Will We Survive?

" Imperial powers do not forgive those who expose their weaknesses or make public the sordid and immoral inner workings of empire. Empires are fragile constructions. Their power is as much one of perception as of military strength. The virtues they claim to uphold and defend, usually in the name of their superior civilization, are a mask for pillage, the exploitation of cheap labor, indiscriminate violence, and state terror."

Chris Hedges, https://scheerpost.com/2021/08/30/hedges-the-empire-does-not-forgive/. 

"Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people." George Monbiot, Bloodhounds. https://www.monbiot.com/2021/08/27/bloodhounds/

Last week Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas told Der Spiegel that Germany anticipates an Afghan exodus of between 500,000 to 5 million refugees. Given what will surely emerge as yet another humanitarian disaster, perhaps our focus and attention should turn to the fate of the Afghan people as a whole.

Even the ones who never worked a day for us.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/08/28/analysis/what-you-need-know-about-canadas-kabul-airlift-mission 

By Sandy Garossino 

So many voices saying we shall not survive. Unless we change our ways. News reports about rage and violence and hatred indicate that many cannot see a way forward. They may be without a job, without a home, and certainly without dignity.

My view is probably oversimplified but this is the result of our contempt for life that can't be controlled through threats or politics. We have learned we are not in control no matter how many bombs we use or how much money we have.

Yes we might get into our private jet and fly to Mars as the earth dries up, the forests  burn and the rivers flood our farms. But we must imagine the misery we shall endure before we get on that rocket or stay here and die.

So I will list the assets we have now. 1. Imagination. 2. Language. 3. Insight into causes. 4. Love for family and friends. 5. Music. 6. Art. 7. Medicine and health care. 8. A bed to sleep in if we have a home. 9. Food. 

Neither you or I created all these by ourselves. We inherited them. The question is how many years did it take for these things to develop to our benefit and who gave up their lives to defend this inheritance? 

Who is to blame? And more importantly what can you and I do?

"Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people. But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame attaches to those who began this open-ended war, without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and their entourages." George Monbiot, Bloodhounds. https://www.monbiot.com/2021/08/27/bloodhounds/

If you want to know the reason we are so broken - read this article. Think about it. Ask yourself why the current media is so lame and why serious journalism is being punished and ridiculed.

Breaking Down the Addiction

 "The atmosphere does not respond to gestures. It is unmoved by promises, unimpressed by words. It has no factions that can be set against each other, no voters who can be fobbed off and distracted." George Monbiot. https://www.monbiot.com/2021/08/24/dead-line/

"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." George Orwell (brainy quote)

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."  Alice Walker https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/

"The greatest power is not money power, but political power." Walter Annenberg. (brainy quote)

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi (brainy quote)

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson (brainy quote)

“Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever." 

― Toni Morrison

The greatest power is that interrogation between my broken self and my loving self to weed out actions that simply hurt others in order for me to justify my own hurt, then to move forward to do what the world needs of me as a sentient being. It transcends identity and politics. It's the power to take in the whole argument and reflect on how I can offer my help, knowing no matter how uncomfortable the moment ― I cannot control the day.

If we give the world time to express all its thoughts, we could find the way to peace ― Janet Vickers

Chris Hedges: Empires at the end are collective suicide machines.

 Like any empire in terminal decay, no one will be held accountable for the debacle or for the other debacles in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen or anywhere else. Not the generals. Not the politicians. Not the CIA and intelligence agencies. Not the diplomats. Not the obsequious courtiers in the press who serve as cheerleaders for war. Not the compliant academics and area specialists. Not the defense industry. Empires at the end are collective suicide machines. https://scheerpost.com/2021/07/26/hedges-the-collective-suicide-machine/

This article breaks my heart open again. I have been feeling grief for the empires I was born and raised in. Grief for the ways workers, women, immigrants and young boys trained to wipe out their emotions. Grief for those who had to endure my bad behaviour when I was hooked onto the empire propaganda. Grief for all on this planet battered by humans who have been brainwashed by the cult of power worship.

I am hungry for the kind of power that heals, loves and nurtures, that is not contorted into narcissism, celebrity, or racism. All who fall into that dance are traumatized whether victim or perpetrator.

