omaha | Nebraska’s publicly owned utilities
generated more power than their customers used during this week’s brutal
cold snap in the country’s midsection.
But energy experts say the targeted rolling blackouts criticized by Gov. Pete Ricketts prevented Nebraska and other states from catastrophic failure of a shared electricity grid.
Those
cuts, dictated by the Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool, likely
prevented Nebraskans from living the nightmare facing Texas, where
millions went without power for days.
The
World-Herald spoke with energy experts, utility leaders and others
about what happened, why it happened and what might prevent a repeat
occurrence.
Why did Nebraska have rolling blackouts?
A
polar vortex brought freezing temperatures to the southern U.S., with
the cold snap staying for days as far south as the Mexican border.
Utilities
in Oklahoma and slices of Texas that belong to the power pool struggled
to operate some natural gas, coal and wind power plants not equipped to
run in such cold temperatures.
Getting
natural gas out of the ground was also slowed in both states, with
frozen wells and pipelines making it harder to deliver the gas needed to
generate electricity and heat homes.
Even in Nebraska, where colder
temperatures are common, some power plants struggled in sub-zero
conditions to operate at full capacity, including coal-fired units in
Nebraska City.
The loss of
that power production left the power pool, which manages electrical
supply and demand across a 14-state power grid, with a power imbalance.
pressenza |Hours after writing his screed, Boyd announced his resignation and apologized.
But he qualified his apology by saying that he never meant to imply
that the helpless elderly were the lazy ones—just everyone else. “I was
only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up
and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout,”
he wrote in a manner that suggested he was “sorry, not sorry.”
Most Republicans are not as overt as Boyd in their faith in social Darwinism. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
who instead of openly blaming Texans for their own suffering instead
decided to blame climate-mitigating policies and renewable energy
programs like wind power. Speaking on Fox News, Abbott railed against
the “Green New Deal,” claiming that a reliance on wind turbines was
disastrous because the state’s wind-generated power “thrust Texas into a
situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.” For good
measure, he added, “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”
The conservative Wall Street Journal, which has long been hostile to
tackling climate change through renewable energy, repeated this claim in
an editorial blaming “stricter emissions regulation” and the loss of coal-powered plants for widespread misery in the snow-blanketed South.
In fact, millions of Texans are going without power because of the Republican emphasis on cheap power over reliable power.
Seeing electricity generation as a profit-making enterprise rather than
the fulfillment of a public need, GOP policies in Texas have made the
state vulnerable to such mass outages. Moreover, plenty of wintry areas successfully run wind turbines when properly prepared to do so. And, Abbott did not see fit to point out that harsh winter temperatures lead to frozen natural gas pipelines—the real culprit in the outages.
Even as a majority of Texans now believe that climate change is really happening, their governor in late January vowed
to “protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack
from Washington.” Apparently protecting Texans from the ravages of the
fossil fuel industry is not in his purview. This is hardly surprising
given how much fossil fuel industry contributions have ensured Abbott’s loyalty to oil and gas interests.
The conservative mindset can be counted on to prioritize private
interests over public ones. In a Republican utopia, the rich are noble
and deserving of basic necessities, comforts, and life itself. If they
have rigged the system to benefit themselves, it means they are smart,
not conniving. In the future that Republicans promise, “Only the strong
will survive and the weak will parish (sic),” as per Boyd’s post. In
other words, our lives are expendable, and if we die, it is because we
deserve it and were simply not smart enough to survive.
theeconomiccollapseblog | We are getting a very short preview of what will eventually happen to
the United States as a whole. America’s infrastructure is aging and
crumbling. Our power grids were never intended to support so many
people, our water systems are a complete joke, and it has become utterly
apparent that we would be completely lost if a major long-term national
emergency ever struck. Texas has immense wealth and vast energy
resources, but now it is being called a “failed state”. If it can’t
even handle a few days of cold weather, what is the rest of America
going to look like when things really start to get chaotic in this
country?
At this point, it has become clear that the power grid in Texas is in
far worse shape than anyone ever imagined. When extremely cold weather
hit the state, demand for energy surged dramatically. At the same
time, about half of the wind turbines that Texas relies upon froze, and
the rest of the system simply could not handle the massive increase in
demand.
Millions of Texans were without power for days, and hundreds of thousands are still without power as I write this article.
And now we are learning that Texas was literally just moments away
from “a catastrophic failure” that could have resulted in blackouts “for months”…
Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away
from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for
months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.
As millions of customers throughout the state
begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials
with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates
the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was
dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts
across the state.
I can’t even imagine how nightmarish things would have eventually
gotten in Texas if there had actually been blackouts for months.
According to one expert, the state really was right on the verge of a “worst case scenario”…
The worst case scenario: Demand for power
outstrips the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing
equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down.
If the grid had gone totally offline, the
physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid could
have taken months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice
president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software
and information company headquartered in Austin.
For years, I have been telling my readers that they have got to have a
back up plan for power, because during a major emergency the grid can
fail.
RT | Texans may be suffering without electricity in bitter
temperatures, but Young Turks host Cenk Uygur can see the bright side,
as podcaster Joe Rogan and others who relocated to the state are
“freezing their asses off.”
Two dozen Texans are dead, food supplies can’t reach supermarkets, and nearly 200,000 homes
are still without power as of Friday morning, as freezing temperatures
wreak havoc on the Lone Star State. So paralyzing is the weather that
firefighters in San Antonio on Thursday were unable to extinguish a
burning apartment block due to frozen fire hydrants.
