Mad Mad Mad World, and What's Love Got to Do with It?
so much going on within the imploded neighborhood community, nuclear-blended family, nuclear city community, so much broken with community after township after state after regional arena
All of it — news, breaking if it bleeds it leads headlines, all of the lobby groups, the associations, the specialized rallyings, all of it, from the US Chamber of Commerce to Koch Brothers, Citizens United, and every niche outfit on earth — takes up so much space in our minds.
So, the insanity of war war war in Ukraine, that proxy war, the decades of USA planning for war against Russia, all of the cognitive dissonance of a Jewish Comic Actor with Pandora Papers/Panama Papers graft up his sleeves, cocaine in his nose and backing of Nazi tactics getting a blank checka and open-ended wish list, there are fewer and fewer of the masses understanding why and how and when and where and what causes train derailments, infrastructure collapsing, 33 percent drop in community college enrollments, fewer and fewer management companies a la Blackstone and others, controlling more and more of housing, how all of that, and much much more, is tied to the very project of funding, training and fighting Russia in this insane proxy war. (source . . . source . . . source)
The tie-ins are far and wide. The weaponry, the intelligence, the economic assistance and money flow from USA taxpayers (we are now at $94,000 for each person which is our collective debt) thrown at Ukraine; and then this absurd lie factory of US media, the Presstitutes in the Press, the jumbled journalists, all the quickening of dumbdowning, the flip-flopping of language, meaning, context and grammar, all of this is tied to a war: it all goes to the illiteracy of what war really is.
We are an empty country, where people at the coffee shop or on the beach or anywhere DO NOT put two and two together: funding military, funding these economic hit men and hit women, with the decay in the land, from water systems that are 50 years old, pipes a hundred; where hospital bills are half a million for five hours of surgery and two weeks of ICU; schools with teacher deficits; a government of rich and near rich laughing all the way to their cancel culture wine fests and their upside down is upside right sensitivity trainings and loco use of ‘their’ for him or her, and ze and zer for him and her . . . never ever tie in what war and militarism and Rules Based Hell for the USA, Everyone Else Be Damned!.
Lest we forget:
The reality is so much IS dysfunctional and slipping on an average day in an average city within an average household . . . . The discussions we have are never “over there,” looking at the totality of capitalism, corrupt militarism, the insanity of a country ruled by idiots who are wanting to kill Chinese, kill Cubans, kill Venezuelans, kill Iranians, and KILL anyone who moves and gets in the way of the USA.
How do we then create a springboard for decent discourse, when as I write this Facebook is putting me in Facebook detention and warning me ad naseum their community standards are being breached by my posts: hate speech?
How about hate action? What are the open and closed and hidden agendas for Facebook?
In 2016, Facebook’s grand project to ‘connect the unconnected’ was banned in India after a year-long national debate led by digital activists. What Facebook promoted as a benevolent initiative, activists decried as self-interested attempt to increase market control of the digital space. Since then, the project kept expanding globally, particularly across Africa: by the summer of 2020, at least 32 African nations had offered the service at one point in the last five years. What made this quiet expansion possible across Africa? And what does it mean for the future of civil society, democracy and the Internet on a continent increasingly connected? (source)
This is the worst kind of warfare: attacking the minds, dirting up the culture, flooding future generations with the lack of understanding their own contexts, languages and histories:
How do youth contend with ANYTHING without higher order thinking, without exposure to plethora of studies, debates, books, articles and documentaries, without the family and the friendship groups broaching these issues. This is accomplished through cleaning the slate, and of course, SOCIALISM.
These issues few journalists know about: It’s a lot of work just checking out and understanding these 25 for them, let alone plebes . . . .
The presentation of the Top 25 stories of 2020-2021 extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across North America has made the Project even more diverse and robust. The Top 25 stories of 2020-2021 have been selected from several hundred candidate stories submitted by 209 student researchers and nineteen faculty evaluators from ten US college and university campuses.
