Trump Puts An Appropriately Ugly Face On A Very Ugly Empire

November 14, 2024

NOV 08, 2024

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The only thing I like about Trump is exactly what so many empire managers hate about him: he gives the game away. He says the quiet parts out loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast that US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament that they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and tell everyone he’s bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs.

Trump is the opposite of Obama, who was very skillful at putting a pretty face on the evil empire. Trump puts a very ugly face on a very ugly thing. He is a much more honest face to have on the empire. A crude, stupid plutocrat who is owned by other plutocrats is the perfect representative of that tyrannical power structure.

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The propaganda machine has been spinning its head off trying to frame soccer brawls in Amsterdam as a horrifying “pogrom” against Jewish people because the side instigating the violence were supporters of team Maccabi Tel Aviv who flew in from Israel.

Video evidence shows far right Israeli hooligans terrorizing the streets of Amsterdam, chanting “Fuck the Arabs”, starting fights, beating people, tearing down Palestinian flags, attacking a cab driver, and singing “Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs! Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

In the face of all this evidence of atrocious behavior by Israeli soccer fans, The New York Times ran a story with the headline “Antisemitic Attacks Prompt Emergency Flights for Israeli Soccer Fans”. The Wall Street Journal ran with “Antisemitic Attacks in Amsterdam Prompt Tight Security at Jewish Sites”. “Pogroms have returned to Europe, and the ‘anti-racist’ Left are silent,” says The Telegraph.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail sports section ran with a headline more in line with what people actually saw: “Israeli football hooligans tear down Palestine flags in Amsterdam as taxi drivers ‘fight back’ in night of chaos ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s visit to Ajax”.

Leaders of western nations like the US, UK, Canada and France joined the Dutch kingin framing these soccer brawls and hooliganism as a historic mass-scale hate crime against Jews, while Israeli officials have been melodramatically shrieking like their hair is on fire.

These exhausting victim-LARPing freaks. Stop playing sports with Israel. Stop holding sporting events which could lead to the deranged members of a genocidal apartheid state showing up in your community stirring up violence and hate so they can cry victim and say you holocausted them.

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Another thing that sucks about the fake “antisemitism” crisis that the western political-media class are pretending to believe in is that it will probably become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which creates real hatred of Jewish people.

You can’t keep telling everyone over and over and over again that Jews and Israel are one and the same and that any criticism of one is always necessarily an attack on the other while the state of Israel is murdering children by the tens of thousands without contributing to unfair prejudice against Jewish people everywhere. Israel is exacerbating this effect by insisting its actions represent all Jews and are done in defense of Judaism while committing genocidal atrocities under a Star of David flag.

If you understand the truth that modern Israel is a settler-colonialist project of the western empire which uses the Jewish religion as an excuse to inflict violence and tyranny in a crucial geostrategic region, then you understand that there’s no real connection between modern Israel and the Jews you encounter in your community. Sure a majority of western Jews buy into the empire’s lies and support Israel, but a majority of the westerners of all faiths buy into the empire’s lies about its wars and official enemies and all its other propaganda too. This is just what it looks like when you live in a highly propagandized society which is structured to psychologically manipulate people into consenting to nonstop military violence.

Once you understand this, you see that blaming ordinary Jews in your society for the actions of the state of Israel makes about as much sense as blaming ordinary Muslims for the actions of the Saudi royals — but most people don’t understand this. It takes a lot of learning and close examination, and most people haven’t reached that level of lucidity in our confusing information landscape which is distorted by lies and propaganda.

So when they see a self-evidently evil thing being done and hear their leaders and pundits telling them over and over again that if you hate what you’re seeing then you necessarily hate Jewish people, what understanding do you think they’re going to form in their minds?

Greater hatred and prejudice looks like a fairly inevitable consequence of this messaging from where I’m sitting. And it will all be the fault of the western pundits and politicians who are aggressively promulgating this message throughout our society right now in an effort to stomp out criticism of an active genocide.

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https://x.com/caitoz/status/1854664993515749535

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The garment-rending emotional reaction to the US election results compared to the apathy on Gaza over the last year tells you that liberals don’t see Palestinians as human beings. They’ll deny it, but it’s true. Their emotions show you much more than their words ever will. This is who they are.

