BRIEF UKRAINE HIGHLIGHTS

Even though the continuing invasion of Ukraine is, without a doubt, the biggest story out there, rather than load up my Facebook page with individual war stories, that most of you don't read, I've decided to put together a "digest' of sorts of articles I think are most relevant on my blog and then post it on FB. Like it or not, Putin's vile actions have the potential to literally affect every person on the planet.

But make no mistake. Even though this war is primarily about three things: Putin's ego, his desire to see Russia restored to its former glory as a world SuperPower, and the real mistakes of western (primarily U.S.) foreign policy by the last four administrations. We need to take a long look at the shadow policies of our own corrupt empire.

MOTHER JONES: Is It Amnesia or Hypocrisy That Fuels the GOP’s Crazy Response to Putin?
Hint: It's both. In recent days, as Putin has threatened a conflagration, top conservatives and GOP officials have practically pinned “I’m-with-Vlad buttons” onto their lapels.

AXIOS:  Ukrainian troops were holding off a massive assault from Russia's military in Kyiv
Streetfighting erupted in Kharkiv after President Vladimir Putin's forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a statement praising Ukrainian resistance Sunday, "Where are all those who promised to capture Kiev in 2 hours? Where are they at? I can't see them. ... The darkness will retreat. The dawn is near."

BBC NEWS: Ukraine invasion: Russian planes face near-total airspace ban to west
More EU countries are expected to announce bans on Russian airlines in their airspace on Sunday. In the United States, Delta Air Lines said it would suspend a flight booking agreement with Russia's Aeroflot.

GBN: Vladimir Putin orders Russian nuclear deterrent forces on alert amid tensions with the West over Ukraine invasion  
Speaking at a meeting with his top officials, Mr. Putin asserted that leading Nato powers had made “aggressive statements” along with the West imposing hard-hitting financial sanctions against Russia, including the president himself. The Nuclear Option.

FORTUNE:  War in Ukraine could displace more than 1 million people into nearby European countries
With 350 million Ukraine refuges already on the move, Europe is bracing for what could be an exodus of more than a million refugees. 

YAHOO NEWS:  Western sanctions push Russia and China even closer together 
Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine will increase Russia's already significant economic reliance on China, but a growing Russian dependence on China could cause friction between the two countries down the line.

 YAHOO NEWS:  As Russia invaded the Ukraine, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plunged.
The conflict raised questions about bitcoin's role — as a haven, a tool for the unbanked, and an authority-free zone.

LIVE Updates

QAnon Conspiracy Theorists Plotting to Take Over U.S. Elections

posted by Gary Stamper, CPC, MSIP, DPSP

BUSTED. This is the biggest fight we've been in, yet!

For months, election experts have been warning about Donald Trump's efforts to install proponents of his "Big Lie" to oversee elections in key battleground states.¹

Now we've learned that several of these candidates have direct connections to QAnon, the dangerous pro-Trump conspiracy theory movement, and that these QAnon candidates have joined forces to "control the election system."²

These are not just a handful of fringe also-rans with no chance of winning. In fact, a total of 21 candidates who deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election are running for various secretary of state offices around the country.³ Meanwhile, Trump's political action committees have raised a stunning $122 million that he can use to help them win.⁴

If any of these candidates are successful, they would be in position to help execute Trump's plot to rig the elections in 2024 and install him in the White House for a second term.

That's why MoveOn is doing something we've never done in our 23-year history: We're launching a multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed QAnon candidates for secretary of state across the country and defend our free and fair elections.

Will you donate $5 to help stop the Trump-backed conspiracy theorists from taking over our elections?

So far, at least six of the 21 "Big Lie" candidates running for secretary of state offices around the country have been linked to QAnon.⁵

These candidates include a former Nevada state legislator who publicly bragged at a QAnon convention that he and others were directly recruited to run by QAnon proponents.⁶

Another QAnon-linked candidate is January 6 insurrectionist and Arizona state legislator Mark Finchem, who has appeared on a QAnon web show and claimed that elected officials are "involved in a pedophile network in the distribution of children," a key tenet of the QAnon delusion.^7,8 Finchem has raised $660,000 for the race so far, which is more than the two leading Democrats combined.⁹

Meanwhile, QAnon message boards are lighting up with activity to help these candidates win.

If you think that fringe white supremacist extremists like this could never get elected, think again. Many of them have already been elected to state offices, and there are already at least two known QAnon believers in Congress—Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.

