Love, Kindness, And Solidarity Are The Most Radical Acts Of All

The longest night of the year calls us to practice radical love. 

I'm writing before dawn as I stoke up the fire to warm the house while a carpet of tiny ice crystals sparkles outside reflecting the full moon in the sky.

Rituals of light involving candles, bonfires, and holiday decorations prop up our sagging morale  in the Global North as we struggle through the second winter of a pandemic more deadly than ever. 

source: Getty Images

The passing of Black elder bell hooks was an occasion to remind ourselves of her wisdom and fierce advocacy for love as the ultimate radical act. Her guidance:

love is a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust,

and so if you don’t know what you’re doing, just pull out that little card and ask yourself ‘in what way does my action that I’m taking reflect these traits, these characteristics, these values’

Tempers are raging in the world white supremacist patriarchy created. That world is filled with threats of violence, actual violence, and a hail of bullets at regular intervals. Videos shared on Tiktok went viral calling for last Friday to be national school shooting day. Previous campaigns motivated students to destroy school bathrooms and punch teachers.

Teachers are quitting in droves, and those still hanging on are posting anguished reflections on the rising tide of anger directed at them by parents who have come undone and children whose social opportunities boiled down to zoom and video games for a year. 

High school teacher Julie Holderbaum wrote:

Oh my God, another one? How many school shootings does that make this year?

Are all teachers as overwhelmed and exhausted as I am?

Does anyone care what teachers are going through in this country?

When is someone going to do something about it?

Health care workers also are operating in a state of extreme duress that can only be sustained for so long. Much of it is fueled by their frustration and despair as angry, ignorant people refuse to observe safety protocols to protect others: the little children too young for the vaccines, and the immunocompromised people too ill to receive them.

Brute force in the form of vaccine mandates has failed as those who study public health success stories knew it would. 

Irresponsible advice last spring -- from the CDC no less -- to take off our masks and resume commerce and in-person school led us deeper into the crisis. 

We need a #maskmandate indoors in public. One-fifth of 🇺🇸 HCWs have quit since the #pandemic began, & I know dozens personally planning an exit. You will not have enough staffed beds if you don’t control cases. They have #physicianburnout & we can’t just make more drs/nurses. https://t.co/agWHsQwl8W

— Tatiana Prowell, MD (@tmprowell) December 20, 2021

This month the White House press secretary sneered at a reporter who asked why the federal government does not provide at home tests for everybody like other countries do (i.e. countries with universal public health care programs). Simple, non-invasive PPE like N95 masks for all is still lacking. 

Providing them would be an act of love, but the people have long since stopped expecting rule by corporations or oxymoronic for-profit health care to be guided by love. Will they share vaccine knowledge with the world or hoard it to increase their own wealth? You know the answer.

Scholar of failing empires Chris Hedges says that cruelty it not an accidental byproduct of the current system, it is the point. 

Our courts fail to punish sexual exploitation of children, protecting the powerful men and women in Epstein's little black book.

Instead, a court in the government that capitalism and its foundation, racism, built, punish a Puerto Rican immigrant truck driver whose company vehicle brakes failed resulting in a crash fatal for others. 

Image source: "Viral TikTok Shows Truckers Boycott On Behalf Of Rogel Augilera-Mederos"

Aguilera-Mederos manifested love when he said how he wished that he could have traded his own life for that of the victims. 

The judge sentenced him to 110 years. Silver lining in that particular cloud: truck drivers are refusing to enter the state of Colorado in response and over 3 million people have signed this petition asking that his sentence be commuted to time served.

Workers are unionizing like mad, hooray! Solidarity is an act of love -- while condemning someone to risk death for the bottom line is routine corporate behavior even in a weather emergency.

As the war machine churns out deadly poisons, accelerates climate change, and takes no responsibility for burning children to death in Afghanistan; as the social safety net tears beyond repair and your wealthy government responds by going on holiday; and its automated messages fill inboxes with ominious reminders of the resumption of student loan payments in January; as we struggle through the longest night of the year,

rememember:

love, kindness, and solidarity are the most radical acts of all.

Late Stage Capitalism Is A Death Cult -- Change My Mind

Aerial view of candle factory in Kentucky before and after this week's tornado.
Source: MAXAR Technologies via Reuters

I was sleepy the other night when I thought my husband said that there had been a 200 mile wide tornado killing people in Kentucky. Turns out it was a mile wide tornado (bad enough) touching down over a 200 mile area in several states (quite bad) in December (clear sign of a climate in crisis).

What he didn't know at the time is that Amazon warehouse workers routinely deprived of their cell phones were buried under rubble when the roof collapsed.

Source: The Washington Time "OSHA opens probe into deadly Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois"

Also that workers in Kentucky's Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory who heard warning sirens and tried to leave were threatened with firing if they departed. Some stayed and died, some left anyway, and some stayed and survived to tell the tale.

The economic system producing both galloping climate change and burgeoning military budgets that drive climate change is a death cult.

Usually the claim "capitalism is a death cult" applies these days to the absence of public health policy that protects, you know, public health. 

One cannot serve both commerce and health as the CDC has bent over backward to demonstrate.

In the second winter of a deadly pandemic the U.S. has racked up this dismal track record:

• no universal health care
• no free testing kits such as the rest of the world receives (and derision from the White House press secretary for even suggesting this would be a good idea)

Wow. This tweet took off. And contains some of the most accurate responses wrt our pandemic response here in the US.

