Like many poets and prophets, Leonard was (we hope) not wrong - just early.
"It's coming to America first / The cradle of the best and of the worst / It's here they got the range /And the machinery for change / And it's here they got the spiritual thirst / It's here the family's broken / And it's here the lonely say / That the heart has got to open / In a fundamental way / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A"
It's official: democracy is delayed (again).
In the meantime, a criminal conspiracy of corrupt sadists takes control of the main levers of power in America. We watch them implement their published plan to destroy the US federal government system (Executive, Legislative & Judicial) in favour of a dictatorship. Before you get smug or comfy, this is not an American movement – it is internationalist and has spread across western democracies.
Right now the same forces of dark money and extremism are systemically undermining your media, your political parties and your system of representative democracy in readiness for the next elections.
Some background reading
Despite hundreds of Republicans and extremist organisations preparing and publishing a 900+ page manifesto in 2023 (and despite the execution of the 180 day transition plan before our very eyes) it seems that most of the Democratic party and the mainstream media have done little to prepare for this time. Indeed, in many cases they seem to have simply facilitated the transfer of power. The coup clearly happened many years ago, we now watch the victors mopping up. It is the only plausible explanation for the Vichy-like response from nearly all of the Democratic party.
Maybe one day we will discover whether it was due to genuine support, fear, greed or an unhealthy mixture of all. Whatever. We are here now and now is all we have.
So what is this Project?
"a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism"
We read Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership so that you don't have to.
The playbook was referenced but not published with the Project 2025 manifesto, however we see it in action in what can only be described as a blitzkrieg of illegality. It aims to overload the capacity of the system and of people to respond.
The playbook is also aimed at guaranteeing that the legal system will be shock-loaded to breaking point. The law moves much more slowly than Trump and his goons can break things, and they are relying on this (in addition to their capture of some of the Supreme Court judges).
"Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system...Vought claimed he and his team had already drafted hundreds of executive orders and regulations; he specifically emphasized executive orders to implement the mass deportation of more than 20 million people as quickly as possible."
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution - and to burn down the system
We can call what we see many things. Best to keep it simple to make it easier to rally people and coordinate (and given the strong historical analogies):
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."
In any event, whatever Trump, Musk and goons represent in themselves, the power behind them is private capital (and foreign powers) that have taken over the American State decades ago.
It was inevitable that our largely symbolic democracies would face a day of reckoning. It has been as clear as day – to any honest analyst – that the reality of modern capitalism and democracy are fundamentally opposed to each other.
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. (Martin Luther King)
It is no surprise that the problems in our societies and politics (including unjust inequality) have accelerated since the Global Financial Crisis, when the public were forced to indemnify the private sector (and politicians) for their own failings and corrupt practices. Every crisis since (including COVID) has become a tool for a co-ordinated free for all from public funds.
You cannot have a fair distribution of responsibility, influence and reward for all, under a system that supports such great disparity of wealth and power – and where representatives are voted in by the people but yet are sponsored by and appear to be only accountable to the powerful. Political power and wealth cannot be so artificially segregated in the new system we need to create after the storm.
The top 0.1% of Americans control $22 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% control $3.8 trillion in wealth. (Robert Reich)
So we must now face-off against those people who – in order to continue this trajectory of inequity – model their revolution on the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and are very happy to:
"use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.”
The extremist internationalist capitalists ('fascists' is much easier) are, as always, better organised than the rest of us. So they decided to take a leaf (actually more like the whole library) out of the Nazi propaganda and political playbook. This includes the use of 'projection' propaganda – to accuse others of that which you are busily and secretly doing yourself.
We watch them set fire to the political and legal structures in place that gave people even a very limited form of influence on the qualitiy of their lives (perhaps before they voted to express how little they get out of the current economic system and tried to obtain real change).
"In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described..as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That is no longer true. The U.S. is still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction: moderate Republicans, now called New Democrats (as the U.S. Congressional coalition styles itself).
There is still a Republican organization, but it long ago abandoned any pretense of being a normal parliamentary party. Conservative commentator Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describes today’s Republicans as “a radical insurgency — ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition”: a serious danger to the society.
The party is in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector. Since votes cannot be obtained on that platform, the party has been compelled to mobilize sectors of the society that are extremist by world standards."