One pundit managed to find an upside, however. On Twitter, Uygur, a
progressive commentator, celebrated the fact that Rogan, a libertarian
podcast host who had recently moved to Texas from California, was likely
suffering.
“Only upside of Texas power outages is people like
@joerogan, who were so proud to leave CA and move to TX, freezing their
asses off,” he tweeted on Thursday. “They
said they wanted less government. Congrats, mission accomplished! I
hope you're not asking the government to come help you. #Freedom”
Uygur was instantly hammered for his apparent gloating. Commenters reminded
the progressive pundit that California, a byword for liberal statism,
regularly suffers from blackouts and wildfires, while Texas, known for
its economic libertarianism, just got hit with the cold snap of a
century.
mxdwn | Acclaimed pop singer Grimes has shared a few updates from her social media accounts
on the ongoing winter storm in Texas. Hit with unprecedented cold and
snow, Texas is currently experiencing widespread power outages, leaving
millions throughout the state without heat and electricity.
Earlier today, Grimes
tweeted that she had spent several days in Austin without power and
drove south to get out of the storm. A native of the Vancouver, Toronto
area, the singer also responded to a Twitter thread, wondering if there
was a way for Texas cities to “mass salt cuz then ppl could get food or
go to warming centers.”
Just spent however many days in Austin w no power, no heat + a baby in -0. drove south all night 2 escape incoming storm but roads r rly dangerous rn. Super worried about ppl. What’s best way to get food and heat to ppl rn? This is a v dangerous esp for kids
Grimes also used her social media channels
to share helpful resources to those being impacted by the weather
including warming stations across north Texas, mutual aid funds
throughout the Dallas, Houston and Austin areas, as well as a separate
thread complete with ways to cope with freezing temperatures. Additional weather reports show that more freezing temperatures and snow are heading toward the area this week.
Meanwhile, Austin Energy also reported that customers in the Austin
area “should be prepared to not have power through Wednesday and
possibly longer.” The multi-talented Grimes famously relocated to the Austin, Texas area recently with her Tesla-founder boyfriend Elon Musk, and their young child.
maxim |Tesla CEO Elon Musk
ridiculed the Texas electrical grid operator for being unreliable after
millions of Texans were left without power during a powerful winter
storm that hit the Lone Star State with historic freezing temperatures.
The billionaire electric car mogul moved from California to Texas in December—following the lead of podcaster pal Joe Rogan—to build a new Tesla factory in Austin.
On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that the state’s energy agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), “is not earning that R.”
Meanwhile, the New York Post reports
that Texans have been posting on social media about sleeping in their
Tesla cars to keep warm during the cold nights—thanks to the "Camp Mode"
feature that allows Tesla owners to use the car's climate control for
more than a day without draining the battery.
wfaa | The Texas power outage has become the Texas power outrage. Electricity supply and demand in Texas has really stabilized now. But when it was grossly out of whack over the past several days,
the cost of power in the wholesale market went crazy. It went from
about $50 per Megawatt to $9,000. That didn’t affect retail many
customers because they were on a fixed-rate plan. See explanation of
plan types here.
But if you were on a variable or indexed plan, your rate — and
therefore, your electric bill — may have skyrocketed. One customer
messaged us:
“Mine is over $1,000…not sure how…700 square foot apt I have been keeping at 60 degrees."
“Using as little as possible 1300 sq. ft. house and this is my bill. How is this fair. I only paid $1200 for the whole 2020.”
That tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of their bill, which now stands at $3,801.16.
When your electric company tells you to switch but there has been a hold on switching for over a week now. Using as little as possible 1300 sq ft house and this is my bill. . How is this fair. I only paid $1200 for the whole 2020 year @FoxNews@wfaa@tedcruz@GovAbbottpic.twitter.com/AylTS4m0j4
Then, I spoke with a guy named Ty Williams. He sent screenshots of
his three electric meters (one for his home, one for a guest house, and
one for his office). Last month, his bill for all three was $660. So
far, for this month’s electricity, he owes more than $17,000.
Williams wondered: “How in the world can anyone pay that? I mean you
go from a couple hundred dollars a month...there’s absolutely no
way...it makes no sense.”
ineteconomics | In 2002, under Governor Rick Perry, Texas deregulated its electricity
system. After a few years, the electrical free market, managed by a
non-profit called ERCOT, was fully-established. Some seventy or so
providers eventually sprung up. While a few cities – including Austin –
kept their public power, they were nevertheless tied to the state
system.
The market system could, and did, work out most of the time. Prices
rose and fell, and customers who didn’t sign long-term contracts faced
some risk. One provider, called Griddy, had a special model: for $9.99 a
month you could get your power at whatever the wholesale price was on any given day. That was cheap! Most of the time.
The problem with “most of the time” is that people need electric power all of the time. And Texas’s leadersknew
as of 2011, at least, when the state went through a short, severe
freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather.
But they did nothing. To do something, they would have had to regulate
the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the
providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be
regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed –
most of the time. In 2020, even voluntary inspections were suspended,
due to Covid-19.
Enter the deep freeze of 2021. Demand went up. Supply went down.
Natural gas froze up at the wells, in the pipes, and at the generating
plants. Unweatherized windmills also went off-line, a small part of the story.
Since Texas is disconnected from the rest of the country, no reserves
could be imported, and given the cold everywhere, there would have been
none available anyway. There came a point, on Sunday, February 14 or the
next day, when demand so outstripped supply that the entire Texas grid came within minutes of a collapse that, we are told, would have taken months to repair.