Ignore their words and watch their actions. It works with politicians, it works with entire governments, and it works with individuals too. If you see someone flailing around on the ground because their genocidal candidate lost after spending a year walking around functioning perfectly fine throughout a year of genocide, that tells you something about them that their words would never tell you.

People are always much more honest with their actions than their words, because words can spin narratives and actions cannot. If you’re ever unsure of someone’s true motivations and where they really stand, don’t ask them, just watch them. They’ll tell you eventually, with their actions and not their words.

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Letter to the Editor – Maxine Rogers

November 14, 2024

I haven’t liked to go into how dangerous the Covid 19 gene-therapy shots are, as so many of my family members, friends and neighbours have taken them. I don’t want people to be frightened because there is nothing they can do about it now. I am pleased to say, my sisters and their families have stopped taking the boosters. I choose to speak out on the subject of vaccine injuries as they are so prevalent and so very unnecessary.

I read an article from The Children’s Health Defense about an Ontario man in his late 40’s. He had some Covid 19 vaccinations and had a bad vaccine injury. They call it, “Covid 19 Vaccination Syndrome,” and it is indistinguishable from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I know a lot about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) as I have lived with it for more than twenty years. I became ill with puzzling symptoms after a bad bout of the flu. This is a typical presentation of CFS.

We were told by Public Health Officials that the vaccines were safe and effective. There was no way they could have known this because the vaccines were not tested over the usual five to ten year time period needed to assess the effects of a vaccine. The gene therapy preparations were made ready in a matter of weeks.

Usually, vaccines are tested in vitro, then in small animal studies where the mice are given a dose of vaccine and then they are monitored and their progeny is monitored for months or years before they go on to study the effects in rabbits in the same manner and then in primates until after many years, it is decided it is likely safe enough to test on humans. None of this was done with the Covid 19 injectables.

Even with all these precautions, there were still vaccine injuries and a number of vaccines have been pulled off the market even after all these studies because they were found to cause injuries and death.

Well, the Ontario man got very sick after his Covid shots and a booster. He lost a great deal of function. Typically, the patient presents with fatigue, weakness, sleep disorders, a lot of physical pain and mental fog which makes even the simplest tasks very difficult. When I was ill for the first few years, before I found ways to stabilize my condition, it often felt as if I was trying to function while experiencing nitrogen narcosis. Before I became ill, I was a passionate SCUBA diver and experienced nitrogen narcosis a number of times. The confusion is profound.

So, this poor man, who had been well and healthy, took the Covid 19 vaccinations because the Public Health Officials and his own physician told him it was safe and effective. Well, we now know it is not effective at stopping people from contracting Covid 19 and from spreading it. So much for, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

He became very ill. He was hospitalized for feeling suicidal. I too felt suicidal when I became ill as I had previously been very healthy and fit. Because I had the support of my family and friends, I was able to pull myself together and decide that if I was willing to kill myself then I should also be willing to pursue every possible way of improving my health.

The young man in Ontario was not so lucky. Instead of being helped to overcome his illness he was offered euthanasia. He was confused, depressed and desperate. He accepted MAiD to end his suffering.

His case was one selected for review in Ontario. “This case shows how the Canadian Healthcare system abandoned a suicidal patient in need of real medical and psychiatric care. If it had not come from a Government report, I would have difficulty believing this horrifying case history,” wrote Dr. Aaron Kheriaty.

The fact is, the patient was mentally ill at the time he was killed and mental illness should have disqualified him from receiving death by a Doctor. The members of the panel who investigated his case questioned how a condition, “previously unrecognized in medicine his “post vaccine somatic syndrome,” could be considered incurable given limited available clinical knowledge and research.”

Even the very few safeguards around receiving euthanasia in Canada are routinely ignored. Track Two patients, those who are not terminally ill, are supposed to have a 90-day waiting period between applying for Maid and being killed. The median time between requesting MAiD and being killed is only eleven days and I got that statistic from Health Canada.

