Disinformation photos on Flickr

“It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions” - Daniel Defoe by an equilibrium always exists

I. 'Political Cartoon' - THE TRUTH is not an amalgam of fantasies & possibilities- the truth is FACT. - "Wikileaks takes a big bite out of gov secrecy". Wikileaks Series- first set of studies/sketches ( more to come )

18" x 24.5" acid free paper, sumi ink & ebony pencil

"War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford." -

Hannah Arendt

-Samantha Power - Development and Democracy - "Samantha Power discusses the political challenges facing democracy promotion and the practical needs of effective democratization." www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUOO5cCNVg

"Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them." - Julian Assange, editor & founder of Wikileaks

wikileaks.org/

( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology )

"WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on the 'War Logs- ; ''I Enjoy Crushing Bastards" www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708518,00.html

- ( !! Yessssssssssssss.. Enough of bastards... )

-

"The leak of tens of thousands of Afghanistan war-related documents tells us more than the sum total of many official communiqués about the war. On balance, more disclosure is a good thing, but the leaking of raw military intelligence is a special case that requires a careful, rather than a cavalier, approach.

There is not enough information about the war, and much official information is misleading. In Canada, the federal government's quarterly reports contain a few updates based on its goals in Kandahar, but little else that informs. The government has already shown itself to be an unreliable source on issues relating to Afghan detainees.

The situation is now too dangerous for the most trustworthy chroniclers – journalists, UN personnel – to go outside NATO-protected areas.

So reliable, independent information is lacking. The circumstances in this war make such information even more necessary."

www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/we-neede...

"The first phase was chilling, in part because the banter of the soldiers was so far beyond the boundaries of civilian discourse. “Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em, just open ’em up,” one of them said. The crew members of the Apache came upon about a dozen men ambling down a street, a block or so from American troops, and reported that five or six of the men were armed with AK-47s; as the Apache maneuvered into position to fire at them, the crew saw one of the Reuters journalists, who were mixed in among the other men, and mistook a long-lensed camera for an RPG. The Apaches fired on the men for twenty-five seconds, killing nearly all of them instantly."

"Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté." www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/is-the-war-in-afghanist...

"Instead, many eyes will now pore over this data from many different directions, looking for patterns and attempting to eliminate the noise, disinformation and fog of war.

Many will look to it to criticise and condemn the US presence in Afghanistan, but if those on the other side – those who support such military incursions – have any sense, they too will use it to understand better the war in which they find themselves and adapt their counsel to fit more accurately the facts on the ground.

That’s the benefit, usually, of an open society. We get to triangulate on the truth by gathering facts in the public space, then providing them to all sides to chew over. We use this against our own illusions and those of more closed societies who can only view the world through one narrow perspective.": www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/0730/1224275801...

"We journalists should be delighted that WikiLeaks exists because our central task has always been one of disclosure, of revealing public interest material that others believe wish to be kept secret.The website deserves our praise and needs to be defended against the reactionary forces that seek to avoid exposure."

edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/29/wikileaks.roy.greensla...

"With the release of the WikiLeaks documents, Arab media may finally feel vindicated, as Western media finally start to give greater prominence to civilian casualties." newamericamedia.org/2010/07/wikileaks-documents-validate-...

"Wikileaks confirmed: A plan to kill American geologist with poison beer

The Wikileaks documents contain a claim that Pakistan and Afghanistan insurgents were working to poison alcoholic drinks in Afghanistan. While that's unproven, one US adviser in Afghanistan tells the Monitor he was almost poisoned that way in 2007." : www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0728/Wiki...

"This is duplicitous only if you close your eyes to the Pakistani reality, which the Americans never did. There was ample evidence, as the WikiLeaks show, of covert ISI ties to the Taliban. The Americans knew they couldn't break those ties. They settled for what support Pakistan could give them while constantly pressing them harder and harder until genuine fears in Washington emerged that Pakistan could destabilize altogether. Since a stable Pakistan is more important to the United States than a victory in Afghanistan—which it wasn't going to get anyway—the United States released pressure and increased aid. If Pakistan collapsed, then India would be the sole regional power, not something the United States wants."

www.billoreilly.com/site/rd?satype=13&said=12&url...

"How to read the Afghanistan war logs: video tutorial

David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor, explains the online tools we have created to help you understand the secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan": www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/video/2010/jul/25/afgha...

"Jonathan Foreman, writing for the right of center National Review's Corner blog, hopes the documents will force America to deal with the possible deceptions being made by ally Pakistan. "It is possible that the publication of documents that provide actual evidence — rather than rumors — of the role of ISI personnel in Taliban planning, logistics, and strategy will give the West greater leverage in dealing with Islamabad and might force Pakistan’s political elite to confront the reality of the ISI’s secret activities. If so, that would be a silver lining to what is otherwise a military disaster abetted by the U.S. and British media."

www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/NATL-The-Importance-o...

A War Without End: www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

"Julian Assange on the Afghanistan war logs: 'They show the true nature of this war'

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, explains why he decided to publish thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan Afghanistan war logs expose truth of occupation": www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/jul/25/julian-assange...

The history of US leaks: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10769495

Freedom of Information Act: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_...

"A long-delayed Afghanistan war funding bill, stripped of billions for teachers and black farmers, is back before the House and walking now into the storm over the Internet leak of battlefield reports stirring old doubts about U.S. policy and relations with Pakistan.": www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40254.html & www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40251.html

This ongoing series is dedicated to everyone who has needlessly had their lives destroyed, been injured or die in this almost past decade of war. For the sources, journalists & average citizens who risk their lives to inform us.

Reuters reporters Namir Eldeen, Saeed Chmagh & the good samaritan ( father ) who died trying to save them & of course his two surviving small children who will forever be impacted by the brutality of war for decades to come.

Please help Private Bradley Manning- www.bradleymanning.org/

"One surprising consequence of the war in Iraq is the surrender of postmodernism to a victorious modernism. This has been largely overlooked in North America.

In reaction to the U.S. intervention in Iraq, Jacques Derrida, a famous postmodernist, signed on as co-author of an article drafted by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, previously an opponent of his, in an unmistakable endorsement of modernist Enlightenment principles. Derrida, the apostle of deconstructionism, is now advocating some decidedly constructive and Eurocentric activism.

The article appeared simultaneously in two newspapers on May 31, in German in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "After the War: The Rebirth of Europe," and in French in Libération, less triumphantly, as "A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy: The demonstrations of Feb. 15 against the war in Iraq designed a new European public space."

Other famous intellectuals joined in with supportive newspaper articles of their own: Umberto Eco (of The Name of the Rose) and Gianni Vattimo in Italy and an American philosopher, Richard Rorty. This provoked much discussion in Europe, but only a few comments so far in North America, the Boston Globe and the Village Voice being rare exceptions.

This week in Montreal, there was an anti-globalization riot in which windows were broken in protest against a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. But the Habermas-Derrida declaration praises the WTO and even the International Monetary Fund as part of Weltinnenpolitik: maddeningly hard to translate, but something like "global domestic policy" or "external internal policy."