As this happened, the price mechanism failed completely. Wholesale prices rose a hundred-fold
– but retail prices, under contract, did not, except for the unlucky
customers of Griddy, who got socked with bills for thousands of dollars
each day. ERCOT was therefore forced to cut power, which might have been
tolerable, had it happened on a rolling basis across neighborhoods
throughout the state. But this was impossible: you can’t cut power to
hospitals, fire stations, and other critical facilities, or for that
matter to high-rise downtown apartments reliant on elevators. So lights
stayed on in some areas, and they stayed off – for days on end – in
others. Selective socialism, one might call it.
When the lights go off and the heat goes down, water freezes and that
was the next phase of the calamity. For when water freezes, pipes
burst, and when pipes burst the water supply cannot keep up with the
demand. So across Texas, water pressure is falling, as I type these
words. Hospitals without water cannot generate steam, and therefore
heat; and some of them are being evacuated right now. Meanwhile, ice is bearing down on the power lines.
finance.yahoo | Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday rebuked a claim made a day before
by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that put the blame for that state's massive
cold-weather power outage on the failure of renewable energy sources,
such as wind and solar.
In fact, extreme weather like the winter storm that swept across the country
in recent days will become more likely as climate change worsens, Gates
told Yahoo Finance, advocating instead for an expansion of renewable
energy as part of his call for the U.S. to achieve net zero carbon
emissions by 2050.
On Tuesday, Abbott blamed the outages on wind turbines and
on the Green New Deal, a plan for combating climate change that the
Texas governor called "a deadly deal for the United States of America."
Bill Gates, who has been emitting ten thousand times more greenhouse gases than the average person for decades, wants us to believe that he really cares about climate change and the solution is for him to start more companies and make more money off other people's labor.
“Our
wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than
10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation
where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. ... It just shows that
fossil fuel is necessary,” Abbott told Sean Hannity in an interview cited by the Washington Post.
When asked about the blame directed at wind energy by Abbott, Gates said, "He's actually wrong."
"You can make sure wind turbines can deal with the cold," adds Gates, the former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO and author of a new book entitled, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
"[The extreme cold] probably wasn't anticipated for the wind turbines
that far South. But the ones up in Iowa and North Dakota do have the
ability to not freeze up."
The storm struck a large portion of the
U.S. on Monday, bringing snowfall and ice that caused power outages for
millions of people. Overall, more than 150 million people came under a winter storm warning, the National Weather Service said.
'The extreme events are coming more often'
The cold blast hit especially hard in Texas, where as of Tuesday 4 million households lacked power, the Washington Post reported. Some conservatives blamed frozen wind turbines for the power outage but wind energy contributes a fraction of the state's power in the winter, the Post pointed out.
The
loss of power caused by blackouts of thermal power plants — which
mostly rely on natural gas — outpaced the loss caused by frozen wind
turbines by a factor of five or six, the Post reported.
"Actually,
the main capacity that's gone out in Texas is not the wind, it's
actually some of the natural gas plants that were also not ready for the
super cold temperatures," Gates says.
NYTimes | The crisis dates back to the 1930s, when the Federal Power Commission gained the authority to regulate
interstate transmission of electric power. But politicians in Texas,
with their slavish devotion to the fossil fuel industry, didn’t want
Washington regulating the electricity business and chipping away at
those hefty profits.
So the business went entirely unregulated
until the formation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas in the
1970s. But ERCOT has been anything but reliable. While it is
technically overseen by the state, its board is really just an industry club. Several of its members don’t even live in Texas.
On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott solemnly declared the state would not see another accident like Thursday’s deadly 100-plus-vehicle pileup on a frozen Fort Worth highway. On Monday, he reassured Texans that power would return. That day, two million people were plunged into darkness, and many into 8 degree weather. Then four million. By Tuesday, 10 people had died
in the Houston and San Antonio areas alone. Water pipes burst across
the state, forcing people without power to boil water just to drink it
safely.
After taking a beating on Twitter, Mr. Abbott spun around on Tuesday and blamed the utilities. He promised an investigation into ERCOT. George P. Bush, the state land commissioner, cravenly blamed the renewable energy industry, a talking point that caught fire among conservatives.
It was all just cow pie, though: Renewables like wind and solar can contribute up to 20 percent of the Texas power grid, but they were forecast to account for just 7 percent of the winter grid, with some 80 percent
of electricity in the state’s capacity projected to come from natural
gas, coal and a bit of nuclear power. And while some wind turbines in
Texas froze, many of them kept turning. By Tuesday, renewables were
helping to get the power going again. But it wasn’t enough. Each time
the power came back up on Tuesday, demand spiked, and the power supply
ran right back down. The rolling blackouts would just keep on rolling.
On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott ordered
natural gas producers not to let their supply out of the state until
Sunday, and to instead send it to the electrical grid. How soon this
could help the millions of Texans who continue to shiver in the darkness
is unclear. ERCOT has, once again, ordered utilities to cut power.
“It
feels colder than 25 degrees outside. I’m shivering in the house. … My
hands are freezing. My feet are freezing, and my nose is freezing,”
Laura Bettor, a psychologist in Austin, told me as she watched people
ski down her street. “People’s phones are down because they can’t
charge. And the government here? Everything about the state government
here is stupid.”
nbcnews | As large parts of Texas woke up Thursday to another day of a power crisis amid extreme winter weather, issues with water systems added to the misery for much of the state's population.
Texans
were under notice to boil tap water before drinking it after days of
record low temperatures damaged infrastructure, caused blackouts and
froze water pipes.
Millions
across the U.S. were left without electricity or heat in the aftermath
of the deadly winter storm as utility crews rushed to restore power
before another blast of snow and ice this week.