If this poor man had not taken the Covid 19 gene therapy that made him so ill, he would be alive and well today. I find it appalling that he did the, “right thing and rolled up his sleeve,” to take a shot of a toxic product that left him disabled and was then casually killed by the very medical professionals who had a duty to care for him.

round wheel

November 14, 2024

Otto of the beach: Otto and CO2

November 14, 2024

Kenton Loewen & JP Carter Duo to play the Back Hall

November 7, 2024

With 25 years of shared musical history, veteran Vancouver musicians Kenton Loewen (Drums) and JP Carter (Trumpet/ effects) come to Denman Island as part of a short run of shows in preparation for their sophomore record. The duo put out the critically acclaimed “It Becomes Us” on the Infidels imprint in 2021. Think the softest faintest voice in the distance to the crashing of waves in the wildest storm. It’s a full experience in free, groove, tonal and out sound. They play The Back Hall on Wednesday Nov. 13th at 8pm. Tickets are $20 at the door.

“..I actually question whether they played together in other lifetimes as they just mesh that well. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or like a perfect pairing of Merlot and charcuterie.”

⁃ Green Moreen (Cups n Cakes Network)

Shucking Oysters: Status Seekers

November 7, 2024

Shucking Oysters: Status Seekers

By Alex Allen

Once again the Victoria Belfry Theatre is in hot water. This time it is over the controversial play “1939,” written by acclaimed “Métis” playwright Jani Lauzon based on her father’s experience at a residential school. Lauzon, who claimed her ancestry is Finnish on her mother’s side and Métis on her father’s, was recently found to be only French-Canadian on her father’s side – going back five generations.

Wannabindians, race shifters, Indiginots. Commonly known as Pretendians, as in pretend to be an Indian, seem to be the fastest growing demographic in Canada. Practically every month someone is outed for falsely claiming an Indigenous heritage. And many assume the Indigenous identity for personal or professional gain only. Even the iconic Buffy Saint-Marie was challenged last year on her Indigenous ancestry.

CBC News who aired the “Fifth Estate” episode on Saint-Marie said questioning a person’s “Indigeneity” requires great care and nuance. In deciding what stories to pursue, they always ask: Is this a person of significant influence? Has this person benefited from their claims of Indigenous identity? Has this person shaped public perceptions of what it means to be Indigenous in Canada? Has this person taken space or opportunities away from others who might rightly deserve them? If all the boxes have been ticked then they will dig deeper.

They found Sainte-Marie’s birth certificate, that listed her parents as white. Family members in the US, including her younger sister, said that Sainte-Marie was not adopted and does not have Indigenous ancestry. She identified as Algonquin and Mi’kmaq yet earlier she said she was Cree and was adopted by a mother in Saskatchewan.

Sainte-Marie, now in her eighties, did cryptically respond: “Being an ‘Indian’ has little to do with sperm tracking and colonial record keeping: it has to do with community, culture, knowledge, teachings, who claims you, who you love, who loves you and who’s your family.”

Today, for the first time in Canadian history, there are “structural advantages” to being Indigenous. Huge perks. “People can get job opportunities. They can get scholarships and bursaries. They get roles in television and film,” says Indigenous scholar Kim TallBear, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the UofA. Indigenous author and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor shared the irony that not that long ago some First Nations people would go out of their way to say they weren’t Indigenous.

Tallbear says what’s problematic, are those settlers who are adopted into Indigenous communities as adults, as a way of honouring and welcoming them. “What many don’t understand is that you are being invited into a family, a community, that wants you, but not into the larger culture. Nor can you speak for it. There’s a big difference. I have an honourary doctorate. But I am not a doctor. Do you see the point?”

Recently…Uof W professor Julie Nagam falsified her Métis ancestry. Carrie Bourassa at the USask falsely claimed she was of Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit ancestry. Prominent scholar and former judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond claimed Cree ancestry. Former Emily Carr teacher Gina Adams, falsely claimed she was an Indigenous hybrid artist of Ojibwa Anishinaabe and Lakota descent. Director Michelle Latimer of the CBC Indigenous television series, Trickster, claimed she was from the Kitigan Zibi First Nation. Amie Wolf, UBC adjunct professor, was fired about her Mi’kmaq identity claims. Vianne Timmons, president of Memorial University falsely said she was descended from Mi’kmaq First Nations peoples. Noted UC Berkley scholar Elizabeth Hoover posted a mea culpa declaring herself a white woman who “mistakenly” built a career on being of Mohawk and Mi’kmaq descent. Can you see the pattern here?

