End of an era, especially for Gen X and beyond.
2025-12-31
2025: End Of Year Thoughts.
Well, if I had any qualms about what 2025 would be like, they went out the door fairly fast.
This was one year I wasn't ready for.
Perhaps ironically, it drove me to start this post earlier than normal.
However rather than doing things as I usually do, I'm going to approach this in different way. Just write out a few thoughts and leave it at that.
If I had to choose a word that best described 2025 for me - it's LOSS.
Lots of things and people came and went in 2025.
Loss of famous musicians. It's weird to think that bands like Black Sabbath and KISS will never ever be now. I guess that's a part of life, but even then it's hard to fathom.
In many ways for me however, it all starts at work. The loss of so many friends and colleagues over the course of several months, hit me really hard.
This isn't to say or suggest that I worship either the people I work with or my employer. But aside from family, it's the longest I've ever been in one place. So when you get to know a lot of people over a fairly long period of time, and many of the people exit - it can really do a number on you.
Getting up and going to work (that's a whole other story) isn't the same.
Walking through the front door and sitting at a desk isn't the same.
Focusing on your job and missing critical people who help you in your job isn't the same.
In so many ways I've known that a job is a job, and to an employer, that's all one is. But due to all the layoffs, I really feel it more. And based on the reasons for hit happening, I know that it's really only a matter of time before it happens to me as well.
Along with this, came an apparent loss of respect. By this I mean that I finally know now that I'm truly not very highly regarded or respected by anyone at work - rather I'm only tolerated because of the group I'm in, and that this role wasn't one worth considered transitioning over to a service provider. This is a reminder to me (like it or not) that I have to come to terms with the idea that I really need to make the transition out. There are really only three possibilities -
- Transition to a new role internally
- Transition to a new role externally
- Transition to a new vocation completely
Yeah, good luck on any of those in this environment of endless job losses.We'll see where that goes.
Then there's the loss of people around the world.
The ongoing genocide of brown people largely by white people (i.e.Israel's genocide crimes against the Palestinians) is a reminder to me to that we as a species are heading down a path with no return. If we collectively cannot stop one group of people from destroying a whole other group of people (and recognize that the underlying system that allows this - neo-liberal US Crapitalism -is the source of many other ills in the world, including colonialism, imperialism, fascism, etc) - then how to we stand any chance of stopping the largest threat to all of us - climate change?
I did make some progress music-wise.
Actually completed writing 10 new songs this year. I wrote an additional few extra songs, with many more ideas (chord progressions, riffs, lyrics, melodies) lined up. The thing is, this all came at a loss - I HAD to focus on this because I lost my main equipment for writing and arranging. And to make things worse, the replacements for them won't be arriving any time soon.
One good thing I did get out of all this, was I was finally able to finalize on a way or recording that actually will meet my basic goals.
It's funny how losing a critical piece of technology actually forced me to adapt and use older and less pristine equipment; such that I was able to be both creative and productive.
Lastly, there has been the loss of trust.
It took me long enough to realize that there are some people in my life that are consciously and actively looking to sabotage my goals and wishes - by any means necessary. Often times it comes in the form of sowing doubt in me, or simply telling me what I want to do is a waste of time. In other cases, it's about stony silence and lack of engagement.
The discovery of all this has been painful for me in many ways. It's a tough thing to realize that I'm regarded and treated as nothing more than a living paycheck; who gets up early to avoid traffic, work early and late and weekends (the latter of which I think, was one of the reason I am still employed), only to hand all that over in a paycheck to be spent into nothingness with no care in the world. And then to be otherwise marginalized, or simply not taken into consideration. It's even worse when one's ideas and thoughts and wishes are dismissed, derailed, de-emphasized, or simply ignored altogether.
But ... what I have learned throughout all this is ... that none of this will sidetrack me on what I want to do - why?
- My happiness if something I can achieve - I don't need to find that elsewhere. And I certainly don't need to find it in others.
- Don't take things personally and emotionally from others - even if (and especially even if) that's how it's intended.