Especially after January 6, we cannot underestimate the threat posed by radical right-wing extremists. That's precisely why MoveOn is going big in secretary of state races across the country to defeat these pro-Trump conspiracy theory candidates. Will you donate $5?

Yes, I'll chip in to stop QAnon from taking over our elections.

Our democracy is on a knife's edge, and secretaries of state who will count every vote and ensure free and fair elections may be the only thing standing between democracy and authoritarianism.

That's why—for the first time in our 23-year history—MoveOn is dedicating millions of dollars to help elect secretaries of state who will put our democracy first and stand up to QAnon.

Please, if you are able, join us by chipping in $5—or whatever you can—to take down the QAnon plot to put Trump loyalists in charge of overseeing elections.

Thanks for all you do.

–Chris, Corinne, Justin, David, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Campaigning to Oversee Elections, While Denying the Last One," The New York Times, January 30, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/160255?t=5&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

2. "Trump-Backed QAnon Candidates Launch Group to 'Control the Election System,'" Vice, October 27, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/160920?t=7&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

3. "Campaigning to Oversee Elections, While Denying the Last One," The New York Times, January 30, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/160255?t=9&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

4. "Trump began 2022 with a war chest of $122 million," The Washington Post, January 31, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/160263?t=11&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

5. "Multiple people seeking to run state elections are connected to QAnon," Media Matters, August 16, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/160923?t=13&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

6. Tweet by Alex Kaplan, October 25, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/160924?t=15&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

7. Tweet by Alex Kaplan, May 10, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/160925?t=17&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

8. "These locally elected officials posted or openly supported QAnon conspiracy theories. Here's what happened after they took office," CNN, June 3, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/160926?t=19&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

9. "Trump followers zero in on secretary of state campaigns," Politico, January 24, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/160256?t=21&akid=317542%2E1319737%2EWkiMR8

Want to support MoveOn's work? Donald Trump and his allies are methodically enacting a plan to place some of Trump's most ardent supporters in key election offices that oversee vote counting, have the power to certify—or decertify—election results, and declare election winners and losers. We've launched a powerful, multimillion-dollar campaign to stop Trump. But we need your help to power our effort.

Will you chip in to power our campaign to defeat Trump and the GOP in 2022?

Click here to chip in $5, or whatever you can afford.

---

PAID FOR BY MOVEON . ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

ON DEATH & DYING - and MEET JEM BENDELL

 Where Do We Go From Here?

Today I'm going to jump right in and talk about climate change's proverbial Elephant in the Room, death and dying.

Why is that the elephant in the room? Because for the most part, even though good science and facts are telling us it's possible that humanity might well go extinct in a decade or two, no one wants to talk about it and I get it. 

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones. In my early twenties, I had a near-death experience. I was driving home with my band to Vallejo, California, late one night in our van after playing a club gig in San Jose and we had a flat tire just shy of the Gilman exit in Berkeley. We pulled over onto the wide gravel shoulder of the then 4-lane freeway, and the five of us got out to find that we needed to change the right front tire.

Great team that we were, we all set about to get it done. One of us, I think it was Tom, grabbed the tire and handed it off to John (I think), and I grabbed the lug wrench and jack and crawled belly-down under the front bumper in front of the wheel to set the jack under the frame.

That's when I heard someone yell, "he's going to hit us!" The next part was initially vague but I remember being aware that I was tumbling out of control in what seemed like a slow-motion movie. No pain, just what I came to realize years later was pure witness state, and for the few split-seconds it must have taken, I was just an observer with no attachment to what was happening. I remember that part like it was yesterday.

I must have passed out because the next thing I remembered was waking up laying face down on the freeway. I looked up and saw cars skidding and swerving around me and I passed out again, and remember objectively thinking, "I'm dying."

I woke again, still on the freeway, and there were paramedics around me doing whatever it is paramedics thankfully do. From that point on they asked me questions, shined a flashlight in my eyes, loaded me onto a gurney/stretcher and into an ambulance to the emergency room at the hospital. When I asked about my band-mates, I was told that they were fine.

It wasn't until the next morning that I learned about the extent of my injuries. I was remarkably lucky. Apparently, I had been dragged face down in the gravel, had 2 wheels pass mostly over me, and was thrown about twenty feet onto the freeway surface.  I had suffered only superficial face damage with lots of scabbing, some bruised and cracked ribs, and the doctors' removed a gravel stone from my neck that barely missed a carotid artery.

We were hit by a drunk driver at about 50mph who thought we were the off-ramp... He suffered a steering horn ring through his chest, but survived.