In all of these cases, they not only faked their First Nations ancestry – they also based their entire lucrative careers and lives around their false Indigenous connections. Pretendians, Kevin Yuill noted, are especially “rife in academia, where there is enormous pressure on universities to hire more Indigenous people.” Institutions will openly accept people who claim to have Indigenous backgrounds – better than awkwardly asking for proof of status.

Back at the Belfry, the show did go on. Since that decision, both an Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff member quit. Lauzon eventually admitted that her use of “Métis” was not meant to refer to the historic Métis Nation but rather as a general term for the mixed Indigenous ancestry she believed she has. In a subsequent email, Lauzon wrote that she was in the process of reaching out to “a specialist in Indigenous heritage.”

There have been many discussions within Indigenous communities about how to deal with these race shifters. One woman suggested an act of Parliament, making it an offence to falsely claim Indigenous heritage. Others want to rely on the traditional method of asking three simple questions: Do you consider yourself Indigenous? Does the community consider you Indigenous? And where does your family come from? The last one is often the most difficult to fake.

And what’s with the proliferation of female identity thieves? In a Reddit thread someone wrote: “Female Pretendians in the 1970s were mostly into eroticized Indian glamour prominent in the counter-cultural movements, while modern wannabe Indianettes are almost exclusively materialistically oriented career- and money-grabbing egotists.” Another helpfully explained: “Women can just wear their hair long, straighten it and dye it darker if necessary, put on some weird clothes, and it is kinda hard to actually tell.” Got it.

Green Wizardries: Sketchbook Art

November 7, 2024

I am restless by nature. I hate wasting time. Some of the things I like to do to fill up little spaces of unproductive time, such as time spent waiting for the ferry, include knitting socks. Knitting, and indeed any needlework, has a soothing effect on me and, to judge by the look of other knitters, it soothes other people too.

I also like to buy used books at The Second Page in Courtenay. It is a small used-book store run by a man who grew up over the public library his mother ran. I once asked him for a particular author and he reached his hand into a stack of books and pulled a title from that author out of the stack. It was like a magic trick.

At the moment, I am really into reading Agatha Christie murder mysteries. I very much enjoy her early writing from the 1920’s. Her descriptions of the technologies they used then are fascinating. I also find the social conventions of one hundred years ago very interesting. She writes some things that woked -up people now would have fits of the vapours over. I find it interesting to see how conventions and popular beliefs change over time.

Another thing I find relaxing is to paint. A dear friend gave me a stout leather purse. It is fairly large and I kept it for a year or so before I discovered its role in my life. It is just the perfect size to contain a sketchbook or two, a lot of pens, pencils, a small box of watercolour paints and a water brush. My bag contains more goodies because I never know when the urge to use a dip pen and ink, or something, will come over me.

A water brush is a excellent and exciting paintbrush. These brushes have a hollow body that one fills with water and a synthetic tip that comes to a really excellent point. A slight pressure on the body of the brush adds more water to the bristles making it a fabulous brush for outdoor sketches.

I hadn’t painted or drawn for a long time because my life is very busy and I don’t have an hour or two to sit down and work on a painting. One day, I was noodling around on YouTube and came across Danny Gregory. He has a YouTube channel called Sketchbook Skool. Danny is a self-taught sketchbook artist who teaches drawing and painting and publishes his sketchbooks. I watched his video on a seven-day sketchbook challenge. The first day was devoted to drawing breakfast. I was having watermelon, a gift from a couple of friends who grew some lovely watermelons here on Denman. It made quite a pretty picture.

Each day of the week had a different subject to draw. This was a terrific help to me because I never knew what I wanted to paint. Having a list of subjects to draw was exciting and helpful. Danny teaches people to draw their own lives. While I spent the week drawing the subjects he proposed, I also started to draw other subjects that just caught my eye.

I drew a series of vignettes of our ferry trip to town one day. Another unscheduled drawing was of a couple of jars of lemon rinds in vinegar that I had steeping in my living room. I use the lemon-scented vinegar for cleaning and as a hair rinse. They also made a nice picture.

I started to do continuous-line drawings. I drew such a portrait of a friend who had joined us for lunch in town. It looked a lot like some of the wilder Picasso drawings. I looked up the connection between Picasso and continuous-line drawing. Picasso invented the continuous-line drawing. He was a classically-trained artist of great ability. I was able to see many of his student works when I visited Barcelona many years ago. Picasso found continuous-line drawings helped him loosen up. I too find it helps me to not overthink or be too fussy in my drawing.