What is most striking is that this collapsing of at least notional democratic structures (to reflect the reality of capital structures) has happened during a period of extraordinary growth in wealth inequality. For example, in the USA, the Republicans (and their backers) are not fighting a defensive rearguard action to maintain inequitable levels of inequality. Instead, the increase in unjust wealth inequality and the lack of consequences for corruption and illegality is simply more high-octane fuel to power the takeover (to a system that dispenses with any checks on that very same illegality and inequity). Then laws are changed and what was inconceivably immoral and illegal becomes the new norms. We have seen this all before.
This accelerating dynamic is why the system is completely broken, and also why it can not go back to its previous structure. Those funding the breakdown of our (even largely symbolic) democracies are very unlikely to quit, find their souls and repent or start caring for others and all life on planet Earth. Anyone who thinks we can deal with this crisis purely politically, by way of moderate reform, is kidding themselves and you.
The long-standing post WWII equilibrium has fully broken. Now only a full-scale political and economic restructuring is going to work to redress the imbalances and lead to a new peaceful equilibrium.
Make no mistake they are experts at Nazi systems of misinformation, fear and control. They have actively studied them (e.g. Trump apparently kept a copy of a book of Hitler's speeches next to his bed).
Consider the success of Israeli Hasbara, where they have persuaded many that it is racist to protest a brutal occupation and Apartheid regime that has been supported by America in its oppression of Palestinians for decades.
The success of the propaganda is astonishing. Consider the purported justifications for this Genocide against mostly women and children, by an Israeli leader that supported Hamas (see Further Research below) to keep Palestinians weak and divided.
The English language is not up to the task of providing words for this level of despicableness. All this murder, torture, rape and suffering to avoid a Palestinian State at all costs. All this despite the lack of elections in Gaza since 2006 (and the median age in Gaza is 19).
The river to the sea is Likud policy for Israelis (since at least the 1970's). Ethnic cleansing and mass murder is the goal. This is why they are happy to gloat about their depravity – but heaven forbid we speak honestly about this or we might risk getting labelled, investigated or sacked as anti-semites. As if somehow, in this weird alt-right moral universe, that might be worse than being actual sadistic mass murderers!.
“You are a slow learner, Winston."
"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."
"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” (George Orwell, 1984)
Israeli and American politicians (and their supportive entrepreneurs and media owners around the world) implement or provide cover for Nazi and Stalinist tools of indoctrination and lies in front of our very eyes – with little demur by the influential and powerful within our Western democracies. This has emboldened them – so now it's masks off and time for the knives, complete with Sieg Heils.
And if you want to know which other people or powers support it, are compromised or are simply too greedy to care, look at who downplays this threat. Watch those who suggest we should be open to or could learn from Trump, Musk and the rest - that we should have humility in the face of fascism.
"Your prayers are for prey
All you see is your suffering
Everything not you
Must be sacrificed, slew"
(from 'Mantle')
Each day we watch Astonished As you grow in strength Into your blood feathers
Our allied fascists currently governing Israel are now deeply integrated with US, UK, Australian and other western governments, political parties, media, militaries, and even police forces.
The Likud leader Netanyahu smirks whilst Trump describes the destruction and Genocide the US and Israel (with European support) have visited on the Palestinian people – including over 40,000 women and children in Gaza (many shot with sniper rifles).
Israel and the US are aiming to finally complete (after decades of determined effort) the full house of crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people. This is in addition to war crimes. All for political purposes in order to take their land. The very definition of terrorism.
President in effect endorses ethnic cleansing of territory before hosting meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu
We need to be more forthright about how deeply the Israeli government plays the game of propaganda and terror – Israel are the world's experts – and how much the US relies on it and uses the same tactics. They have been the American attack dog for many years in the Middle East, but also as an outsourced black ops specialist around the world (including in most Western democracies). They excel at the use of spyware, blackmail, threats and compromising people, illegal surveillance and other technologies and processes to systematically monitor, mute and ultimately destroy people. They have their own agenda too, but for geopolitical purposes they are the real 51st State. That's also why so much funding for the GOP and Trump comes through Israeli connections.
“Palestine is Israel's workshop, where an occupied nation on its doorstep provides millions of subjugated people as a laboratory for the most precise and successful methods of domination. Israel as the ideal ethnonationalist model is reliant on being able to commercialize this message,” Loewenstein writes. “Although some countries want Israeli arms or technology just to spy or disrupt dissident behavior and have no interest in building their own ethnoreligious entity, many others buy into the myths about Israeli racial supremacy and want to emulate it in their own countries.”
