This week’s archive radio show revisits January of 2021 when Joe Biden was transitioning into the White House — and I warned that since his cabinet and his advisory team was utterly dominated by war profiteers then our new president was likely to very quickly get us into another war…
Why am I always so prophetic? I really wish I was wrong more often. Anyway — Joe Biden represents the Warmonger’s apotheosis — so watch your asses and your pocketbooks…
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Regular Program:
Bonus 6:
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Note: This program is best listened to through high-quality headphones at a very high volume
*The News & Commentary section of this week’s show originally aired on January 1st, 2021
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Part 1:
Station ID / Disclaimer
00:00—00:16
TB Intro
Music: Focus
00:16—02:03
Housebroken Monsters
Music: Hanna-Barbera — Arthur Lyman
02:03—05:00
The Warmongers Apotheosis
Music: Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo — ROMZ Record Crew — Sam Spence — TriBeCaStan — Bassoon Brothers — Tod Dockstader — Hair Stylistics
This week’s archive radio show provides due credit (if nothing else) to Joe Biden, we ponder whether or not Crazy Horse was indeed crazy — and for the feature piece we follow the Shock Doctrine to its logical conclusion. Head explosions are imminent, so prepare properly. It’s time for the Thunderbolt!
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Regular Program:
Bonus 6:
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Note: This program is best listened to through high-quality headphones at a very high volume
*The News & Commentary section of this week’s show originally aired on February 5th, 2021
This week’s archive radio show cuts right to the cookie sheet and exposes the little known fact that the State of Israel has not only become the world’s leading expert in the field of violently oppressing civilian populations, but also upon how how to look good whilst doing so! Not only that, but Israeli ‘experts’ are traveling the world teaching oppressive governments how to violently oppress their own citizens! Including even our own local police departments!
Meet Palestine: The Laboratory of Oppression!
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Regular Program:
Bonus 6:
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Note: This program is best listened to at high volume over high-quality headphones
*The News & Commentary section of this week’s show originally aired on May 20th, 2016
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Part 1:
Disclaimer / Station ID
00:00-00:30
TB Intro
Music: Focus
00:30-02:30
Indecent Exposure
Music: RJD2 — Magnetik — Jeff Beck
02:30-11:06
Laboratory of Oppression Part 1
Music: Pink Floyd — The System — Dieter Zimmermann
A detailed description of all events is located after the News and Commentary section
To go directly to an event description just type the index entry above into a search box
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New Normal Not
231102
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Route #666 to Hel Discontinued
Hey, People!
It is my sad duty to report that any Thunderbolt listeners wishing to go to Hel will no longer be able to take bus #666 to get there. Polish officials changed the route number to #669 after complaints from local religious conservatives.
Perhaps the Blue Oyster Cult’s Hot Rails to Hell are still available?
I’ve heard you can also get there in a handbasket…
Slowing Down
For the first ten years I published this newsletter, I did not miss a week.
However, you may have noticed that this is the first newsletter I have published since last May.
For years I pointed out that I publish this newsletter largely because I couldn’t really not do it.
Well lately, I have been discovering that these days I can not only not do it, but that I am having a hard time summoning the energy to do it at all.
Almost from the beginning, I have questioned the effectiveness of what I am doing. Applying my own rules to my own work, if you are making waves then first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win.
However, before you can win you need to get through the ignore/laugh/attack phases. As far as I can tell, I have never been able to get past the ignore stage. I used to get 60 to 70 engagements per week on my Thunderbolt Fedbook page whereas these days I’m lucky to get 5 or 6 – but I suspect that is more due to changes in Fedbook’s algorithms rather than any conscious effort on their part to censor me over my content. The only time there has been a serious effort to censor me came, ironically, from the Left in the form of Olympia’s infamous cancel culture, and since that whole brou-ha-ha was over something that wasn’t even true to begin with then that doesn’t even really count. And one of many truly ironic aspects to that situation was the fact that they skipped the ignore me part and the laugh at me part and jumped right to the attack me part (they couldn’t refute the facts so they attempted to kill the messenger) and all of that attention ultimately led to a major controversy which led to a lot more people reading my article than would have otherwise. Had they simply ignored me rather than attacking every aspect of my personal life for over a year and a half then almost nothing probably would have happened as a result of that article.
I have always kept myself going knowing that you never know when or what your actions ultimately influence, and I figured that even the chance someone would be inspired by my work to go take on injustice and oppression in a serious manner was worth the work.
However, when it came the one metric that most people would consider to be the most important as far as effectiveness goes: In my last newsletter I came right out and made a plea for financial support – and I did not get a single response to that plea.
That fact was truly disheartening, not only because I could use the money, but because evidently there is no one out there who feels that the not inconsiderable amount of work I put into this project is worth $5 or $10 a month to them.