All that bullshit and drams is just that - bullshit and drama designed to distract and deflect and prolong and project others' and their unhappiness and inadequacies onto me. And that it truly is up to me to move forward. In this regard, the seeds of that plan are slowing being planted now. Now it's time to be patient, stay focused on delivering on the day-to-day things, and being polite and professional.
When those seeds begin to sprout, it's up to me to nurture them,and make it grow. None of what these people do will hold me back from my happiness. And now that I know who and what they are - I won't let them.
Prologue
Well I said I'd do something different, and here it is. This whole year, loss has been a theme; and with that comes sadness. I think of sadness as our way of coping with loss, as a means of finding a way forward on our own. I spent a lot of time on the road and by myself. One positive output of this, was listening to lots of different kinds of music. This one particular song really touched me, because it contains many elements of the way I'm looking to make music in the future. But as well, emotionally, the tone, the notes, the scale, the instruments (heck the basic chord progression) really helped me cope and continues to do so.
So I'm posting it here - perhaps if you are experiencing loss, it can do for you what it has for me.
2025-12-29
For Western societies - standing up for women's rights evidently doesn't mean if they are not Judeo-Christian, nor apparently white.
Wonder how the metoo crowd responds to this -
IOF escalates abuse against Palestinian women prisoners in Damon
These assaults form part of a broader deterioration in detention conditions, which prisoners say continue to worsen.
Quote of the day - 12-29-2025.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud
The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real-time, broadcast to every handheld screen on earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians endure a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralyzed.
If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitise this criminal discourse.
The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly championed the “encouragement of migration” and demanded that “not an ounce of humanitarian aid” reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the starvation of two million people could be “just and moral” in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the refrain was the same: “erase Gaza,” “leave no one there.” When military leaders refer to an entire population as “human animals,” they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.
This was preceded by the hermetic siege — a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of ‘security,’ always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world’s ‘largest open-air prison‘. Whether they utilised armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’ whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.
2025-12-28
Hmm ... it never dawned on me that these two could be related.
Who the fuck knew?
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/understanding-the-relationship-between-zionism-and-fascism/
For many, it was – and continues to be – unthinkable that Zionists could be fascists because of the centrality of antisemitism to fascism in Europe. However, Zionist fascists, like Abba Ahimeir, an admirer of the authoritarian philosopher Oswald Spengler, believed that fascism had no inherent connection to antisemitism, and that therefore Zionists could be fascists. However, more consistent with the Black radical approach is that the European Zionists – Christian but also Jewish – were in fact antisemites, in addition to being racists. Theodor Herzl famously declared antisemites Zionism’s ‘most dependable friends’ and opposed Jewish immigration, arguing they carried ‘the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.’ In 1897 he depicted the anti-Zionist caricature, ‘Mauschel’, ‘a distorted, deformed and shabby fellow’ who he did not see as belonging to the same race as the Jewish Zionist who must be freed from association with Mauschel.
It is well-known additionally that Zionists actively thwarted the saving of European Jews from the Nazis. Ralph Schoenman documents that ‘From 1933 to 1935, the WZO turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates’ because they were seen as of little use to the requirements of the Zionist colony.
Hey T-Mobile ...
... stop making such male-hate ads.
It's bad enough you have those two losers from that loser TV show on, being idiots.
But as someone who's forced to use your service, your ads make me look for a better opportunity.
Which I'll jump on, the moment arrives.
2025-12-27
Can't save ourselves from the worst of our behaviors.
Bullying. Amazing how the loudest and so-called most powerful seem to always be the ones doing the bullying.
US continues pursuit and seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers amid condemnation at UN Security Council
Tensions continue to rise in the Caribbean. The United States continues to confiscate and pursue Venezuelan oil tankers, while Caracas denounces what it considers an “act of international piracy” at the UN.
Trump’s Strike on Nigeria: Joint with Muslim President, Unconstitutional, Useless Posturing for Evangelicals
2025-12-26
10000 bodies found by one excavator.
Repeat that to anyone who still think the State of Israel isn't committing genocide.
