The Thunderbolt 220518 - Centuries Old Business As Usual
Dana Walker
The Thunderbolt
News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes
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1) FYI Section:
1A) Parallax Perspectives for May
1B) Message from Citizens for a Clean Black Lake
2) Die In for the Climate Crisis
3) Peace Vigil / Poor People’s Campaign Event
4) Bonus Tip of the Day
A detailed description of all events is located after the News and Commentary section
To go directly to an event description just type the index entry above into a search box
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Centuries Old Business As Usual
220518
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A Tale of Two Refugee Camps
Hey, People!
So — you never know when the inboxes of Cascadia are going to be scorched by an incoming Thunderbolt these days…
Anyway, I’m going to start with the story that inspired me to put out an edition at this time, for it turns out that if you’re a refugee trying to escape horror and death by coming to the United States via the Mexican border — make sure that you are Ukrainian!
A small army of American volunteers showed up in Tijuana to help the incoming Ukranians out and the Mexican government provided them with a soccer stadium. Therefore, the Ukrainian welcome center complex is a large, clean, and welcoming space. There are tons of resources available — everything from cooked food, to information flyers, to people helping to get refugees in line to board the next bus, and they are even provided with Internet access.
The day that reporter James Spring visited this camp, he estimated that between 500 and 800 refugees moved through this shelter and into the United States with an average wait time of 8 hours.
Then Mr. Spring went to another refugee center called Agape, this one populated by refugees with — let’s say — ‘darker’ skin tones. This camp had about the same number of people as the Ukrainian one did, but these were migrants mainly from Central America, Mexico, and a few from Haiti.
I will quote Mr. Spring here: “Agape is up a dirt road. It's right between a junkyard and a cemetery. And it's not very big, maybe the size of like two Olive Garden restaurants. And I'll just come out and say it. The place has a very different vibe than the Ukrainian compound.”
Unlike the 8-hour wait time for the hundreds of Ukrainians who were moving through daily, in the month previous to Mr. Spring’s visit only one person from Agape had been legally processed into the US, and that only after he had been waiting at Agape for almost a year.
The Rump used COVID as an excuse to close the border to nearly all immigration for over two years, and then — breaking yet another solemn promise made whilst on the campaign trail — Sleepy Joe continued with that policy.
But then, miraculously, they found a way around all of that when it came to Ukrainians! The Ukrainians are being accepted into the US through a process called ‘humanitarian parole’ which allows them to stay for up to 12 months!
Evidently white people aren't considered by the State Department to be as contagious as people of colour when it comes to COVID.
Mr. Spring decided to take one of the refugees from the Agape center to visit the Ukrainian center, and a young woman named Mayra from Michoacán, Mexico volunteered. Mayra had been acting as a nurse at Agape, and she was seeking asylum in the United States because the drug gangs in Michoacán had been killing and/or recruiting all of her family members.
Mayra noted that unlike Agape, the Ukrainian center had a kid's center with toys and Legos, etc. There was a coloring station for the older kids. There was prepared food everywhere. There were even kennels for the Ukrainian dogs. It was explained that Ukrainians had all these resources even though most of them weren’t even spending the night — whereas at Agape, the refugees mostly slept on floors and mostly had to pay their own way as the center did not have enough resources to take care of them or to provide them with too many luxuries — such as food or a bed, for instance.
The fact that the Ukrainians were getting processed so quickly — especially under the guise of ‘humanitarian parole’ — was a tough pill for Mayra to swallow since she had herself attempted to get her own father into the US under this ‘humanitarian parole’ exception due to the fact that his leg had been amputated, he had severe diabetes, and his condition had been steadily getting worse.
His ‘humanitarian parole’ claim was denied and Mayra's father soon thereafter died at the Agape shelter from his medical complications.
As Mayra and Mr. Spring left the Ukrainian facility, they walked past dishes of hot food, cases of bottled water, walls full of clothing and blankets sealed in clear plastic bags, and past the smiling American guards at the front gate. Outside, Mr. Spring pointed out that Mexican cops were posted at the corner keeping watch over the Ukrainians and protecting them from the gangs. “What? Really,” Mayra asked? “They get that, too? And people shoot at us from outside the shelter, actual gunfire, and the police are almost never around. How sad.
