Letter to the Editor – Eartha Muirhead

May 30, 2024

I am a wee bit grumpy after scrolling through countless pages of climate denial on the website “Climate Conservative Consumer” (www.c3headlines.com) as cited by Helen Grond, in her last week’s article titled “Give Science A Chance.”

In case you don’t have time to look at it, here are a few lowlights.

The New York Times reporting of climate change is scorned as “climate porn” and “fear-mongering….the essential US propaganda instrument for left/liberal/progressive policy.” Bjorn Lomberg, who claims “climate change is real but not the apocalyptic threat we’ve been told it is” and author “False Alarm” “is called an anti-CO2 activist.” Greg Blanchett, not found on my internet search, is named as a member of “The Very Sick Fuck Club.” A FB group by that name spouts violent, racist and sexist jokes.

“Leftists” like Joe Biden and Barack Obama are using propaganda to conspire against true science: “….the global warming hysteria and conspiracy of the left’s science will hopefully be another cleansing episode that reduces the high fever of corruption ….that the ruling elites are using.” This sentiment reminds me of hearing a radio interview with the BC United Party leader who repeatedly claimed that the NDP are “radicals”. Political historians will be rolling over in their graves if they catch wind of this double-speak..

“Give Science a Chance” claims that the International Panel on Climate Change refuses to engage with the world’s leading climate scientists. Yet, in 2009, James Lovelock, an independent scientist claimed “when I criticize the IPCC, I am most of all criticizing the the lack of wisdom amongst managers and politicians who forced scientists to manipulate data until it satisfied all of the nations present.” The IPCC was watering down the facts in an attempt to gain consensus from as many nations as possible. Meanwhile, Grond want us to believe that the IPCC has been exaggerating their findings, which “ignores the 150 years of established climate change research.” In 1972 I do recall my biology prof speaking of climate change but that was not 150 years ago.

As for the claim that the world is cooling; The Pacific Salmon Foundation reports ever-increasing warming temperatures in BC’s rivers and oceans. Currently CO2 levels are at 427 ppm, compared to 365 ppm in 2002 and up by 50% since the 18th century. I sure wish it was merely a coincidence that the climate is becoming increasingly unstable while C02 levels rise. I sure wish these fanatical climate pornographers would leave us alone.

Ageosis

May 30, 2024

Shucking Oysters: Sweeping Floors with a Rake

May 23, 2024

Joseph arrived to find bylaw officers had taped off his life belongings and police officers not allowing him access. After getting his name and information, the officers told him he could retrieve his things at a later date. They did return his wheelchair, but he was threatened with arrest when he tried to grab a bag of his clothing from behind the tape.

Once again, dismantling homeless camps with no hint of humanity was conducted in Victoria last week. With multiple large container trucks taking away belongings, this tactical exercise even took support services staff in the area by surprise. Our Place Society had just surveyed those 77 people sheltering on the block over a two-week period, asking what it would take to help them get off the street. The charity had been working toward helping those into housing by the end of the year. “The trust built since January has been undermined,” Our Place CEO Julian Daly said. “Because some people will wonder: ‘Did we know about it? Were we part of it?”

Just over a year ago, I attended the UBCM Housing Summit held at the Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver (where a room with a king bed is $524 a night). Premier Eby and his entourage; Green leader Furstenau; the Housing Minister, and many municipal politicians, staff, and media attended the three-day event. Each morning, as I walked from my hotel in the west end, I could not believe the homeless clumps everywhere and with nary a glance from passersby. On the last day of the summit, fraught with social commentary, the City of Vancouver chose that day of all days, to forcibly remove the 100-plus Downtown Eastside tent encampment. How many shelter rooms were actually available for the 100 plus people? 12.

Housing advocate Fiona York described the way tents and structures were removed as “violent,” “traumatizing” and “dehumanizing.” “The actions today were definitely violent actions that came from the state through various levels of government and authorizing bodies,” she said.

Sixty-one city staff, plus three dozen police officers, were at the corner of Main and Hastings that morning. City staff included 46 workers from the engineering department; seven people overseeing impounding and staging, four liaison staff to assist with shelter and Vancouver Coastal Health referrals and four Vancouver Fire and Rescue staff. The itinerary: 11:00 am. 12 structures removed. 13 people displaced. Two people’s belongings impounded. 1:00 pm. 27 structures removed. 16 people displaced. 13 bins of belongings impounded. 3:00 pm. 55 structures removed. 26 people displaced. 17 bins of belongings removed. 5:00 pm. 10 structures removed. 26 bins of people’s belongings impounded. By end of day. 67 of 81 structures were removed. The next day the authorities returned. 1:00 pm. 10 people and 14 structures removed. 3:00 pm. 21 structures removed and 16 people displaced.