And show them this -> https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/one-excavator-10000-bodies-a-sea-of-rubble-inside-gazas-effort-to-retrieve-and-bury-its-dead/
2025-12-25
Another 12-25-2025 of concentration camp misery and horror for Palestinians.
This is why US Crapitalism must end - because as long as things like this continue, our collective existence as we know it - will end someday.
I did not understand I grew up in a concentration camp until I left Gaza
Growing up in Gaza, I didn't realize that the
siege I was living under was unique or that others didn't face a
constant threat of death. It was only after I left that I understood I
had grown up in a concentration camp, and that it shaped my life.
2025-12-24
You know the wealthy and powerful in the US only care about ... their wealth and their power, right?
After all, if they really cared about 'government spending' and 'responsibility' something like this would matter.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/pentagon-8th-consecutive-audit
That is matters to uh, the rest of us in society (as it's our tax dollars/wealth being 'lost'), is evidence of this.
2025-12-23
Said it before and I'll say it again - capitalism is a system that enables and empowers criminals, bullies and psychopaths using money.
Example:
Budour Hassan Sounds Alarm as Israeli Settlements Expand, Deepening Apartheid and Threatening Palestinian Statehood
2025-12-21
Oh look - the 'image' of science is used to covered up made-up shit.
Scientific Deception by Monsanto/Bayer on Display with Retraction of Landmark Glyphosate Safety Study
Calls into question not only the 'integrity' of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, but also the entire process.
This however shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone who understands this is the basic function of government in crapitalism - to grease the wheels of process for profit of the powerful, at the expense of everyone else.
Choice bit -
As noted in the U.S. Right to Know article by Stacy Malkan on December 3, 2025, “A scientific study that regulators around the world relied on for decades to justify continued approval of glyphosate was quietly retracted last Friday over serious ethical issues including secret authorship by Monsanto employees—raising questions about the pesticide-approval process in the U.S. and globally.” This study, published in 2000, asserted that the weed killer glyphosate does not pose health risks to humans. Despite a wide body of scientific evidence that contradicts this study’s findings, both EPA and industry pointed to these results as further proof that glyphosate should continue to be allowed on the market.
The study was revealed as being ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, with the data based only on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring data from studies that more thoroughly evaluated chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity. The recent retraction “came years after internal corporate documents first revealed in 2017 that Monsanto employees were heavily involved in drafting the paper,” which is one of many examples in which researchers and journalists have exposed “the many ways Monsanto manipulated the scientific record, influenced regulatory agencies, interfered in the peer-review process and used deceptive tactics to shape how regulators and the public view glyphosate,” Ms. Malkan writes.
Further coverage by Carey Gilliam in The New Lede calls attention to the issues behind the retracted study. As the article states: “The listed authors of the paper were three scientists who did not work for Monsanto—Gary Williams, [M.D. (professor emeritus at New York Medical College),] Robert Kroes, [PhD,] and Ian Munro, [PhD] and the paper was touted by the company as a defense against conflicting scientific evidence linking Roundup to cancer. The fact that it was authored by scientists from outside the company, from seemingly independent researchers, gave it added validity. But over the last decade, internal company documents that came to light in litigation brought by cancer victims have revealed that the paper actually was a product of three years of what one company official referred to as ‘hard work’ by several Monsanto scientists who helped craft the paper as part of a strategy Monsanto called ‘Freedom to Operate’ (FTO).”
2025-12-20
People(s)-Centered Human Rights - continued.
How it can be applied locally, and globally -
- Clear and lucid commitment to, and call for national sovereignty, equal rights, and self-determination;
- Demonstrably de-colonial, anti imperialist, and anti militarism;
- Specific call(s) for and demonstrated commitment to bottom/up popular and social struggle that are independent of nation states and bourgeois-serving governmental bodies;
- Communicates a clear and accessible methodology for building power for and shifting it to the masses;
- Leadership is in the hands of the masses - poor, working class, colonized and oppressed people in lieu of the petit-bourgeois;
- Offers an objective distinction from liberal frameworks of “humanitarianism” by rejecting pan European, white supremacist, colonial/racial capitalist patriarchy through calls to action and frameworks that are clearly grounded in, and guided by, the needs and aspiration of the masses/oppressed people; and
- Does not call for or allow itself to be subjected to recuperation/elite support through articulated guard rails and protocols.