We were lucky. No one died, and I got to go home that day. Randy, our guitarist, who tried to get out the way was caught by one of the vehicles and had a shattered hip that took months (years?) and several surgeries to recover from. Tom, our keyboard player, was standing in the back of the van having just passed the spare to another band member when the car hit us and he luckily only had a broken jaw and some other minor injuries. I don't remember anyone else being hurt badly.

The point is, that for a moment, I thought I was dead or dying. The experience completely altered how I view dying and death. Through the years I've come to realize that death is not to be feared. It's the other bookend to birth, that hopefully includes living a life well-lived, something far too few people have the opportunity to do. I am privileged to have had that opportunity. My "near-death experience" was part of what led me into meditation and Zen Buddhism teachings about death and dying.

Most of us aren't "lucky" enough to go through something like that. Until now, that is. Even if we do somehow manage to escape extinction, science is now telling us that we've passed the tipping points that indicate things are going to get bad... very bad, with millions - perhaps billions - dying.

So what is it about dying, especially in the U.S., that's so hard for so many of us to even acknowledge, much less, face head-on? Why aren't we talking about this?

We live in politically-correct times where it's taboo to engage in negative thinking, and what could be more negative in western culture than death? "The Secret" is a 2006 self-help book by Rhonda Byrne, based on the earlier film of the same name. It is based on the belief of the Law of Attraction, "the magical feel-good thinking that unintentionally says we control our own reality that allows us to disassociate from the pain that's already going on in the world. This perspective is nothing more than an ego-centric worldview that says as long as I'm not suffering, the world is okay. What this response is actually saying is that it's someone else's problem (reality), not theirs, and is the worst kind of spiritual by-passing and up-and-out mentality that infects so many of us." I wrote about that here in 2011.

"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens." —Woody Allen.

 

We cannot "manage" death. No amount of denial or spiritual bypassing can change that. It comes to us all and as what is really the true "secret," and we can only change how we respond to whatever comes. When discussing the very real possibility of Near-Term Extinction (NTE), it's crucial that we explore all of the implications of what's happening all around us, including the psychological and spiritual implications without watering them down with New-Age bullshit. 

In Professor Jem Bendall's IFLAS Occasional paper 2, "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy" from 2017" he lays out a brief list of those implications, including non-linear changes that include "run-away climate change." Some of those changes are:

• undisputable global ambient temperature rise 
• a warming Arctic including a dramatic loss in sea ice
• sea level rising due to warming and the melting of land-based ice, and the consequent acidification degrading the marine food web
• storm, drought and flood frequency and strength impacting food sources and resulting in famines
• raging out-of-control fires across the planet
• rising methane and CO2 levels
• reported impacts today are at the very worst end of predictions being made in the early 1990s
• Environmental scientists are now describing our current era as the sixth mass extinction event in the history of planet Earth
• the evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease, systems and social breakdown, and war in our lifetimes.
  
  

Bendell has chosen to interpret this information as indicating inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe, and possible extinction. "There is a growing community of people who conclude we face inevitable human extinction and treat that view as a prerequisite for meaningful discussions about the implications for our lives right now," Bendell writes.

He further writes:

"...It is not my intention in this paper to map out more specific implications of a deep adaptation agenda. Indeed, it is impossible to do so and to attempt it would assume we are in a situation for calculated attempts at [crisis] management when what we face is a complex predicament beyond our control. Rather, I hope the deep adaptation agenda of resilience, relinquishment, and restoration can be a useful framework for community dialogue in the face of climate change. Resilience asks us 'how do we keep what we really want to keep?' Relinquishment asks us 'what do we need to let go of in order to not make matters worse?' Restoration asks us 'what can we bring back to help us with the coming difficulties and tragedies?' ”

I agree with Bendell that "Near-Term Extinction" is not set in stone, but avoiding it will be JOB #1 for everyone, including governments, institutions, corporations and small businesses alike, cities, towns, and communities... everyone, and I sadly do not see the will for that to happen as we continue to make things worse through continued fossil fuel extraction and usage and continuing to strive for growth, when we need to be planning for de-growth, and like supple bamboo, bending with the inevitable rather than breaking.

In the meantime - preferably right away - read Bendell's paper in its entirety by visiting his website here.

Last, I leave you with these thoughts, no matter how you feel about the above, because everyone should know how to die well.

"A thoughtful person should await death…not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but viewing it as one of the things that is required by nature. It is not death men should fear, but rather we should fear never beginning to live.” ― Marcus Aurelius 

 

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” ― Mark Twain