With nowhere to go, they return. This approach is like sweeping a floor with a rake. Watch the YouTube video, “Real Canada. Saturday Afternoon – Downtown Vancouver, Canada Spring Walk, March 30, 2024” with almost 23 minutes of the bleakest footage on addiction and homelessness I have seen. And it is not just the big cities. Nanaimo, Courtenay, Campbell River, are all suffering from the same dystopia.

Dr Anna Kopec, assistant professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, at Carlton University, said that rather than this heavy-handed police response and forced eviction, we need to connect the homelessness with the services that they need. In particular, Kopec points to our emergency response and shelter system as not addressing the complexity of addiction. In order to stay in a shelter, “the folks are forced to remain sober and if you’re caught using any sort of substance, then you’re kicked out which really fails to help any individual with regard to thinking about emergency housing, and then on top of that their addiction issues.”

Kopec said that in this neoliberal world, homelessness is often deemed a personal failing. It’s “this oscillation between kind of being identified as undeserving or in need of compassion that is also influencing the approaches to homelessness and adding complexity to how we approach the problem.” This may explain how so many people can simply walk by the homeless with not a blink of the eye. Fear? Disgust? Superiority?

In Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari wrote that “when you have been told that you are a piece of shit all your life, embracing the identity of being a piece of shit, embracing other pieces of shit, living openly as a piece of shit seems better than being alone.”

Addicts need help, not contempt. What happened in their past that made them find everyday life so unbearable? Conclusive studies have shown the long-term effects of early childhood trauma. Child abuse is as likely to cause drug addiction as obesity is to cause heart disease. Survivors of childhood trauma are “often left with that sense of self-hatred all their lives” and that is why so many of them turn to the strongest anaesthetic they can find. As addiction expert, Dr. Gabor Maté noted, if we were serious about reducing the number of addicts, we would identify the mothers who are most stressed and least able to cope and give them care and support in how to properly bond with their child.

Addiction is an expression of despair, and the best way to deal with despair is to offer a better life rather than make threats. Being addicted should not be a crime.

Margaret Atwood Visits Denman Island — Some details.

May 23, 2024

We hope that by now word has spread far and wide on Denman that Margaret Atwood is visiting. Here are further details.

Ms. Atwood will give two presentations, both at Denman Island Community Hall on June 1^st and each for the price of $30. Each offers attractive features. The first presentation runs from 10am to 12noon and attendees will be treated to a solo talk by Ms. Atwood, along with readings she chooses from amongst her large corpus of work. The evening event from 7:30 to 9:30 pm is a moderated discussion with Des Kennedy.

When Ms. Atwood gave word that she would be visiting our Island at the invitation of the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival, our committee had to decide how to manage the sale of the limited number of tickets as fairly as possible and make this a special occasion for fellow islanders.

Our priority is to offer tickets to Denman Island residents first. To ensure fair distribution, sales will be done in person to folks with proof of residency. We anticipate a large demand and ask for your support in ensuring we can get through the lines as quickly as possible and deliver tickets to as many Denman folks as possible.

Ticket sales take place from 11 am to 1 pm on Wednesday May 15th (half of the total for each show) and Saturday May 18 (second half of tickets for each show) at the Seniors Activity Centre. To maximize the number of Islanders who can attend, tickets are limited to a total of two per Denman household for one or both shows. Please consider which show you would like to attend – it is two tickets total per household, not two per show. Tickets sales for a smaller fundraiser will also be available for purchase at the same time.

In addition to these main events at the Community Hall, there is a Meet and Greet fundraiser on the evening of May 31st. Catered by Erika Bland and the Farm to Family crew, this event promises a delectable spread of locally sourced appetizers and drinks. Proceeds from the $200 per ticket fundraiser will benefit Farm to Family, ADIMS, and Denman Affordable Housing. A charitable donation tax receipt for a portion of the ticket cost will be sent out before the end of the year.

Looking forward to sharing this historical event on Denman Island.

Publisher’s Notes – May 23rd, 2024

May 23, 2024

Since readers last heard from me, a lot has changed at The Islands Grapevine. Those of you who aren’t colourblind (I am) may have noticed some of those changes. I’ll just have to trust the feedback I’ve been receiving about the additional colour flourishes, which has all been positive. In addition Canada Post has rejigged our Denman circulation to better reflect the island’s population growth, which has us now serving 850 Denman homes.

