Alanis Obomsawin

 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/indigenous-filmmaker-alanis-obomsawin-beatty-lecture-1.7019757?cmp=newsletter_The%20IDEAS%20Newsletter_10358_1304110

A beautiful courageous soul who has managed to change the world along with many others who have conscience and courage.

Extreme Prejudice

 

https://www.monbiot.com/2023/11/16/extreme-prejudice/

George Monbiot must have come from a different planet to see the mess we (humans) are in.

News sites, papers and radio, are telling us we have no hope. Government is poisoning  our future with cynicism.

Let's go back to the jungle then. When we had to compete with tigers and germs for the next meal. When the cave walls were too close to see the weather outside.

Then we might not have dwelt on how much power we had in comparison to the rest of the world. Not that I know what we did dwell on. It's all in my imagination where my personal power starts and ends yet others may suffer when my power overrides their safety and comfort.

Let's not go back to the jungle. There was an Adam and Eve but they had different names and histories and evolved from primates which include all the great apes. (Wikipedia) 

The goal of war is to demoralize the human spirit. Make everything about killing and death and torture. Make all news to highlight our arrogance and our mistakes where love is redundant.

Reading the news is simply feedback of all our errors without questioning arrogance or ego. Enter dreams of fascism, guns and bombs. Enter love of money, wealth and celebrity.

But we could celebrate birthdays and the beautiful human face of those we depend on like mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Even though this seems wishy-washy. Friends and family are the drugs that will get us through without the withdrawal symptoms. 

Unless the people we depend on are toxic or those in positions of power have abused that trust by directing their energies towards their own vanity. The way we are nurtured and nurture others is the beginning of our survival as a species.

Prayer For The Psychopath

 

Prayer for the Psychopath

Your early years were the training

for your life

and all that you think

except that which

dare not be thought

or given a second

in your day

Your training has come from

billions of years

unnamed teachers

civilized control

trauma crowded out by

pomp and circumstance

In kindergarten the scary parts

turned into animal comics

and little songs

to encourage you to trust

civilization and its experts

universities

veritable awards

rewarding the memory

with beautiful things

like the violin

small hands to guide

the bow across strings

gentle like a swan on the water

then to instruct you to be in control

at all times.

No-one to tell you how sweet

your hungry heart is.

So you stay on the window

looking in

constantly arguing with all the voices

carried since the first time

you were told you will never 

amount to anything.

Vivian Silver Jewish Peace Activist

"For many who have never lived through war, peace may be a word misconstrued for something naive or facile, but for activists fighting for peace on the ground, it is all about the fierce, Sisyphean, constant labor of the body and the mind. It is not popular or easy to keep fighting for peace in a land of constant conflict. Many have died on its altar, and in recent years, as political turmoil roils Israel from within, the word peace often feels like an endangered species. Yet to her final days, it kept falling and falling from Silver’s lips."

https://www.kveller.com/remembering-jewish-peace-activist-vivian-silver/

Mighty Vengeance

Leader of a powerful nation

has designed the image

to the end

with bombs, guns and drones

he completes the mighty warrior

cleaning the earth

of its problems

wiping all the little pieces

off the chess board

— a clean slate

where tomorrow we can

start again

without having learned anything.

I can imagine all the worlds mothers

saying to themselves

I won’t go through that again.

Never again has new meaning now. 

Torture Before The Kill

 

“There is something so uniquely evil about ‘a humanitarian pause.’ It’s an Orwellian demand to continue taking human life indiscriminately with moments of reprieve, so that the kill have some food, water and bandages before they are targeted again,” media critic Sana Saeed said on social media. “It is torture before the kill.”

Media critic Sana Saeed on Social Media. https://truthout.org/articles/over-1000-protesters-shut-down-chicago-train-station-to-demand-ceasefire/?utm

The History of Antisemitism

 https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/why-the-jews-history-of-antisemitism

I visited this site and learned that antisemitism began with the Christian Church, and the violence towards Jews has become worse with each century.

Except this new one - I hope. But hope is not enough.

And even now the battle in Israel between Netanyahu and Hamas can be directed to the British who "gave" Israel to the Jews in 1948. 

I do not have a degree in history so will not endeavour to write much here.  The website www.ushmm.org has questions for us all to discuss.

• How have Jews been affected by antisemitism? What impact does antisemitism have on others?

• What is the meaning of “scapegoat”? What do people gain from scapegoating?

• What is the effect of hateful images and speech? Do images and words reflect existing attitudes or create them? 

• How has antisemitism changed throughout history? What are some differences among religious, political, and racial antisemitism?

• Why would political or religious leaders espouse antisemitic ideas?

• How is antisemitism similar to or different from other forms of group hatred?

  
  

  Yes bring in the children too. It's something we need to talk about.

The Ubiquitous Nature of Power (first published in The Flying Shingle many years ago)

Why would previously elected governments cut services that would ultimately harm the economy when they build their campaigns on the economy?

