THREE VALUABLE RESOURCES TO PASS ON

Over the past several days I've watched and begun to get involved with three interrelated sources. These are vital links to awaken and mobilize more and more of us to individually and collectively understand the climate emergency that we are in and to engage together in the actions needed to give us the possibility of preserving a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren and all of the children of all of Earth's species.

I'm aware that there are countless other excellent resources. These are but three:

1. The new film on Netflix called Don't Look Up — https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357.

Here is an excellent review and its chilling and vital relevance to our times: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco. Crucial here is the consciousness of the urgency that we must individually and collectively look up and act.

 

2. The PBS documentary Earth Emergency — https://www.pbs.org/show/earth-emergency/.

 

This powerful documentary is a fact based, comprehensive, chilling, and illuminating deep dive into the reality of the climate crisis and the urgency of the radical changes that we must undertake together now. Here also is one excellent review: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/29/new-documentary-explains-extreme-weather-emergency.

 

3. Third Act — https://thirdact.org/what-we-do/.

 

There is an invitation here for elders — those of us who are 60 and over — to join with the youth, with people of color, and with our Indigenous sisters and brothers to work together for climate justice, racial justice, and voting and democratic and Earth justice. The goal of the Third Act is to connect and mobilize a vastly under utilized but enormous part of the population and to empower us to engage more deeply and in greater numbers than ever before in the great national and planetary struggle for a just, caring, peaceful world and sustainable planet. Third Act offers us a variety of ways that we can connect and participate. You can also find an excellent additional interview with Akaya Windwood and Bill McKibben about the Third Act here: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/third-act-climate-mckibben/. The young ones and others who are standing up and fully engaged in the work of fighting for deep and systemic change need us as elders to stand up with them.

 

* * * 

 

These are just three significant and important resources. I know that there are so many others out there. May we each find our own ways to increasingly come together, roll up our sleeves, and do our part to contribute to the urgent work at hand. The eyes of the children are watching. 

Thank you.

Bless us all.

💗

Molly

John O'Donohue: For the Family and Friends of a Suicide

For the Family and Friends 

of a Suicide

As you huddle around the torn silence,

Each by this lonely deed exiled

To a solitary confinement of soul,

May some small glow from what has been lost

Return like the kindness of candlelight.

As your eyes strain to sift

This sudden wall of dark

And no one can say why

In such a forsaken, secret way,

This death was sent for …

May one of the lovely hours

Of memory return

Like a field of ease

Among these gravelled days.

May the Angel of Wisdom

Enter this ruin of absence

And guide your minds

To receive this bitter chalice

So that you do not damage yourselves

By attending only at the hungry altar

Of regret and anger and guilt.

May you be given some inkling

That there could be something else at work

And that what to you now seems

Dark, destructive and forlorn,

Might be a destiny that looks different

From inside the eternal script.

May vision be granted to you

To see this with the eyes of providence.

May your loss become a sanctuary

Where new presence will dwell

To refine and enrich

The rest of your life

With courage and compassion.

And may your lost loved one

Enter into the beauty of eternal tranquillity,

In that place where there is no more sorrow

Or separation or mourning or tears.

 

— John O'Donohue

From To Bless the Space Between Us:

A Book of Blessings 

 

Highly Recommended Film: Don't Look Up

After hearing about this new film on Netflix from different sources, last night my husband and I sat down and watched Don't Look Up. It left me stunned with its interwoven horrors, hilarity, heartbreak, and deep and urgent relevance to our times. The below is one review by Arun Gupta, who I agree with — We all need to see Don't Look Up. — Molly

You need to see "Don't Look Up." It's not the funniest movie, though it has its moments. It's not the best acted and criminally underutilizes Jennifer Lawrence, despite a stellar cast. It's not the best written, missing moments ripe for brutal repartee that Succession has raised to an art form.

But it is one of those exceedingly rare Hollywood movies that deftly satirizes the utter insanity of American politics and never lets its foot off the gas pedal while maintaining a light tone.