“I've seen so few people, so, so few bringing even a single donation to our shelter. Or, for example, these kids have so many supplies — Crayons, notebooks, Play-Doh, these learning materials. And our kids, who are here for months, don't have these supplies. And those who are only here for eight hours, they have everything here, everything, everything, all the comforts. They even have the Internet. They have everything. The truth is, they don't need it. Honestly here, I see how literally they don't even open the things they bring them. I think they don't even open it. They don't need it. They're people who simply pass through, and they give them everything. Why?”
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I think that is a very good question, Mayra. I have yet to hear an acceptable answer.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes/act-two-6
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The Other Demographic Change
So everyone knows that white people are about to become a minority in the United States, and that this change has already taken place amongst the youth population. It is also obvious that a lot of white people are very uncomfortable with that inevitability and are trying to counter that trend.
They may as well try to stem the tide — but you can’t really even tell them that.
However, there is another demographic change that very few are considering and this change will be much more important as far as political representation in the federal government goes, which is this: As is known and bemoaned amongst informed leftists, the compromise made to the slave states during the original drafting of the Constitution means that the 576,851 people who live in Wyoming have the same number of senators as the 39,538,223 people who live in California. (Note the number of commas in those last two numbers.)
Keeping that in mind, consider that I just heard a radio show host say that by 2040, 75% of the American population will be living in just 5 states. (I haven’t confirmed that assertion, but that sounds about right from what I do know.)
If true, this means that 25% of the American population will soon be choosing 90% of the US senators — and this 25% of our population will be much older and much whiter than the other 75% of our population.
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The Handmaid’s Court
And meanwhile, the Supreme Court now has a super-majority who believe that they should be able to use the power of the law to force a bunch of bigoted and sexist religious superstitions that were very popular back in the 17th Century down everyone else’s throats.
Again, these are views that are held by a tiny minority of our population.
I can’t find the quote from Alito (all search engines are evidently ignoring all alternative information these days) (and interestingly, when I searched for this quote by Alito ALL of the top listings were sites such as Fox News, Breitbart, and other nutcase right wing propaganda outlets) but anyway, I heard that Samuel Alito, the justice whose opinion was leaked, had since said something to the effect that people’s ‘opinions’ hold no sway over the decisions of the Court.
Yes. In an alleged ‘democracy’ people’s ‘opinions’ should hold no sway over the Supreme Court — especially when for the first time in American history they are actually eliminating already existing rights — and when they are eliminating those rights for fully half of the population.
And when I say this is 17th Century crap, I mean that literally: In that infamous leaked opinion, Justice Alito actually quoted an infamous 17th Century English jurist and misogynist named Sir Matthew Hale — a man who had literally executed women for being witches.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/samuel-alito-roe-v-wade-abortion-draft
Mr. Hale also said of women, “They are chargeable unprofitable people” who “know the ready way to consume an estate, and to ruin a family quickly.”
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/05/alitos-leaked-draft-quotes-literal-witch
According to a footnote in one law review article, Hale also appears to have been the very first jurist to articulate what later would become the widely accepted legal principle (including here in the United States for most of our history) that a husband cannot be charged with raping his wife.
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This is the legal expertise that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito uses for his role model — a literal 17th Century witch burner and an apologist for rapists.
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Centuries Old Business As Usual
So here we are. Ever since the first person figured out that they could hoard food during the good times and then make bank when the next famine came along, our history has consisted of a never-ending battle between a small handful of ‘elites’ who wish to enslave everyone else to serve their selfish interests and every one else attempting to resist this enslavement — often with very limited if any success.
One way for a small handful of rich people to brutally exploit large numbers of poor people is through terror. You spend enough to arm a whole bunch of people to whom you grant special ‘privilege’ so they are personally invested in your swindle, then you convince them that any threat to the status quo is a threat to that privilege and then you use your army or your police force or whatever to do truly hideous and heinous things to anyone who objects to the status quo.