Yet it is not much of a stretch to claim the young anti-globalists as disciples of postmodernism and Derrida, who has hitherto been a foe of "logocentrism" (putting reason at the centre), "phallologocentrism" (reason is an erect male organ and, as such, damnably central) and Eurocentrism (the old, old West is the homeland of all of the above).

Derrida added a note to the article, observing most people would recognize Habermas's style and thinking in the piece, and that he hadn't had time to write a separate piece. But notwithstanding his "past confrontations" with Habermas (Derrida had objected to being called a "Judaistic mystic," for one thing), he agreed with the article he had signed, which calls for new European responsibilities "beyond all Eurocentrism" and the strengthening of international law and international institutions."

More: www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000361.php

"In early 2003, both Habermas and Derrida were very active in opposing the coming Iraq War, and called for in a manifesto that later became the book Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe for a tighter union of the states of the European Union in order to provide a power capable of opposing American foreign policy. Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration of February 2003, "February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe,” in Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe which was a reaction to the Bush administration demands upon European nations for support for the coming Iraq War[25]. Habermas has offered further context for this declaration in an interview."

More: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%c3%bcrgen_Habermas#Habermas_and_D...

Habermas: ”The asymmetry between the concentrated destructive power of the electronically controlled clusters of elegant and versatile missiles in the air and the archaic ferocity of the swarms of bearded warriors outfitted with Kalashnikovs on the ground remains a morally obscene sight

I consider Bush' s decision to call for a "war against terrorism" a serious mistake, both normatively and pragmatically. Normatively, he is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies; and pragmatically, one cannot lead a war against a "network" if the term "war" is to retain any definite meaning.”

Derrida: “To say it all too quickly and in passing, to amplify and clarify just a bit what I said earlier about an absolute threat whose origin is anonymous and not related to any state, such "terrorist" attacks already no longer need planes, bombs, or kamikazes: it is enough to infiltrate a strategically important computer system and introduce a virus or some other disruptive element to paralyze the economic, military, and political resources of an entire country or continent. And this can be attempted from just about anywhere on earth, at very little expense and with minimal means. The relationship between earth, terra territory, and terror has changed, and it is necessary to know that this is because of knowledge, that is, because of technoscience.

It is technoscience that blurs the distinction between war and terrorism. In this regard, when compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that are in reserve, for the future, in the computerized networks of the world, "September 11" is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One will be able to do even worse tomorrow, invisibly, in silence, more quickly and without any bloodshed, by attacking the computer and informational networks on which the entire life (social, economic, military, and so on) of a "great nation," of the greatest power on earth, depends.”

www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000361.php

I am incredibly- delighted at all the vital discussions about the war & US gov that are FINALLY taking place- & on a mass scale- as a result of this leak .. Simply miraculous..

FREEDOM & PEACE ( transparency, diplomacy & the evolution of such ) FOR ALL WAR NATIONS.

( WARNING - links ( after excerpt ) are NOT for sensitive viewers- ) "Wikileaks have released over 150 supressed images. This is the tip of the iceberg, keep looking, keep publishing.In the last week Wikileaks has released over 150 censored photos and videos of the Tibet uprising and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the Chinese internet censorship regime — the so called “Great Firewall of China”The transparency group’s move comes as a response to the the Chinese Public Security Bureau’s carte-blanche censorship of youtube, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and other sites carrying video footage of the Tibetan people’s recent heroic stand against the inhumane Chinese occupation of Tibet."

fortuzero.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/tibet-western-media-sa...

file.wikileaks.org/file/tibet-protest-photos/index.html

FREE TIBET!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also other dire & serious issues ( out of countless ) - that expose corruption by corporations & gov's:

"A documentary about intensive pig farming due to be screened at the Guardian Hay festival on Sunday is facing a legal threat from one of the companies it investigates. Pig Business criticises the practices of the world's largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, claiming it is responsible for environmental pollution and health problems among residents near its factories."

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/29/pig-business-document...

"In an investigation broadcast on BBC Radio 5 on November 14, 2004,[79] it was reported that the site is still contaminated with 'thousands' of metric tons of toxic chemicals, including benzene hexachloride and mercury, held in open containers or loose on the ground. A sample of drinking water from a well near the site had levels of contamination 500 times higher than the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organization.[80]

In 2009, a day before the 25th anniversary of the disaster, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi based pollution monitoring lab, released latest tests from a study showing that groundwater in areas even three km from the factory up to 38.6 times more pesticides than Indian standards."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

-

The Blue Mask - Lou Reed - www.goear.com/listen/9960779/the-blue-mask-lou-reed ( & O Superman ) www.goear.com/listen/02cf55d/o-superman-(for-massenet)-la...

Lou Reed The Blue Mask

Lyrics:

They tied his arms behind

his back to teach him how to

swim They put

blood in his coffee and milk

in his gin They stood over the

soldier in

the midst of the squalor

There was war in his body and

it caused his

brain to holler

Make the sacrifice

mutilate my face

If you need someone to kill

I'm a man without a will

Wash the razor in the rain

Let me luxuriate in pain

Please don't set me free

Death means a lot to me

The pain was lean and it made

him scream he knew he was alive

They put a

pin through the nipples on his chest

He thought he was a saint

I've made love to my mother,

killed my father and my brother

What am I

to do

When a sin goes too far, it's

like a runaway car It cannot

be controlled

Spit upon his face and scream

There's no Oedipus today

This is no play you're thinking you

are in What will you say

Take the blue mask down from my face and

look me in the eye I get a

thrill from punishment

I've always been that way

I loathe and despise repentance

You are permanently stained

Your weakness buys indifference

and indiscretion in the streets

Dirty's what you are and clean is what

you're not You deserve to be

soundly beat

Make the sacrifice

Take it all the way

There's no won't high enough

To stop this desperate day

Don't take death away

Cut the finger at the joint

Cut the stallion at his mount

And stuff it in his mouth

---

-

Countering Disinformation & Violent Extremism in the Digital Age by New America

2

From left to right: Mi-Ai Parrish, Sue Clark-Johnson Professor in Media Innovation and Leadership, ASU;

Monika Bickert, Vice President of Global Policy Management, Facebook

When green isn't green by Peter Blanchard

2 1

Corporate agriculture on the experimental farm, your tax dollars at work. Ironically, note the much greener field beyond the sprayed one. Maybe the dandelions know something we don't (they've been here 350 million years longer, and will probably out-survive our shenanigans). Nearby, the relatively tiny organic gardens remain unfunded and largely ignored by the government. Agriculture Canada has been called an "owned" department, implying that their decisions are directed, one way or another, by corporate interests, lobbying and disinformation. Controlling and selling monoculture and its related chemicals is highly profitable, and so gives industry a big voice. Whither public interest, healthy food and sustainability?

Corporate agriculture: where squeaking out an extra percentage point of short-term profitability is valued above all other considerations, such as fossil fuel dependency, soil sustainability, disaster resiliency, biodiversity, small business, family farms, climate change, healthy rural communities, local food, seed saving. It's all about maximizing corporate profit through the centralization and control of food production. Food as a factory product. Nature in a box. I look forward to the day when Monsanto and the like need to hold bake sales to raise funds — while farmers and gardeners are thriving in an honest, democratic economy. Canada certainly isn't there yet.