Changes less noticeable have occurred as well. The paper’s precarious financial state that I’d referenced in January called for difficult measures. I decided against a GoFundMe. Our community has many worthwhile causes to donate to, and I am committed to the concept of self sufficiency in my business model. In truth, a restructuring was required if this 32 year old institution was to meet each of the new challenges presented. I moved The Islands Grapevine office to my house, saving about $5000 a year, which has allowed me to keep advertising rates at a reasonable level.

Another significant change has seen the Grapevine’s longest tenured employee move on to what I hope will be prosperous endeavours. Layout and production manager Chris Seguin not only assured the paper made it to mailboxes each Thursday as its dedicated printer of 14 years, but he was also the bridge I required while learning the ropes after taking over from outgoing Publisher, Sherry Stevens. Without his steadfast commitment, The Islands Grapevine would’ve been a distant memory, like a dodo bird.

What The Islands Grapevine has over that long departed bird is an ability to adapt to the changing times. Not so coincidentally, as our community’s paper of record, all of this is charted in our pages each and every week, some 1600+ weeks and counting! As the dust settles, we see that change can be good. The Islands Grapevine now goes out to over 1400 homes and businesses on Denman and Hornby Islands weekly, and has attained greater cost certainty along the way, while adding more colour to its pages! And we are proud of our updated website, theislandsgrapevine.com

As I am now the only paid contributor, I earn just enough to augment my modest income to pay my rent and support my family. And while much has changed with The Islands Grapevine, what hasn’t changed is our commitment to serving our communities. We are ever grateful to all of our contributors and advertisers as we seek to support our communities’ events and activities, its culture and local businesses, by refreshing our website, expanding our circulation and services, and improving the paper’s printed quality..

Thank you all. See you next Thursday!

Ain’t Gonna Study War No More

May 23, 2024

d0dcef0e86253c3e9c03fc714001d9ab-3573136139 — McGill protests

I don’t know how many encampments have been established on Canadian campuses, but I learned (conversation between scholar Angela Davis & Dr. Gabor Mate – Science & Non- Duality, SAND, Palestine & the World, 17^thMay, 2024) that there have been over 180 on various US campuses, a level of student protest not seen since Vietnam War. My alma mater, McGill, is presently seeking an injunction against its protesters’ encampment, which has been peacefully in place these last few weeks and getting a lot of front page coverage in Quebec. While these encampments have been student-led interfaith non-violent gatherings involving a disproportionate number of Jewish students, many’ve been attacked and ruthlessly shut down by city police forces and university administrations. Sometimes, as at UCLA, the students were attacked late at night by a violent mob with clear connections to the ultra-right and extremist Zionism, while police basically stood by and failed to protect them. This is why Max Blumenthal entitled his May 8^th, 2024, report on The Grey Zone, “The Occupation Comes Home”.

The negative publicity surrounding the encampments has been massive. They have been depicted as anti-semitic for having the audacity to criticize Israel. The media have taken at face- value the Zionist claim that the freedom slogan “From the River to the Sea” is a call for genocide against Jews. This is complete nonsense. Many of these encampments hold weekly Shabat ceremonies, led by such principled people as Rabbi Brant Rosen of T’sedek synagogue in Chicago, and their key speakers and leaders are often Jewish (see his Shalom Rav blog, 17^thMay, 2024.) Fanatical pro-Israel students, such as the young woman at Yale in early May who made inflammatory, highly publicized claims of being “stabbed in the eye” by a protestor’s placard, an accusation soon shown to be utterly false, are desperately seeking to discredit the students.

Peter Beinart – Journalist, Professor at CUNY, and religious Jew – wrote that he’s visited many encampments recently and has been moved by their inclusivity, respect for all faith traditions, and for Jews he spoke with, a kind of renewal of their connection to their Jewish values. (Beinart blog 20^th May, 2024.)

Max Blumenthal’s The Occupation Comes Home was filmed in a talk to students at UMass. I find Max particularly compelling because he is a Jewish-American about the age of my sons, who grew up in Washington DC as the son of a government insider. His dad was an advisor to Clinton. He knows the game inside and out, and is a fearless investigative reporter. His 2014 book “Goliath” is a gripping read about the real Israel, the apartheid Israel, based on 5 years of on-the-ground research. This is not the wonderful high-tech, LGBTQ-friendly face Israel likes to show to the world. While most people shrugged off Israel as mainly a positive influence, Max said back then that Israel was a society primed for genocide; his humanity allows him no satisfaction over that foresight. As any student of Israel-Palestine knows, the events of October 7^th were a very long time coming, and not unexpected. What has truly shocked the world is the magnitude and severity of Israel’s response, and the West’s complicity in that extreme response.

