Migrant Rights!

 Dear Janet, 

Today, on International Migrants Day, the federal government released a statement claiming to “reaffirm our commitment to protecting migrants’ rights.” But here’s the truth: 2024 has been a year of endless attacks on migrant rights.

This week, they granted themselves new powers to “cancel, change, and suspend immigration documents,” while promising to fast-track—read: discriminate against—certain asylum claimants.

They say they “acknowledge the significant difficulties that many migrants face,” yet their recent sweeping immigration changes will cause 2.3 million permits to expire in the next two years, tearing families apart and leaving temporary permit holders and undocumented individuals more vulnerable than ever.

Cut through the noise. Speak with your friends, co-workers, and family to help separate fact from fiction about immigration.

And here’s one quick action you can take right now: forward this email to three people you know.

What? What! Is it we need to do?

USA could be congratulated for ending the rule of humanity on this planet. That's if you believe humans are ruling it.

Certainly we are destroying it. Greed. Climate change. Nuclear war. All of us arguing to save the world or not.

Certainly there are many theories presented every day. In media. In church. In the science lab. This causes a noise in politics. Contests of voices trying to be the loudest, to get the most votes, to sell the most stuff, to bring in the most money, to be the most popular.

When will we get over ourselves and who is the loudest voice? 

Are we happy? Are we winning?

The story this far beginning in the dark womb of a woman's body, an egg waits to be fertilized. Now we know that it takes male and female to create the embryo, then it needs warmth, nutrition and peace, to grow, to feed from food that finds its way (sorry I don't have the technical language for this process but I suspect you know what I mean).

Every day you wake up you think. Might be -- what's for breakfast? Might be a list of things you (have told yourself) you have to do, or else ... something you don't want to happen will happen.

You will have a list. For me it's what can I do to fix some of our problems. Violence against women, men, children.

Might be -- go to work, go shopping, go to school, place of worship, hospital, factory  -- to do whatever job you have promised to do.

This sounds quite banal yet its very important. Shortly after WWII the USA created drama programs for us to watch. A good guy, a bad guy, a gun and a couple of men. There were dramas in Europe and Asia as well. But it was made easy because the whole story could be finished in an hour. Good guys, bad guys, winners, losers. But we haven't fixed anything because there is still injustice, bad behaviour, wicked actors and people getting hurt. In Europe there had been stories in books and TV, on stage, in schools. All of this was necessary for social cohesion. Then there were many stories competing for the audience, advising different values.

Rather than cohesion we have competition for different beliefs, religions, politics. We spend our lives convincing others we are right or at least surviving. And to add more tension, we don't have equal options. Humanity is a problem. 

We isolated egos don't ask to be born but we dominate this world and the future. In our minds. For as long as we are here we will think about all problems we have or may have in the future.

We have to think about this. How do we want our future to be and how do we get there when we create stories that hold ourselves up as the good guys and the others are bad?

How Can We Teach Our Children to survive?

Listening to Cross-country Checkup on CBC radio about students being rude in the classroom. No-one seemed to talk about how to make kids behave. No-one mentioned while I was listening, how this is the result of humanity realizing our time on this earth is coming to an end.

We are doomed to suffer the torture of monsters who will kill us for the pleasure it releases from despair. That's a short tidy sentence. This is the holocaust, in endless cycles. Whether its the reign of Henry VIII, Hitler or Putin.

Do you dare ask what has happened to the young boys who grew up and carried on the cycles of despair because "its human nature". These are the conversations we need to have. Is it okay to give up because it's too late for us to change? Who is it that needs to change? And where would we begin?

Beginning with Patriarchy - a system where authority goes to the eldest male in the family and where females are viewed as owned by the patriarch. Women today have more voice than they did in the time of Henry VIII but there are lingering beliefs which make women vulnerable to the power of men.

This is not about being good or kind. This is a value which has influenced society today. Women resenting the power held over them and men resenting the resistance of women. Lest anyone truly believe the US Republican party is saving lives by making abortion illegal you just have to listen to a candidate recently selected to stand for President. I don't think I need to explain why this is not to protect women and her embryos. 

There are two main factions in North America: political power and wealth but neither are in control. Humans are not in control, we are anxious and angry and anything we talk about regarding our future is built on fear or anger. Is it any wonder students are rude or indifferent to rules of behaviour?

Men are afraid of their power being challenged and business owners afraid of losing their autonomy. These things nag us as we try to sleep. New worlds or broken old words break apart traditions and haunt the future. But children are already burdened -- could they understand this?

Enduring the Trauma of Genocide (w/ Gabor Maté) | The Chris Hedges Report

Lee Lakeman - Whoredom of The Left - Chris Hedges

 https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/lee-lakeman-and-the-whoredom-of-the-a0c?utm_source=podcast-email%2

"Lee battles a world going numb, a world banishing empathy, a world where solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized is increasingly a foreign concept. She warns that with the political and economic upheavals ahead, caused by climate change, the rise of authoritarian governments, misogynist demagogues and the breakdown of global capitalism, the exploitation of women and girls will explode".

Just Asking

 But Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the other billionaires who’ll be running the administration starting January 20 don’t want to pay their fair share to keep Social Security going. They’d rather kill Social Security.

https://robertreich.substack.com/account

My question is - how do we get out of paying for those who want to disenfranchise the world through money.

Connect the dots!

 Once upon a time there was a planet where one species dominated. When I say dominated I mean they believed it was their duty to be in control. Other species had to be cared for until the dominants wanted to eat them, then they were stored in sheds and killed as required. This worked fine for the dominants as long as they controlled all the other dominants on the planet. Trouble arose when different tribes competed for the dominant position.

It might seem obvious that if all the dominants were able to find a way to get along, to share the goods and responsibilities. The strange thing is - it was not those who had the least power who fought the most, it was those who were raised as the most powerful and their families.

It could be that those who were poorest couldn't fight because they were serving those at the top. And worst of all those at the bottom, the most abused were grateful for survival. But those at the top or near the top were anxious about losing any little part of their power - mostly the imagined superiority they clung to. 

Whether in the court of Henry VIII or the Government of USA, the obsession of its members was the amount of control they owned personally. For slim comfort they believed if they could create tensions among the others, if they could make them feel insecure, they could be in control.

Control was a dream, a fantasy, which did more harm than good because people who feel insecure don't problem solve, they create more problems. They don't use the gifts of the heart in wisdom to care for one another rather than compete.