2025-12-19
When your descendants (if they survive long enough) ask how the World ended up in the state it's in ...
Know that it's in part due to the reality that the United States isn't (and hasn't ever been) a democracy.
Enabling a nearly $1 Trillion dollars for weapons and violence has to rank up there with all the massive upward wealth transfers in modern times.
2025-12-18
2025-12-16
Worthless rocks create terrible myths, and bloody genocide.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/blood-diamonds-israel-gaza-genocide/290592/
Snippet 1
Unlike gold, diamonds are rarely hallmarked, meaning that few American brides know that their engagement and wedding rings were crafted and polished in Israel. Even fewer are aware that their purchase directly funds the slaughter in Gaza and Israel’s ongoing seizure of land in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
“Overall, the Israeli diamond industry contributes about $1 billion annually to the Israeli military and security industries … every time somebody buys a diamond that was exported from Israel, some of that money ends up in the Israeli military,” Israeli economist, Shir Hever, testified at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in 2010.
Perhaps the key figure in the Israeli diamond industry is business magnate, Beny Steinmetz. Considered by many to be Israel’s richest man, the 69-year-old founder of Steinmetz Diamond Group first entered the industry in 1988, purchasing a production factory in Apartheid South Africa.
Through his charitable foundation, Steinmetz has poured money into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), including “adopting” a unit of the Givati Brigade, buying equipment for them. During Operation Cast Lead in 2009, the brigade carried out a massacre, forcing dozens of Palestinian civilians into a house in Gaza, bombed the house, and prevented ambulances from approaching. Rescue workers who eventually found their bodies also reported seeing the words “The only good Arab is a dead Arab” daubed in Hebrew on the remains of the building.
Snippet 2
The diamond industry sustains itself through a number of myths, the first of which is that they are rare minerals. They are not. In the late 19th century, massive diamond deposits were found in South Africa, flooding the global market. However, the businessmen operating the mines quickly realized that only by maintaining strict control over the supply of the commodity could high prices be maintained. Today, well over 100 million carats of diamonds are unearthed annually, enough to produce hundreds of millions of pendants, rings, and earrings.
Nor are diamonds inherently precious. Thanks to their extreme hardness, they are useful to toolmakers producing saw blades and drill bits. Beyond this, however, their value is limited. And, contrary to popular belief, they are not intrinsically connected to courtship, marriage, or anniversaries in Western culture. In fact, the link in popular culture between diamonds and love is the result of a marketing campaign. The phrase “diamonds are forever” is, in reality, a marketing catchphrase devised by Madison Avenue executives in 1947. Professor Sut Jhally, producer of the documentary, “The Diamond Empire,” describes “diamonds are forever” as “perhaps the most famous advertising slogan ever invented.” “That slogan, that idea that comes out of Madison Avenue, now defines the way that we think about rituals that define our most personal activities, marriage, and courtship,” he added.
Tell me, what really is the difference between the United States and Israel?
There's this -
The Israeli army is creating a ‘new security reality’ in the northern West Bank to advance colonization
In recent weeks, the Israeli army has launched
a renewed military campaign in the northern West Bank. Palestinians say
these operations aim to establish a new “security reality” to
facilitate the rebuilding of Israeli settlements dismantled in 2005.
2025-12-15
Pinochet 2.0 - aka José Antonio Kast.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/15/the-far-right-triumphs-in-chile/
The far right triumphs in Chile
José Antonio Kast, who has promised historic tax cuts and a tougher immigration policy, will be Chile’s next president. Center-left candidate Jeanette Jara has conceded defeat.
Shocking, but not surprising. Israel and spyware.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/15/israeli-predator-smartphone-spyware-exposed/
https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/israeli-predator-smartphone-spyware
Israeli ‘Predator’ Smartphone Spyware Exposed
New research published by Amnesty International exposes the disturbing internal workings of Intellexa, and its constellation of digital espionage products. This includes ‘Predator’, a highly invasive resource linked to grave human rights abuses in multiple countries. Intellexa’s menacing technology allows government customers to access target smartphones’ cameras, microphones, encrypted chat apps, emails, GPS locations, photos, files, browsing activity, and more. It’s just the latest example of an Israeli-linked spyware specialist acting with no consideration for the law – although one wouldn’t know that from Amnesty’s probe.