Finance editor Ed Ongweso on Israel's strategy to weaken Palestinians' ability to resist through the use of technology and water deprivation.
All of these people have truly learnt all the wrong lessons from history.
The bitter irony is that many of us that protest the current fascist state of Israel actually support the existence of Israel. It is like being pro-German and protesting the Nazis, the two views are not incompatible – indeed, as history shows, they are ultimately the same position.
It takes chutzpah, Writing poems To the Israelites.
"The profound change that has occurred in Israel is best exemplified by the war in Gaza. Almost everything about it was meant to appease the fascist, racist, pro-population-transfer far right; and the spirit of Kahanism seized control of its goals and conduct. It wasn't only the scale of the army's cruelty; it was, above all, the way in which cruelty was rendered into a value in Israeli society as a whole, into an opportunity, an asset, a miracle. Cruelty as something to be proud of, to aspire to, to boast of and to flaunt." (Gideon Levy, Haaretz)
The War That Is Supposed to End Sunday Will Go Down in History as the First Kahane War. It Is Fundamentally Different From All of Israel's Previous Wars.
Justice has fled,
Dumb, blind and deaf
All that remains
Is the sword
(Eyeless in Gaza)
It's true to say we have had largely symbolic representative democracy in the West (and particularly the US) which always protected capital. As Chomsky noted in 2013, the Republicans realised that even that doesn't work for them anymore (because it's very hard to persuade people to vote to have increasingly less of the pie). So they stepped out of the paradigm into extremism many years ago.
This painful equilibrium we have had prevents any real change in the dynamics of representative democracy to genuine democratic policies – the primacy of capital and the war machine must be maintained at all costs. It is how the great democracy lets you choose only between different colours for your support of Genocide, but not whether you would like to stop killing so many women and children.
The US has also created a culture of immunity, impunity and exceptionalism causing great devastation to many people and the biosphere.
It seems obvious that a mafia style gang would see the value of leading such a government and political system and go further in seeking to enshrine immunity from illegality.
"the American dream of prosperity at home and supremacy abroad has long masked a much more cynical and transactional order – one that Trump is both exposing and entrenching."
Guantánamo Bay? Imperialism? Alliances with billionaires? Those shocked at the president's early moves have forgotten what came before, writes Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
In a sense, the Republican party has just decided to dispense with the democratic window dressing in America to go full fascist dictatorship.
In that respect, Trump and his gang are not a discontinuity but an acceleration of the reality of what the American Dream has all too often been (for most people in America and around the world): a nightmare of racist sexist economic exploitation of the weakest; prairie predators on the prowl; manifest destiny made flesh; a mirror to a dark soul. The American people (and the rest of us) must wake up, and that soon.
If you don't believe me, try to find out, even to the nearest 5 million people, how many American Indians and how many black people were killed to found the American dream?
If you think that's unfair, try answering how many people have been killed due to unjust or illegal wars, covert operations, or in support of coups or authoritarian regimes by dictatorships carried out, funded or supported by the USA since WWII?
I can wait...
“For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.” (Winston Churchill)
The history consumed by most people is always written by the victor, real history "is only ever preserved in the dark".
This statement is not even anti-American sentiment. America is not the first brutal imperial empire (though its people are particularly well trained to be extraordinarily ignorant or blithe about the chasm between its founding ideals and the way it treats most people).
My sentiment is ultimately anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-ubernationalist. In addition to the obvious point, that they are repulsive ideologies that belong in the past, none of them can solve our global issues including our impact on all life on Earth including our chances of survival as a species.
Don't get me wrong: Americans, like the rest of us, have their better angels too (though they have an exemplary record of murdering them – Lincoln, MLK, Malcolm X). Indeed, even war-mongering President Bush managed an extraordinary achievement with the anti-AIDS PEPFAR project which is estimated to have saved over 20m lives.
The importance of the United States contribution to the global HIV response cannot be overstated. Since its creation in 2003, PEPFAR has saved more than 26 million lives by investing in critical HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programs in 55 countries.
However, America's current leaders and most of their media either support the Satanic forces taking control (taking it back to the worst aspects of its nature) or have allowed it or are apathetic to it.
This policy watch provides an overview of the Trump administration's executive order to pause all foreign aid programs, including for global health, and related actions to date.
This process has been happening for decades and is largely indifferent to the false choice offered of only red or blue instruments of capital and warfare. It is fair to say that America has never yet really wrestled with its own dark side – its terrible violent soul.
"...Because you do not wrestle with your angel.
Because you dare to live without God.
Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp."
(Leonard Cohen, 'Book of Mercy')
Before we move on we should pause a moment to look at ourselves. We see as if through a mirror, darkly.
The corruption I contest is in myself and each of us too. We cannot oppose those that would try to 'other' the darkness in their souls and in the world – by attacking the weakest and most vulnerable – if we ignore (i.e. 'other') the risks of our own corruption.
We cannot win against them by refusing to see the darkness in ourselves. Indeed, they tap into this darkness in us very effectively - encouraging us to join them or at least to turn our faces away from what we do not wish to see. They try to make greed, hatred and sin into a virtue and aim to turn compassion and honesty into a vice.
They encourage that voice which whispers 'let someone else speak out, let someone else do something about it'. It is the voice that says in every age (substitute with the 'other' as needed): 'but I am not a Jew, or black, or Muslim, or Palestinian, or a woman, or transgender or poor or...'.
If you have older children, I recommend watching 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' with them. After the end – and the terrible silence that envelops your family as you watch your child process the horror – will you sit there and honestly tell them that it could never happen again?...when it is happening to Palestinians now and when the process of dehumanisation of others is starting to gather more strength. Remember also, it was just not the Jewish boy who was destroyed, the family that facilitated that destruction also sacrificed their child to the hatred of the Holocaust.
We can no longer sacrifice children, each other and the wider living world to the Moloch or to Mammon. We must wake up from the collective madness that threatens to descend on us yet again.
Being honest with ourselves, a great forest fire was inevitable. A Trump shaped fireball will now ignite the flames across the world.
It's true the world needed the equilibrium to break down, we needed a step change.
A rational caring human would have liked that to not be led by this collection of racist sexual abusers of women and (allegedly) children – led by a man accused of rape, harassment or assault of 25 women and a 13 year old girl. Instead we hoped for a new way of distributing information and decision making that protects each of us, other species and ensures a viable biosphere on planet Earth.
2020 has awakened us to the Black Days constructed while we slept. Now we act, and not just to avoid the worst excesses of the
The conflagration was coming. We thought climate change and the need to fundamentally change our relationship to our environment, to other species and planet Earth would be the catalyst for change and not these arsonists who have misplaced their souls. These ghouls that want to turn the world into Mordor. Now we need to make it through to rebuild a better ethical, economic and political construct for our world.
Evolutionary theories tell us that new forms of life are only possible when there is free space in the ecosystem. We now must watch the forest burn and lament the suffering (rightly) but we must also stay focused on what becomes possible once the fires have died down.
What is possible is a new form of distributed decentralised democracy and economies not built on subjugation of others and destruction of the biosphere
And so we must be the firemen trying to save what we can in the fire, but we must also be the dreamers and activists of a new world to come that is based on respect for diversity.
Diversity of power, opinion, wealth, races, gender, religions and of species. A world where the maximum compatible freedom of action is available for the greatest diversity of people and other life-forms. This universal truth must be central to our ethics and not just the limited, and now under fire, notions of human rights.
"At this stage of history ... either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or ... there will be no destiny for anyone to control."
Economically it is not a philosophy of equality (as justified inequalities are useful), but of useful and constrained inequality that is equitable – so that more people can enjoy life and achieve their potential within a world that can sustain complex life.
Exploration of the difference between necessary useful inequalities and inequities that are not good for us collectively
We see many people already arguing about who is most to blame: Putin, Trump, Musk, the Koch brothers, the GOP!, the neo-liberals..
Or who is culpable for failing to respond seriously or for folding: the Democratic party, the centrists, the leftists, the traditional liberals, much of the mainstream media..
I get it, but we can argue about primary liability and contributory negligence all day - let's not spend our time shifting deckchairs on the Titanic.
We do need to know the hidden wealth and power that drives these forces we face. We do need to know the full extent of the international criminal conspiracy if we are to fight it. We also need journalists and civil liberties organisations to keep digging and, perhaps, when we get through this we will get many more shocking answers about how we reached this point. See Further Research below.