#25. Abusers Benefiting from International Anti-Abduction Treaty
#24. Juvenile Justice Reform Remains Elusive
#23. Coastal Darkening Threatens Ocean Food Chains
#22. Dataminr Introduces Racial Bias, Stereotypes in Policing of Social Media
#21. Conservative Christian Groups Spend Globally to Promote Anti-LGBTQ Campaigns
#20. Proposed Domestic Terrorism Legislation Imperils Civil Liberties
#19. European Demand for Biomass Energy Propels Destruction of US Forests
#18. “Collision of Crises” for Black and Brown Survivors of Sexual Violence during COVID-19
#17. New Wave of Independent News Sources Demonetized by Google-Owned YouTube
#16. Femicide Census Connects UK Killings with Global Wave of Violence against Women
#15. Thousands of 5G Satellites Pose Risk of Future Space Wars
#14. US Factory Farming a Breeding Ground for Next Pandemic
#13. Corporate Media Sideline Health Experts during Pandemic
#12. Grave Threats to Amazon Rainforest from Domestic Industries and Global Capital
#11. Seed Sovereignty Movements Challenge Corporate Monopolies
#10. Activists Call Out Legacy of Racism and Sexism in Forced Sterilization
#9. Police Use Dogs as Instruments of Violence, Targeting People of Color
#8. Pfizer Bullies South American Governments over COVID-19 Vaccine
#7. Google’s Union-Busting Methods Revealed
#6. Canary Mission Blacklists Pro-Palestinian Activists, Chilling Free Speech Rights
#5. Microplastics and Toxic Chemicals Increasingly Prevalent in World’s Oceans
#4. “Climate Debtor” Nations Have “Colonized” the Atmosphere
#3. Historic Wave of Wildcat Strikes for Workers’ Rights
#2. Journalists Investigating Financial Crimes Threatened by Global Elites
#1. Prescription Drug Costs Set to Become a Leading Cause of Death for Elderly Americans
Imagine Americanos, both young and old, tackling these 25 topics above, let alone the endless stories on why we have system fail and system breakdown. Forget about looking deep into the black pools and those black mirrors to understand how multigenerational and intergenerational trauma and PTSD and the karmic leveling of so many multiple millions killed in, yes, our USA taxpayer’s name, reverberates deep in the soul of America.
The crisis of the West is due in large part to the inability of its societies to face, accept and assimilate the shame they feel consciously or unconsciously for their centuries of crimes against humanity. This fundamental failure on the part of the United States, and by implication, Europe, prevents their societies and their leaders from confronting their own history and current affairs with humility, frankness and sincerity. It is a political-affective weakness that keeps its societies and governments locked in a highly dangerous and disastrous spiral of self-harm, addiction and fantasy that now leads them not only to attack vulnerable countries but also to attack themselves. (source)
I write about that trauma, that collective transfer of trauma, the anti-Black roots of this country, the outright supremacy of whites here and there, and this concept of exceptionalism. This country — USA on the decline — is represented in many images that float along the YahooNews or Bing Rolodex. Image after image:
Forget about the train derailments, the teen suicides, the Americans weathering quickly under penury, predatory, casino, corrupt Capitalism.
You pick your list of local, state and national stories that connect to the fall of the empire, and each and every micro/macro aggression tied to Militarism, Elitism, Financial Fascism.
It is a mad mad mad mad muddled murderous masochistic mucked-up misanthropic mentally-challenged Western World!
In relation to self-harm, the United States is characterized by its culture of violence expressed in countless incidents of killings in schools and colleges, the routine use of lethal force by law enforcement, its odious criminal justice system that forces innocent people to accept guilt because they cannot trust the legal system and are threatened with long years of incarceration. The U.S. prison system holds more than 2.3 million people, one-third of the population of Nicaragua and more than 20% of the total number of people incarcerated in the world. The U.S. prison industry is worth more than $75 billion each year.
The amount of crime in the daily lives of us — family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, student bodies, shoppers, patients — is how the Neoliberal-Libertarian-Money for the Rich, None for the Poor kill us all through death by 1,000 fines, tolls, add-ons, taxes, excise fees, regular fees, late fees, penalties, tickets, evictions, repossessions, credit chasers, debt collectors.
Almost EVERYTHING now costs, and a dollar here or ten there, or a thousand smackers can be more than just one or two or ten deaths by a single cut, but that grand could be a killer, a stroke inducer, a stomach ulcer creator, a heart stopper.
How to understand the War by USA against Russia in Ukraine as emblematic of the decay of detante, decay in dimwit democracy, decay of knowledge?
Those top Censored stories? Try to look at those censored or poorly covered stories going way way back, almost 50 years ago of this project. That’s 1,250 stories:
In 1976, Dr. Carl Jensen founded Project Censored at Sonoma State University. He developed the Project to research and publicize news media censorship in the US and to develop students’ critical thinking skills and media literacy. The Project produced its first list of important but under-reported news stories in 1976. Jensen and Project Censored circulated the earliest annual reports in mimeographed form. From early on, Bruce Brugmann helped to increase the Project’s impact by publishing Project Censored’s annual report of the “news that didn’t make the news” in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Bye-bye unipolarism!