Out of more than a million people in the
U.S. who did not have electricity, Texas accounted for nearly half with
511,421, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The state dropped below 1 million power outages for the first time Thursday.
In
Texas, the extreme weather disrupted water service for more than 12
million residents, forcing many of the more than 680 water systems in
the state to issue boil water notices.
Other parts of the
country are bracing for snow. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
New York City and the tristate area are expected to see 6 inches of
snow, while Washington, D.C., is expected to get 2 to 4 inches.
At least 37 people have died because of weather-related fatalities since Thursday, the majority in Texas.
Another
major winter storm is expected to track from the Lower Mississippi
Valley into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast through Friday, the National Weather Service said, bringing more heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain to further complicate recovery efforts.
Travel
remains paralyzed across much of the United States, with roadways
treacherous and thousands of flights canceled. Many school systems also
delayed or canceled face-to-face classes.
However, staying home also carried risks in places without power.
The
winter weather has caused blackouts in Texas that affected 1.8 million
customers Wednesday night, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. That number was down to just over 511,000 as of 11:28 a.m. local time, the site said.
Without
power or heat, some Texans posted videos on social media of them
burning old furniture to stay warm. Others shared images of flooding
caused by burst pipes and collapsed ceilings.
The extreme winter weather this week and accompanying
problems — water facilities without power and lines that broke after
freezing — disrupted service for more than 12 million Texans, forcing
nearly 680 water systems to issue boil water notices, according to a
spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Nearly 264,000 Texans live in areas where water systems are completely nonoperational.
slate | Of all the continental states, Texas alone has its own power grid. (The rest of the continental U.S. is covered by two other grids.)
The reason for this is very Texan: The utilities wanted to avoid the
oversight from the federal government that comes with interstate
business. So Texas developed a massive market governed by the rules of
supply and demand that led to low prices for consumers.
But
according to Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston,
there’s no incentive for Texas power generators to jump in at a moment’s
notice, thanks to the way the market is structured. The average
wholesale price of electricity for the past decade or so has been lower
than what it costs to provide that electricity. He notes that the
high-cost generators know they have to be ready to go in the summer, but
after that, they “button up and go fishing,” and it can be difficult to
bring them back online quickly. For some companies, providing that
reserve power in offseason times, such as February, could prove very
rewarding if an unusual spike happens. But it’s a high-risk venture, and
larger companies are motivated to avoid sinking so much into the cost
of producing supply without a reliable demand. So Texas doesn’t have a
lot of reserve power.
Julie
Cohn, a historian with affiliations at the Baker Institute at Rice
University and at the Center for Public History at the University of
Houston, added that in Texas there is no law or regulatory entity
requiring a power system to have a certain amount of backup in case of a
sudden spike in demand, as is the case elsewhere. It’s possible that,
because of its isolation, the Texas grid was unable to pull power from
the surrounding regions. But as Gürcan Gülen, an independent energy
consultant and a former researcher at UT Austin, noted, the surrounding
regions were dealing with their own blackouts, so it’s unlikely that
would have helped much.
At
least one expert has argued that Texas had little reserve power on hand
simply because it had little need to worry, given its abundant natural
gas resources.But natural gas, which powers a large
percentage of Texas electricity plants, was a major culprit in this
week’s blackouts. Multiple technological elements in the extraction and
distribution of natural gas failed in the extreme temperatures,
knocking out about half of its normal output. This would have been a
huge problem even if natural gas’s role in the state’s power generation
wasn’t taken into account: Texans rely heavily on natural gas for heat
and fuel during the winter, and when demand skyrocketed as temperatures
plunged, the utilities were forced to prioritize individual houses and
hospitals over the power plants. And even then, some of those power
plants that received the natural gas were forced to halt operations due
to the cold.
The
cold was punishing for other power sources as well: At least one
nuclear power plant partially shut down in the cold, and some coal
generators failed in the frigid temperatures.
gpenewsdocs |Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are
integrating in policy making at the national and international levels.
From agriculture to technology, decisions historically made by
governments are increasingly made by secretive unaccountable bodies run
by corporations says Nick Buxton.
LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries,
producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today I’m joined by
Nick Buxton. He’s going to be giving us some big picture of context on
The Great Reset, a World Economic Forum initiative to reset the world
system of global governance.
A worldwide movement crossing not only borders but all walks of life
from peasant farmers to techies is fighting against this initiative on
the grounds that it represents a major threat to democracy. Key voices
from the health, food, education, indigenous peoples and high tech
movements explained why in The Great Take Over: How we fight the Davos capture of global governance, a recent webinar hosted by the Transnational Institute.
Today’s guest, Nick Buxton is a publications editor and future labs
coordinator at the Transnational Institute. He is the founder and chief
editor of TNI’s flagship State of Power report. Welcome. Nick.
NICK BUXTON: Thank you very much, Lynn.
FRIES: The Transnational Institute was co-organizer
of The Great Takeover webinar. So what is it that you’re mobilizing
against by opposing this Great Reset Initiative.
BUXTON: What we’re really concerned about is really
that this initiative by the World Economic Forum actually looks to
entrench the power of those most responsible for the crises we’re
facing. In many ways, it’s a trick. It’s a sleight of hand to make sure
that things continue as they are; to continue the same.
That will create more of these crises, more of these pandemics, will
deepen the climate crisis, which will deepen inequality. It’s not a
Great Reset at all. It’s a Great Corporate Takeover. And that’s what we
were trying to draw attention to.
What we’ve been finding in recent years is that really there is
something I would call it a kind of a global, silent coup d’état going
on in terms of global governance. Most people don’t see it.