These ‘elites' claim the ‘right to rule’ due to their superiority to everyone else — and for a long time many of them not only claimed to rule by a direct edict from God, but they usually got away with that.
This ‘superiority’ is evidently evidenced by the fact they’ve done such a great job of running the world throughout our history.
It would seem that God could use a good personnel manager.
However — a much easier and in many ways more effective method of controlling the masses is to keep them at each other’s throats. When they are hating on each other, they aren’t hating on their oppressors. Thus, certain demographics are demonized and dehumanized and presented as sub-human threats to everything that is good and right about the world and thus the slaves all spend their time fighting each other rather than all of them getting together to tackle their actual enemy — the slave masters, or the ‘elites’, or the 0.1% or whatever tag you wish to apply.
The reason Donald Trump was able to con so many millions of people is because everyone knows that our current system is utterly corrupt from the top to the bottom and that it is run by elites to serve exclusively elitist interests. The Rump managed to convince those millions of acolytes that he was there to stand up to those corrupt elites. He managed to construct a massive edifice made of lies, gaslighting, distortions, and pure bull shite — but he built all of that upon foundations of actual truth. The American media is indeed a lapdog of corrupt elites. The FBI is indeed a political hit squad. The Democratic Party is indeed an utterly corrupt and wholly owned subsidiary for the Wall Street War Machine. Hillary Clinton should indeed spend the rest of her life in prison.
Donald Trump did indeed ‘drain the swamp’ — he just refilled it with other swamp creatures that were even more repellent. The Rump also took the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to probably its ultimate extreme since the Civil War: We are now split nearly evenly into two camps who both view the other as camp as an existential threat — and since both sides of this artificially created divide have gone insane, then both sides are completely correct to paint the other side as an existential threat. You are either Left or Right. You are either Democrat or Republican. If you are a Democrat then you believe this, that, and the other thing, and if you are a Republican you believe the other thing, that, and this — with absolutely no middle ground. If you disagree or even question established ideological memes on either side, then you are yourself demonized and dehumanized by both sides. There are three activists in Olympia who ignore me and pretend they don’t see me when we encounter each other in public because I’m against gun control laws, for instance. I’m with them on nearly every other issue — but I dare to disagree with that one piece of ‘leftist’ dogma thus placing me beneath their notice.
The actual facts are largely irrelevant to either side.
And now, as we tear each other apart over some social issue that is mostly irrelevant as far as the future of humanity is concerned, neither the Democrats or the Republicans are seriously addressing the truly existential stuff as the environmental infrastructure that makes our lives possible on this planet is being systematically destroyed and we are about to experience the mother environmental disaster of all environmental disasters in all human history — and all for the short term profits of a small handful of these same ‘elites’ who we continue to allow to run our world in spite of centuries upon centuries of evidence attesting to their horrid misrule.
Right.
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An Ode and a Fare Thee Well to Olympia
So, some of you have probably noticed that after 10 years of publishing once a week every week, the Thunderbolt newsletter has become very sporadic since last November due to all my time and energy being directed toward converting an old school bus into a retirement home.
I am most happy to announce that the bus project proceeds apace, and while Murphy finally made an appearance recently and set me back a couple of weeks, barring further such interventions I hope to be moved in by August and have all the work done by September or, budget permitting, October.
After I’m settled in to my new home, I plan to resume both regular publication of this newsletter and I will once again start producing new radio shows. (I have been airing reruns on the radio since November.)
However — I am now officially announcing that after I finish moving into my bus then I am done with Olympia. I plan to resume my work from Ashland, Oregon.
I still love Olympia, and overall I consider my time here to have been very well spent. I have very few regrets about having come here. A lot of magic people have touched my life in a variety of ways that are invaluable, I’ve met some of my favourite people I’ve ever known here, I’ve learned a lot about a lot of things that I needed to learn about here, and I’ve gotten a lot of love here.
