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What part of “Climate change is a rapidly worsening existential threat to humanity. Global temperature could reach an irreversible tipping point in just 12 years that will ensure our planet is uninhabitable.” causes people to NOT immediately sacrifice EVERYTHING for their children (borders, economies, inefficient houses, carbon-based economies, eating cows, etc.)? Is it the word “rapidly”, “worsening”, “existential” (look it up), “threat”, “irreversible”, “tipping”, “ensure”, “uninhabitable”... just what is the problem? What is more important than ensuring our planet can sustain us?
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My latest work for Chamber Orchestra will be premiered by the Ukiah Symphony Orchestra on March 24, 2019 from 2:00-4:00 pm at the First Presbyterian Church of Ukiah, 514 W. Church Street, Ukiah CA 95482. This 20-minute piece, entitled "Rose's Paintings", is a four movement work inspired by the paintings of Rose Xylona Ayala. You can go to my youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAc4H-TDlUq2u7o606T6KnQ?view_as=subscriber to listen to the pieces. Just look for videos titled "Comets" "Stairway to Heaven", "Room With a Door", and "Rose". Please make plans to attend this fundraiser for the symphony. Other local composers to be featured are Jeff Ives, Joseph Nemeth, and Bill Taylor. DONATION - $30 SENIORS - $25 Click the poster below for details  This represents a critical point in the story of humanity... a morality play writ large. When faced with the mother of existential crises, human nature reveals itself. Some instinctively avert their eyes and drive full speed backwards off a cliff. Others see the threat clearly, take its measure, and true to the nobility inherent in humanity, rise to the challenge with bold, creative resolve. The Green New Deal is not a new initiative. It has needed new faces and new energy to propel it beyond the old, corrupt guard that would stand in its way. Welcome to the State of the Union. Welcome to the new world. I know it is shocking to witness a Congress that intends to both lead and legislate. I know those shiny new, not all white faces, that now populate the House are a fundamental threat to the powerful elite represented by the Senate. I understand that their ideas about fairness, equality, compassion, eliminating poverty, caring for people with medical needs, engaging the rest of the world in an effort to avert our extinction, and education for all is more important to them than purchasing a few more new aircraft carriers or squadrons of half billion dollar airplanes. If you have a problem with this approach to government, then get over it or get used to it. Here's the greatest shock of all, if you can bear to read it: this world belongs to the youth, who will inhabit it among the filth and chaos we older people have left it in. They will do what they can to fix our world, and they will die trying. They will call for radical change in every sector of our human activity because radical change is what is necessary for their survival. That means a world government will be formed, the needs of our planet will supersede all other considerations, what we now think of as individualistic rights to consume and plunder will be eliminated, spirituality will be expressed differently, religion will be radically altered, the immorality of the super rich owning more than they need will be corrected, wealth will be redistributed, and the quality of life will not be measured in GDP. It you have a problem with this view of the world to come, then you will suffer in the future. Your SUV will be crushed, along with your ego. If you are okay with this future, vote it into existence. Encourage the rebirth of true democracy in America. Call it whatever you like... socialism, globalism, elimination of racism, elimination of capitalism... even the destruction of "isms". However you feel, it's on the way. There is not a damned thing you can do to stop it. Embrace the change or step off the planet.  Click on the picture to link to the Huffington Post article or click here.