20221019 by Guy M Wong

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/covid-19-is-still-a-global-heal...

COVID-19 is still a global health emergency, WHO says

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), almost three years after it was first recognized as such back in January 2020.

The determination was made last week at a meeting by the Emergency Committee on COVID-19, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO.

"The committee emphasized the need to strengthen surveillance and expand access to tests, treatments and vaccines for those most at risk," Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing. "And for all countries to update their national preparedness and response plans."

The committee acknowledged that the pandemic has gotten better, but believes the world must remain vigilant as the COVID-19 virus has proven unpredictable.

"While the global situation has obviously improved since the pandemic began, the virus continues to change, and there remain many risks and uncertainties," the director-general said. "This pandemic has surprised us before, and very well could again."

The WHO defines a PHEIC as "an extraordinary event" that could harm other countries through the spread of a disease. A PHEIC could require a coordinated international response effort, and is often "serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected."

Last week, meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief chief medical adviser, described the spread of the new COVID variant known as BQ.1 as "pretty troublesome." The strain, and a descendant called BQ.1.1, have already grown to make up more than 10% of new infections across the U.S.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/19/covid-deaths-us-...

Whites now more likely to die from covid than Blacks: Why the pandemic shifted

OMERVILLE, Tenn. — Skill Wilson had amassed more than three decades of knowledge as a paramedic, first in Memphis and then in Fayette County. Two places that felt like night and day.

With only five ambulances in the county and the nearest hospital as much as 45 minutes away, Skill relished the clinical know-how necessary to work in a rural setting. Doing things like sedating patients to insert tubes into their airways.

But when it came to covid-19, despite more than 1 million deaths nationwide, Skill and his family felt their small town on the central-eastern side of Fayette County, with its fields of grazing cattle and rows of cotton and fewer than 200 covid deaths since the start of the pandemic, was a cocoon against the raging health emergency.

“It was a lot easier to stay away from others,” his widow, Hollie Wilson, said of the largely White and predominantly conservative county of about 42,000 residents. “Less people. Less chance of exposure.”

Covid seemed like other people’s problems — until it wasn’t.

The imbalance in death rates among the nation’s racial and ethnic groups has been a defining part of the pandemic since the start. To see the pattern, The Washington Post analyzed every death during more than two years of the pandemic. Early in the crisis, the differing covid threat was evident in places such as Memphis and Fayette County. Deaths were concentrated in dense urban areas, where Black people died at several times the rate of White people.

“I don’t want to say that we weren’t worried about it, but we weren’t,” said Hollie, who described her 59-year-old husband as someone who “never took a pill.” After a while, “you kind of slack off on some things,” she said.

Over time, the gap in deaths widened and narrowed but never disappeared — until mid-October 2021, when the nation’s pattern of covid mortality changed, with the rate of death among White Americans sometimes eclipsing other groups.

A Post analysis of covid death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from April 2020 through this summer found the racial disparity vanished at the end of last year, becoming roughly equal. And at times during that same period, the overall age-adjusted death rate for White people slightly surpassed that of Black and Latino people.

The nature of the virus makes the elderly and people with underlying health conditions — including hypertension, diabetes and obesity, all of which beset Black people at higher rates and earlier in life than White people — particularly vulnerable to severe illness and death.

That wasn’t Skill.

The virus also attacks unvaccinated adults — who polls show are more likely to be Republicans — with a ferocity that puts them at a much higher risk of infection and death.

That was Skill.

He joined the choir of critics opposing vaccination requirements, his rants in front of the television eventually wearing on Hollie, who, even if she agreed, grew tired of listening and declared their home “covid-talk free.”

So, she said, Skill commiserated with like-minded people in Facebook groups and on Parler and Rumble, the largely unmoderated social networking platforms popular with conservatives.

“We’re Republicans, and 100 percent believe that it’s each individual’s choice — their freedom” when it comes to getting a coronavirus shot, Hollie said in January. “We decided to err on the side of not doing it and accept the consequences. And now, here we are in the middle of planning the funeral.”

Capt. Julian Greaves Wilson Jr., known to everybody as Skill, died of covid Jan. 23, a month after becoming infected with the coronavirus. He fell ill not long after transporting a covid patient to the hospital. At the time he died, infection rates in Fayette County had soared to 40.5 percent among people taking coronavirus tests.

‘A different calculus’

When the coronavirus appeared in the United States, it did what airborne viruses do — latched onto cells in people’s respiratory tract, evaded innate immune responses and multiplied. The pathogen, free of politics or ideology, had a diverse reservoir of hosts and found fertile pathways for growth in the inequalities born from centuries of racial animus and class resentments.

Unequal exposure, unequal spread, unequal vulnerability and unequal treatment concentrated harm in communities that needed protection the most yet had the least. Cumulatively, Black, Latino and Native American people are 60 percent more likely to die of covid.

But as the pandemic progressed, the damage done by the virus broadened, and the toxicity of modern-day politics came to the fore.

The Post analysis revealed the changing pattern in covid deaths. At the start of the pandemic, Black people were more than three times as likely to die of covid as their White peers. But as 2020 progressed, the death rates narrowed — but not because fewer Black people were dying. White people began dying at increasingly unimaginable numbers, too, the Post analysis found.

In summer 2021, the nation saw some of the pandemic’s lowest death rates, as vaccines, shoring up the body’s immune response, became widely available.

Then came the delta variant. The virus mutated, able to spread among the vaccinated. As it did, an erosion of trust in government and in medicine — in any institution, really — slowed vaccination rates, stymieing the protection afforded by vaccines against severe illness and death.

After delta’s peak in September 2021, the racial differences in covid deaths started eroding. The Post analysis found that Black deaths declined, while White deaths never eased, increasing slowly but steadily, until the mortality gap flipped. From the end of October through the end of December, White people died at a higher rate than Black people did, The Post found.

That remained true except for a stretch in winter 2021-2022, when the omicron variant rampaged. The Black death rate jumped above White people’s when the spike in cases and deaths overwhelmed providers in the Northeast, resulting in a bottleneck of testing and treatment.

When the surge subsided, the Black death rate once again dropped below the White rate.

“Usually, when we say a health disparity is disappearing, what we mean is that … the worse-off group is getting better,” said Tasleem Padamsee, an assistant professor at Ohio State University who researched vaccine use and was a member of the Ohio Department of Health’s work group on health equity. “We don’t usually mean that the group that had a systematic advantage got worse.”

That’s exactly what happened as the White death rate surpassed that for Black people, even though Black Americans routinely confront stress so corrosive it causes them to age quicker, become sicker and die younger.

The shift in covid death rates “has vastly different implications for public health interventions,” said Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Officials must figure out how to connect with “communities who are ideologically opposed to the vaccine” while contending with “the cumulative impact of injustice” on communities of color.

“Think about the fact that everyone who is age 57 and older in this country was born when Jim Crow was legal,” she said. “What that did was intersect with covid-19, meaning that embodied history is part of this pandemic, too.”

So what contributed to the recent variation in death rates? And why?