However, there are actually several reasons for my planned move, one being that my daughter has moved to Ashland, she absolutely loves it, and I want to spend more time during this latter part of my life hanging out with her.
Another reason is that while Olympian winters are not all that cold, they are very wet, they are very dark, and they last for entirely too long. While Ashland is a little colder than Olympia during winter and a little warmer during summer, they only get 9+ inches of rain per year as opposed to Olympia’s 33 inches. In addition, that far south the sun is in the sky for a significantly longer period of time during the winter months — and unlike here, in Ashland you can often actually see it.
I’ve also never been comfortable with literally being in the shadow of a very dangerous volcano — nor am I chill with being within 150 miles of five very dangerous volcanoes. The entire Cascadia region is also long overdue for one of the devastating magnitude 9 earthquakes that have rocked the Pacific Northwest on an average of once every 250 years for thousands of years— and it’s been 322 years since the last one — and since these earthquakes are always centered upon the Cascadian Subduction Zone, then these type of underwater earthquakes also always produce huge and devastating tsunamis that might well wipe out places like Alaska and/or Hawaii.
The main reason I am leaving, though — to be honest — is that I am totally burned out upon Olympia’s large and vicious cancel culture. I had my whole life ruined and in several circles my reputation was totally trashed over pure bullshit that wasn’t even true to begin with.
And not only that, but they did so with widespread community support — including several people who should have known better.
That whole experience has left me — let us say — ‘unimpressed’, with the Olympia activist community overall. I am going to remove myself from the field of your endless circular firing squads — and while some may rejoice at that news, I figure that this is your frigging loss.
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Anyway, that’s it for this edition. I’ll probably see you soon. Check out the radio show sometime…
And then it’s time to get to work…
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The Olympia Action Alert
Late May, 2022
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1A) Parallax Perspectives for May
I got this message from Glen:
See below for how anyone anywhere can watch this through my blog – and how Thurston County WA’s cable TV subscribers can watch it on TV three times a week throughout May 2022.
The May 2022 episode of “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” TV series provides powerful information and inspiration to significantly improve the U.S.’s “national security” by – ironically -- de-militarizing our “national defense.” Instead of military violence, we could defend our nation better through carefully planned strategies of nonviolent resistance.
Besides eliminating the danger of nuclear war, a nonviolent national defense would also provide better security without all of the downsides that violent militarism causes.
During this hour Glen Anderson:
- Encourages us to think open-mindedly, boldly and creatively
- Explains how nonviolent national defense could actually work effectively
- Shares examples of nonviolent resistance used successfully in other countries
- Mentions a variety of great benefits that nonviolent national defense would provide
- Discusses how to overcome the obstacles to making this radical change
- Encourages us to boldly pivot toward peace
- Shares sources of information about this
Glen has been studying and strongly supporting nonviolent national defense for nearly half a century. He firmly believe we could do this if we organize strategically savvy grassroots movements to overcome the obstacles and create a groundswell of nonviolent public pressure. We do need to shift our culture significantly. Actually, Glen points out that our culture has shifted in a number of ways, so we can shift it now in this bold, peaceful way.
Usually the TV programs in this TV series feature interviews, so -- based on the TV video -- Glen types up a thorough summary of what we said during the interview.
This month's program does not include any guests. Glen had written up a POWERFULLY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE with MANY LINKS TO ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION. In this TV program Glen summarizes the main points down to less than one hour.
He strongly encourages people to READ THE ORIGINAL, VERY THOROUGH ARTICLE (which includes links to many more sources of information) here: Nonviolent National Defense Would Be Better in Every Way
Questions? Contact Glen Anderson (producer and host) at (360) 491-9093 or glenan...@integra.net
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1B) Message from Citizens for a Clean Black Lake
I got this message from Esther:
Hello Commissioners,
I am sending you another article about mismanagement of lake water quality, this time in Lakewood.
I have sent you many similar articles that raised concerns about the use of chemicals while failing to address the causes of contamination, but still have never received even an acknowledgement that you care to deal with this issue of our drinking water.