Intellexa is among the world’s most notorious “mercenary spyware” purveyors. In 2023, the company was fined by Greece’s Data Protection Authority for failing to comply with its investigations into the company. An ongoing court case in Athens implicates Intellexa apparatchiks and local intelligence services in hacking the phones of government ministers, senior military officers, judges and journalists. Oddly unmentioned by Amnesty International, Intellexa was founded by Tal Dilian, a senior former Israeli military intelligence operative, and is staffed by Zionist entity spying veterans.
2025-12-13
Hmm ... I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard to figure out whom exactly are these MNCs.
The ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, which has unleashed a series of legislation angering both the workers and farmers in the country recently, claims that the seed bill seeks to modernize seed regulations with stricter quality control and penalties for major offenses.
In a statement issued on Sunday, SKM questioned the government’s claims, calling the proposed bill a “regressive legislation” which will establish the hegemony of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) over the Indian seed sector and take away the country’s seed sovereignty.
The bill is harmful for the farmers, for India’s biodiversity, and its food security, and also an assault on Indian federal structure, as it proposes the centralization of the existing powers of the provincial/state governments, SKM claimed.
2025-12-12
2025-12-10
Can you say 'electoral coup'?
That's really the only way to describe what the West has done in Honduras.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/09/honduran-left-denounces-electoral-coup/
International Human Rights Day is a farce of the West.
And what is the answer?
What is emerging in its place is the decolonial concept and approach of “People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs).
“People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves and Collective Humanity through social struggle.”
What is clear is that PCHRs represent a political project and, therefore, unlike liberal bourgeois human rights discourse, does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project that names the main enemies of human dignity and human rights and advocates for building movements to defeat those enemies. PCHRs advances an ethical approach to the idea of human rights that is not dependent on states, legal processes, and the granting of rights. PCHRs instead are created by the people in struggle which is also the source of PCHRs legitimacy.
With the consolidation of fascism and its capturing of most of the international institutions, including the UNSC, the PCHR framework represents a logical strategic approach for anti-imperialist activism and the authentic defense of human rights.
2025-12-09
Hey Hampton at Hilton ...
... when I decide which hotel to stay at during my next vacation, it won't be with your corporation due to your manhate ad I saw while watching a hockey game.
2025-12-06
How empires die - by over-extending themselves militarily over resources.
In the case of Venezuela - it's oil.
In Sudan - it's gold.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/africa-sudan-war-uae-gold-anti-imperialist-rise/290580/
Eurovision 2026 can go fuck themselves.
Public broadcasters quit Eurovision 2026 over participation of Israel
Broadcasters from at least four countries plan to exit Eurovision 2026 after the European Broadcasting Union decided to allow Israel to compete.
Quote of the day - 12-06-2025.
Bárbara Loureiro of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)
“There is no real way out of the climate crisis without a rupture with the capitalist model, and there is no possible rupture without popular organisation, without collective struggle, and without confronting the structures that profit from devastation.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/06/vijay-prashad-capitalist-climate-catastrophe/
2025-12-03
The Coloniality of Solidarity - why the Western Political Left always gets co-opted.
Overcoming the coloniality of solidarity constitutes a formidable challenge, necessitating rigorous self-reflexivity, a deliberate interrogation of material positionality, and a conscious recalibration of ideological dispositions. The binary oppositions between ‘regimes’ and ‘peoples’ in the Global South – once a central analytical framework within comparative political science in the imperialist core – have been uncritically adopted and normalized among certain leftist formations in the Global North. This discursive tendency manifests in prevailing attitudes toward states such as Iran, Nicaragua, Cuba, Zimbabwe, China, Syria, and Venezuela, where reductive categorizations persist.