The easy explanation is that it reflects the choices of Republicans not to be vaccinated, but the reasons go deeper. The Post interviewed historians and researchers who study the effects of White racial politics and social inequality on health, spoke with relatives and friends of those lost to covid, and compiled data from federal databases and academic studies.

What emerged is a story about how long-standing issues of race and class interacted with the physical and psychological toll of mass illness and death, unprecedented social upheaval, public policies — and public opinion.

Resilience gave way to fatigue. Holes left by rural hospital closures deepened. Medical mistrust and misinformation raged. Skeptics touted debunked alternatives over proven treatments and prevention. Mask use became a victim of social stigma.

Many Republicans decided they would rather roll the dice with their health than follow public health guidance — even when provided by President Donald Trump, who was booed after saying he had been vaccinated and boosted.

Researchers at Ohio State found Black and White people were about equally reluctant to get the coronavirus vaccine when it first became available, but Black people overcame that hesitancy faster. They came to the realization sooner that vaccines were necessary to protect themselves and their communities, Padamsee said.

As public health efforts to contain the virus were curtailed, the pool of those most at risk of becoming casualties widened. The No. 1 cause of death for 45-to-54-year-olds in 2021 was covid, according to federal researchers.

“I still remember when I was doing the mayor’s press conferences a few months into this, and I made note of the fact that most of those people who had died look like me,” said James E.K. Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College, one of the nation’s oldest and largest private, historically Black academic health sciences center, in Nashville. Hildreth played a central role in the city’s pandemic response.

“I wondered aloud if it were reversed, would the whole nation not be more galvanized to fight this thing?” recalled Hildreth, an immunologist and member of an expert panel that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines, including coronavirus shots.

After it became clear that communities of color were being disproportionately affected, racial equity started to become the parlance of the pandemic, in words and deeds. As it did, vaccine access and acceptance within communities of color grew — and so did the belief among some White conservatives, who form the core of the Republican base, that vaccine requirements and mask mandates infringe on personal liberties.

“Getting to make this decision for themselves has primacy over what the vaccine could do for them,” said Lisa R. Pruitt, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who is an expert in social inequality and the urban-rural divide. “They’re making a different calculus.”

It’s a calculation informed by the lore around self-sufficiency, she said, a fatalistic acceptance that hardships happen in life and a sense of defiance that has come to define the modern conservative movement’s antipathy toward bureaucrats and technocrats.

“I didn’t think that that polarization would transfer over to a pandemic,” Pruitt said.

It did.

A lifesaving vaccine and droplet-blocking masks became ideological Rorschach tests.

The impulse to frame the eradication of an infectious disease as a matter of personal choice cost the lives of some who, despite taking the coronavirus seriously, were surrounded by enough people that the virus found fertile terrain to sow misery. That’s what happened in northern Illinois, where a father watched his 40-year-old son succumb to covid-19.

For Robert Boam, the increase in White deaths is politics brought to bear on the body of his son, though he’s reluctant “to get into the politics of it all, but it all goes back to that.”

Brian Boam was a PE teacher at an elementary school in suburban Chicago. On Christmas Eve, the entire family gathered at the elder Boam’s home in an Illinois town where the first Lincoln-Douglas debate was held. Brian Boam was there with his 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.

Robert Boam said his son had survived covid the year before, so “we got on his butt to get that booster shot when he was here for Christmas.” And he did — but got sick again, the 73-year-old said. “Being vaccinated, and all that, and getting covid again kind of bummed him out.”

Just after the new year, Brian Boam, who was hypertensive, went to a hospital feverish and vomiting. It took 10 hours to be seen and even longer for a bed to become available. As he waited, he sent what would be his last text message to his parents. Thanks for all you do. I love you.

He went into cardiac arrest in the emergency room and was transferred to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, one of the nation’s top academic hospitals. There, his family hoped he would be healed, but his organs began to fail. He died Jan. 8.

“The thing that gets me is the people who still don’t believe it’s serious or even real, but when they get sick, they run to the hospital,” Robert Boam said. “You’re taking away from heart attack patients and stroke patients.”

The pandemic, he said, “should’ve been taken seriously from the very beginning, and it wasn’t. It was denied. It was downplayed. And it all goes back to one person, as far as I’m concerned.”

Asked who that was, Boam would say only: “I’ll give you three guesses. The first two don’t count.”

Stress, and its burden

While almost three years of chaotic public health crises have left Americans of all races uncertain about the future, they have also revealed the enduring nature of racial and class politics — and the cost they exact, including for White Americans.

Those triggers are layered upon each other, stoking stress, said Derek M. Griffith, who co-leads the Racial Justice Institute and directs the Center for Men’s Health Equity at Georgetown University.

“Whether it’s ‘I can’t pay my rent and mortgage as easily as I used to,’ or ‘I want to show I’m not worried about covid,’ your body doesn’t care where the stress is coming from. It’s just experiencing stress,” he said. “Then add to that how people are coping with the stress.”

When it comes to racism, most people think of something that occurs between individuals. But it’s as much about who has access to power, wealth and rights as it is about insults, suspicion and disrespect. Prejudice and discrimination, even if unconscious, can be deadly — and not just for the intended targets.

A growing body of research, outlined in the book “Caste,” by Isabel Wilkerson, shows that even the most anodyne of social exchanges with people of different races, such as glancing at faded yearbook photos, can raise White people’s blood pressure and cortisol levels.

Stress is a hard-wired physiological response, triggered at the first sign of danger. The brain sounds an alarm, setting off a torrent of neurological and hormonal signals. Persistent surges of cortisol and other stress hormones can wear down the body, increasing the risk of stroke, diabetes, heart attack or premature death by damaging blood vessels and arteries. Overexposure to stress can weaken the immune response and can make it harder to develop antibodies after being vaccinated against infectious diseases.

Sometimes, the harm is not just biological but also behavioral.

Researchers at the University of Georgia found that White people who assumed the pandemic had a disparate effect on communities of color — or were told that it did — had less fear of being infected with the coronavirus, were less likely to express empathy toward vulnerable populations and were less supportive of safety measures, according to an article in Social Science & Medicine.

Perhaps, the report concludes, explaining covid’s unequal burden as part of an enduring legacy of inequality “signaled these disparities were not just transitory epidemiological trends, which could potentially shift and disproportionately impact White people in the future.”

Translation: Racial health disparities are part of the status quo.

And because of that, government efforts to bring a public health threat to heel are seen by some White Americans as infringing on their rights, researchers said.

“This is reflective of politics that go back to the 19th-century anxieties about federal overreach,” said Ayah Nuriddin, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University who studies the history of medicine.

Us vs. them

Questions about the government’s role in ensuring the public’s health and well-being hang heavy with historical inflections in states such as Tennessee, once home to the president who argued that Reconstruction-era legislation to help and protect newly freed enslaved people violated states’ rights.

And so in many ways, the roots of the consternation over recent pandemic-control measures began sprouting a century and a half earlier.

But that hasn’t stopped people such as Civil Miller-Watkins from wondering why those roots are choking so many now.

The former Fayette County school board member, who possesses an abiding belief in the power of the common good, said she finds the mind-set “I know what’s good for me, and if it’s harmful for you, you’re going to have to deal with it” worrisome amid a pandemic.

