BartBlog

Don’t you just hate being lied to? Apparently not. We Americans all get systematically lied to every single time we turn on the TV — and yet nobody seems to mind. “Pharmaceutical side effects are worth it, the climate crisis is a myth, Zionists have every right to murder Palestinians, banksters are our BFFs, the chemical attacks on Syria weren’t staged, there are new well-paying jobs springing up like mushrooms….” Whatever. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/wikileaks-chemical-weapons-watchdog-ordered-deletion-of-all-traces-of-findings-that-syrian-chemical-attack-was-staged/

“But I’m not lying!” Madam Jane told me this morning. “I’d never lie to you!” Yeah, right. “There really will be world peace in ten years!”

Sorry but I just gotta call bull-dookie here. “You really have the nerve to tell me that after Americans just spent seven trillion dollars on all kinds of deadly weapons, nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, drones, aircraft carriers and even hand guns, I’m supposed to believe the human race is actually going to get its shite together and suddenly become peaceful in the next 3650 days?”

That there’s no climate crisis hovering over us, that America’s brutal attacks on Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian oilfields will suddenly come to an end, that Americans will actually give up their fossil fuel cars? That Big Pharma’s pricey little white pills are going to miraculously cure us? Dream on.

“Are you really trying to convince me that we now live in a perfectly peaceful world? That assault rifles are an absolute fashion-accessory must-have? That there are oodles and oodles of affordable housing units available here, that homelessness doesn’t exist, that America is a democracy, that mega-corporations pay their fair share and that our current President, various Congressional legislators and members of our Supreme Court all love women (but in a good way)?”

The list of lies they tell us goes on and on. “Coke Zero is good for you. Our infrastructure is safe. We can’t allow big banks to fail. Corporations don’t need to pay taxes like the rest of us. Al Qaeda’s White Helmets are good guys.” And that America’s so-called wars and proxy wars on Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Afghanistan, Russia, Honduras, Cuba, Bolivia, Libya, Guatemala, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Yemen are necessary to keep America strong?

And now Madam Jane is telling me that I’m spozed to believe that America, the greatest war-mongering liar in history, will suddenly want to start acting like Mother Theresa in just ten short years? That male White Nationalists will suddenly come to Jesus and no longer want to shoot you and me? That the climate crisis will suddenly be averted and that even our two-year-olds will all get along and never ever fight over toys ever again?

“No No No!” said Madam Jane. “I stick with my prediction. In ten years there really will be world peace…because…in ten years…the entire human race will have killed itself all off.” Oh.
https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Lost-Future-World-Stillwater/dp/1532803850

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s now 2020. We only have ten more years left. What can we do to prove Madam Jane wrong?

Christmas Day was a truly grim eye-opener for me this year. “How many starving, homeless and desperate people existed in Jerusalem back when Jesus was alive?” I asked myself. “And were there as many lonely desperate outcasts to be found in Bethlehem 2019 years ago such as the ones I had just seen standing in line and patiently waiting for food in front of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco on this current December 25th?”

It’s two millennia later. Here in America. The land of the free and the home of the brave. 2019 years after Herod. After 2000 years of so-called hope and progress? And yet there they all were on Christmas Day 2019, hundreds of them, stretching far down the block and around the corner, cold and hungry and homeless and desperate. And most of them were old and Black, having been systematically ground down to the nub by America’s racism — from the day they were born in their mangers.

I was so very shocked to my core to see so many hungry desperate people all in one place. On Christmas Day. In a land claiming to be “Christian”.

All I could do was go home to my cozy little apartment and try to block out these dreadful images with eggnog. Eggnog didn’t work. I had just seen the ghost of America’s Christmas future and it had terrified me — a future where, if Americans don’t finally start acting more Christ-like, we too, sooner or later, will all end up like the desperate people I saw yesterday — and there will be no “Joy to the World” for any of us ever again. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Civilized-to-Death/Christopher-Ryan/9781451659108

Let us hope that this horror never happens — and then let’s all go out and make sure that it doesn’t. It’s time that we take Christmas back from the corporate billionaires, the war-mongers and the haters!

Front and center at a recent Michael Bloomberg event in San Francisco? Seated within mere feet from an actual billionaire? Hey, that’s me! Somehow I managed to score the absolutely best seat in a room that held 3,000 people. Is karma my bitch or what! Maybe I should play the lottery too, I’m feeling that lucky. We were all waiting to hear Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg talk about the current climate crisis.

Then a science guy from the Midwest in the seat next to me started man-splaining about how climate-crisis-denying politicians in the pay of huge corporations are constantly battling to prevent any sort of effort to stave off extinction of the human race. “At first they denied it was even happening at all but now they just tell us that solar power will give us cancer.” Uh, no. It won’t. “All you need is to use one-tenth of one percent of Michigan’s farmland to solar-power the entire state.” Our fossil-fuel warlords don’t want us to know that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/walvanlierop/2019/12/06/yes-fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-real-destructive-and-protected-by-lobbying/#724279be417e

Then Brown and Bloomberg walked onstage. Damn it, I forgot my camera. They were only 12 feet away. But there’s still the old-school option of pen and ink, right? So I’m sitting here in the front row, totally ready to write a hit-piece on Bloomberg, the billionaire who has suddenly switched from being a neo-con Repub to being a climate-protecting Man of the People. Humph.