My only interest in this is my concern for the public health, the health of the ecosystem we rely on and the Strategic Groundwater Reservation of the State Capitol which supplies the drinking water for your family and mine. I have no financial interests, no ambitions, no agenda beyond ensuring the water supply of Thurston County remains safe. I have spent many many hours researching and investigating the environmental impacts of the mismanagement of Black Lake in consultation with reputable scientists and advocates, and yet I find the whole issue subsumed by issues of power, privilege and an institutional unwillingness by the County to honestly evaluate what would be best for the well-being of ALL County residents. The Department of Ecology has also failed to protect our most precious resource, as noted in the NWEA case I cited to you several times which found the Department in violation of the Clean Water Act on exactly this issue of toxics. Recent disclosures of corruption at the EPA also corroborate my concerns.
I have been very disappointed with how the County has treated our citizens group, throwing up roadblocks to what should be readily available public records, refusing to communicate clearly its procedures or to even respond to our inquiries, and conducting private meetings with interested opposing parties in which we had no voice, no presence and no notice. Our initial requests that the County follow its own 2015 Healthy Watersheds plan and address the causes of contamination in Black Lake were ignored, leaving us little recourse but to try to stop the further application of poisons into the Lake by legal means.
What should have, from the beginning, been an honest effort to address a vital issue that embraced all interested parties working together to come up with solutions to benefit the entire community has devolved into a conflict where everyone loses and the original problem persists and worsens. The County used ten times the amount of poison in lakes in 2020 than it did in 2016, and that does not include what was applied to Black Lake which has no County oversight.
The attached article shows the results of poor management decisions by local elected officials on a Pierce County lake. I pray we can avoid that dismal outcome here.
I remain committed to protecting our water resources and stand ready to assist the County as always.
Thank you.
Esther Kronenberg on behalf of
Citizens for a Clean Black Lake
cc: Black Lake supporters
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2) Tuesday May 24th
Die In for the Climate Crisis
Time and Location TBA
I got this information through Olympia FOR:
Save the Date! On Tuesday, May 24th, students from schools all over Thurston County will be staging a Die-In to bring attention to the urgency of the climate crisis and to demand swifter action. Throughout social movement history, "DIE-INs" have been an effective tool to dramatize the deadly impact of various social ills from HIV/AIDS to medical coverage to police brutality. As we know, for young people today, climate change poses a great threat to the future. It is a life-or-death issue. Hence, the Thurston Youth Climate Coalition will be dying-in at Olympia City Hall on the 24th. You are invited to join in and show your support. More details to follow. Keep an eye out on our social media pages, and stay on the lookout for action alerts in the coming weeks pertaining to the demonstration. And please help spread the word by sharing this Save the Date!
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3) Wednesday June 8th
Peace Vigil / Poor People’s Campaign Event
Afternoon and Evening Between Marathon Park and Heritage Park
7 pm Watch Event @ Traditions Cafe
I got this information through Olympia FOR:
Wednesday (yes, Odin's Day!) June 8 during the Noon Peace Vigil, meet in Sylvester Park (yes, there will be houseless folk present) to make signs of your own choosing to carry in our demonstration with the WA Poor People's Campaign. We will have materials, and you may bring your own special gear to show the rest of us. All of what we make will be in action the afternoon and evening of Friday, June 17. The area between Capitol Way and the level ground of Heritage (Marathon) Park is set aside for as many of us as may gather on the day before the mass demonstration in Washington, DC. The Poor People's Campaign and March on DC is a child of MLK, Rev. James Lawson, Rev. Barber and so many peaceful warriors. FORUSA is a major sponsor, and will be recording the proceedings in DC.
Olympia will invite you to a watch party inside Traditions Cafe, beginning 7am PDT, or you can watch livestream from your own home.
Time to get moving and show up for justice.
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4) Bonus Tip of the Day:
Don’t accept the status quo.
Peace.
Dana
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https://dana98501.wordpress.com/2022/05/18/tb-220518-centuries-old-business-as-usual/
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