“Living in a rural county is not for the faint of heart, especially as a Black person,” the 56-year-old said. Still, she can’t help but wonder, “if I’m the same neighbor you give sugar to, and you know I have an 84-year-old in my house and a little-bitty baby at home, why wouldn’t you wear a mask around me?”

It’s a question that dogged her over Christmas when two of her grandchildren were infected with the coronavirus days before they were scheduled to be vaccinated.

“We put it on Republicans and politics,” she said, “but I think we should dig deeper.”

That’s what Jonathan M. Metzl, director of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, did for six years while researching his book “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.”

Published in 2019, it is a book about the politicization of public health and mistrust of medical institutions. It is a story about how communal values take a back seat to individuality. It’s an exploration of disinformation and how the fear of improving the lives of some means worsening the lives of others.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was writing a prehistory of the pandemic,” Metzl said in an interview. “You’re seeing a kind of dying-of-Whiteness phenomenon in the covid data that’s very similar to what I saw in my data.”

Metzl and Griffith, a Vanderbilt professor at the time, conducted focus groups on the Affordable Care Act throughout middle Tennessee including White and Black men who were 20 to 60 years old. Some were small-business owners and security guards. Others were factory workers and retirees.

The divergent medical experiences of Black and White patients permeated Metzl’s focus groups, particularly when the conversation veered toward the politics of health and government’s role in promoting well-being.

“Black men described precisely the same medical and economic stressors as did White men and detailed the same struggles to stay healthy,” Metzl wrote. “But Black men consistently differed from White men in how they conceived of government intervention and group identity. Whereas White men jumped unthinkingly to assumptions about ‘them,’ Black men frequently answered questions about health and health systems through the language of ‘us.’ ”

Tennessee has yet to expand Medicaid under the ACA, a decision fueling rural hospital closures at a rate that eclipses nearly every other state because there isn’t enough money to keep the doors open. Not only would expanding Medicaid have saved hospitals, Metzl wrote, it would have saved thousands of lives — White and Black.

Metzl said watching the pandemic unfold felt like a flashback to past battles over federal health-care reform. Messaging that leaned into quantitative data about masks and vaccines sounded eerily similar to the mistakes made, “at least for this part of the country,” with the ACA, he said.

“The minute public health infrastructure started to talk about the statistical public health benefits of the mask” and not how everyone needed to be on the same page to stay safe, Metzl said, “I just knew that it was going to open a door for the same kind of anti-ACA stuff, which is ‘the government’s telling you what to do.’ ”

As Metzl conducted research for his book in 2016, a 41-year-old uninsured Tennessean named Trevor who was jaundiced and in liver failure told him “I would rather die” than sign up for the ACA. When asked why, Trevor, who was identified by first name only, said: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”

Now during the pandemic, there are people like 39-year-old Chad Carswell of North Carolina whose kidneys functioned recently at just 3 percent. He was denied a new kidney in January after refusing to take a coronavirus vaccine as required for the transplant at the time, saying: “I was born free. I’ll die free.”

Much like protests to “repeal and replace” the ACA, Metzl said rejecting public health measures is about dogma more so than a mistrust of the science of vaccines or masks.

“We’ve oversimplified this with morality tales about the vaccine is good, and anti-vaxxers are bad, and they’re automatically racist,” Metzl said. “Being anti-vaccine or anti-mask is part of an ideology. When people get more desperate, they get more ideological.”

A funeral, a cause

Skill Wilson’s funeral in January was a public testimony to the complexity of people. The room was draped in the unmistakable symbols of patriotism, a steely declaration that this was someone who believed in service and sacrifice for country and community. Firefighters sat in row upon row, their dress uniforms — crisp white shirts and formal blue blazers — marking the solemn occasion. Maskless faces abounded.

His urn, embossed with the firefighters’ “thin red line” flag — a black-and-white U.S. flag with a single red stripe across it — sat between two firemen’s helmets. It is a flag that some have come to see as a political statement, while others view it as a way to honor fallen firefighters. Behind them, a burial flag folded into a crisp triangle.

A succession of eulogies told the story of a man who could make you drive past your highway exit in a fit of rage, who harassed the fire chief until every station in the county had a flagpole that displayed the Stars and Stripes, who loved sneaking up behind his children and yelling, “Boo!”

Husband. Father. Friend.

Sarcastic. Goofy. Joker.

“Skill was one of the constants in my life. For people who didn’t really know our friendship, they’d think we hated each other,” said Debbie Patterson, a division chief with Emergency Medical Services at the Memphis Fire Department. “We were constantly going to battle and name-calling. Some of them are dork, idiot, slacker. But our true term of endearment for each other, for years, has been ‘b----es.’ ”

He would call at 6 a.m., even when she wasn’t on shift, to “wake me up and tell me I was a slacker for being on vacation,” she said, laughing.

During those phone calls, they figured out the day’s menu for lunch, bragged about their children and personal lives, and solved the fire department’s problems “as firefighters do.”

“Of course, we rarely saw eye to eye on anything,” she said. “The best part about Skill was he could laugh at himself for being a dumb ass, too.”

It was a scene of mourning and hope, of bravado and brokenness. There was as much laughter as sorrow, wounds healed by scripture and classic ’70s rock. It was a paragon of Southern, White masculinity.

Last to the lectern was Hollie’s uncle, who looked out at the sea of uniforms, at the men and women in government service, and assured them that the uncomfortable truths he said he was about to share were not directed at anybody in the room.

Skill, he said, was a warrior who put his faith in the system that “betrayed him and left him laying on this battlefield” during a “war he was willing to fight.”

“How many more good men and women — fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters — will be sacrificed on the altar of money before we all stand up and say this is enough?” he continued, adding that “Skill and I were on the same page. We had the same worldview.”

He never specified the war, though he said it was one we’re all fighting “no matter what lines they try to draw between us.” Faith, he said, lies with God and each other, “not in those who are solely motivated by profit.”

But it wasn’t about what he said. It was about what he left unsaid: the far-right extremist views that go beyond the bounds of traditional conservative politics and ideals of patriotism.

Online, he and the family have shared social media posts and, until recently, sold customized insulated plastic cups bearing the insignia of Three Percenters, a decentralized militant movement named after the myth that just 3 percent of the population fought the British in the American Revolution. It’s founded on the idea that armed “patriots” should protect Americans from the tyranny of big government, including gun laws, pandemic shutdowns and racial justice protests.

Later, outside in the parking lot while smoking a cigarette, Hollie’s uncle clarified that the battle is against covid and shared the popular — yet false — conspiracy that potentially lifesaving covid medications are being withheld by the health-care system. What he wouldn’t do was provide his name, saying he didn’t want “little black SUVs showing up at my house.”

Methodology

The Post applied the standard technique used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to calculate age-adjusted covid death rates by race using the CDC’s provisional covid death data that includes race, ethnicity, age and date of death. Under that procedure, The Post calculated death rates for age groups by dividing the number of deaths by the population in that age group. The Post then used a standardized age distribution to create an overall rate for each race-ethnicity group.

Age-adjusted rates are especially necessary for understanding covid deaths because the majority of people killed by covid are age 75 or older, even though that group represents less than 9 percent of the U.S. population. Additionally, more than 90 percent of covid deaths are in people age 50 and older.