And people have become familiar with the way that corporations have
far more influence and are being integrated into policymaking at a
national level. They see that more in front of them. People see their
services being privatized. They see the influence of the oil companies
or the banking sector that has stopped actions such as regulation of
banks or of dealing with a climate crisis.
What people don’t realize is a global level there has been something
much more silent going on. Which is that their governance, which used to
be by nations, is now increasingly being done by unaccountable bodies
dominated by corporations. And part of the problem is
that that has been happening in lots of different sectors but people
haven’t been connecting the dots.
So what we’ve been trying to do in the last year is to talk with
people in the health movement, for example; people involved in public
education; people involved in the food sector; to say what is happening
in your sector?
And what we found is that in each of these sectors, global decisions
that used to be discussed by bodies such as the WHO or such as the Food
and Agriculture Organization were increasingly done by these
unaccountable bodies.
Just to give an example, we have now the global pandemic and one of
the key bodies that is now making the decisions is a facility called
COVAX [COVID-19 Vaccines Global Alliance]. You’d have thought global
health should be run by the World Health Organization. It is accountable
to the United Nations. It has a system of accountability.
Well, what’s actually happening is that the World Health Organization
is just one of a few partners but really [COVAX] it’s being controlled
by corporations and corporate interests. In this case it is GAVI [The
Vaccine Alliance formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines
& Immunization] and CEPI [The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Innovations].
And they are both bodies, which don’t have a system of
accountability. Where it’s not clear who chose them; who they’re
accountable to; or how they can be held to account. And what we do see
is that there’s a lot of corporate influence in each of these bodies.
“Even though it sounds like a
paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging
across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to
influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and
control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)
Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political
figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into
office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and
billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization
under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an
unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime
Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum
just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat
Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to
decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.
Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these
conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime
punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of
unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the
definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition
will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t
agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.
Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.
Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated
violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental
authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”
While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be
if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are
certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech
is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and
the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling
class.
dailymail | The Electoral Commission has rejected a controversial application to set up a Black Lives Matter (BLM) political party in Britain because its name would be 'likely to mislead voters'.
The
independent election watchdog argued that a 'reasonable voter could
assume that the party represents, or is in some way associated with' the
grassroots BLM movement and its official UK affiliate.
A
spokesperson told MailOnline that the party's proposed constitution and
financial scheme were 'incomplete' and also rejected, as the manifesto
did not determine the structure and organisation of the party.
The application was submitted to the
election watchdog by applicants whose identities remain unknown just
five months after the killing of black man George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.
His
death triggered a cultural revolution in Britain that began with a wave
of statue toppling by protesters and culminated in the founding of a
Commission of Diversity in the Public Realm by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Tory
backbenchers claimed the application to set up the party proved that
BLM was a partisan political project with Left-wing objectives,
including 'deconstructing the concept of "family" and defunding the
police'.
However, at the time the bid
was lodged the main Black Lives Matter UK (BLM UK) group insisted it
had no affiliation with the applicants.
opendemocracy | When asked to address philanthrocapitalism
over the last 20 years, one of the first thoughts I had was how
late-stage capitalism impacts sex workers. I entered sex work as a
stripper in the United States at the age of 19 in 2007, and even then
dancers at my club bemoaned how much earnings had dropped since the
1990s. In the 14 years since, even those of us who are relatively
privileged have seen tuition and predatory student loan practices soar,
employment rates/wages drop, and a continuing erosion of social safety
nets. This has meant that many of us in a previous decade potentially
could have quietly done sex work in our early 20s and moved on to other
careers as we got older, but under current economic conditions we have
simply never been able to afford to entirely leave the industry.
As
the sex industry has grown oversaturated, managers of legal workspaces
have become bolder in pursuing exploitive and discriminatory labour
practices. This, in conjunction with Trump’s presidency and the passage
of anti-sex work policies like SESTA/FOSTA, has pushed many of us into
higher contact, more criminalised work that is still preferable to the
majority of available waged jobs. Anti-trafficking crusaders often blame
us for glamourising the industry, but the reality is that people of all
genders and ages are entering into sex work because they are under
increasing financial duress and experience a lack of other viable
options under our current power structures.
As an administrator of
the Lysistrata Mutual Care Collective & Fund, a mostly
volunteer-run resource specifically by and for sex workers, our
collective grounds its resistance to predominant modes of
philanthrocapitalism by drawing on what grassroots organisers call the non-profit-industrial complex.
Non-profits, especially in the anti-trafficking realm, often give
lifetime positions of power to people outside of marginalised
communities. They are accountable primarily to well-off board members
and funders. Funding typically goes to their salaries rather than
directly to individuals in the populations they claim to serve.
This
dynamic is also found within the sex worker movement. Formally
educated, white sex workers from middle class backgrounds are
disproportionately able to transition to paid advocacy work and secure
grant funding, while our peers who face greater risk of arrest and
violence in every part of their existence are often additionally barred
from transitioning to non-profit and academic employment.
deadline |CAA has signed artist, organizer, educator, and public speaker Patrisse Cullors for representation in all areas.
Cullors is known as the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global
Network. In addition to her work with BLM, her advocacy shines through
as a Chairperson of Reform LA Jails, and Founder and Board Chair of
grassroots Los Angeles-based organization Dignity and Power Now.
On the TV side, Cullors is part of the writers’ room for the Freeform series Good Trouble. She initially served as a consultant for the first season of The Fosters spinoff
to help with Malika (Zuri Adele) activism and social justice storyline.
She joined the writers’ room for the second season.