Anyway, if you want a more reliable alternative than I have been lately, I would recommend reading Caitlin Johnstone’s newsletters, as she not only writes as if hurling Thunderbolts, but she is actually both a better writer and more informed than I am – if not as funny.
One of numerous criticisms I have made of the Great Liberal Cancel Machine over the years is their propensity to convict people without a trial. I also remember warning the Me Too movement that the worst thing that could happen to their movement would be a high profile accusation that later proved to be untrue. The prevailing meme these days is that whenever a person of colour cries ‘racism’ or whenever a woman cries ‘sexual abuse’ then we should believe them. That is indeed a good rule of thumb, but as with all rules there are exceptions – and I would suggest that we should probably get some verification before we ruin someone’s life over it.
Anyway, Russel Brand was recently accused of sexually abusing several women. He has been cut off and demonetized on several social media platforms as a result, including You Tube.
I have absolutely no idea if Russel Brand is guilty of these accusations – and that is the point. I am especially wary when such allegations are leveled against one of the leading and most effective critics of both the corporate media and the Wall Street Death Machine. I would suggest that we should ask some serious questions when the accused is someone that a lot of very powerful people would love to see thrown under a bus. In a case such as this, I would suggest that it is especially imperative that we withhold judgment until there is some due process so we can be reasonably sure about what really happened.
So far this attack is coming solely from the same corporate media that Mr. Brand so effectively trashes on a regular basis. Brand vehemently denies the allegations – and there is no indication that any of the charges are being investigated by any law enforcement agency in either Britain or the US, where the offenses are supposed to have happened.
And then, lo and behold! The Grayzone revealed that You Tube’s financial censorship of Mr. Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister and Cancel Culture Warrior who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid pandemic. This minister’s husband also participated in a campaign of state cancelation as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division – and there is evidence that YouTube’s censorship of Mr. Brand was in fact driven directly by a British government decree.
Evidently, though, reporters are very selective in whose sexual malfeasance they report on. Everyone knows that here have been numerous allegations of inappropriate touching leveled against Joe Biden over the years, but did you know that Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, kept a diary that was later stolen from her at a drug rehab center and then sold to Project Veritas wherein Ms. Biden writes that her father was taking showers with her when she was 14 years old?
If Israel didn’t exist we would need to invent it in order to protect our interests in the area
-Senator Joe Biden
I cannot think of anything to say about the Palestinian situation that I have not already said way too many times for way too many years.
Israel is a brutal apartheid police state and it is conducting a genocide by every definition of both those terms.
I consider this to be not an opinion, but a simple fact backed by evidence that is quite in-your-face and quite overwhelming.
Since the Zionists, their apologists, and their agents cannot refute the aforementioned in-your-face overwhelming evidence, they instead simply ignore that evidence and start screaming at you that by criticizing Israel you are either an apologist for terrorists or you are an anti-Semite or both. Then they will dox you on the Internet, they will start sending you death threats, they will destroy your career, they will cancel your speaking tour, they will have all your social media profiles banned, and they will provide some serious funding to your opponent in the next election. Marjorie Taylor green wants to sanction Alexandria Ocasio Cortez because Ms. Cortez participated in a rally supporting Palestinian rights. Ms. Green wants to sanction Ms. Cortez for supporting a ‘terrorist organization’.
Germany has literally made it illegal to protest in favor of Palestinian rights. (Evidently Germany’s motto of ‘never again’ in reference to the Holocaust does not apply to Palestinians…)
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In 1948 the Israelis stole Palestine at gunpoint. They killed thousands of Palestinians in doing so and they displaced three-quarters of a million, meaning that they kicked them out of their homes and sent them packing into the streets as refugees with nothing more than what they could carry. Some of their grandchildren remain refugees to this day. The Israelis justified all this by pointing out that Israel was their ‘traditional homeland’. The problem with that is that the Romans kicked the Jews out of Palestine around 2,000 years ago, and while there has been a Jewish presence in the area since then, they have always represented a small minority.
And anyway, if we were to extend that logic, then we should also return the Western Hemisphere to the indigenous Americans since they still ruled parts of it as little as 130 years ago.
The Zionists also justify their theft by pointing out that some Western white imperialists passed a resolution saying that it was perfectly legal for the Israelis to go steal Palestine from the Palestinians.
Some might question Britain’s right to give somebody else’s country to a third party, and as for being ‘legal’, I would point out that the Jewish Holocaust was also perfectly ‘legal’ under German law at the time.
As for ‘terrorism’, if you define terrorism as targeting innocent civilians for political purpose, then the United States is itself the largest and most active ‘terrorist’ organization on the planet. Targeting civilians ALWAYS sucks, full-stop, no exceptions.