I am not giving away spoilers, nothing you can't see in the trailers or is revealed early in the film. Streep and Jonah Hill are obvious stand-ins for the Trump family, a cesspool of venality, cynicism, and opportunism. One of the best acted characters is Mark Rylance's soft-spoken Silicon Valley CEO with a God-complex, a combination of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, who drives much of the plot. Cate Blanchett shines as the glamorous cynical face of mainstream news that is little more than manipulative clickbait entertainment.

Don't Look Up ties these elements together — the state, corporations, and our information ecosystem — to accurately represent what would happen if a planet-killing comet was headed straight at earth. Every policy decision is refracted through polls, political advantage, and show business. Even the august legacy media, a thinly veiled New York Times, dances to the same tune. Its editorial decisions determined by memes, social media, and engagement.

With a story written by Adam McKay and David Sirota, Don't Look Up is what can be termed sociological filmmaking. It doesn't matter what the small people do, represented by the two scientists played by Lawrence and DiCaprio. Their choices are either to join the corrupt system or drop out. Attempts to warn the world, to impel action, to work inside the system are crushed under a juggernaut of self-interested disinformation by elites who have captured the levers of power.

Don't Look Up is a latter-day Dr. Strangelove, even if it doesn't hold up to Kubrick's masterpiece. It's a terrifying message swaddled in comedy about the consequences of the path we are hurtling down. There are subtle but deft political observations that when the entire planet is threatened, as with climate change, only states have the power and resources to address the monumental forces at work, and genteel protest, no matter how righteous, is ultimately ineffectual in the face of the unholy trinity of the capitalist state, media, and corporate power.

Plus for the sharp-eyed it has a hilarious use of the Wall Street Bull. And pay close attention to ending, which has an ensemble composed of exactly the type of ghouls you would expect in such a scenario.

 

— Arun Gupta 

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) on Apartheid, War, Palestine, Guantánamo, Climate Crisis & More

With deep grief and deep gratitude and love, I share this excellent Democracy Now! program devoted to Archbiship Desmond Tutu. 🙏 Molly

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid icon, has died at the age of 90. In 1984 Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work fighting to end white minority rule in South Africa. After the fall of apartheid, Archbishop Tutu chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he pushed for restorative justice. He was a leading voice for human rights and peace around the world. He opposed the Iraq War and condemned the Israeli occupation in Palestine, comparing it to apartheid South Africa. We reair two interviews Archbishop Tutu did on Democracy Now!, as well as two speeches on the Iraq War and the climate crisis.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: I want to say a big thank you to all of you, especially you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess of the world. And we want to say to the leaders who are meeting, look in the eyes of your grandchildren.

Climate change is already a serious crisis today. But we can do something about it. If we don’t — if we don’t — hoohoo!, hoho! — there’s no world which we will leave to you, this generation. You won’t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in drought. There will be no food. There will be floods.

We have only one world. We have only one world. If we mess it up, there’s no other world. And for those who think that the rich are going to escape — hahaha! — we either swim or sink together. We have one world. And we want to leave a beautiful world for all of this beautiful, wonderful young generation. We, the oldies, want to leave you a beautiful world. And it is a matter of morality. It is a question of justice.

Please go here for the original full interview and transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/27/life_and_legacy_archbishop_desmond_tutu    

Scholar Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, Justice for Palestine, Critical Race Theory & More

 An excellent interview. — Molly

World-renowned author, activist and professor Angela Davis talks about the prison abolition movement from her time as a Black Panther leader to today. In her tireless efforts as an abolitionist and a teacher, Davis continues to be a fierce advocate of education and the interconnected struggles of oppressed peoples. Davis talks about Indigenous genocide, Palestine, critical race theory and the role of independent media. “Democracy Now! helps us to place our own domestic issues and struggles within the context of global battles against fascism,” says Davis.