Cullors also appeared in the Kenneth Paul Rosenberg’s documentary Bedlam, which sheds light on the state of mental health in the U.S. It premiered at Sundance earlier this year
and Cullors’ family is one of four that share their personal stories
about mental health. For her part, she shares the heartbreaking story of
her brother Monte and his struggle with mental health. This opens the
floodgates that unveil the country’s severely broken healthcare and
prison system.
In 2016, Cullors published her memoir When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir which wnet on to become a New York Times bestseller. She has directed and produced numerous theater and performance pieces as well as docu-series.
Cullors will continue to be repped by Keppler Speakers and Victoria Sanders & Associates.
truthdig |The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights
of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated
flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils
that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It
reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical
reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.—Martin Luther King Jr., 1968
You don’t have to be one of those conspiratorial curmudgeons who
reduces every sign of popular protest to “George Soros money” to
acknowledge that much of what passes for popular and progressive,
grass-roots activism has been co-opted, taken over and/or created by
corporate America, the corporate-funded “nonprofit industrial complex,” and Wall Street’s good friend, the Democratic Party, long known to leftists as “the graveyard of social movements.” This “corporatization of activism”
(University of British Columbia professor Peter Dauvergne’s term) is
ubiquitous across much of what passes for the left in the U.S. today.
What about the racialist group Black Lives Matter, recipient of a
mammoth $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation last year? Sparked
by the racist security guard and police killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike
Brown and Eric Garner, BLM has achieved uncritical support across the
progressive spectrum, where it is almost reflexively cited as an example
of noble and radical grass-roots activism in the streets. That is a
mistake.
I first started wondering where BLM stood on the AstroTurf versus
grass roots scale when I read an essay published three years ago in The Feminist Wire
by Alicia Garza, one of BLM’s three black, lesbian and veteran
public-interest careerist founders. In her “Herstory of the
#BlackLivesMatter Movement,” Garza wrote: “Black lives. Not just all
lives. Black lives. Please do not change the conversation by talking
about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down
unity and a more active solidarities with us, Black people,
unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend
on it.”
Denouncing “hetero-patriarchy,” Garza described the adaptation of her
clever online catchphrase (“black lives matter”) by others—“brown lives
matter, migrant lives matter, women’s lives matter, and on and on”
(Garza’s dismissive words)—as “the Theft of Black Queer Women’s Work.”
“Perhaps,” she added, “if we were the charismatic Black men many are
rallying around these days, it would have been a different story.”
From a leftist perspective, this struck me as alarming. Why the
prickly, hyperidentity-politicized and proprietary attachment to the
“lives matter” phrase? Garza seemed more interested in brand value and
narrow identity than social justice. Did she want a licensing fee?
Wouldn’t any serious, leftist, people’s activist eagerly give the catchy
“lives matter” phrase away to all oppressed people and hope for their
wide and inclusive use in a viciously capitalist society that has
subjected everything and everyone to the soulless logic of commodity
rule, profit and exchange value? Who were these “charismatic Black men
many are rallying around” in the fall of 2014?
And how representative were Garza’s slaps at “hetero-patriarchy” and
“charismatic Black men” of the black community in whose name she spoke?
Would it be too hetero-patriarchal of me, I wondered, to suggest that
maybe a black male or two with experience of oppression in the nation’s
racist criminal justice system ought to share some space front and
center in a movement focused especially on a police and prison state
that targets black boys and men above all?
I defended the phrase “black lives matter” against the absurd charge
that it is racist, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the
left-progressive credentials of anyone who gets upset that others would
want to have a “conversation” (as Garza put it) about how their lives
matter too. Is there really something wrong with a marginalized Native
American laborer or a white and not-so “skin-privileged” former factory
worker struggling with sickness and poverty wanting to hear that his or
her life matters? For any remotely serious progressive, was there
anything mysterious about the fact that many white folks facing
foreclosure, job loss, poverty wages and the like might not be doing
cartwheels over the phrase “black lives matter” when they experience the
harsh daily reality that their lives don’t matter under the profits
system?
My concerns about BLM’s potential service to the capitalist elite
were reactivated when I heard a talk by Garza’s fellow BLM founder,
Patrisse Cullors (another veteran nonprofit careerist). Cullors spoke
before hundreds of cheering white liberals and progressives in downtown
Iowa City in February. “We are witnessing the erosion of U.S.
democracy,” she said, adding that Donald Trump “is building a police
state.” Relating that she had gone into a “two-week depression” after
Hillary Clinton was defeated by Trump, Cullors said she wondered if BLM
had “done enough to educate people about the differences between Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton.” She described Trump as a fascist.
BAR | It is painfully evident from the video
of last week’s meeting between a #BlackLivesMatter delegation and
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that the organization
is philosophically incapable of making demands on the political
representatives of the rulers of the United States. #BLM’s leadership is
either confused as to the nature of political demands, or has decided
to reject the most fundamental lessons of mass movement politics –
indeed, of human social dynamics. Political movements are defined by
their core demands. The video of #BLM’s closed-door encounter with
Clinton in New Hampshire, August 11 – after the five activists had been
prevented from attending and, presumably, disrupting her campaign event –
should become a staple for future political education classes on what
happens when would-be movement operatives enter the lion’s den unarmed
with political demands: they are humiliated and eaten alive.
#Black Lives Matter does post a list of “National Demands”
on its website, including “that the federal government discontinue its
supply of military weaponry and equipment to local law enforcement,” and
that the U.S. Justice Department “release the names of all officers
involved in killing black people within the last five years.” Mixed in
with these demands are pledges to “seek justice for Michael Brown’s
family,” to develop a network “aimed at redressing the systemic pattern
of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US,” and to “advocate” for
a decrease in federal spending on law enforcement, accompanied by an
increase in social funding.