However, let's stay focused on what we need to do now. A great wave is coming and the boat is on fire and sinking.
We need to coordinate a coalition of the willing built on core values we can all agree on. An opposition for this war that is upon us, whether we know it or not.
“Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.” (Aragorn)
"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird....' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him." (Wikipedia)
Governments create war cabinets that cross political lines at times of great need. Capitalist fascists are the new internationalists & they are waging war on our societies.
Opposition parties must now do the same if the Government in their country is supporting the international fascists. We are at war, it's resistance time.
We need two main things to coordinate a response in the short-term:
A 5 point plan that any people, politicians and parties in the coalition of the willing can agree on that deals with these threats;
A clear filter to help us be sure we are on the same side and that we want to solve the problems that got us here once the war is over.
For example, this could be our filter:
Do you care about all human beings & other species?
Do you see the current crisis as one primarily due to the primacy of capital above all else (including fairness, economic usefulness and protection of the biosphere)?
Do you agree that a criminal conspiracy has taken advantage of our subservient representative democracies?
Are you willing to fight to change our failed democracies, economies and means of distributing capital to build something better?
Are you willing to collaborate?
If yes, welcome to the war alliance. You are in.
We also need a symbol we can get behind and a slogan or rallying call, otherwise we will be uncoordinated and drowned in the noise generated from the forces we oppose.
In addition, we need to be expert at mass communication and coordination (whilst protecting ourselves from mass surveillance and unlawful targeted surveillance).
Let us also not forget, people like Trump and Musk are the tip of the iceberg. Removing them would just allow some other extremists to take advantage of this broken system of dark money, criminality and venality. The whole system of democracy and the distribution of capital needs to be rebuilt.
Be clear in your mind, they fully intend to crash the world economy for various reasons (likely later this year).
Firstly, the lessons they learned from history is that fascism thrives in times of economic bleakness. They are very well aware of the economic conditions that allowed Hitler to usurp the German democratic system.
"When Hitler had vowed in court, in September 1930, to destroy democracy through the democratic process, a judge asked, “So, only through constitutional means?” Hitler replied crisply, “Jawohl.”
The vital lesson of how Adolf Hitler took advantage of democracy to become a dictator.
They want people scared, desperate, confused, angry and vulnerable so they can play us all off against each other. People will find it harder to coordinate and protest for their rights when they are desperately trying to pay their healthcare costs, rent and for food (all of which are already rising rapidly thanks to the Trumpian nightmare).
In addition, some analysts (particularly notably that brave lady of St. Louis - Sarah Kendzior) suggest Trump has long planned to set fire to the US system to take advantage of the fire sale post-USSR collapse style.
"Yes, they want to crash the economy. As I note in my books and articles, Trump admits this openly, and it’s reflected in the mafia and corporate raider world from which he and his cohort emerged."
My advice on surfing the blood-dimmed tide in the latest reader Q & A.
"You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.” (Trump, 2014 when defending Russia on Fox News)
I expect the crypto markets will provide the exit liquidity for them just before the wheels come off.
Being democratic is an attitude. It's not something you can outsource with a tick every 4-5 years.
Resistance is not just being against the minority of money-loving monsters in power, whether actual - e.g. the USA and Israel - or pulling many of the levers behind the scenes – e.g. the UK and Australia. It must also become a movement to:
1. Protect the biosphere & species diversity as well as human diversity
2. Transform economic structures - this capitalism & real democracy are simply not compatible.
We do not have to know the exact nature and details of the new economic and political structure to collaborate - just the broad principles. For example, that economic structures and wealth distribution must be actually useful (still allowing for beneficial inequalities) and they must service our chosen democratic political structures and goals (quality of life and contentment, respect for all people, human and species diversity, sustainable development etc,).
3. Facilitate decentralised media and decentralised platforms for information dissemination and validation
4. Create real participatory democracy - where intention, attitude and acts combine to ensure we are all responsible for and beneficiaries of the systems for making collective decisions
In short, this crisis and its ultimate resolution forces us to ensure that capital and political power can no longer be so centralised (or so artificially distinguished) in a manner that makes the holders of capital the masters that will always be able to game any system so as to 'win'.