Everything else being equal, though, and since this particular fight is so unequal, I tend to be somewhat less judgmental about such things when considering the oppressed than I am when considering the oppressor. And besides, the Palestinians have tried non-violent methods of protest many times in the past, and every time the Israelis have declared their non-violent protests to be illegal and started killing them.
As for ‘anti-Semitism’, well, I can’t speak for the BDS movement as a whole, but I do know that 10 years ago, when I briefly worked with the Olympia chapter of BDS, over half of the membership of that chapter were themselves Jewish.
Are the Zionists accusing my friends of being anti-Semitic Jews or something?
As for me personally, I always stand with the oppressed and I always stand against the oppressor. I am 100% consistent in that. Race, creed, religion, or national origin has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Had I been around in the 1930s, I can absolutely guarantee you I would have been right up in Adolf Hitler’s grill about his treatment of the Jewish people.
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After the Holocaust I am pretty sure that no one except hard core anti-Semites had any kind of problem with creating a safe space for Jews.
Many, though, wondered why they had to steal somebody else’s country to achieve that goal.
Many may also wonder how the victims of such an atrocious attempted genocide as that perpetrated by the Nazis could now be attempting to perpetrate an atrocious genocide of their own.
The UN regularly votes to condemn various Israeli war crimes, and the votes are often everyone in the world vs. the United States and Israel with an occasional ‘no’ vote from some South Pacific Island nation that wants to kiss America’s ass for whatever reason.
However, since the United States is on the Security Council then they can unilaterally kill any such resolution.
The rule is that Hamas is a terrorist organization because they kill civilians while Israel is allowed to mass-slaughter civilians with barely any notice. The rule is that Israel has the ‘right to defend themselves’ whilst the Palestinians do not have that right. In the United States and Europe there is non-stop over-the-top condemnation of Hamas’s recent invasion of Israel. Without exception the talking heads of the Media Machine point out with breathless outrage that Hamas murdered entire families. They kidnapped innocent civilians and took them hostage. They raided a music festival and killed lots of people there.
As always with the Israelis, there were lies galore. Hamas was raping Israeli women – though not a single actual report of rape has been made by anyone. Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American President Joe Biden claimed to have seen photos of numerous decapitated Israeli babies – a claim that Biden’s aids were embarrassingly forced to retract as there were no such photos, and in fact there has not been a single actual documented incidence of Hamas intentionally killing any Israeli children. Then, Netanyahu claimed to have photos of Hamas lining Israelis up next to a trench and then machine-gunning them a la Nazi tactic but again no documentation of such an incident has turned up anywhere.
Yes, these were all proven to be lies – but I can guarantee you that for years to come Hamas will regularly be accused of being rapists, of decapitating babies, and machine-gunning unarmed civilians – so the lies still did their job.
In one positive note, for some reason NPR has suddenly become Palestinian friendly. While they still pump out the propaganda, they are airing a whole bunch of stories about the suffering of the Palestinians. There are also huge demonstrations for Palestinian rights happening all over the world, often in contravention to local laws.
Other than NPR, though, I have not heard any of the usual suspects on the Media Machine even mention the fact that the Israelis have been murdering Palestinian children by the thousands for almost 80 years now. They have killed over 2,000 children just in the last couple of weeks in response to the Hamas attack along with the promise of many more to come.
The Israelis call their kidnappings ‘detention’, but since they take people and lock them up for years without even charging them much less providing a trial, then that is the same thing as kidnapping.
The Israelis regularly bomb schools, they bomb mosques, they bomb hospitals, they bomb civilian apartment buildings, and they even bomb Red Cross aid stations. Israeli snipers constantly target journalists. Every single one of those acts are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The recent bombing of a hospital in Gaza got a lot of press because it killed hundreds of civilians who were sheltering there. At first, the Israelis claimed that they bombed the hospital because Hamas had set up a headquarters inside. When that went over like a lead balloon though, the Israelis next blamed Islamic militants, saying that one of their missiles had misfired and struck the hospital.
Israel claims that Gaza is autonomous. This is in spite of the fact that the Gazans do not control their economy, they do not control their borders, they do not control their airspace, and they do not control their coastline. The only things that make it into Gaza from the outside are the things the Israelis allow in. The Israelis calculate exactly how many calories the Gazans need to prevent starvation and that is exactly the amount of food they allow into Gaza.
This is genocide.
Hamas claims that while some Israeli civilians were indeed killed in this latest violence, they were not targeting civilians. Indeed, way over half of the Israeli casualties were soldiers, police, or security guards of one kind or another. The Israelis, on the other hand, have been justly criticized for killing numerous civilians whilst allegedly targeting Hamas operatives.