The covid death age pattern is important in reviewing deaths by race because White people are disproportionately older. More than 40 percent of White people are age 50 or older, but less than 30 percent of Black people are in those older age groups. Hispanics are even younger, with less than 25 percent age 50 or older.

The age-adjusted rates offset that difference in age distribution to compare deaths as if the races or ethnic groups had the same age distribution.

Whites, Blacks, Asians, American Indians and Alaskan Natives are non-Hispanic. Hispanics are of any race, so the racial groups and the Hispanic groups do not overlap.

For maps, The Post calculated age-adjusted covid death rates for each race in each state over the course of the pandemic using provisional covid death data by state.

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

Free Estonia by A.Davey

2

Tallinn City Museum, Tallinn, Estonia.

========================================================

As a member of NATO, Estonia, like Montenegro, is a beneficiary of the collective defense provisions of Article V of the Washington Treaty, the organic document that established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They provide that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.

Russia is currently carrying out disinformation campaigns in Estonia aimed at ethnic Russians there.

www.dw.com/en/baltics-battle-russia-in-online-disinformat...

========================================================

Here's how Estonia extricated itself from the USSR:

In the late 1970s, Estonian society grew increasingly concerned about the threat of cultural Russification to the Estonian language and national identity.

By 1981, Russian was taught in the first grade of Estonian-language schools and was also introduced into Estonian pre-school teaching.

Soviet authorities began to lure in Finnish tourists and the much needed foreign exchange they could bring.

The Soviet travel agency Inturist contracted Finnish construction company Repo to build Hotel Viru in downtown Tallinn. [Our tour guide said the building was heavily bugged.]

Estonians saw very different construction equipment, methods and work morale. An improved ferry MS Georg Ots between Tallinn and Helsinki came into operation. Estonia gained Western currency, but on the other hand Western thoughts and customs began to infiltrate Soviet Estonia.

By the beginning of the Gorbachev era, concern over the cultural survival of the Estonian people had reached a critical point.

The ECP [Estonian Communist Party] remained stable in the early perestroika years but waned in the late 1980s.

Other political movements, groupings and parties moved to fill the power vacuum.

The first and most important was the Estonian Popular Front, established in April 1988 with its own platform, leadership and broad constituency.

The Greens and the dissident-led Estonian National Independence Party soon followed. By 1989 the political spectrum had widened, and new parties were formed and re-formed almost daily.

The republic's Supreme Soviet transformed into an authentic regional lawmaking body.

This relatively conservative legislature passed an early declaration of sovereignty (November 16, 1988); a law on economic independence (May 1989) confirmed by the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet that November; a language law making Estonian the official language (January 1989); and local and republic election laws stipulating residency requirements for voting and candidacy (August, November 1989).

Although the majority of Estonia's large Russian-speaking diaspora of Soviet-era immigrants did not support full independence, they were divided in their goals for the republic.

In March 1990 some 18% of Russian speakers supported the idea of a fully independent Estonia, up from 7% the previous autumn, and by early 1990 only a small minority of ethnic Estonians were opposed to full independence.

The first freely elected parliament during the Soviet era in Estonia had passed Estonian Sovereignty Declaration on November 16, 1988, independence resolutions on May 8, 1990, and renamed the Estonian SSR the Republic of Estonia.

On August 20, 1991 the Estonian parliament issued a Declaration of Independence from the Soviet Union.

On September 6, 1991, Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the independence of Estonia,immediately followed by the international recognitions of the Republic of Estonia.

On February 23, 1989 the flag of the Estonian SSR was lowered on Pikk Hermann, and replaced with the blue-black-white flag of Estonia on February 24, 1989.

In 1992, Heinrich Mark, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia in Exile, presented his credentials to the newly elected President of Estonia Lennart Meri.

The last Russian troops withdrew from Estonia in August 1994.

The Russian Federation officially ended its military presence in Estonia after it relinquished control of the nuclear reactor facilities in Paldiski in September 1995. Estonia joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_Soviet_Socialist_Republic

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

La omisión del Estado y la administración de la tragedia | The omission of the State and the administration of the tragedy #19S by jpazkual [OFM]

2

Los acontecimientos alrededor del sismo del pasado 19 de septiembre ponen a la vista la estrategia que adoptó el Estado mexicano para administrar la tragedia en su beneficio, ocultar su negligencia, lucrar con ella y aprovechar la oportunidad que se viene para engrosar los bolsillos de quienes más tienen. Es esto lo que convierte un desastre natural en una tragedia.

----

La omisión del Estado y la administración de la tragedia | Por Tejiendo Organización Revolucionaria | 25 de septiembre de 2017 - tejiendorevolucion.org/190917.html

----

Quien protagoniza la tragedia es la negligencia, no el temblor; evidencia de ello es que éste fue presentado como inesperado, aunque es por demás sabido que se dio en zona sísmica; evidencia son los más de treinta años en que no se avanzó en la prevención: las revisiones fallidas después del temblor del 7 de septiembre no arrojaron datos de que hubiera escuelas mal construidas o con daños estructurales; evidencia es que los reglamentos de construcción son letra muerta, asesinada por la corrupción de los diversos niveles de gobierno y los negocios inmobiliarios.

La urgencia de la tragedia convocó a la solidaridad inmediata y la presión del tiempo urgente ocultó un hecho fundamental: el Estado sí cuenta con los recursos materiales y humanos para enfrentar la catástrofe; cuenta con maquinaria pesada, equipo y personal especializado, infraestructura de comunicación, dinero, etc., si no los ocupó fue porque deicidio no hacerlo, no porque se viera rebasado.

El Estado mexicano tiene recursos de alta tecnología para espiarnos, por ejemplo, pero no los puso al servicio de los rescatistas para localizar vida dentro de los escombros. Tampoco se usó la estructura estatal para proporcionar información fidedigna y pronta que pudiera salvar vidas y canalizar la ayuda. Es más, ni los rescatistas internacionales fueron bien aprovechados, aunque los había.

La participación del Estado en las zonas más afectadas fue bajo la lógica de contener y controlar. Así actuaron sus efectivos castrenses, la milicia y la marina, al presentarse con armas de alto calibre a establecer perímetros de seguridad, que no sólo obstaculizaban el pronto rescate de vidas humanas, sino que pretendían cohibir la organización de la gente. Es importante mencionar que hubo elementos del ejército y policía custodiando las tiendas trasnacionales de supuestos intentos de rapiña. No es difícil concluir que su plan era lavarle la cara al ejército, cuya presencia fue más evidente en aquellos puntos que mediáticamente eran más explotables. Todo esto bajo una lógica de guerra y de barrer de manera pronta con los escombros.

El Estado permitió y fomentó que se le pidiera a la población gastar su salario en acopios individuales, que luego buscó administrar de forma clientelar y asistencialista, mientras, los impuestos que de por si paga el pueblo fueron a parar al fideicomiso “Fuerza México”, fideicomiso que canalizará los recursos públicos y privados generando una acumulación de capital nada desdeñable para quienes lo administran: las grandes empresas; esas, que brillaron por su ausencia cuando se hizo el llamado general a la solidaridad y que ahora piden donaciones como si fuesen la víctimas de la tragedia.

