Thing One and Thing Two

People are functioning like 3-toed sloths. They have too much on their minds, give them a break. And at 3 PM the heat suffocating the Bay Area clocked at 102, which does not  help.  It’s a wonder anyone cares about anything, except the good news is vast numbers of folks do. And 102 is so cold in places like India and Japan, and Nigeria people have to bring blankets. That applies to many other countries as well, even some that use toilet paper. 

 

We have a few issues that concern us. The Disunited States is gripped at the moment in the convulsions of an election circus. Two old white men, neither a candidate known for original ideas, are facing off, and even the 3-toed sloths are galvanized in submoronic attempts to bolster the political creature of their choice. And neither creature represents the millions of people who are about to lose their housing security, to be tumbled out into the streets, alongside their piled up furniture. So let’s restore a bit of sanity to the proceedings, quit the circus tent for a moment to have a gander at the Big Picture. Outside, where cooler heads prevail.

 

Thing One 

 

We have two main issues and only two to really worry about. Call them Thing One and Thing Two: global climate collapse, and the nuclear industry. The latter is a two headed-monster, head one: energy; head two: nuclear weapons. The latter range from small  “depleted uranium" tipped ordnance which is pyroclastic (that is it atomizes on explosion) to Tridents with 96 warheads, each 8 times as powerful as a Hiroshima bomb, which were just lollipops in comparison. 

But these two are joined at the neck. Nuclear power has a two-headed reciprocal relationship, one people entirely overlook, namely that nuclear weapons wouldn’t and couldn’t be there if there were no nuclear plants, and nuclear plants had to be built to create the weapon’s grade plutonium without which nuclear bombs could not be manufactured. So we have a two-headed monster whose heads feed one another (kinda like those cute little parakeet couples that regurgitate, and feed each other their own vomit).  

 

Thing Two

 

We are already in the thick of the first stages of climate collapse: Fires (California, Brazil) , floods (Ohio, Yemen) , desertification (sub-Saharan Africa and Central America), glacier and ice shelf melt (the Andes, Arctic and Antarctic), Hurricanes and Typhoons (southern US and Asia), storms and freak winds (on my street last night one mini whirlwind sheered a huge tree of one of its tree-sized limbs). Migration already displacing millions as soils in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America become too desiccated to farm.

                        Folks in Yemen try to help one another

 

Now Thing One and Thing Two, are kinda like larger sets of nuclear power; they too are joined at the neck. For example, Korea’s Busan  Kori Nuclear Power plant (NPP) lost power because of typhoon Maysak; Preceding this latest event, a whole history exists of other plants failing, even becoming endangered as rivers and oceans surge: Oyster Creek in the Disunited States which came close to being another Fukushima during  superstorm Sandy in 2012 not to mention N.Y, State’s Indian Point; Ft. Calhoun in 2011  which nearly failed when the Muddy Missouri overflowed its banks, and a truck backing up punctured the inflated boom meant to hold floodwaters back.

 

                           Bisan Units 3 & 4 hit by typhoon Maysak 

 

Our orange media bonbon may have boasted he could delay the election, send cops to polling stations, dispatch secret feds to cities to arrest peaceful protesters, and muck with the Post Office to suppress the wrong kind of vote, all the creeping signs of fascism, but as long as Thing One and Thing Two don’t invite each other to dance, planetariily speaking, we have nothing to worry about.

 

What You Can Do

 

By now, it’s pretty clear even to Greta Thunberg and other 88-year-old adolescents that governments, and the UN, and the Davos crowd, and all the Good People of Influence (Jeff Bezos, Murdoch, Bill Gates, Christine Legarde, and all the other felons we worship) are not going to lift a FFinger. (badspeak for inertia) so it’s up to all the little tiny units calling themselves US.  WE can stop eating meat, and substitute eggs, cheese,  and tofu. We can learn to grow our own food, we can stop driving and flying,. We can wash our clothes in a wash tub, and hang them out on a line, we can give up that greatest of luxuries, toilet paper, give up the gadgetry of the moment: cars and cell phones, and rise and retire and heat our homes with the light and heat of the sun.. 

Why don’t we?

 

 

Sign nuclear arms ban.

 

Save USPS and uncouple McConnell conflict of interest with PO superPAC.

 

Demand Senate restore eviction moratorium and rental assistance.

 

Demand Justice for Daniel Prude

 

 

Portuguese youth file “unprecedented’ climate lawsuit against 33 European countries.

 

World Bank suspends Doing Business Report (DBR) after ‘irregularities’ found in 2018 and 2020 reports.

 

Supreme Court rules faithless super electors can’t invalidate millions of voters they represent, but Repugnican strategists are striving to do just that.

 

Lots of luck with that department: Pennsylvania lawmakers call on Postmaster General Dejoy to return sorting machines

and

43 Green Groups demand moderators make climate crisis ‘central focus’ of 2020 presidential debates.

 

CDC directs halt to renter evictions: million at risk in next several months.

 

Harvard activists’ new fossil fuel divestment strategy: make it an inside job,

 

Over a hundred groups demand Biden ban fossil fuel execs and lobbyists from campaign and cabinet.

 

Urging ‘New Good Neighbor Policy,’ 100 groups demand Biden end US destructive imperialist approach to Latin America.

 

Groups sue administration to protect clean water.

 

Largest solar array of its kind in US sits atop a former Pittsburgh steel mill.

 

Green New Deal champion Ed m=Markey defeats Joe Kennedy III in Mass,

 

America’s greatest athletes stand up for racial justice, calling on country to change.

 

Court rules Communities United for Police Reform may intervene in NYPD misconduct database.

 

More than  100 protesters and legal observers to sue NYPD for violent arrests.

 

After 7 months, Rochester Mayor announces 7 cops responding to mental health call and responsible for Daniel Prude’s death have been suspended.

 

Hayward cop charged in shooting death of Black Man in Walmart.

 

‘Flowers for Moses Cemetery’: community fights desecration of African cemetery to build a self-storage facility.

 

New Jersey Mayor rescinds $2500 bill sent to activist for planning Black Lives Matter rally.

 

Gov. Newsom signs California eviction moratorium for renters hurt by pandemic.

 

Police decertification bill amended after discussions with Newsom administration to include an accountability feature, improving its chances..

 

Oakland group launches non-police mental health hotline.

 

Justice Department to investigate Jacob Blake shooting.

 

Court rules San Francisco landlords of single-family homes can’t triple rent to force tenants out.

 

San Francisco supervisors’ committee votes to slash cop budget by $30 million.

 

Ninth Circuit rules warrantless spying program illegal, citing Snowden disclosures.

 

Black-led resistance movements pave way for reparations.

 

Maybe best news of all: protests begun in Minneapolis, and giving way to a national uprising changing ways folks relate and address issues of community safety, strengthening bonds and shifting away from American individualism. 

 

 

 

 

Four boats capsize in #45 boat parade by not lobserving safety rules.