This zero sum game approach to 'winning makes a very very small percentage of people even more powerful and wealthy – at the cost of abuse of the other, the weak and vulnerable, dehumanisation and leading to more crimes against humanity, less enjoyable lives for nearly everyone else, less useful freedom for all, the death of even notional democracy etc.
Ultimately this winning will result in the destruction of the life-carrying capacity of our planet for all complex life. So much winning...
So prepare right now for the crash coming as well as the hard battles in the long war we face.
Support independent journalism and the braver media organisations. Support human rights, civil liberties and other groups that do extraordinary work to protect the injured, the vulnerable, the voiceless and powerless.
As George Monbiot notes, we need to consider what we can do to start to build / get involved with resilient mutual support structures in our communities.
Times like these show us how it could be so easy to crucify a man who told us our duty is to love each other. We live in a time of the preaching of dis-compassion, when the parable of the Good Samaritan is inverted to become a warning about the dangers of do-gooders (who should be cast out for their compassion).
The so called 'Christian' fundamentalists that have joined Trump's alliance of extremists are no better than the Ku Klux Klan. The Kahanists and religious Zionists in Israel (like Ben-Gvir - Israeli Minister of National Security) are equally repulsive racist terrorists.
As the Dalai Lama says compassion (a kind of kindness) must be our only philosophy and religion.
The Buddhist concept of compassion is a better approach than the simplistic abstractions of the concept of 'love', because it is practical. It joins the feeling of wonder and joy at being just a tiny part of all of life's wondrous forms with how we should act using contemplation and reason.
"...Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."(Mary Oliver, 'Wild Geese')
Although the road to compassion may start as a motive emotion, it is important to realise that compassion is not a surfeit of feeling towards others – an excess of feeling that could be exhausted.
We see this serene universal compassion most in the figure of Gautama Buddha. Compassion is wisdom. This wisdom contains within it a reduction of the pain of the ‘feeling’ of aloneness, and a diminution of a false sense of an important, separate ‘self’. This sharing allows us to connect with the Earth and its other life-forms and the flow of the energy of life. It roots us like a tree and helps us to weather the storms.
It seeks to look beyond the surface of relative form to the deeper nature of impermanence and the commonality of all life. It is a state of mind that requires careful work to maintain.
Whether you are religious in the traditional sense or not you should understand the importance of community, common practices and communal comfort in times of great upheaval and change (an Axial Age).
The importance of humility is crucial too, it means being connected to the earth (humus) and to see ourselves as part of it not above it. It carries us all, whether we think it or not. A new humility for humanity would enrich us all.
Many confuse non-violence with pacifism. For example, reasonable self defence is an act of self love (not hatred or anger directed at others) and so can be considered non-violent (e.g., under a Buddhist analysis). This distinction is crucial to understand, to take affirmative action and, most importantly, to avoid becoming the very thing you should be contesting (let's call this 'Israel Syndrome').
"when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings, I say he’s a sinner" (Malcolm X)
Life survives and perpetuates through the maximal diversity of compatible (compossible) life-forms having freedom to act (to be different).
Our duty is to give the fire of life the best chance of succeeding against the odds and deep time (with an abundance of humility about what will succeed):
We are the flames,
We carry the fire 🔥
We are the flames We carry the fire
A great wave cometh and our boat is sinking:
God, or whatever power of good is in the universe, please give me strength to be a good father, husband and neighbour.
Please give us the courage to love and protect each other, no matter how dark it gets.
Help us to speak honestly and clearly, without favour or fear.
Help us to weather this storm together.
Humility and compassion are endless. They are our only refuge and redemption.
A note on the use of God:
If it bothers you, substitute 'good' for 'god' in my article, as that is the sense in which it is used.
Further research and reading:
Project 2025
Project 2025 Tracker
The importance of independent Media
Obeying in advance by US and British media means they cannot combat the march of the hard right Broligarchs
Non-violence vs Pacifism
Examine Nelson Mandela's emotional rejection of a 1985 offer by the South African government to free him if he renounced violence and abstained from politics.
Paul Fleischman is a psychiatrist and a Teacher of vipassanā meditation in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. He is the author, among other works, of Cultivating Inner Peace and Karma and Chaos. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I have found myself musing about nonviolence, its contributions, its limits, and its place in [...]
