The World's 500 Wealthiest People Gained $1.2 Trillion This Year

Again and again and again we’re being shaken awake and implored to stand up together and end the sheer insanity of late stage patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalism! Anyone who defends capitalism is — either knowingly or unknowingly — not a friend to our country and other nations and the Earth. Another world is possible! AND it's up to us to demand the radical changes needed to transform and heal our nation and the world. — Molly

Ben Hauck: "This is outrageous. Billionaires shouldn’t even exist, let alone boosting their net worth 25% in a single f*!#ing year to $5,900,000,000,000. Simply insane."
 

Winter Solstice Blessings

May the longest night and the shortest day,

Bring rest to your mind and soul, I pray.

May you find guidance and may you find peace, 

As the cylce of light will slowly increase.

Embrace the magic that the darkness bears,

Breathe deep the chill and the shift in the air.

May you always be blessed with the Light from within,

And may well-being be yours as the new cycle begins.

From

Gaelic Revivalist Heathens

Here It Comes: Get Ready for a Stop-Bernie Onslaught Like You've Never Seen

We all need to be aware and prepared to fight the relentless toxic propaganda with a profound commitment to speaking the truth again and again and again. We’re in the fight for our lives. Everything we love and cherish is at stake. 🙏 Molly

"Because disparaging and minimizing Bernie in 2019 didn't work, the next step in 2020 will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks."

By Norman Solomon

A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins—but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.

Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other indicators on the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.

From the Times: “Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat.” From Politico: “Democratic Insiders: Bernie Could Win the Nomination.”

Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign’s chances will surely boost the decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.

For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn’t work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks.

Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media coverage—synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party—will range from condescending to savage.

When the Bernie campaign wasn’t being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain’t seen nothing yet.

With so much at stake—including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party—no holds will be barred. For the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it’ll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.

While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that a Sanders presidency is a real possibility. The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets that distort options and encourage passivity.

Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.

Please go here for the original: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/27/here-it-comes-get-ready-stop-bernie-onslaught-youve-never-seen

Hundreds of Offshore Fracking Wells Dump Billions of Gallons of Oil Waste Into Gulf

This article from three years ago remains incredibly relevant to today. The poisoning of our Earth Mother began long before Trump and continues to be normalized each and every day. Because of the dire consequences of the human caused climate and ecological crises, we are faced with two choices and two profoundly different kinds of radicalism. There is this devastating radicalism of destroying our planet and driving most life on Earth into extinction. And there is the radicalism of implementing the Green New Deal and demanding that we completely transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables Now and save ourselves. These are the facts. These are the choices we all need to make. Everything we love and cherish is at stake. — Molly

By Andy Rowell

As the U.S. shale industry comes under increasing scrutiny for its environmental and health impact, it has emerged that the U.S. has approved fracking offshore leading to billions of gallons of wastewater to be dumped at sea.

The Center for Biological Diversity has released federal documents that reveal that officials approved more than 1,200 offshore fracks in 630 different wells in the four years from 2010 to 2014 in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico has already been suffering from decades of conventional oil and gas drilling as well as the aftermath of the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010, when millions of gallons of oil were spilt.

The newly released documents reveal that fracking occurred off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with no public involvement and with no site-specific tests undertaken beforehand.

In so doing, the industry was also allowed to dump a staggering 76 billion gallons of waste fluid into the sea in 2014 alone.

There is real reason to be worried by this dumping. Over the last 18 months there has been growing concern about fracking chemicals contained within fracking wastewater.

Just over a year ago, the UK-based CHEM Trust issued a report and briefing paper on how toxic chemicals from fracking could affect wildlife and people.

The report identified specific examples of hazardous materials used in fracking, including chemicals "associated with leukemia in humans" and "toxic to sperm production in males."

The trust warned it is "particularly concerned about the use of hormone-disrupting chemicals" commonly known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

And then last October new research found that fracking chemicals are linked with a decreased sperm count in adulthood. Finally, in April this year, a new scientific study found high levels of 16 endocrine disruptors in samples taken near a fracking site.

And now it seems fracking wastewater has been dumped at sea without anyone's knowledge or oversight. "Fracking has largely been in a shroud of secrecy," Miyoko Sakashita, the oceans director at Center for Biological Diversity, said, before adding "It is a dangerous activity that has no place in our oceans or the Gulf of Mexico."

According to Sakashita, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) "didn't really know what chemicals—and still doesn't know what chemicals—are being discharged into the Gulf of Mexico," which is a damning verdict on the U.S. regulator. "When I first called EPA … they basically responded to me that they don't keep track of [wastewater dumping] and they don't know," Sakashita said.

"The Obama administration is essentially letting oil companies frack at will in Gulf ecosystems and dump billions of gallons of oil waste into coastal waters," adds Kristen Monsell, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney. "Every offshore frack increases the risk to wildlife and coastal communities, yet federal officials have been just rubber-stamping this toxic practice in the Gulf of Mexico for years."