Why are essential services, that intervene in crises before they reach their ultimate social cost, being underfunded or shut down?

Why does the corporate media in its news and entertainment programs promote an image of our world as greed-driven, macho, and violent while all the serious discussions around how to effectively deal with the problems are slotted in the back pages or late night shows?

Why has so much hatred been directed towards those who love or pray differently and why has so much contempt for the poor and marginalized been inflamed and so little done to alleviate the misery?

Why have our governments failed to care for the environment upon which our future health and wealth depend?

At first these may seem like separate issues but to me, they are all connected in one very important way – they lead towards social breakdown and ultimately destroy civil society.

So it appears that some in government and media, actively support and work towards the destruction of the entity they are supposed to be governing. It also appears as though people in Western democracies are voting for the parties that are destroying their futures.

Is this intentional? Are there powerful interests conspiring to bring about a slow and painful end to the human project, or has something gone terribly wrong in the way we identify with the collective future?

David Suzuki points out that we have “developed a way to estimate economic activity by measuring the value of all transactions for goods and services” called the Gross Domestic Product. However it doesn’t seem to include the services that come from government – that is disdainfully called taxes.

Corporations measure their success not by the quality of their products or how it helps people, but by how much their stock sells for. Politicians measure their success, not by what they have done for their constituents, but by how many votes they get.

In essence, what this means is that the health and well-being of humanity and the environment, is “overburden” to use a mining term. What this means for us and our children is less health care, lower education in terms of learning rather than superficial tests, less public transportation, more pollution environmentally and culturally, the silencing of real debate, the end of science, a global distancing from the reality we live, and a greater focus on invasive corporate measures.

Prisons will be filled with environmentalists and activists for social justice. People will be afraid to talk to their neighbours. City centres will become territorial battle grounds for drug lords. The sensitive and educated will die quietly from drug overdose. Families will break up under stress. Suicide will overtake obesity as the major epidemic. Bigotry, prejudice and balkanized wars will make the commons uninhabitable.

If we want to know what this looks like, think of all the failed nation states constantly in turmoil while transnational companies extract huge profits. Think of pipelines covering the earth, the sky filled with industrial chimneys and dark satanic mills powered by slave labour getting crushed or burned in hazardous warehouses. To use a quote attributed to George Orwell “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

The enemy is not one particular country, the enemy is that dissociated power universally accepted as force, rather than something that flows from our relationship to the environment in which we live. When we cease to look inside ourselves for the capacity to care and organize a humane world, we become victims or sociopathic egos punishing all that we can’t control.

We have come to this stage not because of progress but because of a ubiquitous disorder which we must examine to begin the work of healing. Our power lies in many things but mostly in accepting we are vulnerable, fallible and mortal.

This post was first published in The Flying Shingle then online at Episyllogism. 

Very Wise Words from Robert Reich

 https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/my-children?r=pwb38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

"First, if Jews and Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims on an American college campus cannot feel safe around each other, they will never feel safe around each other, anywhere.  Second, the only way forward is to reject stereotypes, and begin to talk to one another. Talking to one another involves listening — listening to the fears and anguish, to the anger and resentments on the other side. Trying to understand those feelings and not dismiss them."

When Criticism Becomes A Public Sport

 

When CBC radio reported the "fraudulent" claim of a celebrity which cannot be proven, what is the purpose of the report?

Shaming seems to be a public sport for media, politics and celebrity. It's almost as though everyone's integrity is wrapped up in one article. It's also easy to think and feel as though our private lives are for public consumption. As though we are all characters in a Soap Opera.

Is every identity, every soul, merely a piece of meat for corporate media? Do we become insensitive to our loved ones as we watch TV shows that focus on winners and losers? Are we losers if we have no proof of being a winner?

If everything about me was headlined on the front page of a tabloid, would I lose my friends? If I claimed to be a Christian would opinion pieces about the failure of Christians give strangers the right to ridicule me? If I was rich would I be hated? If I was poor would I be publicly ridiculed?

If I was Jewish would I feel like a subject of blame because of Netanyahu's policies? If I was Palestinian would I feel damned by Hamas and Israelis.  Would I hang on every word broadcast by the media? 

Would any identity give permission to strangers to hate me? If I was related to a serial rapist would anyone dare to be my friend? Does public issues of blame give me a fleeting sense of superiority if I can judge another without letting them know?

How can I help heal this broken world of alienated egos blamed for everything a blogger might write or friends at a party might have a good chuckle over? What is being exploited here? What can we talk about without injuring anyone?

Imagine a world that valued life for life's sake, where people supported one another before expressing an opinion. What if my headstone had these words: Here Lies Janet Vickers, a mother, sister, daughter and friend, who had an interesting life, and was loved by a few people, but who was not known for any extraordinary talents or strengths. While she was here she was okay.