However, we must give some credit to the Israelis in that they seem bipartisan in this tactic since credible reports are emerging that the Israeli defense forces are also knowingly killing large numbers of Israeli civilians whilst targeting Hamas operatives. One Israeli woman reported that, quote: “They [Hamas] did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.” The Hamas operatives were, in fact, wondering where the Israeli defense forces were because that was who they had come to fight, and in fact they had an Israeli woman call the IDF and report the Hamas presence on their kibbutz so defense forces would show up and Hamas could take them on. The IDF responded by showing up with tanks and shelling the kibbutz, killing a lot of Israeli civilians along with Hamas fighters.
A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control even though that base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.
Israeli officials regularly refer to Palestinians as ‘animals’. There are prominent cries from prominent Israeli officials to “level Gaza to the ground”.
That is the language of genocide.
The equivalency to that would be if the Sinaloa drug cartel crossed the American border to kill a bunch of Americans and then the Americans responded by bombing the crap out of the civilian population of Sinaloa before leveling the city to the ground.
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Like I said, I cannot think of anything to say about the Palestinian situation that I have not already said way too many times for way too many years. I am hoping that this explosion might finally inspire people to finally actually do something about resolving this insane situation – but, I’m afraid that the Israelis are going to use this as an excuse to accomplish their ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem and completely depopulate Gaza of all Palestinians.
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That is genocide.
New Normal Not
One of a tsunami of ills that beset our country is the fact that Americans have lost all faith in our national institutions.
This loss of faith is well earned.
Pretty much every member of Congress is owned either by a pharmaceutical industry that makes hundreds of billions whenever we experience a health crisis, and/or by energy companies that make hundreds of billions whenever we experience an energy crisis, and/or by an arms industry that makes hundreds of billions whenever we go to war. Donald Trump did not win the 2016 election so much as the Democrats lost it by shoving a candidate down our throats that nobody wanted. The one message the American voters were sending loud and clear during that election was that business as usual was no longer an option – yet the Democrats literally stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders by using every dirty trick and sleazy tactic in the book so they could impose upon us the very definition of business-as-usual. While the pre-election polls showed Mrs. Clinton beating Donald Trump – those same polls showed Bernie Sanders using Donald Trump as a doormat and winning in a landslide.
Yes, Donald Trump is a pathological liar, he spins and twists and he regularly unleashes avalanches a gas-lit bullshit – but the secret of his success is that his entire edifice of bullshit is built upon foundations of actual truth. The media is indeed the lap dog of the elites. The FBI is indeed a political hit squad. The Democratic Party is indeed corrupt to its core and Hillary Clinton should indeed spend the rest of her life in prison. Large portions of the American public know all of these things, and thus when they heard Donald Trump saying all of those things they were utterly elated!
I just find myself alarmed and saddened by the fact that so many Americans don’t even seem to know what a demagogue is, much less how to identify one.
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Other than climate change, most of our other problems would be easy to fix if only the powers that shouldn’t be decided to fix them. The US government recently proved they could reduce child poverty by 30%, for example, with the simple expedient of a child tax credit.
Oh, well. Sure was nice while it lasted. Sorry, kids.
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And meanwhile liberals want to pass a bunch of feel-good gun control laws that will punish mostly law-abiding people whilst doing almost nothing to curb violence in our culture.
Russia has very strict and strictly enforced gun control laws, yet they have a murder rate roughly the same as ours. Canada and Switzerland on the other hand, have higher per capita rates of gun ownership than we do here in the United States yet their violent crime rates are nearly non-existent.
I, for one, most certainly do not want to live in a country where the only people with guns are the cops and the criminals – both of whom I consider to be highly dangerous and untrustworthy enemies. If I ever need to defend my loved ones from marauding gangs of whoever – be they cops or criminals (there often is no difference) – I not only would love to have an AK-47 with an extended clip, but I wouldn’t at all mind having a rocket launcher and a flame thrower…
Guns are not the problem. People are the problem.
Do you want to tackle violence in our culture? To my way of thinking, the base root cause of all this violence is the fact that we take a huge percentage of our youth and then we put them through a spiritual and emotional meat grinder.
Then we blame them when they come out of that process all ground up.
There is more and more research coming out about the predictable and even ‘normal’ if highly problematic human reactions to trauma in general and to childhood trauma in particular. However, there are proven ways to deal with the problematic aspects of childhood trauma that often work. A huge percentage of these kids are completely cured through the simple expedient of exercise and a healthy diet, for instance.
Instead we dehumanize and demonize them and send them to prison for the rest of their lives even though prisons represent a very expensive way to make a problem even worse than it already was since the dehumanization and degradation that are typical of the prison experience simply reinforces all of the other very bad things that those kids already thought about the world to begin with.
Did you know that virtually everyone in prison for a violent assaultive type crime were themselves emotionally and/or physically and/or sexually abused as children – often all three?