• GOP Congressman Spent His Week Harassing Muslim Colleague on Twitter
• Police Sergeant to Precinct: If a Homeless Person is Black, Just Shoot Them • 2 Years Later, Trump’s Muslim Ban is Still Keeping Families Apart • Ocasio-Cortez Flooded With Bigoted Calls • Virginia House Democrats Call for Gov. Ralph Northam’s Resignation (for black face photo) • The Covington Teens’ Racist “Tomahawk Chop” Is The Product Of Native Mascotry • Don Lemon Shreds Ralph Northam’s Disgusting Racism: ‘It Deeply Hurt’ Me • RNC Gets Roasted Over “Tone Deaf” Black History Month Tweet These headlines say a lot about our nation. We need to pay attention to the issues of race and bigotry that are becoming more - not less - prevalent as we struggle with white supremacy, white fragility, and white rage. We fought a civil war over these issues once before but we have never overcome them. Our government has never apologized for its role in the practices of genocide and slavery upon which our nation was built. Racist language is still present in the DNA of our Constitution, and has not been expunged or repudiated. I believe the United States needs to institute a national “Truth and Reconciliation” commission based on the South African model that addressed their apartheid era. God knows we could use such a process to help our nation transition from our myth of a white european ethos of the past to a superior one based on vibrant ethnic and racial diversity for the future. This is a little something I apparently posted on Facebook on September 14, 2012. I completely forgot about it until this morning, when it showed up on a "Memories" posting. It is interesting. I had a dream about an organization called the Anti-Antichrist World League (AAWL). Fifteen years ago a retired senior level CIA administrator named John Strawn wrote a paper called “Asymmetrical Leveraging: The Fall of Empires”. In the paper he advanced the theory that world governments are now simply hosts for powerful groups that advance their geopolitical aims by using religious extremists and ultra right conservatives as puppets. Strawn’s first axiom was simple: “money equals power”. The Master Groups realized long ago that money is the only real power in this globally connected world, and that they could control world governments by influencing the actions of their puppets. Because governments are not responsible for the puppets (and many times don’t know they exist) they are powerless to stop them. Strawn’s second axiom was: “To find out who gains... follow the money”.
“Push the hot buttons of religious intolerance on one side and nationalism on the other (preferably at the same time), mix in a little indignation and voilà!, you’ve got the makings of an international crisis.”, Strawn wrote. He argued that crisis of the kind that destabilize a government is the goal of Master Groups. “When the dust settles, it is the Master Groups, with their ability to mobilize vast logistical and monetary resources, that swoop down to feast on the bones of the wrecked state.”, he wrote. Master Groups do not need to collect taxes, provide for public services, govern, or concern themselves with alleviating the human suffering they cause. They do not need to pay for large armies or fixed bases of operation. Their host countries must provide for all that. The Master Groups have learned to constantly enrich themselves by manufacturing cycles of violence, then servicing the needs of afflicted host countries. The use of relatively few resources to effect changes in much larger geopolitical systems is the “asymmetrical” part. The “leveraging” occurs when factions inside a host nation (or region) are manipulated to attack other puppets outside the borders of their host country. Strawn argued that was an important component of successful asymmetrical leveraging. Attacking outside the host country borders forces two or more host countries into participation because they are forced to protect what they perceive as their national interests. Such threatened interests may be ideals, physical assets, or groups of people valued by the host countries. Many intelligence operatives around the world seriously read John Strawn’s paper. Mid-level Intelligence administrators began to communicate with each other across agency divides. While no spy agency could penetrate the Master Groups by themselves, they could, by working together, begin to see the Master Groups general contours. They discovered that most of the Master Groups were inspired by an apocalyptic worldview. Both fundamentalist Islamic and Christian theologies are cynically exploited into an Antichrist, apocalyptic scenario that serves both; Moslem looking for Jihad against infidels and Christians earnestly wishing to hasten the return of Jesus Christ. While Master Groups do not possess religious beliefs, they nonetheless use religion the way starships in science fiction use antimatter. So, the AAWL is so named as a rejoinder to what it perceives as its greatest common foe. The Master Groups are difficult to identify because they are often loose associations of powerful individuals operating in business and government. Sometimes they are corporations or entire industries. The AAWL is, thus limited in what it can do to combat the power of the Master Groups or their puppets. It mostly operates as an extra-channel resource for hapless governments. Even though many spy agencies worldwide can operate with some level of impunity, the Master Groups have no legal, ethical, moral, or financial restrictions. I read the “Asymmetrical Leveraging: The Fall of Empires” paper and spent time carefully examining how Master Groups operate. Stay tuned! |