Israel
For 14 Years, Netanyahu's Policy Was to Keep Hamas in Power; the Pogrom of October 7, 2023, Helps the Israeli Prime Minister Preserve His Own Rule
While the Interior Ministry Says Rabbi Baruch Lanner Will Not Be Allowed to Make Aliyah, Advocates' Group Says About 100 Rabbis, Teachers and Other Figures Who Have Been Accused, Charged or Convicted of Sexual Abuse Overseas Have Already Found Refuge in Israel
Read by Matthew Alford
Under Israel's draconian military laws, Palestinian children are systemically imprisoned. Here's what they face in detention.
The UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, together with a former Hamas commander, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Listen now (41 mins) | Investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein questions the narratives he was taught growing up in the Jewish Diaspora as he traces the origins of Israel's military-industrial complex, examining how Israel became one of the world's leading arms and tech exporters.
NSO Group's spyware has been used to facilitate human rights violations around the world on a massive scale, according to a major investigation into the leak of 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets. These include heads of state, activists and journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi's family.
True Faith
Mariann Edgar Budde defends sermon asking president to show compassion to immigrants and LGBTQ+ people
Cruelty is the point
Those who celebrate his defiance and sadism are as claimed by his logic as those who are paralyzed with outrage
Stay safe online
Guidance on online safety - this is not just for Federal workers or Americans. Everyone needs to get serious now. Close your X, leave Starlink, FB etc. Check your security settings. Protect yourself now. Don't wait please.
Under the new administration there's an increased need for digital security. Here's how everyone, even you, can communicate and post safely, from using Signal to thinking twice about what you post on Instagram.
UK
Why is it only Declassified seeking to hold to account General Basyuk, who oversaw Israel's slaughter in Gaza, as he meets UK officials?
Thank God Israel had the courage to sometimes ignore its most powerful ally
Exclusive: Labour's top team has accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds from pro-Israel funders.
Europe
The far right in Europe has a long and shameful history of antisemitism. Yet as the far right seeks to renew its image and make electoral gains, emphatic support for Zionism has become a key pillar of the project, while hatred of Jews has been supplemented with newer forms of racism and xenophobia.
Germany
Tycoon tells 4,500 people at campaign event in Halle to be proud of German culture in speech via video link
Australia
The new laws will see the introduction of additional hate speech offences, harsher penalties for existing offences and mandatory minimum prison terms.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Caitlin Johnstone):
A New World Order
America's greedy gangster president is forcing European elites to finally reckon with the high price of protection
European defence has been a key issue since at least 1948, with the Treaty of Brussels between France, the United Kingdom and the three Benelux countries. At the time, the spirit of the signatories was still to guard against the threat posed by Germany, which was still fresh in people's minds (following on from the Franco-British alliance treaty of Dunkirk in 1947).
Revealed: Pete Hegseth writes scathingly of key institutions and says 'If you love America, you should love Israel'
Trump is taking the US in a dark direction and we must not let ourselves be dragged along with him, argues Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer
Report published before international summit suggests US is moving away from a global leadership role
Beijing is preparing to take advantage of disruption.
In a speech at the Sorbonne on 25 April, President Emmanuel Macron called on France's European allies to develop a credible strategic concept over the coming months for defending the continent based on their own capabilities. These moves would count as part of the effort to build NATO's "European pillar", but also allow the European countries to defend themselves on their own "when necessary".
The betrayal of Ukraine is a final warning to the UK and its continental allies to put a lot more energy and money into rebuilding their defences
Financial Times: Vance's real warning to Europe
Bloomberg: Trump Tells Europe to Buy American Arms to Keep NATO Strong
An Axial Age
Every so often, things fall apart. In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth
Read 331 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world crea...
Read 889 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. NATIONAL BESTSELLER. Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what...
Climate Change
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/degrees-matter
An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.
The 12 months before July 2024 were more than 1.5 °C warmer than the pre-industrial baseline. Using climate models, the author shows that the first year that exceeds 1.5 °C of warming most probably also occurs within the first 20-year period with an average temperature that exceeds temperature targets.
The Atlas Network - a group of extreme climate deniers and supporters of dictatorships
The Atlas Network's dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Exposing the secret history of the making of the climate crisis should change everything about how we act to stop it. This has been covered and evidenced over and over, so I will just restate the...
Peter Howitt