I saw some examples of Neurographic Art which is a, deceptively simple, method of drawing. It was invented in 2014 by Psychologist Pavel Piskarev. One simply draws lines on a paper and smooths the intersections where the lines meet. The resulting spaces are filled in with colour. The results look magical and the practice has a magical component. While smoothing the intersections of the lines, a person can think of the changes they wish to make in life and the process is very helpful to make such changes.

I sent pictures of my drawings to friends and one friend, who is living in a conflict zone, wrote back asking how to learn it. I explained and told her about the magical possibilities of transforming fear or some such negative emotion into something better. She was very excited and feels her area of the world could use such a practice now. With the political situation in Canada and the States being what it is, maybe we could all use a little sketchbook in our lives.

Considering Euthanasia

November 7, 2024

CONSIDERING EUTHANASIA

by William Thomas

Is Canada’s world-leading Medical Assistance In Dying a beacon of hope and compassion for an aging population — or a money-saving cull of the indigent and non-terminally infirm?

MAiD was legalised in 2016 after the Supreme Court found that “individuals who have a grievous and irremediable medical condition” have a right not to be forced to “endure intolerable suffering.”

But only five years later, those with chronic conditions who no longer wanted to live became eligible for assisted suicide. Canadians can now see a MAiD practitioner in only two business days. And according to Health Canada, the wait time between requesting MAiD and death is often 11 days.

“I don’t know any other procedure under Canada’s public healthcare system that you can get as quickly as MAiD,” says investigative journalist, Alexander Raikin.

DO NO HARM?

In September 2022, The Lancet worried that “What was originally conceived as an exceptional practice in medicine has quickly become normalised.

While the primary aim of “assisted dying” legislation is to provide a “safe and comfortable” death to patients facing unbearable suffering at the end of life, seminar notes from The Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers reveal doctors openly discussing the euthanisation of patients whose only underlying condition was poverty — and suggested how to manage their own “moral distress” at these cases!

Slamming “Canada’s unique pedal-to-the-metal approach to assisted dying,” FORBES charged that Canadian physicians are “routinely and all too casually” offering assisted suicide “alongside other medical interventions” to COVID vaccine injured, the impoverished, and other non-terminally ill patients.

“We are witnessing an alarming trend where people with disabilities are seeking assisted suicide due to social deprivation, poverty, and lack of essential supports,” worries Krista Carr, executive vice president of Inclusion Canada. “It’s time to put an end to helping people with disabilities commit suicide and start supporting them to live.”

By December 2022, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) had killed well over 40,000 Canadians.

ORGAN GRINDERS

MAiD is the world’s fastest-growing assisted-dying program. While injecting lethal drugs intravenously to end a patient’s life is currently practiced in seven countries, Canada stands alone in approving assisted suicide by a nurse practitioner.

Moreover, with more than 10,000 Canadians now dying from medically assisted death annually, nearly half of all worldwide Organ Donation After Euthanasia are Canadians.

Comments Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Executive Director, Michael Robinson,“Wherever assisted suicide is introduced, the rate inexorably climbs year on year, just as eligibility becomes ever more expansive.”

An August 2023 memo from Quebec’s Commission on End-of-Life Care told doctors to slow down assisted suicide cases following an alarming province-wide 54% rise in assisted suicides in just one year.

“In an era where we recognize the right to die with dignity, we must do more to guarantee the right to live with dignity,” insists Canada’s human rights commission head, Marie-Claude Landry.

YOUTUBE HORROR

A horrific YouTube interview by well-known Clinical Psychologist and Professor Emeritus at U. of Toronto, Dr. Jordan Peterson with anti-MAiD activist Kelsi Sheren has terrified 1.4 million viewers with claims that euthanasia is being pushed to slash palliative care costs by Canadian doctors using the same drugs administered for capital punishment that drown recipients in their own fluids for up to 24 hours — while a paralytic drug prevents them from crying out.

Paul Mehennis, a Registered Nurse in BC who’s taught MAiD to healthcare professionals, calmly eviscerates those 13 minutes of wildly misinformed speculation by pointing out that the three medications used for MAiD in Canada — midazolam, propofol and rocuronium — are completely different from the pentobarbital used in American executions.