Please go here for the original interview and transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/28/angela_davis_25th_anniversary_taped_segment

Angela Davis on Imagining New Worlds, the Campaign to Free Mumia and the Biden Presidency

An excellent interview. Angela Davis: "Well, I think it’s so important now, Amy, to imagine new worlds. We cannot fight for those worlds unless we know how to imagine them." — Molly

World-renowned author, activist and professor Angela Davis talks about navigating the pandemic and an inadequate two-party political system during a time of racial uprising in the United States. She also talks about imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Biden presidential campaign and the protests that erupted from the police killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Please go here for the original interview and transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/28/angela_davis_25th_anniversary_taped_segment_part 

USAID Is Running Out of Money for COVID Vaccines While Pentagon Got $778 Billion

Infuriating! Shocking! And not surprising at all. I hope that everyone will watch the new film on Netflix "Don't Look Up" — https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357. It may as well be a documentary on the insanity and sheer madness of our times. — Molly

A shipment of COVID-19 vaccines sent to Sudan by the COVAX vaccine-sharing initiative are unloaded at the airport in the capital Khartoum, on October 6, 2021.

By Brett Wilkins

Sharply contrasting with the $778 billion in new military spending authorized Monday by President Joe Biden, the U.S. Agency for International Development reportedly can’t find the funds to pay for the Biden administration’s effort to help vaccinate the world’s population against Covid-19, according to two agency officials interviewed by Politico.

In an article published Monday by the website, a pair of unnamed sources at USAID — the main goverment agency in charge of distributing coronavirus vaccine doses to COVAX, the global vaccine equity program — are concerned that efforts could stall in the coming spring should the administration fail to find new funding sources.

According to Politico:

The agency, which works with officials in the State Department, has over the past year largely relied on more than $1.6 billion allocated through the American Rescue Plan to help facilitate the shipment and administration of Covid-19 vaccine doses internationally. The agency has either used that money or already earmarked it for several months into the new year to help countries prepare to receive and distribute the doses, the officials said.

Without additional funding, the officials said that USAID will fall behind in its commitments to help the Biden administration distribute hundreds of millions of U.S.-made doses to low- and middle-income countries by the middle of 2022. At the administration’s first Covid-19 summit with foreign representatives in September, U.S. officials noted it would take at least $7 billion in 2022 to ensure shots are administered across the globe.   

Stephen Semler, co-founder of Security Policy Reform Institute, a grassroots-funded think tank, tweeted Monday that in 2021, Biden “delivered 8% of the funding he campaigned on for physical and human infrastructure, and 105% of the amount he ran on for the Pentagon.”

In 2021, Biden delivered 8% of the funding he campaigned on for physical & human infrastructure, and 105% of the amount he ran on for the Pentagonhttps://t.co/MOyOnN07k1 pic.twitter.com/paDTRcy22P  — Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) December 27, 2021 

Critics have noted that the $778 National Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress is $25 billion more than Biden requested — and more than enough to vaccinate everyone in the world.

“Why is there more money for the military-industrial complex — providing no additional protection for our national security and arguably diminishing it — at the same time the U.S. is refusing to spend the $25 billion needed to make enough additional vaccines to vaccinate the world?” recently asked Public Citizen president Robert Weissman earlier this month, citing the consumer advocacy group’s analysis of how much it would take to inoculate humanity.

According to Politico, it is unclear how USAID — which, in addition to providing developmental assistance, has been accused of democracy suppression, torture, and murder — will obtain fresh funding for the U.S. vaccine distribution efforts. The two officials said the agency is “exploring options, including dipping into existing pots of money used for other USAID programs.”

Global South leaders have regularly decried vaccine inequities, with some linking the shortfalls with ever-increasing military spending.

At September’s United Nations General Assembly, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez noted that 80% of doses had been distributed to middle- or high-income nations, comparing that statistic to the nearly $2 trillion in global military spending — more than one-third of it by the United States.

“How many lives would have been saved,” asked Díaz-Canel, “[if] those resources had been invested in health or the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines?”

Please go here for the original article: https://truthout.org/articles/usaid-is-running-out-of-money-for-covid-vaccines-while-pentagon-got-778-billion/