Revolutions, Resolutions, and Resilience

Another revolution around the sun. Time to take stock and plan for next year. Looking forward and back like the namesake of the upcoming month. We got in our seed order last week. I expect dwindling supplies, so you might want to put in your seed order as well. One of my resolutions for next year is to do a better job keeping seed from my heirloom plant varieties. I've ordered some more American Chestnuts to plant, and plan to get some elderberry and mulberry trees in this winter too. We're spending way too much time cooped up inside and it is reflected in our poor health. (h/t Magi). “There was a study of more than 7,300 [COVID] cases in China, and guess how many people caught the disease outdoors?” Leung asks. “Just two.” Being outside in nature is curative on many levels.

It is time for some sort of revolution, or at least a big change. I would like to see resolve for a resilience revolution.

American Psychosis - Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy.

It's obvious, logical, natural, even mathematical that our civilization is going to collapse, that we have overshot the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth and ecosystem that supports us. But people are fed false hope, false positives and magical faiths which extract your agency and distract you from your presence. Held captive by apathy, afraid of your own shadow.

There are many symptoms of our collective psychosis...

It’s the holidays. It’s the buying season. You’re supposed to run out immediately and buy everything you can afford — and actually much more than you can afford — because you can dump everything on credit cards and not worry about paying it off until later. And later won’t suck — the stores promise! But of course truthfully it will. Later will suck. Later always sucks, for most people. But no matter — go quick and get the brand new model of the thing you didn’t like the first time around. Better yet, buy it for someone else because even though they might get as little use out of the gadget as you did, they won’t be able to tell you that — so they’ll just say “Thank you!” because it’s part of the social code. They’ll say you’re the bestest aunt or uncle or cousin or friend or Uber driver who awkwardly gave them a gift for no reason.

https://scheerpost.com/2020/12/22/lee-camp-ads-all-tell-us-to-kill-our-f...

More from Chris https://scheerpost.com/2020/12/21/chris-hedges-the-great-delusion/

The real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species.

Jimmy had two nice discussions with Dylan Rattigan last week about the stimulus bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHHTVyvmpyk (30 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC-oTDEnIJM (28 min)

Trump has out lefted the dims and is demanding a $2000 stimulus check and called out all the absurd content in the bill that have nothing to do with COVID relief. Jimmy weighs in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApMiIL4blxc (18 min)

Included in the combined relief and spending bill are generous tax incentives for large businesses totaling over $110 billion for liquor producers, wind energy lobbyists, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and electric motorcycle manufacturers. The Washington Post reported that the “tax extenders” are “something of a year-end tradition” frequently added to large bills at the behest of industry lobbyists.
...
Trump threatened to veto the bill Tuesday, raising the prospect that millions of desperate people will not get any assistance at all for weeks.
...
measures are set to expire on the 26th and the 31st respectively, leaving roughly 13 million people collecting unemployment with nothing the day after Christmas, while some 19 million are facing eviction January 1, 2021. It should also be noted that the moratorium has not prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being evicted.

Despite the frenzied character of the past two weeks of negotiations, the fact is both political parties have deliberately denied unemployment aid to workers in an attempt to blackmail them into going back to work in order to generate profits.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/unem-d24.html

Turns out that President-elect Joe Biden had sided with the 'moderates' who favored not to send any check. He thereby successfully sabotaged those Democrats who were pressing for a bigger one.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/12/deficit-hawk-joe-biden-sabotaged-p...

So no relief in sight...unless you're a corporation.

one notable feature of the passage of the $900 billion relief bill through the US Congress earlier this week that demonstrated the absolute loyalty of the Democrats to the Wall Street financial oligarchy.
...
The Fed took the unprecedented decision to buy investment-grade corporate bonds as well as buying exchange traded funds, including those that tracked riskier assets.

Unlike the purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which form the backbone of the Fed’s market intervention—currently running at $120 billion a month more than $1.4 trillion a year—the move into corporate bond purchases involved backing from the US Treasury
...
On the economic front, the growth of debt parasitism makes clear what lies behind the bipartisan refusal in the US to implement the necessary measures to deal with the pandemic because of the impact they would have on the stock market and the financial system more broadly.
...
The financial oligarchy has continued to prosper to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, benefiting from death and destruction, through the direct intervention of the machinery of the capitalist state, of which the Fed is a crucial arm.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/corp-d24.html

Viral Stories

Deck the halls with boughs of folly. Party like there's no virus and give COVID this year.
https://scheerpost.com/2020/12/23/what-if-trump-had-launched-a-global-wa...

Nearly a year on, the pandemic is accelerating. More than 11,500 people are dying every day, almost double the highest death rate recorded during the first wave in April. It took four months for the first 100,000 lives to be lost. Now, 100,000 people are killed every nine days.

