you have the Federal Reserve able to come in and say, “We’ve got to have a depression. We’ve got to have unemployment. We’re going to raise interest rates because we want more unemployment to increase the reserve army of the unemployed so that wage earners will be so desperate for a job that they’ll work for less. And if only they worked for less, then prices will come down, if somehow the companies are going to lower their prices because they can pay their labor less.”

The pretense is that it’s all labor’s fault.

We are all on this behavior and consequence chart. We, that it, the 80 Percenters who have 8 percent of wealth in the USA, compared to the Point Zero Zero One Percent, the One Percent and 19 Percent holding 92 percent of the money-power-possession chart. We mustn’t act up, mustn’t question the boss, mustn’t wonder whyt he oppressors are out neighbors, the ones our taxpaying work fund, or why so many Americanos believe this is it for Nirvana — the USA, greatest invention in human kind since the wheel.

Oh, those progessives are capitalists to their bones:

Last November she shifted from supporting Medicare for All to advocating a two-phased approach intended to build support for a single-payer model (in which the federal government would provide health insurance for every person in the U.S.), by first creating a federally based plan to compete with private insurers and expanding access to Medicare. Elizabeth Warren Says She’s ‘a Capitalist To My Bones’ And Positions Herself as FDR’s Heir

And that is THAT capitalism —

“Inflammation is the body’s appropriate response to damage, or the threat of damage,” says Marya, a physician and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition. “We’re learning that the social structures around us, the environmental, political structures around us, are tuning the immune system to sound out the full range of inflammation.” Patel adds that “capitalism primes bodies … for sickness.” (“Inflamed”: Dr. Rupa Marya & Raj Patel on Deep Medicine & How Capitalism Primes Us for Sickness)

Imagine that, all those children, and I am not talking about those with allergies, with multiple chronic illnesses, including diabetes and asthma, caught in this vice which is CAPITALISM.

Daily, we are oppressed, and as the digital oppressors get more powerful, everything about us will be transhumanist, and we will be abiding by retinal scans, spit analyses, galvanic skin response, and then the body will be the internet of physiology, the absolute bot world of nano things controlling the entire human experience, and that’s not just heart rate and BP, but thoughts.

Below, I find these on the bus floors much of the time. The children leave them in their desks at school. They are on the playgrounds with orange peels wrapped inside. Oh, the behaviorists. The mind benders. The psyops, the dead-end Americans, paying for the tools of Nazi War, and now, how many teachers are talking about the Doomsday Clock to their high schoolers, just to broach the issue?

Hell, people do not talk about Ukraine and the pimping of weapons of childkilling in public or at the workplace. These bosses, like the Belgium First Student, send memos out on what can and cannot be said during election A or election B.

And we wonder why so many neuro-normal (sic) people are checked out. TraumaThe Science of Stuck – Britt Frank, baby, trauma!

This is Startup to Storefront, and on today’s episode, we are unpacking the science of how to get unstuck. It’s no coincidence that that’s also the title of the book written by our guest today: author, psychotherapist, and trauma specialist, Britt Frank. Britt knows a thing or two about getting unstuck, as she has battled everything from meth addiction to sexual abuse. She emerged from that trauma with a new outlook on life, a Master of Social Work degree, and a desire to help others overcome their own hurdles. These hurdles vary from individual to individual, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s not uncommon for someone to put up a mental blockade that prevents them from moving forward. Getting over this mental blockade that inhibits you from progressing forward is what we are dissecting today.

In today’s episode we discuss:

– Why you don’t need every friend to be a best friend

– How Covid didn’t create a mental health crisis, it just exposed the one we already had

– The power behind changing your why’s to whats. So roll up your sleeves and let’s start the process of getting unstuck.

The Science of Stuck – Britt Frank,

the death of newspapers is not something to celebrate, but the clueless continue to high-five as more newspapers far and wide die an undignified death!

Note: This is from the Newport News Times Friday 1/27. I’ll leave it as a stand alone. There will be a note at the end.

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.”

— Joseph Conrad, from, “The Task of the Artist.”

I’ve been a wordsmith since my late teens: sports reporting intern in Tucson for the evening daily newspaper.

My first magazine gig was with Skin Diver magazine, and that was an interesting journey into 25 cents per word, but $50 for each photo. I was diving in Baja; I waited out a hurricane that wiped out a small village where I had spent time before and after the storm. Two shots of mountains of hammerhead jaws drying in the sun and sharks underwater; two photos of the village (before and after); shots of some of the villagers digging out; and a photo of me hanging onto a humpback whale landed me more cashola than the 1,000-word article.

I ended up in Bisbee, Tombstone, Nogales, Cochise’s Stronghold and all along the U.S.-Mexico border (La Frontera) as a reporter filing stories on all manner of cool, odd, and sometimes boring stories around planning and zoning, city council and school board meetings.

Words, accuracy, research and inventiveness were everything to me, even before the newspaper gigs in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The Daily Wildcat was my home at the University of Arizona. Words and deploying more than just an inverted news triangle were powerful, and accuracy was a must since everyone on and off campus was reading my work.

I took this gig seriously enough to end up at the University of Texas teaching college composition while finishing a master’s degree. My entire career around words has been anchored to the power of the word to not only transform a community, but oneself.

This isn’t an arcane belief. To be, say a marine biology student (I was one of those), doing some deep reef work AND then writing a report on the findings, but also on the reason for the experiment in the first place, that is the power of the word. We had to write about the cultural history, too — the people and the sea.