Around 78% of individuals requesting MAiD receive palliative care, with an additional 10% having access to palliative care but choosing to refuse it.

It’s a criminal offense in Canada to counsel a patient to die by suicide. Canada’s last execution was in 1962.

“There’s no scientific basis for assuming that the drugs used in MAiD could cause fluid in the lungs,” he states; an opinion emphatically backed by a veteran Vancouver anesthesiologist.

Death by IV typically takes 5-10 minutes.

EUTHANASIA PROCEDURES IN CANADA

Propofol is initially administered intravenously to put patients “into a very deep medical coma” in which “a person’s mind and body are essentially separated,” Mehennis relates.

“In this state, there is no awareness of their surroundings, and they will not experience anything that is happening. It’s not that you were merely unconscious during this period — your consciousness was completely turned off; there was no experience to be had.”

After propofol is used “for a peaceful passing,” a paralytic is given last to shut down the lungs — “most often after the person has already died.”

SLIPPERY SLOPE?

For Paul Mehennis — and many aging Canadians — euthanasia is about “respecting personal autonomy when it comes to how much intolerable and irremediable suffering a person is willing to endure.”

But Canada now allows euthanasia for people suffering from serious but nonfatal medical conditions and disabilities.

“Eligible patients don’t need to have a terminal illness but simply a life-limiting disability. Physicians are proposing euthanasia as a choice of equal standing amongst other options for treatment and palliative care — in some situations without the patient themselves raising the topic,” FORBES reports.

On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable. A Canadian doctor who boasts that she helped kill 400 people through assisted suicide, declares that “loneliness and poverty” are good enough reasons to justify her actions.

In Canada, there were 10,092 doctor-assisted deaths in 2021; 13,241 in 2022.

“Suicide has gone from illegal to optional,” observes Dr. Vernon Coleman, MB ChB DSc. How soon will euthanasia become compulsory and for whom?”

READ my original 2,200 word article at willthomasonline.net

It’s Pizza Time!

November 7, 2024

Kids of all ages love pizza! It is a favourite in our extended family. Pizza is like a picnic – informal, messy and fun. It’s especially fun when you make it from scratch, and I don’t think people would buy ready-made versions if they knew how simple and delicious is homemade pizza crust. It literally takes about 15 minutes to make and you do not need to be a bread- baker to pull it off! Pizza dough freezes really well, an added bonus, so you can double the recipe and have some dough stored in your freezer for another evening when you want something easy.

Here’s my basic dough recipe for 2 individual pizzas:

1 T. traditional yeast 8 oz. lukewarm water 1 t. salt

3 C. organic flour

I mix the type of flour depending on supply, season or mood – all whole wheat, all unbleached white, or ½ & ½ ; you can use whatever proportions you like. You can add herbs like basil, oregano and thyme into the flour for more interest, or keep it plain. The only area where I don’t recommend substitution is in the quality of the flour. Non-organic flour comes from wheat that has been sprayed with pesticides/insecticides, often a requirement for crop insurance; commercial sellers put preservatives in there, and the flour can be heavily processed. The chemicals non-organic flour contains can really harm your gut, so bite the bullet and buy organic only!!! (A family member who struggled for many years with ulcerative colitis has never had a problem with my bread products and I think that’s the reason. No compromise on organic.)

Now for the pizza-making:

Preheat oven to 450 and if you have a pizza stone, place that in there before you turn the oven on.
Stir the yeast into the warm water to make sure it’s alive. It’ll form little bubbles and a cloudy film on top within 5 or so minutes, and you’ll know you’re good to go. Always store your yeast in the fridge so it doesn’t go stale.
In a large bowl, stir the flour and salt together. Make a well in the centre and add in the liquid. Stir until all is combined and the dough begins to hold together. Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured counter and knead it, using the heel of your hand. That means pushing it back and forth, folding it over and forming it into a nice round ball that sticks together. This is hands- on and very pleasurable, as you bread-bakers already know. You want the dough to be smooth and elastic, so it’ll take 5 or so minutes to get that consistency. Don’t worry if you can’t work all the flour into your ball. Add a little flour to your hands if they get too sticky.

