The main issue that radicalized me when I first became a student activist in the 1960s was war, the actual bloody war going on in Viet-Nam, and the always pending war, permanently etched into the back of my mind, the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the United States. I became a draft resister in 1967, like hundreds of thousands of others, and refused to go to Viet-Nam, opting to become a non-violent warrior for peace and justice instead.
The nuclear standoff that traumatized me and a whole generation of anti-war and civil rights activists arose during the Cuban missile crisis of October 16-28, 1962—60 years ago.
Years later I learned that a global catastrophe in October 1962 was averted only because a Soviet submarine commander, off the coast of Cuba, disobeyed orders to fire his nuclear missiles, after a U.S. naval vessel dropped explosive depth-charges, trying to force the Russian submarine to the surface. The 1962 nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, eerily reminiscent of the current nuclear standoff in Ukraine, was precipitated by American deployment of nuclear missiles in Turkey, adjacent to the borders of the USSR, prompting Soviet deployment of intermediate atomic missiles in Cuba.
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Growing up on the Gulf of Mexico and living through several intense hurricanes, I became familiar with the term “eye of the storm.” The “eye” refers to the interlude or relative calm between the two phases of a hurricane, when the center of the storm is passing directly overhead. I was warned as a child not to go outside as the “eye” passed over, even though it seemed like the storm was winding down, because more intense wind, tidal surges, and torrential rains would surely follow.
We are now all living in the eye of the storm. Most of us survived the engineered release (whether accidental or deliberate) and transmission, death, and mayhem of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its spike protein.
But the storm and the coordinated assault on our mental and physical health, civil rights, and constitutional liberties is not over. Big Pharma and government bureaucrats are still trying to pretend that the latest variants (more akin to the common cold or a mild season flu) of COVID-19 are dangerous, even for children and infants. They are also still trying to tell us that the experimental, rushed to market, blockbuster COVID-19 vaccines work, and that they are safe, which they are not. As our ally, Millions Against Medical Mandates, warn us “wake the hell up, they are coming for our children.”
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The war in Ukraine has already caused massive death and destruction, with more undoubtedly to come as the fighting intensifies in the country’s east and south. Many thousands of soldiers and civilians have already been killed or wounded, some 13 million Ukrainians have been forced from their homes, and an estimated one-third of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
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Like most of you, we at OCA and Regeneration International are sick and tired of gloom and doom, false promises, and authoritarian/technocratic schemes. We’ve had enough of the mad science, genetic engineering, war-mongering, fear-mongering, political corruption, corporate greed, cancel culture, and media censorship. We’re tired of political posturing and sectarianism (“my issue or my constituency is more important than your issue or your constituency”). We’re done with name-calling and yelling at one another instead of sitting down and figuring out how we, the 99%, can move forward on real solutions for the U.S. and the world’s most pressing and dangerous crises—while agreeing to disagree on many of the secondary issues that will likely still divide us for the foreseeable future.
I like to call this ecumenical approach '21st Century Populism,' even though the liberal and conservative Establishment want us to believe that grassroots populism is a dirty word, a synonym for intolerance and unlettered ignorance. But as Thomas Frank points out in his 2020 book, The People No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, nearly everything we hear about populism in the mass media is wrong. For many, "populism" is seen as a frightening thing, a term pundits use to describe the racist statements of politicians such as Donald Trump and European extremists.
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As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground. I thought of the war the United States is now waging against Russia via Ukraine and how, as during the U.S. war against Vietnam, few Americans seem to care until it becomes too late.
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Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky sent a love letter to US companies, thanking “such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs” for buying up his country’s assets. “Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine”, he enticed, claiming that the reconstruction of his nation “will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe”.
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The West’s recent approval of more military assistance for Kiev risks nuclear nightmare, fails Ukrainian expectations and rebukes the World War II history enshrined in a prominent Soviet war memorial in Berlin.
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On February 19, Washington, DC, will witness a protest against the war in Ukraine that marks a sharp departure from past demonstrations. The lead demand is simple and direct, “Not One More Penny for war in Ukraine.” It is a demand that emphasizes what we in the US can do to end the war, not what others can do.
Read moreThe U.S. tyranny of monopoly capital has long preferred to deal with fascist governments abroad, specifically in the Global South. American oligarchs’ foreign fascist sycophants are so much more malleable than democratic representatives; they don’t even have to be told what to do because they know. It’s in their DNA.
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As the political situation becomes even more intense in the capital city of Lima in Peru and other regions of the South American country, the western-backed administration of Dina Boluarte has called for dialogue among the contending political forces.
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