Literacy is somewhat new in the USA, that is, reading and writing. Unfortunately, functional illiteracy is high. I ended up teaching U.S. military members at Fort Bliss a week-long writing class with the goal of getting some of the less literate students to at least a seventh grade reading level.

Nationwide, on average, 79 percent of U.S. adults were literate in 2022. Conversely, 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate. However, more telling, 54 percent of adults have literacy below sixth grade level. Worse still is that up to 80 percent of Americans in all demographic categories can’t follow eighth grade instructions on correctly installing a child car seat.

As a college instructor, I taught Jonathan Kozol’s work, including his book, “Illiterate America.” One of the passages is telling about the foundation of America: “One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms: ‘I thank God,’ he said, that ‘there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them … God save us from both!’”

After decades teaching/mentoring students in the art of writing — composition, business writing, technical writing, fiction, poetry, news writing — I have arrived at a new baseline of absurdity and danger:

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a program that generates sophisticated text in response to any prompt a person can imagine. This artificial intelligent application signals the end of writing assignments altogether.

Again, writing is a way of gauging skills and understanding the fine art of whichever field one may end up in. If a student or specialist can explain the process of ocean acidification for both post-doctoral students and laypersons, then the author is ahead of the game. Literacy is key for cultures to both thrive and move ahead.

A deeply researched book on China, say Jeff J. Brown’s “44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass” (2013), is worth more than 44 days of watching mainstream news reporting on China.

Additionally, some of the best writing comes from scientists like Peter Ward, “Under a Green Sky,” or a seasoned journalist like Elizabeth Kolbert, who wrote “The Sixth Extinction.”

There is this belief in elite circles humanity in the future will be split into two major camps — those with power, money and connections, and then the rest of us, who will be dubbed as useless workers-eaters-humans. Yuval Noah Harari believes AI and robotics will render workers in the main unnecessary, useless. This is the philosophy of the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and others throughout industry and government.

We are now reading machine-generated (AI) “news” stories. We are in a great reset where data of every sort is collected and then sold to the digital gods who feed that information into computers to learn what it is to be, think, dream, hope, do as humans. And how to write!

We can feed ChatGPT software a writing prompt close to my heart — What does Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” mean to a young person in the 21st century? The program will produce a competent essay, even replicating the student’s level of articulation.

This is Cliff Notes and plagiarism on steroids. It is a slippery slope, one of a thousand deaths by ten million digital cuts. Nothing good comes from this smoke and mirrors and scamming technology. Having every nanosecond of our lives monitored, every survey we answer and bit of data we send out captured by big business will move us closer to that critical point of big brother everywhere pulling us farther away from what it is to be a thinker, doer, debater, creator and writer.

First Note: The Medford Mail Tribune has closed its door after 113 years in business. I will be writing about the death of newspapers and concomitant death of critical thinking/debate in America in another column.

Second Note: I did not know this piece was running today, The Power of the Written Word. I am not in the newsroom, as I am just the guy who pens these longish (for a small newspaper) columns discussing the issues of the day and the things on my mind. Again, I have many hats as a writer, and much on DV that is original to DV is all rant, polemics, humor, and flipping the scripts (more on that in another piece).

But the front page news for this rag is terrible:

News-Times publication change in two weeks

Newspaper moves to once-weekly print edition

The News-Times last week announced a significant change to its publication schedule starting next month. For those readers who may have missed it, the newspaper will be consolidated into one edition per week. The first paper printed after this change will be on Feb. 10, which means there will be no Wednesday paper that week, on Feb. 8

The News-Times was forced to make this change due to the significant challenges it faced during the past few years, such as staff shortages and large increases in production costs. And like newspapers across the country, the News-Times has seen a decline in advertising revenue.

After this change takes effect, the paper will be posting breaking news and other dated information to its website (newportnewstimes.com) and Facebook page on an even more frequent basis — multiple times each day. For more information, email moc.semitswentropwen@ekrubj  or moc.semitswentropwen@dracs

I was talking to my spouse about how I have seen the values I have held since age 16, 1973, which were fertilized and fed and shaped into adult values, those major ones — I’m think major ones, way beyond dozens — have been eroding quickly.

Newspapers — the old time religion of competition in cities, i.e. two huge daily newspapers, morning and evening, and then weeklies, and then monthlies, and then specialized newsletters, etc., that was the way to bring people together and to get under the skin of the overlords. It is not the same on-line, in the digital world, as we see, confirmation bias and manicuring one’s biases and blind spots is the way of Facebook, Google Searches, and the on-line trash of the digital click baits, aggregators and on and on.

Currating what you know, what you debate, what you expose yourself to, that in my mind is the death of those values, one being news, and robust debate.

Education was another one of those values — real education, as in experiential, and mixed with community based learning, outside the classroom. Real robust and overarching education taking the front and center of our lives, not the crap of retail and consumer and celebrity cult shit.

Biological and environmental and ecological sciences. Whew, what a dying breed of people in this camp, as schools/department are all contingent on playing nice in the grant and funding sandbox.

Literature and creative writing? Oh, how the publishing world has been bastardized, held hostage to the top 6 monopoly publishers, and then the Masters of Fine Arts writing school journals.

I will not go on with the other values I hold dear, those tied to or around certain avocations, fields of interest/study, and academic and professional experience that all have been eroded to the point of very few people left in my tribe. Forget about all the social justice and civic minded issues I hold dear enough to become part of my values system.

Oh yeah, the put-on-hold, Man Lost of Tribe: Or, Terminal Velocity!

There are few tribes left for me to confab with. The death of journalism, even small-town journalism, is not a very good thing. More on this in another 1,000 word column, now, in a once-a-week newspaper!