Please continue this article here: https://www.ecowatch.com/offshore-fracking-wells-gulf-1915520170.html

Bernie Sanders’ Doctors Say He Is Fit To Serve As President After Heart Attack

I also experience that there is a larger picture here. It’s my belief that there is a spiritual force behind the momentum, stamina, and strength of Bernie Sanders and our movements for justice, peace, transformation, and love which are growing daily in America and around the world. This is so much bigger than Bernie Sanders or any one human being. As I step back, what I see is that we are in the midst of an evolutionary leap, one which seeks to benefit all humans, non-humans, and the Earth herself. This is about the heart of the planet and all of life. Never underestimate the power of Revolutionary Love. 🙏 Molly

By Jacob Pramuk

About three months after Sen. Bernie Sanders had a heart attack, doctors said the 78-year-old presidential hopeful is fit to serve in the White House.

“At this point, I see no reason why he cannot continue campaigning without limitation and, should he be elected, I am confident he has the mental and physical stamina to fully undertake the rigors of the Presidency,” wrote Martin LeWinter, an attending cardiologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center, in one of three doctors’ assessments the Sanders campaign released on Monday.

Questions about age and health have swirled around the 2020 Democratic presidential primary field as three septuagenarians run near the front of the pack. The campaigns of 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden and 70-year-old Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have also released medical summaries saying the candidates are fit to serve as president.

The campaign of another primary hopeful, 77-year-old Mike Bloomberg, also released a medical summary saying the former New York City mayor is in “outstanding health.”

Sanders, who had stents inserted in October following a partial artery blockage, has resumed normal campaign activities. The independent senator from Vermont is “in good health” and has “been engaging vigorously in the rigors of [his] campaign, travel and other scheduled activities without any limitation,” wrote Brian Monahan, who has been Sanders’ doctor in Washington for 29 years.

Sanders saw cardiologists in Vermont in November and December following the heart attack, Monahan said. The senator has not had symptoms of congestive heart failure and tests show no “significant” heart rhythm abnormality, according to the physician.

Please continue this article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/bernie-sanders-releases-medical-history-after-heart-attack.html?__source=sharebar|facebook&par=sharebar  

Politico: Democratic Party Insiders Now Think Sanders Could Win Nomination

I think it’s worth affirming again and again that there is a larger picture here. It’s my experience that there is a spiritual force behind the momentum, stamina, and strength of Bernie Sanders and our movements for justice, peace, transformation, and love which are growing daily in America and around the world. This is so much bigger than Bernie Sanders or any one human being. As I step back, what I see is that we are in the midst of an evolutionary leap, one which seeks to benefit all humans, non-humans, and the Earth herself. This is about standing up to the forces of greed and ignorance and choosing to unite to heal the heart and health of the planet and all of life. Never underestimate the power of Revolutionary Love. 🙏 Molly

In U.S. election news, Politico reports that Democratic Party officials and insiders — including Hillary Clinton allies — now say it’s possible that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders might win the party’s presidential nomination. Party insiders had largely written off Sanders’s campaign. But in recent weeks some have reconsidered his chances, as Sanders continues to rise in the polls while candidates like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have dropped in national and state surveys. Democratic California state Senator Scott Wiener told Politico that Sanders has been “more resilient than I anticipated. … [H]e has a very, very loyal following, and people have really stuck with him.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/30/headlines/politico_democratic_party_insiders_now_think_sanders_could_win_nomination 

Joy Harjo: Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

BY JOY HARJO

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

                                                      —Norman Patrick Brown

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.

2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.

4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.

5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.

6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/141847/conflict-resolution-for-holy-beings

Joy Harjo: All Acts of Kindness Are Lights In the War For Justice

 Quotes by Joy Harjo

My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.

She exists in me now, just as I will already do within my grandchildren. No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams.

My father told me that some voices are so true they can be used as weapons, can maneuver the weather, change time. He said that a voice that powerful can walk away from the singer if it is shamed. After my father left us, I learned that some voices can deceive you. There is a top layer and there is a bottom, and they don't match. 

I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul. 

If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. 

In the end, we must each tend to our own gulfs of sadness, though others can assist us with kindness, food, good words, and music. Our human tendency is to fill these holes with distractions like shopping and fast romance, or with drugs and alcohol.

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hate twin, but now, I don't know you as myself.

True power does not amass through the pain and suffering of others.

At least I've had to come to that in my life, to realize that this stuff called failure, this stuff, this debris of historical trauma, family trauma, you know, stuff that can kill your spirit, is actually raw material to make things with and to build a bridge. You can use those materials to build a bridge over that which would destroy you.

It was the spirit of poetry who reached out and found me as I stood there at the doorway between panic and love.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. 

It's possible to understand the world from studying a leaf. You can comprehend the laws of aerodynamics, mathematics, poetry and biology through the complex beauty of such a perfect structure. It's also possible to travel the whole globe and learn nothing.

There is no separation. We are all from the same place. As long as there is respect and acknowledgement of connections, things continue working. When that stops we all die. 

Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.

I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breath in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds. 

A story matrix connects all of us. There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part. 

Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts.

Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world, nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm. 

The heart is a fist. It pockets prayer or holds rage. 

The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little. 

I was born with eyes that can never close.

I listen to the gunfire we cannot hear, and begin this journey with the light of knowing the root of my own furious love.

It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.

All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice. 

Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you. 

Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.