This is the point at which Ajl’s cautionary argument, in relation to Iran, assumes critical significance: ‘By separating “the regime” from “the people”, the US–Israeli propaganda justifies state collapse in the name of the people. You cannot defend a people by adopting the rhetoric used to justify their destruction’ (Ajl Citation2025). This separation, now common in Western Left discourse, fetishizes an abstract ‘people’ while rejecting the actual institutions that make their survival possible. In the Global South, and in Iran in particular, patriotism can be a working-class ideology because the state is the shield against imperialist dismemberment. It is the state that funds hospitals, operates power grids, sustains education systems, and maintains the armed forces capable of defending those functions. To demand solidarity with ‘the people’ while refusing to defend the state is, in effect, to adopt the imperial premise. It mimics imperialist discourses that those institutions are illegitimate and expendable.
2025-12-02
Wow, a long-term study on HFCS shows how bad it really can be.
"A notable finding from this research indicated that chronic HFCS consumption resulted in significant impairments in cognitive functions that are critical to daily living. These included deficits in working memory, decision-making, and even social behaviors essential for establishing interpersonal relationships."
2025-12-01
I just want to say - staging a war between two nuclear weapon-enabled countries should be one attribute of a psychopath.
So what does this make the CIA, the US Elites, and the US Empire?
https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/01/how-cia-secretly-triggered-sino-indian-war/
How CIA Secretly Triggered Sino-Indian War
2025-11-30
Where America is now.
Oh how the mighty will fall.
And it's the majority in America who'll eventually bear the brunt of it.
2025-11-29
Quote of the day - 11-29-2025.
Caitlin Johnstone.
Explore your own consciousness. Inquire deeply into the nature of self and the mind until clarity dawns on you. Heal your inner wounds. Remove from within yourself all the mental hooks of fear and hatred so that the propagandists can find no psychological purchase with which to manipulate you. Follow the faint whisperings of your muse, and learn to help your inspiration birth new creative expression into the world.
These are the kinds of things we’ll have to do to preserve ourselves as we move into this strange new world, on top of the usual business of staying informed and learning to see through the propaganda illusions. Luckily these things are all good for us anyway; the path toward protecting our humanity also just happens to be the path toward becoming a healthier human being and making the world a better place.
Honestly, you can replace 'Zionism' with 'Crapitalism' and it amounts to pretty much the same thing.
A reminder to never underestimate the power of propaganda ->
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/how-zionism-was-sold-to-the-world/
Bader: There are a lot of myths about Israel, from the idea that the land was vacant to the idea that Israelis made the desert bloom. How were these ideas popularized?
Malinowitz: Both ‘a land without people for a people without a land,’ and ‘they made the desert bloom’ are marketing jingles, to appropriate a term from Israeli expat and anti-Zionist Moshe Machover. But despite these being preposterous lies, the phrases stuck. It’s like the idea that Columbus ‘discovered’ America, which you believe until you encounter evidence and become aware that it is absurd.
I also think that phrases like “making deserts bloom” are appealing because they give Israelis almost supernatural abilities. It makes them sound like they’re capable of doing miraculous things, and it elevates them in the popular imagination. As long as Zionist adherents remain snug in the logical bubble of organizations like the Jewish National Fund, the World Jewish Congress, Hillel, and Birthright, they receive a hefty payoff: a sense of fellowship and belonging.
I sense a trend with these - wondering if it'll go in the direction I think it needs to?
Italy holds third general strike in three months, against war budget and for Palestine
Workers in Italy have launched their third general strike in under three months, demanding an end to Meloni’s war agenda and budget.
Hundreds of thousands protest anti-labor legislation in India
Farmers joined the factory and public sector workers across the country on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the historic Delhi protests which had forced the extreme right wing government to withdraw anti-farmers laws
2025-11-28
Midwifery and C-sections - a connection?
One of the things I've noticed in the last few years is how much both the narratives and the movement around women's reproductive rights have shifted very much away from what they used to once be.
Case in point - years ago, the context behind legalizing abortions rested on the concept of (essentially) her body - her choice. That last word being key.