As Angela Davis states so cogently in the SAND webinar (above): “placing violence at the forefront” [ie, Hamas’ October 7^th attack] ignores all the systemic issues that led to the eruption

of that violence. This is an issue, she says, that has always clouded liberation movements, and “it misconstrues the extent to which the State uses and monopolizes violence against the people”. She points to the extensive reporting of Palestinian children throwing stones in resistance to Israeli repression and the fact that the tanks & bombs of the Israeli army- “the vast violence of militarism”- are not even considered newsworthy, making it very hard for readers to be on the right side of history. Now the truth is exploding out.

Max Blumenthal considers also that the mask of American liberal democracy is being peeled back, which is why so many are joining the movement. He says: “The US is corroding its own carefully crafted image to accommodate the genocide imperatives of Zionism, and everyone can see it.” In the US, we are indeed seeing violent crackdowns on the student protesters; we are also seeing principled leaders like The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, Professor & President of Union Theological College (UTC) at Columbia in New York, supporting the encampments. UTC is in dialogue with its students about divestment from armaments, guns and for-profit prisons, having divested from fossil fuels in 2014. UTC is also part of a group of 50+ organizations committed to Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) who manage a fund of over $3.1 Trillion, no small change! She talks with Amy Goodman (early May, 2024) on Democracy Now! about the uptake of university professors weighing in to support the students. With a genocide going on, Jones says: “they feel this is the moral issue of our time”, and we must stand with them. I agree.

CLIMATE BYTES: WE CAN…WE WILL…WE MUST!

May 23, 2024

CLIMATE BYTES

By Rudy Rogalsky

“If we don’t win the war, nothing else matters” [C.D. Howe}

WE CAN…WE WILL…WE MUST!

Four years ago, Seth Klein wrote A Good War as a model for dealing with climate change. In it, he described how during World War 2, Canadian governments and people “remade the economy [through] retooling factories, transforming the workforce and creating common cause among Canadians for the war effort”. That “common cause” included a general acceptance of rationing and “doing without”.

That war effort is indeed an apt metaphor for the scope of the transformations and constraints needed if we are to have any hope of salvation from the ravages of climate warming. We need to transform to a human enterprise that is in synch with nature. 250 years ago, world population was a modest one million living amidst seemingly-boundless resources. Then, by 1928 population had doubled, by 1974 it doubled again and then doubled yet again with an increasingly insatiable appetite for resources that is far greater than what the earth can sustainably provide. We have known this for over 50 years and yet, despite annual warnings and countless international agreements, world emissions of green house gases have continued largely unabated.

Admiration for Canada’s war response needs to be tempered by consideration that Canadians had just been through the great depression and were well accustomed to living frugally and “doing without”. Much of today’s population will find future roads more difficult because we know only unparalleled prosperity with its globalization, unlimited availability of food and consumer goods, ownership of more and bigger “stuff” and space to store it in.

So, what societal changes are needed to make Klein’s Good War against climate change a reality? Please read the book, but one change is a precondition for success of all the others. That is that our political leadership, the media, the judiciary and the population accept unconditionally that the climate crisis is existential and must be won at any cost. C.D.Howe, who led Canada’s wartime restructuring, could have been talking about today: “If we lose the war, nothing else matters”.There can be no partial victory. The following are some essential pieces of the puzzle we must solve.

For context, understand that the last 250 years of growth fueled by fossil fuels is the most atypical period in human history and that, for most of the last ten thousand years, earth’s temperature never varied more than 0.5^oC above or below 14^oC. We are presently about 3 orders of magnitude greater than that.
Organize! Organize! Organize! Civil society organizations are generally ahead of governments and corporations in knowing the depths of the crisis and understanding what needs to be done. Through coalescing of such minority groups, we could bring about a positive tipping point where their views spread to a quarter of the population and then become the majority view. Only by organizing can civil society set the agenda.
Use that power of civil society to bring about political “leadership” characterized by statesmanship and long-term thinking, public trust and total fixation on winning the war. Present politicians, in the main, are obsessed with perpetual growth and short term political and commercial advantage and they must either change or be changed. To elect such people in this emergency would be tantamount to a death wish.
Everyone—governments, corporations, citizenry—must adopt an emergency we-are-at-war mindset.
Government and civil society organizations must marshal all the resources of communications media and the entertainment industry to rally and unify the public
Governments must mandate that Industrial productive capacity and resources must make only products that reduce or eliminate GHG emissions. Oil and gas exploration, fracking, oil sands production must end. There will be shortages of food and other “necessities” requiring rationing programs.
Don’t stop till we’ve won.