Let's encourage humility, let's learn how we can throw off the empire and embrace the universe.

Message from Jack Layton

  

My FRIENDS,

Love is better than anger.

Hope is better than fear.

Optimism is better than despair.

So let us be loving,

hopeful and optimistic.

And we'll change the world.

https://www.laytonlegacy.ca/

What is Happening Here?

"What's happening here? I turned on CBC radio soon after 10:00 pm and it went straight into the Current late edition where the host announced the topics beginning with Haiti where things are getting worse then the sound of a very young child screaming. I turned it off. I used to enjoy listening to the CBC programs for the information and not the sensation."

I posted this on Facebook last night. Appreciating the hosted news programs where there is more than headlines of violence happening all over the world.

The news is terrible and yet it supports the power of patriarchal values by revealing how dangerous some male dominated systems are. It seems to glorify the power of destruction as if climate change can be attributed to capitalism, communism, or some other manufactured system.

Of course I am applying my own biases here and my isolated ego-self which is very useful to the systems that use them to their advantage.

Who is to blame? You see how adjusted I am to the way societies support the greed and lies of our hierarchical system?

Agreed. I have to deal with my own $hit! How much of my emotional energy will I give to the trends that diminish life?

Each day that I have breath I can offer support for others who breath. There are beautiful words and songs comforting people in each generation. So I will make my world beautiful by acknowledging the beauty in it. Friends and relatives who love and know the right things to say and do.

In fact beauty for me is no longer lipstick and hairspray, perfect bodies and white teeth. Beauty is in the faces and eyes of people who have enriched life with the habits of love, because they were raised by people who gave unconditional love and acknowledged the gifts within the young vulnerable child.

We live in the climate of power. What can we do? What can we fight? What shall we celebrate? What actual weapons do good people have against the systems that dominate the air waves? 

I cannot help the child screaming in pain in Haiti. I cannot erase the past and replace the future with compassion. My very thinking in terms of the whole, the nation, the religion, the habits and the fears, take away my agency.

There are souls who have learned, written about and filmed documentaries on the power of the sun, moon, planets, weather and soil. Souls who see patterns in social relationships for health and well-being for the planet, suggesting ways we can survive together. In education, medicine and politics - we have agency but we need patience to see it, and strength to keep sweating. That is true power.

Two Worlds

 

The world we are taught we live in, our history, our songs, our stories, is one world. And the other is the world of power. Where there is no honour, no civilizing, no love for life and nature. The world of Taliban, Nazi's, Military Industrial Complex, the silencing of voices that offer duality, reverence for life, the heart and mind of living creatures.

The world of power only knows what it has won, how to keep the masses living in fear, how to spread hate and fear, how to starve populations, how to get the last word. The world of power does not have anything to teach us other than how to fear.

Drug dealers are the true of our system. Only profit counts and any one who says otherwise must be eliminated. Large and powerful nations are corporate drug dealer, offering brief escape. They keep teaching us with propaganda and threats to go shopping, buy whatever they are selling; we are only worth what we own.

Love, wisdom, compassion, healing - don't exist. Charles Dickens knew this, people who have survived trauma know this. A long painful journey from where the politics preaches and promises, to where your own body has reconciled itself to the larger truth of your painful day.

The primary goal of war is to keep us from knowing our potential as sentient, emotional beings. The right wing authoritarians want us to be vacant bodies willing to kill on the battlefield.

People who have fought in war believe they are doing their duty for love of country and home, then are cruelly stripped of this ideal. Rulers laugh at idealism and integrity. The soft flesh, nervous system, tears and pain - are being erased from consciousness.

The Taliban was not created by Afghans - it was created by cruelty, the Devil and misogyny; it invaded the hearts of men with dire warnings if not obeyed. 

Misogyny is not just the fear and hatred of women. It is the matrix of contempt. It enables armies of people to vacate their own nature, to pretend they are not vulnerable, to silence their conscience which is erased with every generation of systematic exploitation. 

A planet with no life on it, just rocks and fires, is not an accident. Whether we admit it or not, it is the end game of contempt.

The real war is fought with respect for all life, loving kindness, courage, and the truth which we must forever look for and examine.