The commingling of demands and lists of future projects is, itself,
indicative of lack of clarity on what constitutes a demand. However, it
is clear that the organization’s campaign to disrupt presidential
candidates involves only one demand: that representatives of the
corporate electoral duopoly “acknowledge whether they believe that Black
lives matter,” in the words of #BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, who interviewed on MSNBC on the same day as the New Hampshire debacle.
The main aim of #BLM, besides the huge airplay generated by the confrontations, is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals
for changes in the criminal justice system. Julius Jones, founder of
the Worcester, Massachusetts, chapter of #BLM and Clinton’s main
interlocutor at the New Hampshire encounter, told The Daily Beast:
“Each one [of the candidates] is being made to offer their racial
analysis in the United States. We require that they have an
understanding so to that list we need to strongly add analysis because
we live in a pluralistic society."
“The main aim of #BLM is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals for changes in the criminal justice system.”
In the logic of #BLM leaders, solicitation of reformist proposals
from candidates of the two oligarchic parties constitutes a kind of
demand. The group doesn’t even require that candidates endorse #BLM’s
own posted, reformist demands, such as decreasing spending on police or
releasing the names of killer cops. Instead, the candidates are “made to
offer their racial analysis” and to produce proposals tailored by the
candidate’s own staffs.
The strategy – if one could dignify it as such – is inherently impotent, which
is why corporate lawyer and war criminal Hillary Clinton found it so
easy to reduce Jones and his colleagues to school children at an
elementary civics class.
Although millions of people have already seen the video, it is
important to carefully examine the exchange between Clinton and Julius
Jones, since the meeting marks a crucial point in the trajectory of both
#BLM and of the larger movement to which Alicia Garza and her
colleagues contributed a name. The contradictions of #BLM’s strategy
will have profound impact – at least in the near term – on the future of
the struggle against state oppression of Black people in the U.S. We
need to learn from this disaster.
Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims.
Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.”
This is guilt by headline. It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing
as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man,
of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an
inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook, Instagram’s
parent company.
That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.
This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more
to follow. What was once done under the cover of omission is now done
openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith,
claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free
debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal
totalitarian social order.
I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power-hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or
any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer
layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people
controlled.
These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether
explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial
interest to do so. If they do not play their part in this twisted and
intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as
are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core.
For each media company is one part of a large interconnected
intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power,
wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many. The
CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.
To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but
are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense.
These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as
are the NYTimes, CNN, NBC, etc. They too are part of
what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to
control, use, and infiltrate the media. Only the most naïve would think
that such a program does not exist today.
In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine
documents how Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and
Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in
surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the
Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the
so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s
revelations.
Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the
military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the
same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA
overlords. It is one club.
Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it
bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech
companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times,
etc. The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool
from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media
that gives it its marching orders.
That being so, it is not the owners of the corporate media or their
employees who are the ultimate controllers behind the current vast
crackdown on dissent, but the intelligence agencies who control the
mainstream media and the Silicon Valley monopolies such
as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. All these media companies are but
the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and
people controlled.
But for whom do these intelligence agencies work? Not for themselves.
They work for their overlords, the super wealthy people, the banks,
financial institutions, and corporations that own the United States and
always have. In a simple twist of fate, such super wealthy naturally own
the media corporations that are essential to their control of the
majority of the world’s wealth through the stories they tell.
BAR | Black Lives Matter Inland Empire, in an open letter, last week
announced its departure from the cash-heavy Black Lives Global Network.
“The issue of greatest concern for us is the relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party.”
To our community,
Recently, a group of BLM chapters known as the BLM 10 has come
forward to voice their concerns and opposition to the Global Network.
Those concerns, along with the egregious conduct the Global network
demonstrated on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, have brought us to
the conclusion that continuing to remain silent would be an act of
betrayal. While the issues and problems that have been raised have been
well known within our circle for years, it prompted many questions &
concerns for us locally. We’d like to let the community know everything
outlined in the statement put out by the BLM 10 is valid.
We’ve also reached out to the BLM 10 and offered to sign on in support.
Hopefully, we can provide insight and clarification into our chapter’s
history, our relationship with the global network, and our commitments
going forward.
When BLM IE first started, we were originally known as the Black and
Brown Underground (BBU). In 2015 we were approached by an individual
named Patrisse Cullors, who offered us an opportunity to join the Global
Network and organize as a Black Lives Matter chapter. After hearing
her proposal, we believed that our work, direction, and principles
aligned and agreed to join the network; renaming ourselves Black Lives
Matter Inland Empire in the process. We were told that the organization
we were joining was decentralized and leaderless, but we quickly
discovered that was not the case. The Global Network is a top-down
dogmatic organization that promotes certain chapters that choose to
align with their direction and sequester the ones that don’t. For us
locally, that chapter has been Los Angeles.
“Continuing to remain silent would be an act of betrayal.”
For years, the leadership of the Los Angeles chapter has aligned with
the Global network and One United Bank to impose on various chapters,
particularly ours. We believe that while doing this they received
substantial donations and funding, despite them continually soliciting
the community for donations. Together, the Los Angeles Chapter along
with the Global Network have consistently tried to strong-arm other
groups and have worked to undermine a grassroots movement by
capitalizing on unpaid labor, suppressing any internal attempt at
democracy, commodifying Black death, and profiting from the same pain
and suffering inflicted on Black communities that we’re fighting to end.
In spite of being ostracised, receiving no financial support, and the
maltreatment from both the Global Network and Los Angeles Chapter we’ve
maintained our composure while working to the benefit of our community
and victims of state sanctioned violence.