One way or another, every person living in this century or beyond is going to experience conditions that have no parallel in human history. We may still lose the war that we have brought upon ourselves but we owe it to our children to try to win and if that’s not possible, to go down fighting.

Green Wizardries: The Unthinkable

May 23, 2024

Canada is changing very quickly. I don’t recognize the place anymore. Women in their 60’s, and older, are forced to live on the streets in leaky, wet, inadequate tents or in overflowing women’s shelters. The Government’s solution to almost every social problem is to offer MAiD instead of care to anyone who is poor, ill, disabled, mentally confused or otherwise inconvenient.

I was still a little surprised to find a local charity, Farm to Family, offering free meals to young families. I know some of the people who volunteer for the charity and I asked one why they were providing meals for young families? I asked if things were really that bad out there and she wrote back to me to say things are really bad and the suppers are absolutely necessary.

She went on to say that most of the families they serve are two income families with kids and they are really struggling. She said that at the end of a long work day, most of these people do not have the energy to grow a garden. Of course, she knew that my first reaction would be to say they needed to grow a garden with the price of food being so high. She added that most of the families donate money for the meals which helps the program and allows the families who cannot donate to enjoy the community meals.

I talked to another volunteer who helps to produce the meals and she said they are joyful events. The mothers with young children really appreciate having a meal cooked for them. The kids are all playing together and this is a good way for young families to meet. I would go farther and say these meals form community because there are two ways to create a community; one is working together and the second is eating together.

Now, I have to add that I think a lot of people are missing the point. If two income families are struggling now perhaps it is time to change strategies before things become even more expensive as I am sure they will. I am going to suggest the unthinkable. I am going to suggest that people think of having one partner leave the commercial workforce and join the home economy.

“But, they would have less money,” I hear you gasp. Yes, but soon we will be taking $500 down to the cafe for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Inflation is going up so fast your paycheck will never be able to keep up. The partner in the home economy will be able to save the whole show by growing a big garden, keeping some laying hens, keeping rabbits for their meat and manure and even by keeping a dairy goat or dairy sheep for milk and meat.

I do know something about being poor. My husband and I live below Canada’s poverty line. How does the high cost of groceries affect us? It doesn’t. We did not even need to shop for groceries this month. We have heaps of frozen and dried vegetables from last year’s garden and heaps of frozen fruit that makes a delightful fruit salad. We always buy large quantities of basic items such as beans, rice, split peas and similar. We cook every meal from scratch. This is vastly more nourishing and pleasant than relying on convenience food.

A stay at home partner need not be female. It is very useful to have a good strong person on the home front to cut and split the wood that will keep the house warm in the winter as BC Hydro’s prices are on a one-way climb to the skies. A strong person can dig the garden, build fences, prune trees, make jam, smoke meat and fish, dry fruit and vegetables, can everything for the winter, bake bread and make pizza, look after the kids, actually go fishing, hunt mushrooms, mend clothes and knit socks and a hundred other money-saving tasks to keep the family afloat and comfortable.

This is the way of the future. When a family goes to one income, they will pay a lot less in taxes, childcare, groceries, heating plus halving the cost of keeping two vehicles plus not paying for two lots of insurance, work clothes, convenience food and the cost of commuting. There is still the possibility of earning cash or goods on the informal market. The quality of life will go up for the family.

The person in the commercial economy earns money to pay rent or mortgage and the unavoidable expenses. The job of the person in the home economy is to make sure no money leaves the family unless it is essential. Druids call this collapsing now and avoiding the rush.

Shortages in the Land of Plenty: Give Science a chance

May 23, 2024

Shortages in the Land of Plenty

“It’s not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble. It’s what we know, for sure, that just ain’t so”

-attributed to Mark Twain

Give Science a Chance

The following four graphs display data that are all part of the accepted scientific record and focus on the last decade, 128 years, 15,000 years and 400,000 years.

The first graph shows global temperatures over the last 8+ years (black line) with the mean in blue. The green dots represent the increase in CO2 levels. Two important takeaways are: 1. We are clearly not boiling. 2. Wildly fluctuating and now rising CO2 levels do not show they cause rising temperatures now, nor have they ever on any time frame studied.

Long studied and understood natural warming has averaged 0.8 degrees C per century for the last approximately 400 years and is staying consistently in that range. Many people are unaware that natural, long term warming (and cooling) cycles exist and that natural warming accounts for most, if not all, of the 1.5 C increase that has been attributed to post-industrial emissions.

The well understood decadal oscillations (natural 20 to 30 year climate cycles in black) are quite apparent in the following simple graph. The El Nino, La Nina cycles contribute to the individual spikes (grey) that are averaged in. Pay close attention to the grey areas. Don’t get too focussed on the big spikes, they are misleading. The pattern changes after 1960.

The following graph shows temperature changes over the last 400,000 years. Currently, most evidence based climate trends (unlike the IPCC computer generated models) have the planet descending into a cooling phase not a warming one. I think people are starting to notice and they should because the planet has historically spent most of it’s time in cooling phases as the graph clearly shows.

Cyclical and often dramatic temperature changes have always happened and scientific understanding strives to understand the complex underlying mechanisms. It will never be settled; it’s a process, like all science. What is settled is that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consistently ignores the 150 years of established climate change research that contradicts their narrative and instead requires you to believe their internally generated predictions and computer models which have been proven wrong over and over. Why? Is it because maintaining that narrative protects what has become a trillion dollar industry?

Without data and evidence, “science” becomes a faith-based belief system. It’s time to bring “climate change” out of the category of religion where it cannot be questioned or debated and back into the realm of science where it must be questioned and debated. The political organization known as the International Panel on Climate Change refuses to engage with the world’s leading and well respected climate scientists and has for 35 years. By understanding these simple graphs, you already know far more about climate change than the IPCC does! For further information about natural climate variability follow this link. https://www.c3headlines.com/chartsimages.html

The Problem Isn’t Civil Disobedience, It’s Civil Obedience

May 23, 2024

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

MAY 21

Our society does not have an antisemitism crisis. It doesn’t have a crisis of far left radicalism, Islamist extremism, support for terrorism, or fomenting of dissent by foreign powers.

Our society has a moral crisis. A cruelty crisis. An imperialism crisis. A militarism crisis. A propaganda crisis. An insincerity crisis. A stupidity crisis. An obedience crisis.

Empire managers and imperial spinmeisters try to pretend there’s some horrifying existential emergency involving hatred of Jews or love of Hamas or some other ridiculous nonsense in our society, because the empire too is in a state of crisis. People are waking up from its lullaby of propaganda and are rejecting its narrative manipulation like never before, which is why instead of relenting and accepting the empire’s destruction of Gaza, opposition to it is only growing stronger.

So the authorized custodians of imperial narratives flail around desperately trying to regain some control by spinning all the civil disobedience we are seeing in a way that makes it seem like some sort of problem which needs to be fixed. But as Howard Zinn said, “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.”

Our problem is not that more and more people are opposing Israel’s empire-backed atrocities in Gaza with more and more aggression, our problem is that people are not opposing it aggressively enough. Our problem is that too many people still have their minds jacked into the mainstream worldview and ignore the most urgent matter of our time, letting their thoughts be preoccupied with frivolous garbage and trusting that our leaders are doing what’s best for us.

Mainstream culture is so shallow, vapid and idiotic that when an artist rapped about this issue of unparalleled urgency, he included the line “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” — and everyone knew what he meant. He meant mainstream culture is fixated on phony public spats between millionaire pop stars while the US empire funnels weapons of annihilation into Israel to be dropped on a giant concentration camp full of children. It says so much about this fraudulent dystopia we live in that such a thing would need to be said. But it did.

The problem isn’t that people are becoming too disobedient, the problem is that people remain too obedient. The problem isn’t that people are becoming too radicalized against their government, the problem is that people aren’t radicalized enough. The problem is that the freaks who rule over us are not sufficiently afraid of us. The problem is that we have not yet come to the collective realization that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and that we don’t actually need to put up with them doing crazy and evil things right in front of our faces.

Instead people sit around drooling with their eyes fixed on screens full of endless diversion while children are ripped to shreds by western-supplied military explosives for no other reason than because they happen to belong to the wrong ethnic group.

That is the real crisis of our society. Not an imaginary antisemitism epidemic. Not college kids disobeying authority figures. Not leftists. Not anarchists. Not Islam. Not Hamas.

The real crisis in our society is that too many people are still blindly obedient to a murderous and tyrannical empire which should be hacked to pieces and scattered to the winds.

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