Maybe at some point our FDA, CDC and administration will understand finally this is a PUBLIC HEALTH problem, and not a Medical problem to make $$ off of. Maybe. https://t.co/fUCMNTtw91

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 7, 2021

• vaccine mandates rather than empirically proven access + education + incentive methods

• feeble vaccine distribution to low income nations we share the planet's germ pool with

• miniscule economic relief for actual people (vs. corporations)

• huge growth in the numbers of unhoused people nationwide

• schools open despite higher infection levels and maxed out hospital ICUs nationwide

• widespread health care provider burnout

• obscene growth in wealth inequality

Extreme wealth inequality has been a significant force for toppling the social order throughout history. So have pandemics and other disasters.

Meanwhile, the engines of commerce churn on creating profits to buy off governments. Subsidies to fossil fuel corporations were $5.9 trillion in 2020, a whopping $11 million a minute.

That would buy a lot of testing kits. If only the U.S. prioritized life over profits.

Assange Can Be Extradited Rules UK Court While Press Freedom Dies A Lingering Death

Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States because that government has given assurances he will be treated humanely. 

So says the court in the UK which has seen Assange, his health broken and mental health in jeopardy, and turned away.

His crime? Revealing the truth about governments. For instance, what the U.S. government was doing in Iraq with our tax dollars in the now infamous "Collateral Murder" video i.e. gunning down Reuters journalists and shooting up a good Samaritan's van carrying children in Baghdad.

The U.S. government tortured Chelsea Manning at length for allegedly leaking evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq.

The UK government tortured Julian Assange by holding him captive in the London embassy of Ecuador for seven years as his health deteriorated.

On what legal grounds? In so-called "free democracies" the publication of truth is a protected right of journalists. Indeed, a free press is considered the cornerstone of democracy.

Trumped up charges of rape (i.e. nonconsensual condomless intercourse) in Sweden was the ostensible reason Assange was targeted for lawfare, but the Assange's accuser has now retracted his accusation. And the machinations behind getting her to make it in the first place have been revealed as bunk.

How Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, escaped the long arm of U.S. imperial power to suppress the truth makes for a thrilling documentary. Snowden remains a guest in Russia, and is now raising a family rather than returning to the U.S. to languish in prison himself.

Assange has a family, too, but his children are not permitted to know their father's care.

People who dare tell the truth about the most powerful government in history pay a harsh price. 

Their families pay a harsh price.

Meanwhile Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accelerate censorship of dissident views. Sometimes on behalf of convicted pedophiles and their close friends in high place.

We all pay a harsh price as truth and real journalism subside into darkness.

Are Military And Space Programs Victims Of Climate Crisis Or Perpetrators?

Pentagon Planet by Anthony Freda

I'm back from a blogging break during National Novel Writing Month aka nanowrimo in November. I met the challenge of writing a 50,000 word first draft in 30 days; the jury is still out on whether or not it was time well-spent. If you're interested in being a reader who will provide feedback on Comfy Underpants (working title) depicting the effects on children of grinding poverty in late stage capitalism, leave a comment.

During November I collaborated on a few COP 26 related projects, including a virtual presentation for the People's Summit on behalf of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. I teamed up with Koohan Paik-Mander (GN board member in Hawaii) and Veterans for Peace members in the US (president Adrienne Kinne) and UK (David Collins) plus sponsoring organization the Institute for Policy Studies (Ashik Siddique) to present on US Militarism, Space Tech & Climate Crisis: the role of militarism in climate justice.

My presentation in the 90 minute webinar focused on Information Control and Perception Management Around Climate Impact of Space Programs.

To prepare I learned more about the parallels between US military programs and space programs, and their interconnection. For the TL,DW crowd (too long, didn't watch) I'll summarize my key points:

• The role of military in driving climate crisis has been hidden successfully up to now, but COP 26 was a turning point for climate activists if not for national governments.

• The role of space programs in harming climate is similarly hidden.

• Space programs are portrayed as non-military in nature despite the fact that NASA develops technology which is then used by the military.

• Focus on space programs' climate harms is confined in the press to private space programs.

• Both the military and space programs are portrayed as victims of climate crisis in the corporate press and in their own communications to the public.

Koohan's presentation on the militarization of the ocean around Hawaii including space and with disastrous effects on marine life was powerful and new information for many.

In the runup to COP 26, Peace Action Maine invited David Swanson of World Beyond War and Janet Weil of VFP's Climate Crisis & Militarism Project to speak on How the Pentagon Fuels Climate Crisis. 

I did the intro giving the context of the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow and what it might mean for our work, and PAM board member Devon Grayson-Wallace facilitated.

(Link here if embedded video does not work for you.)

COP 26 was a dismal failure in terms of halting runaway climate crisis.

 The non-binding agreements reached would, even if observed in full (highly unlikely), not keep carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions at safe levels. 

Greta Thunberg mocked the empty promises of elected officials (I can't bring myself to call them leaders): "Net zero, blah blah blah. Climate neutral, blah blah blah."

Images source: World Peace Ever TV

Youth and indigenous climate activists staged numerous actions to draw attention to the urgency of the crisis while world leaders went through the motions of taking meaningful action. Wealthy countries will continue to pollute with others bearing the brunt of the dire effects. What else is new?

Here's a simple direct action you can take right now. Pledge to connect the dots between our real security needs around climate and the enormous military emissions elephant in the room.

Source: research by Prof. Neta Crawford for the Costs of War project