President Vladimir Putin commented in October last year, “The unipolar world is leaving. We are facing a historic milestone. The most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of World War II is coming. The West is incapable of ruling humanity on its own, but it is trying desperately to do so. And most of the world’s peoples are no longer willing to put up with it. This is the main contradiction of the new era.
And two years ago our Comandante Daniel commented, “Don’t think that the Empire only sets out to dominate us here in Nicaragua and throw all kinds of lies, slander, infamy at us, they also do it with the Russian Federation, which is a great Power, and they do it with the People’s Republic of China, which is another enormous Power, and they do it even with their European allies…. Yes! …They are accustomed to not respecting Sovereignty, but they will have to learn to respect Sovereignty, because the decision of the Peoples is to defend Peace, and to defend Peace in the World, which is so lacking, it is fundamental that we respect the Sovereignty of all the Peoples, of all the Nations, where each People and each Nation will know how to administer their own house, will know how to develop Programs to combat Poverty, Extreme Poverty, as we have been doing here in Nicaragua.” (source)
War now with CHINA? Is there no collective . . . What the Fuck Are These Freaks in USA Doing?
Senor Pescado. I appreciate the kudo at the bottom of your note. For me, as you might know, I am a systems thinker, which is beyond just higher order thinker. It is not just holisitic thinking. It is not just thinking across curricula. It is beyond knowing the forms of all rhetoric, and understanding those at least Nine Forms of Nazi-Marketing Propaganda.
The mind is mysterious, for sure, but there are archetypes out there, both thinkers and those emoting. We can't look at phrenology to determine shit, other than racialist and racist eugenics crap. It's upbringing, it's SEE -- significant emotional events, both positive and adverse. Socio-economic determinents of health-economic-education-psychological outcomes. I won't go on, but to thank you for the comments, and, after 66 years of all the fandangos and beautifully crazy shit I experienced, both voluntarily and involunarily plus all the thinking ("you're thinking too much, boy, so there is a failure to communicate my asshole stuff . . ." was a typical comment when I was young or around military or what have you), I see the big picture, man, and the wonder of it all in small things, man, small things. I think of the Thin Red Line as an amazing film, book, and alas, most people hated it, but loved Slathering Private Ryan. Those small things, man, like harmonious lives on islands and the beauty of real people, facing the fuck up of war, that is what kicks ass on The Thin Red Line.
Now, actually, that 40 trillion dollar debt, accounting for each USA taxpayer, means you and I owe $230,000 each for all that lovin' spoonful the oligarchs and rotten racketeers have foisted upon us.
Keep thinking, reading, and shit, sent this Substack to one thousand friends of yours, and I'll split the take if I get half of those friends to subscibe/to pay $35 or $50 a year for some kickin' ass shit I write.
Ok, first a bone to pick, and then one to toss in your direction.
What’s this bull$hit about some $94,000 debt that I supposedly owe?
I didn’t even borrow that much to buy my first, new, house.
I know that I’d remember borrowing that kind of money.
What?
Elected representatives?
Sorry dudes, I didn’t vote for any of these silly motherf*ckers.
The winners, or the losers.
$hit, I could have just went with losers, and covered both the donkeys, and the pachyderms.
So any debt collectors wanting to service them loans, just go check the voter registration logs, and get the money from those succkas.
It’s their reps, not mine,
pi$$ing away all that dough.
Duck!!!
Bone comin’ your way!!!!
As a curious fellow, who actually enjoys learning, I have a pretty good idea what kind of effort is required to produce a coherent, and even a semi-exhaustive examination of a myriad of topics.
You sir, and several of your colleagues, put in one hell of a lot of work, just to keep me/us informed.
And, it seems like a pretty thankless undertaking on your part(s).
I’m guessing that paid subscribers are difficult to accumulate, unless you’re some kind of celebrity.
Well, it ain’t much, but,
Thank You for all of the time, and effort that you expend, and all of the slings, and arrows, that you absorb, in order to advance the knowledge of your fellows.
Some call it journalism.
But, I think that it goes way deeper than a profession.
Maybe a calling?
Thank you senor Haeder.
(Sorry, don’t know how to do the wavy thingy above the n)