But in the years since the COVID-19-related pandemic, there's been a subtle but clear shift away from the concept of 'choice' and just focus on abortion 'access'. Which lines up coincidentally with one side of the crapitalist non-choices - the Blue-No-Matter-Whoers. The elimination of 'choice' lined up quite nicely with the need for one of that entity's chief donors (Pfizer) pushing an untested and unsafe COVID vaccine and making billions off it. It also illustrated that to most of that entity's largely white/suburban female voting bloc - abortion was in essence the only real definition of reproductive rights.
Let me point out the obvious - it isn't. There are many aspects around reproductive rights that aren't covered at all. For example, the levels of pre-natal care, choice of birthing, post-birth treatment, and ...
... the option of midwifery. That seems to no longer exist here in the United States, why?
All of this leads to this point ... why the sudden and accelerated increase in c-sections in the United States over the last couple of decades ... (Here's a hint - there's a profit motive) ...
https://liberationnews.org/high-us-c-section-rate-symptom-of-capitalist-healthcare/
Midwifery was a standard global practice until the 20th century.Midwives would travel to the homes of women and babies to offer holistic care surrounding their pregnancies and births (A Brief History of Midwifery). Anti-midwife advocates, including many doctors who looked down upon the practice, campaigned for laws and educational restrictions that effectively dismantled the profession in America within the past century.
This was a massive blow to women’s ability to receive a form of personalized maternity care that many understaffed hospitals cannot provide due to the sheer volume of patients coming in for other ailments. Still, doctors have opposed the practice of midwifery on the grounds that a more Western, “scientific” approach is preferable. In practice this means relying on hospitals for birth and prioritizing quick pain relief over holistic care. It is also a profit-driven practice that is intended to save money for hospitals by shortening mothers’ stays and relying on medication instead of care staff.
Belgium and Arizona .... wait ... there is a connection?
Yes indeed.
Belgian workers reject Arizona’s austerity in three-day strike wave
Workers across Belgium are wrapping up a three-day strike wave opposing the government’s austerity plans, including salary freezes.
Wednesday, November 26, marks the final day of a nationwide wave of strikes and protests against the anti-social policies of Belgium’s so-called Arizona government. Workers in transport and public services, joined by thousands across other sectors, remain outraged by Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s agenda, which includes attacks on pensions, wages, and public services, all while increasing spending on militarization.
Picket lines sprang up across the country, with workers rejecting the government’s plans. Reporting from the strike at the port of Antwerp, Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA) General Secretary Peter Mertens wrote: “Workers are furious that the government is coming for their pensions, trying to steal their wage indexation and, on top of that, wants to raise taxes on gas and fuel. ‘No way,’ they’re saying here.”
This week’s strike wave, launched Monday and preceded by a day of action against gender-based violence, builds on previous mobilization. In October, around 140,000 people marched in Brussels to oppose Arizona’s plans. Despite record turnout, De Wever’s administration failed to take the workers’ grievances seriously. “This contempt and lack of respect are unacceptable,” the trade union confederation FGTB-ABVV wrote in its call for the strike. “Today, a historic wave is sweeping across the arid desert landscape of Arizona – a movement calling for a society based on solidarity, equity, and justice.”
2025-11-25
The connections between media, weapons, violence, and destruction - are billionaires and corporations.
I seriously can't make this shit up.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-seven-richest-billionaires-are-all-media-barons/290572/
It's like a gallery of evil villains - Joker, Lex Luthor, Green Goblin, Skeletor, etc.
Why am I not surprised that Mexico's 'Gen Z Rebellion' is a fraud?
Perhaps because it IS a fraud ...
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/11/23/second-anti-sheinbaum-protest-loses-momentum/
Second anti-Sheinbaum protest loses momentum
After the highly-watched violent protest reportedly drew around 17,000 people, the second one barely managed to gather 200. Analysts see the marches as an attempt to destabilize the executive branch.
Mexico’s ‘Gen Z Rebellion’ Exposed as Right-Wing Plot
Intent on toppling Mexico’s popular president, local oligarchs and an international right-wing network backed a youth-led anti-corruption uprising, Wyatt Reed and Kit Klarenberg report.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)