I feel this fact is foundational to the central problem facing our society yet I’ll bet you didn’t even know that fact. Why do you think that is? Could it possibly be that capitalism requires a large underclass of dehumanized and demonized slaves in order to function properly?
Generally, these studies show that hurt people hurt other people who hurt other people, and so forth. Trauma becomes generational and is literally passed from father to son – and if it is not passed from father to son then often it is passed from foster father to foster son since those who do not suffer such atrocities at the hands of their own families – as well as those who do suffer such atrocities at the hands of their own families – often then suffer such atrocities at the hands of the State. Child welfare bureaucracies are often corrupt little fiefdoms where the ‘adults’ in the room have near dictatorial power over the lives of the often hapless people involved with child seizure cases and their rulings are often steeped in ignorance and prejudice. There are truly scandalous and heinous things going on throughout the child welfare systems of nearly if not every state in the union – yet again, hardly anyone knows these facts much less doing anything about them.
Why is that?
Then, if foster children subsequently start showing any of the classic symptoms of childhood trauma they are immediately put on drugs and then kept on those drugs for the remainder of their term in the foster care system.
This is standard practice throughout the United States.
Did you know that? I’ll bet you didn’t.
Children are raped beaten and abused at astonishing rates within foster care systems, judges and social workers within the system are often punitive and/or corrupt, they are classist and racist and other very bad things yet no one even seems to pay much attention, probably because most of the victims are, of course, low-income people of colour.
Then, when they ‘age out’ at 18 years these foster kids are usually tossed out onto the streets with no money, no job, no skills, no home – and in fact about the only thing they do have is a government-induced drug habit that the government is suddenly no longer paying for.
What could go wrong?
I personally consider these to be the foundational problems underlying nearly all of our other problems concerning violence in our culture – yet hardly anyone even knows these facts.
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As for the ‘homelessness crisis’, it would cost an estimated $20 billion to house every homeless person in the United States.
Again, you could probably find $20 billion in the Pentagon’s couch cushions. $20 billion is about the same amount of money Americans spend on the electricity to power idle appliances that have not been unplugged.
And the crazy thing is we know how to fix this. Study after study has demonstrated that the cheapest and the most effective way to end homelessness is to provide homes to homeless people. That is also the most humane way to deal with the crisis, but we can ignore that since morals and ethics has little to do with public policy.
While there are lots of exceptions to all the rules, the unhoused population can be divided roughly into two groups: Those who have simply fallen through a financial crack, and the chronically unhoused who most often have some sort of disability, be it physical disability, mental illness, drug addiction, or most often a combination of all three. The best solution for the former group is to simply provide subsidized housing until they can get back on their feet. The best solution for the latter group is to provide supportive housing. Yes, supportive housing is very expensive. That could lead us to a philosophical discussion over what a human life is worth, but we don’t need to get into any irrelevant moral or ethical debates here because the truly relevant fact is that as expensive as it is, providing supportive housing is still significantly cheaper than simply leaving people out on the streets.
I will repeat that: Providing supportive housing is significantly cheaper than simply leaving people out on the streets. When left on the streets they are constantly taking up police time and being arrested and then they are given fines they will never be able to pay so they are subsequently arrested for not paying fines and given further fines and between emergency room visits caused by the many physical hazards to health experienced by people living on the streets it is very expensive to leave people on the streets and since it is literally cheaper to provide supportive housing – then WTF? All it would take to solve this problem is some legislation from the federal government along with some pocket change to fund it.
Instead, they continue cutting social programs so they can continue dumping trillions into the black hole of the Pentagon budget where it disappears no one knows where except to unleash hell on earth upon millions of innocent people.
Andrea Ocasio Cortez was the only Democrat in the House who voted against continuing to flush nearly a trillion dollars a year into the black hole of the Pentagon, the biggest polluter on the planet – and yet even there Ms. Cortez said that she voted against it not because the budget was obscene but because there was some immigration stuff in the bill that she didn’t like.
Rashida Tlaib voted “present”. I could not find an explanation for her vote.
Then, when Congress came to their latest agreement to avoid a government shutdown, Ocasio Cortez’s central complaint was that the agreement did not fund America’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
It sure doesn’t take long for them to sell out, does it?
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But then, we have a problem that thus far seems intractable, and it is a problem that pretty much makes all the other problems moot since it seems on track to make large swaths of our planet – if not the entire planet – uninhabitable for humans.
As the Democrats spend all their time chasing ghosts and as the Republicans continue committing slow suicide, we have shattered nearly every high-temperature record all over the planet. We have hurricanes in Southern California, wildfires in the Arctic tundra, forest fires in the rain forests, and the Caribbean Sea has been converted into a giganormous hot tub with water temperatures reaching 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Our manufactured global oven is heating up even faster than the most ominous predictions foresaw – yet everyone is engaged in fights to the death over pure bullshit.