Para el Estado y los grandes capitalistas, a quienes realmente representa, el territorio de la tragedia –Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tlaxcala, Morelos, Puebla, Ciudad de México– es visto como un espacio para generar ganancias, invirtiendo y especulando con las vidas de la gente.

Lo único que podrá detenerlos es la organización de los afectados por el sismo, la organización de la gente solidaria que desbordó las calles y acudió segura de que su ayuda era indispensable, porque sabíamos que el gobierno no haría nada.

El triple propósito de la estrategia estatal fue primero, ponernos a resolver la situación como pudiéramos y así canalizar la energía social, segundo, aparecer codo a codo con la gente para lavar su imagen y, tercero, aumentar las ventas de las grandes empresas.

Si algo aprenden los que insisten en dominarnos es que abajo siempre nos organizamos en su contra, así sucedió con el terremoto de 1985, así sucede ahora. Eso es lo que temen los de arriba y lo que intentaran contener a cualquier costo. El caos que han fomentado en forma de vacío institucional, desinformación, tragedia y muerte tiene por primer objetivo ese: imposibilitar la organización. Después de largos años atacando las múltiples formas de organización popular y social han dejado a una sociedad aislada, dividida, individualizada; no obstante, esta sociedad ahora intenta restablecer los lazos, buscamos reconocernos como compañeros de los mismos problemas.

Junto a la desorganización hay un segundo objetivo del Estado, encauzar nuestra indignación y nuestra solidaridad. Dejar que la “sociedad civil” tenga que resolver lo urgente y vital de la tragedia para así impedir que lo denunciemos; con estas formas el Estado nos desgasta, nos va quitando esperanzas y evita que nos organicemos para cambiarlo en el futuro. Nos quieren dejar la carga de la tragedia, quieren que seamos los responsables del fracaso.

La apuesta desde arriba es que no vamos a ser capaces de organizarnos pero están equivocados, nosotros, desde abajo, vamos a demostrarlo porque nos va la vida en ello.

Por eso llamamos a la organización solidaria y no sólo a la solidaridad. Hay que organizarnos que esto va pa' largo, hay que reconocernos con un enemigo en común: el sistema capitalista al que defiende y representa el Estado. Pero además, y más importante, hay que reconocernos con una causa común: tener una vida digna, digna porque podemos organizarnos para salvar vidas sin que ninguna instancia autoritaria nos lo impida; digna porque podemos participar y garantizar que la reconstrucción de las viviendas afectadas se haga con los requerimientos necesarios. Denunciemos la omisión, la negligencia y la administración que el Estado hace de la tragedia. Impulsemos la autoorganización de los de abajo para la reconstrucción del país desde los escombros.

Tejiendo Organización Revolucionaria

25 de septiembre de 2017

___

The events surrounding the September 19 earthquake expose the Mexican state's strategy to manage the tragedy on its behalf, to hide its negligence, to profit from it and to seize the opportunity that has come to swell the pockets of those who have. This is what turns a natural disaster into a tragedy.

----

The omission of the State and the administration of the tragedy | By Tejiendo Revolutionary Organization | September 25, 2017

----

The protagonist of the tragedy is negligence, not trembling; Evidence of this is that it was presented as unexpected, although it is well known that it occurred in seismic zone; evidence is more than thirty years in which there was no progress in prevention: failed reviews after the earthquake of September 7 did not report that there were poorly constructed or structurally damaged schools; evidence is that building regulations are dead letter, murdered by the corruption of various levels of government and real estate business.

The urgency of the tragedy called for immediate solidarity and the urgent pressure of time concealed a fundamental fact: the State does have the material and human resources to face the catastrophe; has heavy machinery, equipment and specialized personnel, communication infrastructure, money, etc., if not occupied was because deicide not to do it, not because it was exceeded.

The Mexican state has high-tech resources to spy on us, for example, but did not put them at the service of rescuers to locate life inside the rubble. Nor was the state structure used to provide reliable and timely information that could save lives and channel aid. Moreover, not even the international rescuers were well exploited, although there were.

The participation of the State in the most affected areas was under the logic of containing and controlling. This was how their military officers, the militia and the navy acted, by introducing themselves with high-caliber weapons to establish security perimeters, which not only hindered the prompt rescue of human lives, but also sought to restrain the organization of the people. It is important to mention that there were elements of the army and police guarding the transnational tents of alleged predatory attempts. It is not difficult to conclude that his plan was to wash the face to the army, whose presence was more evident in those points that mediatically were more exploitable. All this under a logic of war and sweep quickly with the rubble.

The state allowed and encouraged that the population be asked to spend their salary in individual stores, which later sought to manage clientele and welfare, while the taxes paid by the people went to the trust "Fuerza México" trust that will channel the public and private resources generating a capital accumulation not negligible for those who administer it: large companies; those that shone by their absence when the general call for solidarity was made and now ask for donations as if they were the victims of the tragedy.

For the state and the great capitalists it represents, the territory of the tragedy - Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tlaxcala, Morelos, Puebla, Mexico City - is seen as a space to generate profits, investing and speculating with the lives of people.

The only thing that can stop them is the organization of those affected by the earthquake, the organization of the people of solidarity who overflowed the streets and came safe that their help was indispensable, because we knew that the government would do nothing.

The threefold purpose of the state strategy was first, to resolve the situation as we could and thus channel social energy, second, to appear side by side with people to wash their image and, thirdly, to increase the sales of large companies.

If there is something learned by those who insist on dominating us, it is that below we always organize against him, so it happened with the earthquake of 1985, this is what happens now. That's what they fear from above and what they try to contain at any cost. The chaos that they have fomented in the form of institutional vacuum, disinformation, tragedy and death has the first objective that: to prevent the organization. After many years attacking the multiple forms of popular and social organization have left an isolated, divided, individualized society; nevertheless, this society now tries to reestablish the bonds, we seek to recognize ourselves as companions of the same problems.

Along with the disorganization there is a second objective of the State, to channel our indignation and our solidarity. Let the "civil society" have to solve the urgent and vital of the tragedy in order to prevent denouncing it; with these forms the State wears us, takes away our hopes and prevents us to organize to change it in the future. They want to leave us the burden of tragedy, they want us to be responsible for the failure. The bet from above is that we will not be able to organize but they are wrong, we, from below, we are going to prove it because we are going to live in it.

That's why we call solidarity organization and not just solidarity. We have to organize that this goes for long, we have to recognize ourselves with a common enemy: the capitalist system that defends and represents the State. But more importantly, we must recognize ourselves with a common cause: having a dignified, dignified life because we can organize ourselves to save lives without any authoritarian instance preventing us; dignified because we can participate and ensure that the reconstruction of affected housing is made with the necessary requirements. Let us denounce the omission, neglect and administration that the State makes of the tragedy. Let us encourage the self-organization of those below for the reconstruction of the country from the rubble.

Tejiendo Organización Revolucionaria

25 September 2017

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

New ProfilePics: A Putinesque scam? by Marci Ansen

There's a bit of what seems to be disinformation going around about whether NPP and ToonMe are Kremlin-sourced data harvesters.