Oil a bowl with a little olive oil, place the dough ball in there, cover with plastic wrap or a clean tea towel, and let rise for about an hour or until it doubles in size. If you’re not making the pizzas until later, just put the bowl in the fridge to slow down the rising process.

I double this recipe and freeze ½ of it before the rising.

When you’re ready to make your individual pizzas – each person creating their own is the most fun – push the air out of the dough with the flat of your hands, cut the dough into ½ and roll out each portion with a rolling pin on a floured surface. (Dust the rolling pin with flour.) You want to stretch the dough and form something close to a circle in shape. If you like, you can channel the pros and toss the dough into the air to aerate and stretch it – just toss it above the counter top so accidents don’t result in starting all over.

Now take a cutting board or “pizza paddle” if you have one, and lightly cover that board with corn meal. That way the dough won’t stick when you put the toppings on it.

Thinly spread tomato sauce (I like to make my own, but you can find a wonderful variety of tomato/pasta sauces these days) on the dough, leaving about a ½-1 inch border without sauce. Then add your favourite toppings: olives, cheese – feta, parmesan, cheddar – onions, peppers, mushrooms, ham, sausage, chopped chard or spinach, roasted yam or parsnip chunks – so many choices! Try something new, just for you. It is always fun to see how people construct their own, and the variety makes for some good taste-testing and trading at the table.

Slide the pizza from the board/paddle to the pizza stone/baking sheet (also sprinkled with corn meal) and cook for about 15 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Let cool for about 10 minutes before slicing into wedges.

Buon appetito !

Gaza Tells Us Who We Are

November 7, 2024

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

NOV 04, 2024

I mean, the atrocities in Gaza have a couple million victims. If you add up the populations of the US, Europe, Canada and Australia, you’ve got around a billion people living in a dystopia whose collective conscience is so warped and twisted that they’d allow their governments to support a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world. A billion people who are so morally bankrupt that they find it tolerable for such a nightmare to be inflicted upon their fellow human beings right in front of them.

This has been especially pronounced during the heat of a US presidential race, with tens of millions of voters falling all over themselves to cognitively sweep Gaza under the carpet so they can throw their support behind one of the two mainstream candidates who’ve both pledged to support the Zionist state which is perpetrating this genocide. At best they see Israel’s crimes as an annoying side issue which the left keeps disrupting their Kamala parties about, and at worst they support Israel’s actions entirely.

What a pointless, meaningless, soulless way to live. What a betrayal of truth, and of our own humanity. How could anyone possibly find satisfaction in that kind of zombie-like existence? Mindlessly shuffling along to the beat of the status quo, devouring human flesh because it’s more comfortable than the cognitive dissonance which would come with divorcing the power-serving worldview you’ve been indoctrinated from birth into espousing.

I was listening to an interview with a doctor who worked in Gaza during the genocide and he discussed the time many months ago when the IDF forced the evacuation of a hospital and left four premature babies to die in their incubators after assuring the staff they’d be taken care of. Their tiny bodies were found decomposing weeks later after Israeli forces cleared out of the area.

How did that one incident, just by itself, not stop the world? How did it not stop us all in our tracks and force us to re-evaluate everything that led to this point? It wasn’t a secret that those four babies died; it was in the mainstream news. It was right there, right in front of us, and we did nothing.

Such atrocities have been happening on a daily basis for thirteen months now, and still nothing.

We’ve got to live like this. We’ve got to live in this genocidal dystopia, surrounded by shambling sleepwalkers covered in human blood. Our lives here in the west are far, far more comfortable than the lives of people in Gaza, but they are also far less truthful, and far less capable of nourishing the human spirit.

We marinate in lies and psychopathy, watch lies and psychopathy, eat drink sleep and breathe lies and psychopathy. Our minds are full of garbage and our hearts are full of shit, and we are wading around up to our ankles in the blood, sweat and tears of the global south. This festering sore of a civilization is the only soil in which the western-backed genocide in Gaza could take root.

The people in Gaza have to suffer the consequences of who we are and what we have become, but we have to live with who we are and what we have become. We’re killing their babies and leaving them to rot, but we’re the ones who have to live with the corpses of rotting babies in our souls.

One way or another the killing in Gaza will end one day. But the forces within us which gave rise to that butchery will live on long after the sounds of the drones and explosions have ceased.

We will have to live like that. We will have to live knowing that this is who we are.

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