The United States remains the most hard-hit country. President Donald Trump’s policy of herd immunity, aided and abetted by the Democrats, has so far slain more than one in every 1,000 people living in the country. Every day nearly 3,000 deaths are reported, along with 220,000 new infections, as schools and workplaces are forced to remain open, further spreading the deadly disease.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/covi-d24-1.html

Some people are worried about the new Sars-Cov-2 variant. Vincent who wrote the virology text book says, hey this is the way viruses work.

John Campbell however is concerned. Of course he lives in the UK which would make the variant more concerning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3EYrWjGEI (30 min)

The FLCCC team leader, Dr. Paul Marik discusses the I-MASK+ protocol. This is cued to the recommended protocol for prevention, His presentation last about 30 minutes.

The full 1 hour 40 min interview is here and worth the listen if you have the time and interest.

These doctors and others are frustrated about getting these effective treatments widely employed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N8c6pdAK08&t=1m (last about 3 min)

Here's a patient and his doctor discussing his successful treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbIkGbriJXI (7 min)

The Functional Medicine Approach To Treating COVID-19 And Post-COVID Syndrome is similar to Dr Marik's above. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJxKe1ohl8A (1 hour)

COVID has taught us a lot over the last year, and continues to do so every day that we battle this pandemic. We’ve seen what an overburdened medical system looks like and been faced with the reality of social distancing for many months now. Perhaps one of the most important lessons we have learned, though, is that a body that’s already suffering from chronic disease has far greater risks of COVID severity and even death. In the US, where the majority of people are metabolically unhealthy, we’ve seen our population faring much worse than other countries against this virus. Here, there are 500 COVID deaths per million people (at the time of this episode recording). In China, that number is 3 per million. Look at that alongside the 42% obesity rate here and the 2.6% rate there. COVID has shown us just how out of balance we are as a nation and how our baseline of disease has gotten us into such a mess.⁣

What about M4A during a pandemic? Caity explains...

Americans will not be given Medicare for All despite overwhelming public support because an immense amount of power depends on keeping them in a state of financial struggle so they don’t interfere in the affairs of a nation which serves as the hub of a global empire. The US political system does not exist to serve the interests of Americans, it exists to serve the interests of the empire. No part of that system is there to protect the people from the powerful; it’s there to protect the powerful from the people.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/21/why-its-good-to-push-politicians...

So how do we get to Resilience?

Here's how others in the suburb, cities, and on farms are doing more than just stabilizing the ecosystem, they are regenerating the system. (Highly recommended)
Inhabit - Full Film - Taking Regenerative Ag and Permaculture Forward (1.5 hours)

Jimmy frequently talks about walking away from the dims. I'm to the point where I think the entire political system is owned and controlled by the oligarchs, and our only choice is to walk away from the entire charade.

We've been fighting cold weather. Dropped into the teens this weekend. Unfortunately the row covers over the lettuce blew off during the windy night. This week I'll cover them with manure and mulch the bed ready for spring planting. In a month I'll start the spring lettuce in flats. We still have greens, cabbage, and broccoli doing fine. One less regular garden chore having to pick lettuce. We enjoy seeing how far into winter we can carry lettuce. Some years it makes it till spring.

I saw a clip I tried to find for el. He wants a cold cover that is easy to store. The fellow I saw bought two pieces of polycarbonate. He built two wooden Tee-posts and a squared off U-shaped frame to go over the Tee-posts. Run the flexible polycarbonate sheets one on one side and one on the other with the overlap on the top in the middle. The Tee-post support the sheets at the end of the bed and the U-shaped frame goes over the top bending the sheets into a hoop and then clam or screw the Tee and U to hold it together. Everything could be stored flat in the spring.

We use old tomato cages opened up and spread apart with pieces of scrap pvc pipe. They can be placed over the bed and covered with row covers, shade cloth, or plastic. They do take up space when not being used however.

We can all grow a little something even if it is in a pot (or is pot). Some folks go much farther... Talk about extreme homesteading...

Bryce and Misty have spent the last 12 years building a cob home, homesteading, living off the grid, and homeschooling their two daughters. They live without a car, so for transportation, they use taxis and bicycles, and they eventually hope to have a cart that their two horses can pull. For food production, they have a permaculture food forest for fruits and vegetables, chinampa-inspired wetland gardens, a cow and a bull for milk, ducks and chickens for eggs, bees for honey, and they also forage and cultivate feral crops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J94TqEEPp1I (28 min)
I love their fences and gates.

Well I'm hoping for better outcomes next year not just with the pandemic, but people's means of survival. I fear the mass evictions and unemployment which sit before us...not on a personal level but as a fellow human. We'll need to help each other...the government has failed us. I think resilience will be a theme for 2021. Perhaps this situation will serve as an opportunity to re-invent ourselves. Here's hoping your path into the new year is a good one! Wishing you a sweet cup of kindness...