I love that series.
Make interviews GREAT again! (by letting guests actually answer).
He's knowledgeable - one who helped put together their gigantic map of the coup.
WE LOVE OUR LURKERS!!
OKAY BAKER, REPOSTING (LB)
New Year, New Decade, New Struggle for Change – Be the Storm
t is an extra special time of the year. We are not just seeing out an old year and ushering in a new one; we are also ending an old decade and preparing for a new one. It is time for personal reflection on what you have done or maybe failed to do over the past year. Indeed time for reflection of your life over the past ten years.
Amidst the reflection there should also be a healthy dose of resolving. Resolving to address issues in your personal life, in your working life and perhaps in how you connect with matters pertaining to wider society as a whole. I’ve always tried to be a ‘glass half full’ guy rather than a more pessimistic ‘glass half empty’ but it’s not always easy to remain optimistic in the midst of horrific natural disasters and climate change propelled floods and droughts claiming hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives and displacing tens of millions more.
Far Right Ideas Have Unfortunately Won Support in Some Countries
Politically the rise of the far right and their toxic package of intolerance, racism, bigotry and narrow nationalist isolationism and chauvinism in several countries have been disappointing and sad.
Feeding on the fear and insecurity caused by policies of economic austerity favouring the rich and powerful and further impoverishing ordinary working families and the vulnerable, the idea that foreigners, the poor, the disabled and anyone cast as ‘different’ is the enemy are able to take root as worried and frightened communities seek scapegoats for their challenging economic conditions. Low wages, falling living standards, insecure and/or casual employment, unsuitable and insufficient supply of housing, reduced and less available access to health care and education are not the fault of corrupt and grotesquely unfair economic systems but rather the foreigners, the asylum seekers, the refugees. They are the ones to blame.
Asylum Seekers and Refugees Are Victims Not the Cause of Poverty
It is a cheap, nasty and wholly ridiculous proposition but one which grows arms and legs the more it is repeated by rich and powerful sources in a political vacuum created by politicians too consumed with their own positions of power to pay attention to the real problems in society.
The tendency to seek someone to blame for difficult economic and social conditions is an international phenomenon. The rich and powerful rulers in society who live in opulent and obscene wealth while millions struggle to make ends meet are the real culprits in economic inequality but their control of the means of mental production, namely the press and media, as well as economic production allows them the opportunity to shift blame onto those unable to defend themselves.
The fact many poor hardworking people in one country end up blaming other poor hard working people from another country for their struggles and challenges is one of life’s cruel ironies. Throughout 2020 we must all learn to stand up more for those who are the victims of warped and unfair economic systems and endless wars and aerial bombings. To those who rage against asylum seekers and refugees seeking to build new lives in countries they have fled to or been placed in we should demand they turn their ire on the rich governments who bomb, invade and destroy the nations which result in mass refugee and asylum seeker issues in the first place.
In years gone by weapons used to be produced to aid war efforts. Nowadays wars and conflicts are created to aid the powerful arms industries across the rich West. The invasion and destruction of Lybia in 2016, Iraq in 2003 and Yemen and Syria over the last five years have not just killed millions of unarmed human beings but created political chaos and tens of millions refugees doing what any one of us would do in the same situation. Fleeing their homeland despite the risks and obstacles to try and secure safety and security for their children and wider families.
It is not always easy to do the right thing and stand up for those who are scapegoated, targeted and identified as easy targets but asylum seekers and refugees are not our enemies they are human beings like us, potential friends who deserve support and care, not anger and intolerance.
https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202001011077913084-new-year-new-decade-new-struggle-for-change–be-the-storm/
Zero Point info for anyone who wants it
That makes me happy
Art nouveau was the reaction to the Industrial age and Art Deco, and Bauhaus architectural style - the soulless steel & glass monstrosities, cold, sterile & lifeless.