Clearly, we do not have the same beliefs or sense of ethics. We no
longer feel, as we initially did, that our politics align. As a result,
we are announcing that we are no longer associated or connected to the
BLM Global Network. As an attempt to distance ourselves, we have decided
to rename part of our organization The Black Power Collective while we
restructure.
The use of the BLM name, which we believed was intended to unify our
struggle, has been commodified and debased. It is now being used to sell
products, acquire book deals, T.V. deals, and speaking engagements. We
have no interest in these pursuits, and we are opposed to the movement
to substitute Black capitalism for white capitalism. It has become clear
that the Global network and certain figures have platformed our
struggles with the sole purpose of exploiting our labor.
“The BLM name is now being used to sell products, acquire book deals, T.V. deals, and speaking engagements.”
Furthermore, the issue of greatest concern for us is the
relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party. This
is hypocritical at best, as the Democratic Party has historically
rejected and ignored BLM’s demands and has made it clear that they are
pro-police, pro-prison, and committed to capitalism. From Obama’s
support of police and his double-cross of Erica Garner, to “Top Cop”
Kamala Harris’ denial of justice for Matrice Richardson, even going back
to the 1994 Crime Bill authored by Joe Biden along with the Prisoner
Litigation Reform Act that stripped basic human rights from countless
Black people—the Democratic Party has
literally created the conditions that led to the formation of this
movement. Even now, the Democractic party continues to support
imperialism, killing African heads of state, bombing Somalia, abusing
immigrants (including those of the Black diaspora), and spreading the
U.S. military throughout Black and Brown countries around the world.
This is a party that is a threat both here and internationally. To ally
with them is to ally against ourselves.
WSJ | Three months ago New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was awarded an Emmy for “his
leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to
inform and calm people around the world.” Turns out the Emmys had the
right actor—but the wrong performance. Increasingly it looks like Mr.
Cuomo’s real act was to keep people from finding out how many people in
his state’s nursing homes died from Covid-19.
On Thursday the New York Post reported that
Melissa DeRosa,
the Governor’s top aide, admitted
to Democratic leaders that the state had deliberately kept the true
numbers from them. In a Wednesday conference call, Ms. DeRosa told
Democrats the Cuomo administration rejected a legislative request for
the figures last August because Donald Trump was tweeting that “we
killed everyone in nursing homes” and was directing “the Department of
Justice to do an investigation into us.”
As Ms. DeRosa put it, “Basically, we froze.” The administration
wasn’t sure, she said, if any information it released to state
lawmakers or the Department of Justice “was going to be used against us”
or “if there was going to be an investigation.”
Nursing home deaths are a sensitive issue for Mr. Cuomo because
of a March 25 health department directive that barred these homes from
rejecting people because they had Covid-19. The Associated Press reports
that 9,056 recovering patients were sent into nursing homes after the
directive, more than 40% higher than what the state had previously
reported.
In January state Attorney General Letitia James released a report
on an investigation into complaints about how the nursing homes handled
Covid-19. Two findings stand out. First, that “a larger number of
nursing home residents died from COVID-19 than” the official data
reflected. Second, that the March 25 directive “requiring the admission
of COVID-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at
increased risk of harm in some facilities and may have obscured the data available to assess that risk.”
gatestoneinstitute | China is in the process of creating the "perfect Communist," Weichert, also the author of Winning Space,
told Gatestone. "China is run by a regime that believes in the
perfectibility of mankind, and with the advent of modern genetic and
biotechnology research, China's central planners now have the human
genome itself to perfect according to their political agenda."
Chinese scientists already are on the road of "gene-doping" to make
future generations smarter and more innovative than those in countries
refusing to embrace these controversial methods. "What you are
witnessing in China," Weichert has written,
"is the convergence of advanced technology with cutting-edge
bio-sciences, capable of fundamentally altering all life on this planet
according to the capricious whims of a nominally Communist regime."
Shenzhen's He, after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed
for "illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing," but in the
Communist Party's near-total surveillance state, he obviously had state
backing for his experiments.
He's efforts are not isolated. Nature magazine's news team reported
in April 2015 that Chinese researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in
Guangzhou, in another world-first experiment, edited "non-viable" human
embryos with CRISPR-Cas9. "A Chinese source familiar with developments
in the field said that at least four groups in China are pursuing gene
editing in human embryos," the magazine's website stated.
Beijing's prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool
down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from
further inquiry into China's activities.
Unfortunately, China's advances in gene editing human embryos for
super soldiers is persuading others they must do the same. Soon, for
instance, there will be "Le Terminator."
The French government has just given approval for augmented soldiers.
"We have to be clear, not everyone has the same scruples as us and we
have to prepare ourselves for such a future," declared French Minister
for the Armed Forces Florence Parly.
Michael Clarke of Kings College London told the Sun,
the British tabloid, there is now a biological competition fueled by
China. Will we soon have, as the International Society for Military
Ethics has dubbed it, a race of "homo robocopus"?
Free To A Good Home
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I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to
remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the
ni...
Sex Dolls, Robots, and AI companions
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It's not what you think.
YouTube:
In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD is joined by sociologist Dr. Ken Hanson
to explore the surprising realities of s...
If Free Will Is False, Destiny Is True
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Free will is like God: perhaps dead, its absence having something to say
about morality (what Nietzsche meant by “Gott ist tot” was that the
Christian God ...
FREE BOOK: On Nonviolence
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“Michael Barker’s interrogation of nonviolent protest tactics and regime
change is both timely and important. Drawing on cases ranging from American
democr...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