“No one in the Midwest has even heard of Michael Bloomberg,” said the man seated to my right. And does Bloomberg have a facelift? I wish I look that good at his age.

But then Bloomberg speaks. Oh, crap. He’s really actually into this climate crisis stuff, has been since the 1990s, puts his money where his mouth is. There goes my dream of an actual hit piece.

“This is the most important time to be working in science,” he tells the 3,000 science nerds who are avidly listening. “And we desperately need politicians who are not purveyors of ‘alternative facts’ at this crucial time.”

Yeah, we do need them. Desperately. Sometimes we Americans get so thoroughly involved in our own current soap operas that we forget the very real dangers of the Big Picture when we pull the levers of our (highly tampered with) voting machines.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIBEcIFyFSk&feature=youtu.be&t=2505

“Ending the climate crisis is not a scientific problem. We can do this. It is a political problem.” Oh. That’s probably why he is running for prez — not for fame and glory? Hmmm. “Climate-change deniers have gone from saying ‘It doesn’t exist’ to ‘It’s a commie plot’ to ‘It may exist — but it wasn’t caused by me!’ Climate capture is our only viable solution. And we need educated people to save the world.”

Tell that to the current administration. America is currently # 22 in science education. There are currently twenty-one other countries who are both smarter than us and have more science nerds in the pipeline. That’s just scary.

“But this is a world-wide problem and it needs a world-wide solution. We need China and India onboard with this too.” This is no time to go picking a trade-war with China. “We need China to join us in this fight. The trade war isn’t helping here.”

Altogether Bloomberg gave a very impressive speech. However, like the guy next to me just commented, “If he really wanted to get his message across, he should just spend all this money on simply buying Fox News.”

But still and all, I was impressed with the new “Mike” Bloomberg. Why? Because the climate crisis is really a big deal for me. I gots grandchildren. I would like to see them survive the next twenty years. And Bloomberg is still far better than what we are stuck with in Washington now.

PS: Neither Bloomberg nor Brown mentioned the greatest polluter of all — war-mongering. Imperialism. “Humanitarian intervention”. Afghanistan. Libya. Iraq. Yemen. Korea. Palestine. Bolivia. Chile. Bosnia. Vietnam. Honduras. Guatemala. Ukraine. Syria. Bombs that go bump in the night — and calculated slaughter of women and children by the millions. Imperial “wars” that are murdering our climate too. And us as well. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/new-attack-on-syrian-oil-fields-was-too-sophisticated-for-terrorist-groups-source/

Let’s face it, guys. We Americans aren’t never gonna give up our cars. We’re like those lung-cancer patients who smoke til it kills us. But…. I think that Americans may finally be willing to give up on “war”.

Bloody imperialism since 9-11 has been a really bad seven-trillion-dollar consumer decision. We coulda bought solar-powered cars instead. And perhaps in the future we Americans may finally wake up and chose American values and Jesus’ teachings (and sustainable energy) here at home — instead of the wholesale murder of babies abroad.

Hey, it could happen.

How far am I actually willing to go in order to score free chocolate chip cookies? Good question. Exactly how much torture am I willing to endure? Math has always been torture for me. STEM is my worst nightmare. And yet here I am, in San Francisco, actually surrounded by whole regiments of science freaks! And yet, here’s me — actually having a good time.

Even though the event is mostly sponsored by Google, Lockheed-Martin, Amazon and Chevron.

But still and all, I’m learning some really interesting stuff. And they feed us here for free too. Clam chowder, Vietnamese salad and beer. “Gots any wine?” I asked. Uh, no. Most of these 27,000 nerds are basically grad students and twenty-something STEMers, apparently hoping to land their first (or next) job. Tired of working for Uber. Definitely not a wine-drinking crowd. But they are so cute — with their pocket protectors, electronic gadgets and nerdware. Gotta love them.

However, a lot of these 27,000 nerds are going to invent things someday — really important things, things that will hopefully save our lives and our planet within the next ten years.

The first seminar I went to here talked about how Jules Verne had influenced the space race. Who knew.

The next seminar was given by panel members who talked about the various ways that the federal government has tried to discourage and intimidate any discussion by them regarding our current climate crisis — but how, heroes that they all are, they risked their jobs and their future to try to make Congress aware that corporate America is playing with fire. “The fire next time”. Literally.

Did you know that 97% of our climate crisis is caused by human activity? That climate change in our national parks has doubled the temperatures there as compared to the rest of the country? That wildfires have also doubled? That carbon dioxide is now at the highest level it has ever been since the dinosaurs went extinct? That American Natives are ten times more likely than the rest of us to have an oil pipeline forced onto their land? Hell, even I can do that kind of math.