Snopes.com has looked into this, and the answer appears to be, no actually. So for now, at any rate, our sites seem to be safe.

www.snopes.com/news/2022/05/11/new-profile-pic-app/

Aside from all that, any preferences with these?

GazaProtestSM20140726_131 by DawnOne

Orthodox rabbis opposed to Zionism and the State of Israel with banner www.NKCanada.ca and Imam. Demonstration in support of Gaza in Toronto, march from Queens Park to the US consulate © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com July 26, 2014

International Day of Al-Quds - Several thousand supporters of Palestinians (estimates range from 5,000- 10,000), with a small counter demonstration of a few hundred supporters of Zionist Israel.

The zionists and JDL do not speak for all Jewish people.

Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel

This statement was rejected by both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail (as an op-ed). Please help this important statement get into broad circulation - pass it on to your networks (faculty, community, MPs, university presidents, unions etc.). You may also wish to write to the Star and Globe and express your dismay that they have chosen not to publish it.

Over 150 Jewish Canadians signed a statement expressing their concerns about the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel that is being carried on within Canada. The signatories include many prominent Canadians, including Ursula Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., Naomi Klein, Dr. Gabor Mate, and professors Meyer Brownstone (recipient of Pearson Peace Medal), Natalie Zemon Davis, Michael Neumann, and Judy Rebick. *

The signatories are particularly concerned that unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism deflect attention from Israel’s accountability for what many have called war crimes in Gaza. They state that B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have led campaigns to silence criticism of Israel on university campuses, in labor unions and in other groups. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff unquestioningly echo the views of these particular Jewish organizations.

They strongly state that they are against all expressions of racism. While firmly committed to resisting any form of prejudice against Jewish people, their statement explicitly states that these spurious allegations of anti-Semitism bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind.

The statement underlines the immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people due to the severe poverty, daily humiliations, and military invasions inflicted by the State of Israel.

James Deutsch, M.D., Ph.D.

Judith Deutsch, M.S.W., R.S.W.

Miriam Garfinkle, M.D.

Statement: Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel

We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy "Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.

We are appalled by recent attempts of prominent Jewish organizations and leading Canadian politicians to silence protest against the State of Israel. We are alarmed by the escalation of fear tactics. Charges that those organizing Israel Apartheid Week or supporting an academic boycott of Israel are anti-Semites promoting hatred bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind. We believe this serves to deflect attention from Israel’s flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.

B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have pressured university presidents and administrations to silence debate and discussion specifically regarding Palestine/Israel. In a full-page ad in a national newspaper, B’nai Brith urged donors to withhold funds from universities because "anti-Semitic hate fests" were being allowed on campuses. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have echoed these arguments. While university administrators have resisted demands to shut down Israel Apartheid week, some Ontario university presidents have bowed to this disinformation campaign by suspending and fining students, confiscating posters, and infringing on free speech.

We do not believe that Israel acts in self-defense. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, receiving $3 million/day. It has the fourth strongest army in the world. Before the invasion of Gaza on 27 December 2008, Israel’s siege had already created a humanitarian catastrophe there,

with severe impoverishment, malnutrition, and destroyed infrastructure. It is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel’s accountability to the international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.

We recognize that anti-Semitism is a reality in Canada as elsewhere, and we are fully committed to resisting any act of hatred against Jews. At the same time, we condemn false charges of anti-Semitism against student organizations, unions, and other groups and people exercising their

democratic right to freedom of speech and association regarding legitimate criticism of the State of Israel.

Signatories:

Abigail Bakan, Adam Balsam, Sharon Baltman, Julia Barnett, Lainie Basman, Jody Berland, Sam Blatt, Geri Blinik, Anita Block, Elizabeth Block, Sheila Block, Hannah Briemberg, Mark Brill, Stephen Brot, Meyer Brownstone, Eliza Burroughs, Smadar Carmon, Gyda Chud, Charles P. Cohen, Nathalie Cohen, David Copeland, Natalie Zemon Davis, Eliza Deutsch, James Deutsch, Judith Deutsch, Abbe Edelson, Jack Etkin, Elle Flanders, Danielle Frank, Ursula Franklin, Dan Freeman-Maloy, Miriam Garfinkle, Alisa Gayle, Jack Gegenberg, Mark Golden, Brenda Goldstein, Sue Goldstein, Cy Gonick, Marnina Gonick, Rachel Gotthilf, Amy Gottleib, Kevin A. Gould, Daina Green, Lisa Frances Greenspoon, Ricardo Grinspun, Cathy Gulkin, Rachel Gurofsky, Deboran Guterman, Yesse Gutman, Freda Guttman, Judy Haiven, Michael Hanna-Fein, Jean Hanson, Jan Heynen, Maria Heynen, Adam Hofmann, Jake Javanshir, Jeannie Kamins, Marylin Kanee, Howard S. Kaplan, Gilda Katz. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, Mira Khazzam, Bonnie Sher Klein, Mark Klein, Martin Klein, Naomi Klein, Joshua Katz-Rosene, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Judy Koch, Anton Kuerti, Jason Kunin, Aaron Lakoff, Michael Lambek, Natalie LaRoche, Richard Borshay Lee, Andy Lehrer, Gabriel Levin, Gabriel Levine, Joel Lexchin, Kim Linekin, Abby Lippman, Lee Lorch, Martin Lukacs, Audrey Macklin, Elise Maltin, Richard Marcuse, Wayne Mark, Gabor Mate, Arthur Milner, Anna Miransky, Dorit Naaman, Joanne Naiman, Neil Naiman, Michael Neumann, David-Marc Newman, David Noble, Clare O’Connor, Robin Ostow, Andre W. Payant, Jenny Peto, Simone Powell, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Fabienne Presentey, Yacov Rabkin, Diana Ralph, Naomi Rankin, Judy Rebick, Ester Reiter, Jillian Rogin, Richard Roman, Joseph Rosen, Herman Rosenfeld, Martha Roth, Marty Roth, Ruben Roth, E.Natalie Rothman, B. Sack, Ben Saifer, Miriam Sampaio, Jacob Scheir, Fred Schloessinger, Alan Sears, Shlomit Segal, Edward H. Shaffer, Noa Shaindlinger, Ray Shankman, Eva Sharell, Elliot Shek, Sid Shniad, Max Silverman, Samuel Singer, Elizabeth Solloway, Susan Starkman, Greg Starr, Jonathan Sterne, Jeremy Stolow, Rhonda Sussman, Vera Szoke, Joe Tannenbaum, Howard Tessler, Marion Traub-Werner, Ceyda Turan, Sandra Tychsen, Cheryl Wagner, Jon McPhedran Waitzer, David Wall, Naomi Binder Wall, Kathy Wazana, Karen Weisberg, Barry Weisleder, Paul Weinberg, Judith Weisman, Suzanne Weiss, Abraham Weizfeld, Ernie Yacub, B.H. Yael, Yedida Zalik, Melvin Zimmerman

GazaProtestSM20140726_123 by DawnOne

Child of holocaust survivors at Demonstration in support of Gaza in Toronto, march from Queens Park to the US consulate © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com July 26, 2014