I debated a stranger upon this subject recently, and he pointed out that lots of different things bring climate change. That is indeed true. There are irregularities in the Earth’s tilt over time, and there are irregularities in the Earth’s orbit around the sun over time, and both those things can cause serious climate change. Volcanic eruptions can wreak havoc upon the climate which make our human endeavours seem puny in comparison – and while the disruptions caused by volcanic eruptions often go away in a year or two, that is not always the case. There was a massive eruption in what is now Siberia 250 million years ago that lasted non-stop for two-million years, causing a long-term climate catastrophe that very likely triggered the most devastating mass-extinction event in Earth’s history; the Permian Extinction Event.
Asteroid impacts also can bring mass-extinction events due to climate change – in this case that climate change consisting of the sudden introduction of fire raining down from the sky all over the planet.
We are not even the first living organism to cause a mass-extinction event due to our activity: Back about 2½ billion years ago, when all life still consisted of single-celled organisms, a bacteria figured out how to photosynthesize, i.e. how to power itself by consuming sunlight directly. However, this process produced oxygen as a waste product and oxygen was deadly poison to all those other bacteria that were adapted to an oxygen-less environment. Since photosynthesis was a highly efficient way to synthesize energy, these bacteria began reproducing like mad and thus began pumping oxygen into the atmosphere like mad thus bringing about the very first mass-extinction of species.
Basically, the photosynthesizing bacteria killed off all their competition by employing chemical warfare. This is now called the ‘Great Oxidation Event’.
However, here is the thing about CO2’s role in all this: If you make a graph of the average temperature of the planet over time and if you then superimpose that upon a graph of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over time, you will find that they almost exactly correspond to each other. This is because even when the trigger for climate change is something else, CO2 exacerbates whatever is already happening. As the planet warms, this causes more CO2 to evaporate into the atmosphere which makes the planet warmer which causes more CO2 to evaporate into the atmosphere which makes the planet even warmer and so forth. Equally, when something comes along to cool the planet down, this causes the Earth to absorb more CO2 which causes the planet to cool even more which causes the Earth to absorb more CO2 which causes the planet to cool even more and so forth.
There is one unique attribute to what is happening now in that this will be the first time a major climate change event has been caused by a biological species pumping CO2 directly into the atmosphere. We’re conducting an experiment.
In an example of humanity’s profound hubris, the elites think they can go hide in the survival bunkers that they are building all over the planet for a few years and then come back out after everyone else has died and everything has settled down.
In an example of humanity’s profound hubris, I just heard an NPR reporter doing a story about how scientists are freezing coral so they can be reestablished, quote, “After we deal with climate change“…
The problem with these suppositions is that once the planet’s climate turns hostile to life as we know it, it tends to stay that way for thousands if not tens of thousands of years.
I don’t know how to put this gently, but it’s probably way too late to “deal with climate change”. Unless they come up with some way to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, a whole bunch of very seriously bad things are already baked into the cake far into the foreseeable future no matter what we do. All this climactic chaos is not the “new normal”, these are merely the opening steps in an existential crisis that is not only going to get worse every year for possibly thousands of years to come, but these are processes that are going to get worse at an exponentially growing rate for as far into the foreseeable future as it is possible to foresee.
In other words, everything is going to get much worse before it gets even worse still and it’s not going to get any better for countless generations – that is if we survive the upcoming catastrophe at all, which is not guaranteed.
I wish you and all of your loved ones good luck.
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It’s time to get to work…
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The Cascadia Action Alert
November, 2023
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1) Oly Ecosystems Give Local 2023 Campaign
This message came from Daniel:
Join Us for Give Local 2023Early Giving Starts October 30th Through November 5th
Give Local 2023 starts tomorrow with early giving! Give Local is a regional celebration of generosity hosted by the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound. Since its inception in 2017, Give Local has helped raise over $2.9 million for 97+ different nonprofits across Thurston, Mason, and Lewis Counties. Early Giving 2023 kicks off on October 30th – November 5th.Give Local 2023 runs November 6th – 17th. Thanks to the generosity of the Dawkins Charitable Trust, each donation made during Give Local receives a proportional match from the $100,000 Bonus Fund.
Early Giving for Give Local begins October 30th! That’s tomorrow! Early giving is an opportunity for loyal donors, board members, volunteers, and others who care deeply about our work to help jumpstart our Give Local campaign. Your donations go toward making public access at Cooper Crest safer by enabling us to install stairs down the steepest slopes at the site! Details about our 2023 Give Local campaign can be found at our Give Local site. In brief, after a busy 14 months of erosion control, clearing, creating gravel paths, and planting some 20,000 native plants and shrubs, we are ready for Phase 3: installing amenities to make the site safer and more accessible for the public. Of particular importance is to build a wooden staircase on the steep slopes of the preserve. While no injuries have been reported, we have observed a few people slipping while walking down the steep gravel path, especially in wet weather. There is a lot of community interest in this restoration project, and we want people to visit often and safely! Sturdy and aesthetically pleasing, each of the 63 stairs will be constructed using wooden timbers which are partially embedded in the ground and secured with rebar stakes. The tread area behind each timber will be backfilled with gravel to create a level and uniform non-slip surface, and the sides will be dressed in rocks. It is an important undertaking which will require lots of hands-on work and oversight. Your donations will directly support this project.
Don’t want to give through give local? Find out other ways that you can donate to our mission:
Our last Spinal Column Newsletter came out mid-summer; we are eager to share with you what we’ve been up to since then. It is thanks to the many ways you show up and support Backbone Campaign that all this is possible – so we want to start by saying THANK YOU for believing in and supporting this unique nonprofit. From volunteering to donating to taking action with us in the streets, we are grateful for our Backbone Family.
We must acknowledge the grief we feel, first for the shooting of our Community Supported Organizer Jacob Johns, and second for the escalating violence and war crimes in Israel – Palestine.
Jacob was in New Mexico at a prayer ceremony celebrating the postponement of the resurrection of a monument to Juan de Oñate. He was shot at point blank range and sustained several serious wounds. He continues his recovery in the hospital but is eager to get back to work. (He has been organizing an indigenous collective to attend COP28 in Dubai). Info about the incident and his work is HERE.
Action is an antidote to despair. We are mobilizing our Solidarity Brigades, a network of artful activists and light projectionists to amplify calls for a Ceasefire NOW! in Gaza. Bill posted the following to social media with images of a projection that greeted commuters in downtown Seattle early Monday morning: “Words are not nearly enough to respond to the horrors of escalating violence, war crimes and collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and the further traumatization of people who have suffered too much for too long. The US was wrong to respond the way we did after 9-11. The US squandered the sympathies of the WORLD when we lashed out, recruiting more enemies with our asymmetric violence. Israel, PLEASE STOP. Please task your imagination to find another way toward something new, something just, something beautiful.”
We are mobilizing our light projectors across the US to light up buildings with the Ceasefire NOW! message to get the attention of news media and politicians, to build moral courage for a just peace without apartheid and for an end to the genocidal terror, killing and further mutual-traumatization of generations.
Fighting to Restore Salmon, Orca and Free-Flowing Waters
Backbone’s work toward restoring a free-flowing and un-dammed Lower Snake River continues. We organized actions in communities across the Northwest, deploying banners on overpasses, ferry terminals and other key locations, to call for dam breaching. Earlier this month, we had banners in several Northwest communities, in support of Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Oct 9) and Orca Recovery Day (Oct 14). Thank you to our new team member, Lucy, for organizing this action!
As part of that day of action, youth at Vashon Green School held banners and handmade signs, and distributed cards to over 100 commuters on Vashon Island, urging them to call policymakers to insist on breaching the Lower Snake River dams. These youth are committed to making a call every day. Will you join them?
At the end of September, Team Backbone partnered with Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment to support a flotilla on the Lower Snake River. Twelve Backbone kayaktivists and artful activists made the long trip to help our allies safely deploy land and on-water banners. The action was part of the All Our Relations Journey. We are grateful especially to Julian and Maria (at Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment) for all their work with organizing.
We are so proud of our incredible team. Thank you to Dana, Mary, Jeff, Rob, Karen, Kathy, Thomas, Alison, Steve, and Mike for all the ways you pitched in, as well as to Sue, Sheila, Laura, Lynn, Steve, and Mary for helping construct the 100 foot floating banner. We hope to get that enormous banner out on the water again soon, for another flotilla. We must keep up the pressure on our policymakers. To see more beautiful flotilla pictures by Jeff Dunnicliff, check out our Flickr Album.
Trains Can Save Salmon
As you know, at Backbone it’s important that we not only stand up and say No to wrongs, but that we also offer solutions. Throughout our 20 years, Backbone’s motto has been, Our “No” is only as powerful as our “Yes” is compelling. In the last two years we’ve been focused on proposing a solution to the transportation issue posed by dam breaching. We have demonstrated how to get wheat off the river barges and onto trains in order for wild salmon to thrive.
Amy and Bill shared the preliminary work about our Rural Rail Renaissance proposal at the recent Trout Unlimited conference in Spokane where anglers and conservationists from around the country share our passion for allowing wild salmon, a manifestation of nature’s abundance, to feed humans, orcas, and all that depend of them.
In early September, Solutionary Rail convened a technical retreat in Pullman, WA to refine our transportation proposal and listen to stakeholders from regional port authorities and wheat co-ops. A rail planner, wheat farmer, rail bridge engineer, locomotive engineer, shortline railroad owner, LSR expert, and others then put their heads together. Since then, a great deal of work has been done. A special thank you to rail expert Tom White for his skilled analysis and renderings. The outcome is a simpler path forward for achieving the critical transportation goals. We are calling it the Rosalia to Pasco Shortline Access Rail Corridor.
This Monday, Tom, Bill and many of the participants in the Pullman retreat met with administrators at the Port of Pasco to share this proposal and discuss the central role the Port of Pasco could play. The following day they met with other stakeholders and explored the route, including a fascinating walk through a 1000′ tunnel.
We will continue to reach out and advance a plan that allows both farmers and salmon to thrive. If you want to help build the Rural Rail Renaissance in SE Washington, here are some ideas. (Start with reviewing the Rosalia to Pasco Shortline Access Rail Corridor slidedeck.)
How to Take Action…
In Washington State or in the great Palouse region:
Contact your Washington State Legislators, Governor Inslee, and WSDOT to ask that steps be taken immediately to make the Rosalia to Pasco Shortline Access Rail Corridor a reality. Much work needs to be done, and we must not wait for 2026 when Washington State’s Transportation Replacement Study is finally due. And make sure candidates for Governor know about and support this work.
Write a Letter to the Editor or OpEd in support of a Rural Rail Renaissance in SE WA through building out the Rosalia to Pasco Shortline Access Corridor.
Want to volunteer to help with this work? Contact us at info@solutionaryrail,.org and let us know the ways you are interested in helping out.
Lastly, if you’re in the area next week, we’d love to see you at the upcoming Rise Up in NW in Unity convening by the Nez Perce Tribe, November 1-2 at Tulalip Resort, in Everett, WA. Bill will be there to speak on the Trains Can Save Salmon Plan, and there is a robust agenda.
Earlier this summer, Backbone revamped our Vulture props and showed up at the Stop Raiding our Medicare Rally, on Medicare’s anniversary, at the Federal Building in Seattle. The event was in collaboration with health care advocacy organizations, including Physicians for a National Health Program – Washington State.
n September, one of our projectionists in the midwest projected outside the Republican debate in Wisconsin, to support parents standing up to MAGA hate.
Our friend Carl and the crew from the Block Corporate Salmon campaign traveled to Farm Aid with Backbone props to protest genetically engineered salmon and to call for native-led solutions to the salmon crisis. (Carl Wassilie is a Backbone Campaign Community Supported Organizer. You can learn more about his good work HERE.)
And Backbone collaborated with organizations like Code Pink, Move to Amend, and others to deploy several images in the NYC Climate march, where 75k people took to the streets to call for a Climate Emergency Declaration, the end to fossil fuels, and a healthy planet. Code Pink deployed our inflatable prop to expose the elephant in the room – the US Military, the #1 climate emissions polluter. “As the U.N. holds a climate summit, we’re exposing the elephant in the room – the Pentagon’s pollution.”
Backbone’s Instagram page has been getting a serious upgrade, thanks to Lucy. If you’re on that platform, please follow our page and like/share our posts and stories!
Solutionary Rail Update
In addition to focusing on our Trains Can Save Salmon campaign above, Solutionary Rail has been involved in some exciting work. After our Spring webinar that brought together environmental justice and labor leaders to discuss rail in the public interest, several of those same leaders were invited to testify before the Congressional Committee on Environment and Public Works this summer. Bill Moyer, Backbone ED and Solutionary Rail Lead, was invited to join the meeting, chaired by Senator Ed Markey.
Since then, we’ve been in communication with Senator Markey’s office, providing information on rail electrification, the urgency of electrifying railyards and switcher locomotives, and issues around rail in the public interest. We are beginning to plan a Rail in the Public Interest Symposium, in early 2024 in DC. Stay tuned for more info.
In other SR News, we organized a petition to Secretary Buttigieg and FRA Administrator Amit Bose, calling on them to deny the grant for the Washington State Bullet Train Boondoggle and to urge WSDOT to Implement the Existing Amtrak Plan for 110mph trains & hourly service on Amtrak Cascades. 15 allied organizations and over 300 people signed the petition, which we sent to Buttigieg and Bose, as well as to the NW Congressional delegation. If you haven’t yet added your name, we hope you will, so we can continue fighting for common sense regional rail, NOT boondoggle projects that will take 25+ years to build, a timeline that lacks urgency and will not make an impact on the climate crisis.
Wrap Up
A variety of regional work continues – from building a 2nd giant inflatable salmon, to block printing workshops in our warehouse, to working with rail advocates for sensible rail in Washington State. Across the US projections are taking place at key locations, calling for Ceasefire Now. Thank you for all the ways you support this work; we are coming up on 20 years of Backbone creative actions and solutionary ideas. We couldn’t do this without you!
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