Afterward I talked with one American Native presenter who had a PhD. “How did that happen?” I asked him.

“For over a hundred and fifty years, our tribe has valued education above all,” he replied, “as a way to get out of our rut of defenselessness and poverty.” Ah. Like how Palestinians also value education — and why their universities are constantly under attack, sometimes literally. And, as another presenter mentioned, why America has now become a diseased combination of First and Third worlds.

“Americans are either wealthy conspicuous consumers who think nothing of dropping half-a-million dollars in order to fly out into space with Elon Musk, Jeff Besos or Richard Branson — or else they are just America’s existential field hands.”

Up next at the convention? After lunch, Michael Bloomberg is gonna try to explain to us how and why he suddenly became a Democrat and Man of the People. Good luck with that one, Mike.

PS: Getting a press pass to the AGU convention was extremely hard. The press liaison kept asking me, “But do you work for a major publication?” Who me? Definitely not. If you are a reporter for the New York Times, say, then you gotta tow the corporate line, right? Sorry, guys, but they don’t want me — and I don’t want them either. However. Will still work for chocolate chip cookies! https://sana.sy/en/?p=180156

What the freak is a neo-con, actually? We’re about to find out. “Any person or persons who try to conquer the world at the expense of everyone else in it.” If you plan to turn the world into your own little fiefdom and put everyone else to work as your field hands and maids then you are probably a neo-con. Neo-cons just wanna have fun — at our expense. “What’s mine is mine — and what’s yours is mine too.” https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/11/24/ukraine-trump-biden-the-real-story-behind-ukrainegate-part-2/

And this year neo-cons are really having Big Fun — especially in places like Chile, Palestine, Yemen, Bolivia, Iran, Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Flint, Michigan. “But mostly we are happy, thankful and grateful that we have taken control of and completely colonized Washington DC.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/bolivias-coup-government-a-far-right-horror-show/

But enough about them. America gets what it deserves. Let’s talk about me.

For many of America’s jobless and/or homeless and/or overworked and/or underpaid and/or bankrupt and/or educationally deprived and/or food insecure and/or medically uninsured citizens, there hasn’t been much to be thankful for this past November. Sorry about that. But as for me? Best Thanksgiving ev-ah!

On November 26, the Golden State Warriors, the Oakland Athletics and City of Oakland sponsored a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings for 1,500 low-income residents and seniors. Seated at my table were two blue-collar workers, four kindly Chinese grandmothers, a homeless man, a handicapped man, a young woman down on her luck — and me. Instant family! We didn’t fight about one single thing! Lovely.

On November 27, my doctor’s office sponsored a buffet table for all of us patients. Guacamole, potato salad and Korean barbecue. Not exactly traditional but it worked. More instant family. More gratitude.

And even more special was a very very special family un-Thanksgiving dinner celebrated by the American Indian Movement over in San Francisco that night. An elder from a tribe of American Natives spoke — telling us all about how Trump’s border wall had forced the separation of half his tribe into Sonora, Mexico and the other half into Arizona, a tribal family split apart by politics after having been together for thousands of years.

“What we all need to know are two things,” he told us over green beans, dark meat, white meat and corn-bread stuffing. “We need to know where do we want to go, and also what do we want to do.” Where to go and how to get there.

He also said that our government is currently building Zionist-designed 100-foot-high spy towers on his tribal land in order to keep his family separated forever — not just at each yearly un-Thanksgiving. Neo-cons are gonna be grateful as hell for that! https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism

The next morning, everyone who had been at the un-Thanksgiving dinner sailed over to Alcatraz Island to celebrate the 50th year of the A.I.M. take-over there back in 1969. Colin Kaepernick spoke. Damn, I wish I hadn’t overslept. Colin K. is my hero. https://www.thefader.com/2017/11/24/colin-kaepernick-unthanksgiving-alcatraz

On November 28, an employee of our neighborhood CDB store stopped me on the street and gave me a to-go plate of gourmet turkey, cranberry sauce, candied yams, stuffing, green beans and asparagus. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!

Then my friend down the street had me over for a huge family gathering for her friends and their children. Cute little toddlers running around in party dresses! I felt like I was in the very bosom of the wonderful happy family that I had always wished that I had.

But, wait! Thanksgiving wasn’t over quite yet! My friends Hayley and David took me down to the Long Haul community center and we celebrated even more as they served us yet another Thanksgiving dinner, this time consisting of tofu turkey with brown rice stuffing and umeboshi dressing. Hey, I was totally grateful even though tofu turkey might not have been my first choice — grateful as hell that there were still some Berkeley types still left in Berkeley.

Then Hayley, David and I wandered home in the moonlight, drinking eggnog as we went and eating pumpkin pie when we got home. Neo-cons may yet conquer the world and enslave us all if we aren’t constantly watchful — but in the meantime there is moonlight and friendship and pumpkin pie and eggnog that they haven’t snatched away from us quite yet.

__________________________________________

Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM