bot swarms?

Down here in deep South Texas, anytime you criticize SpaceX or Elon Musk on Facebook for anything, the bot swarms appear defending Musk and SpaceX and calling you pretty much every name in the book. I suppose some of them are real people. Some. Like Trump, Elon does not take criticism well. No wonder they get along so well. After all, Musk fixed the 2024 election for Trump, and gave him almost $300 million for buying ads, campaigning, etc. It would not surprise me if someday we uncover how Musk fixed the election for Trump. Again, Trump won all seven swing states in 2024 by a margin just large enough to not spur a recount? Quite suspicious. Could be the party that is always screeching about conspiracy theories against them most likely pulled off one in 2024. It's the classic projection. The louder they yell, the guiltier they are.

OK, slightly side-tracked there. This post below is from a local, Myra Paredes-Falcon, who is not too pleased with the way Musk is tearing up what was once protected, pristine lands. 

A few days ago, I posted something critical of SpaceX and what is happening to the land here in South Texas.

It got shared a few times, and with those shares came the comments. Laughing emojis. Insults. People mocking the idea that some of us might actually give a damn about what happens to this land.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I looked at some of their profiles. And what struck me was that the vast majority didn't appear to be from South Texas. Some weren't even from Texas.

And it left me with a question I haven't been able to shake... What is it like to live somewhere and never feel any responsibility toward the place?

To live on its land, drive its roads, watch its sunsets, benefit from everything it offers and somehow never feel like you owe that place anything in return?

What is it like to look at South Texas and see acreage instead of home? To see development where we see habitat. To see dollar signs where we see history. To laugh when people who were raised here say, Please don't destroy what we have left.

I genuinely don't understand it. Because if I moved somewhere tomorrow, I would want to learn that place.

I would want to know its people. Its history... Its culture... Its wildlife... The things the people who have called it home for generations consider sacred.

I would understand that being welcomed somewhere doesn't give me permission to take from it without caring what gets left behind.

Maybe that's where the disconnect lies. Some people look at land and ask, “What can we do with this?”... While others ask, “What are we responsible for protecting?”

And when people laugh at those of us fighting for South Texas, I wonder if they understand what they're laughing at.

This isn't some abstract patch of dirt to us. This is where our parents raised us. Where our grandparents walked. Where generations of families have made their lives. Where wildlife still fights for enough habitat to survive.

It's the monte... The resacas... The palms against a pink and orange sky... The Laguna Madre... Boca Chica... The Gulf... This is home.

Maybe you have to truly love a place to understand why watching pieces of it disappear hurts. But what I will never understand is the belief that because something can be developed, exchanged, bulldozed, bought, or sold it should be.

And for the record, you don't have to be born in South Texas to belong here. You don't have to have generations buried in this soil to call the Valley home. But if you come here... if you choose to build a life here... I hope eventually you love this place enough to care about what happens to it.

Enough to listen to the people who were here before you. Enough to understand that progress and preservation do not have to be enemies. Enough to care about what will still be here long after all of us are gone.

Because this land doesn't really belong to any one of us. We are only its caretakers for a little while. And I want to leave behind a South Texas that the generations who come after us will still recognize as home.

-Myra Paredes-Falcon

Photo of Port Isabel Lighthouse

hemp/cannabis

This one below was written by Don Smith, a hemp farmer in West Virginia. He's been dealing with these absurd anti-hemp and anti-cannabis laws for years. It blows my mind, and not in a good way, that despite the 2018 federal farm bill, which removed hemp from the federal Controlled Substances Act, Texas, where I live, has recently passed a THC ban, which bans Delta-8 and Delta-10 variants, but Delta-9 remains legal. WTF are they doing in the Texas Lege? Cultivation of hemp is legal in Texas, provided you are a rich circus performer than can jump through tiny hoops. 

Every time I drive to Colorado, I curse this state where I still live, as they still refuse to legalize cannabis. Texas is now surrounded by states that have legalized cannabis either for recreational or medical use. New Mexico, Colorado, even Oklahoma and Louisiana for Chrissakes have liberalized laws re cannabis, but not Texas. The Republican fools are passing up BILLIONS in revenue, while squashing an entrepreneurial spirit just waiting to burst forth. Hell, even Mexico has decriminalized cannabis for personal use! 

This is the result of 30+ years of solid Republican rule in Texas. I think Texas is more concerned with keeping up its prison population than allowing for some personal freedom. And don't get me started on ICE detention facilities. 

As Don says below, hemp is one of the most useful plants EVER, but it threatens the profits of big corporations who have switched to alternate sources of fiber, wood, plastics, medicines, and countless other products to avoid growing hemp.

(BTW, you can click on all pics to see and read them easier)

VENGEANCE! Cannabis has more food, fiber, fuel, and medicine in it than any other plant in the world. 

I dare you to try to find a more beneficial plant. So how is it that a supposedly Free American is prohibited from growing, using, prosper, or enjoying Cannabis? That’s the real crime. The history of this plant goes back for thousands of years. Our Founders grew it and used it as it was essentially a necessity in their time.

They couldn’t imagine a day when the Nation would be stupid enough to prohibit this plant. It’s odd that even today’s holy rollers consider it the Devil’s Weed. Here’s a hint. It was an ingredient in the Holy Anointing Oil. 

For the past ninety years, fabulously wealthy people pulled a fast trick to outlaw Cannabis as the Hemp Decorticator was invented. They didn’t want the competition and they still don’t. So over the duration of this idiotic prohibition, did you think of American facing legal jeopardy ALL FOR THE MOST BENEFICIAL PLANT ON EARTH? Did you think about the financial losses Americans suffered over the years, ALL FOR THE MOST BENEFICIAL PLANT ON EARTH?? 

The lives lost, careers ruined, the costs of enforcement, the judicial costs, and all the opportunity costs, the rich man’s prohibition profiteering, ALL FOR THE MOST BENEFICIAL PLANT ON EARTH??? 

Did you holy rollers ever consider that you’ve risked hypocrisy, blasphemy, and even heresy, ALL FOR THE MOST BENEFICIAL PLANT ON EARTH??  

“Truth, crushed to the ground shall rise again “!!! Seventy percent of America wants to end and eradicate this Cannabis Prohibition. The ultimate revenge against you Prohibitionists will be watching you guys squealing and squalling in the proverbial Agony of Defeat. 

We’re coming after some Seats in this upcoming election. Saddle up. Stand and deliver. 

E Pluribus Unum

Don Smith II

the Other

Wow, my last post got "hidden" because of "sensitive content" but is still available if you click here to read the post. Oh my goodness, I think the word "f*ck" was in there. And so this post will also be hidden because of that very useful word. We'll see. If Blogger found the previous post too "sensitive" I think they might have a short circuit  over this one, but maybe not.

The post below was published by an online friend Joshua Zacharia Ellis. 

This is an interview with a writer who has researched Hitler's rise to power, and he suggests that most of the mythology about the early NSDAP is bullshit: it was the 1930s elections where they suddenly shifted from being fringe buffoons to beginning their rise, and Hitler wasn't a candidate because he was still an Austrian citizen who was threatened with deportation for trying to start a coup. Nor were the Nazis even the most virulently antisemitic party in Germany in that election.

He suggests that what made Germans vote for the Nazis was that they were explicitly offering violence. They didn't have good marketing - that came later - they didn't have any plans for restoring the economy; they just wanted to punish the "corrupt" leaders, who probably really weren't, and, of course, Make Germany Great Again by hurting or killing outsiders... like the Jews.

We see this time and time again. People don't want good governance; they don't even want dictatorship particularly. They want to see other people punished for their own lot in life. If you understand that, they are easy to manipulate, as Göring himself pointed out.

The problem is that humans are not nearly as bright as we give them credit for, nor does education or any of that stuff breed enlightened voters. Western European education is excellent, but there are still far right parties popping up all over Europe in the midst of these social democracies that take better care of their people than any other countries on earth. But human are resentful angry primates and they're never satisfied with what they have and they always want to blame someone for their problems.

Nobody likes to hear that they're to blame for their own problems... but if you want to *really* piss someone off, no matter their political leanings or education or anything, tell them that their problems are nobody's fault. There is no one to point a finger at. Your spouse didn't die because the hospital was negligent, your kid didn't die because the school metal detectors weren't working, your farm isn't drying up because of some coastal elite who doesn't care about the working man: it just happened because it happened, and no one in particular is to blame. No one did anything wrong. The skies just open and shit rains down and today was your turn under the spigot, kid. Sorry.

So whenever bad things happen to people they want someone to come for with the torches and the pitchforks, or the noose and the tree branch - I'm speaking both metaphorically and quite literally here. There's always an Other and the Other is always too blame.

Some groups are easier to make the Other than, well, others; particularly groups who have a big cultural investment in maintaining their own mores and traditions regardless of where they are. It's great for preserving things you think are important but, if we're being objective, a really shitty strategy for long term survival. In Europe in the early 20th century it was the Jews; in 21st century Europe, it's the Muslims. In Texas right now, it's South Asians, who are better at assimilation than other groups but still wanna go to mosque or mandir depending, who still want to maintain a connection to their home.

And you can see this in MAGA. It's fine to be Indian if you change your name to Bobby or Nikki and don't go around with a dot on your forehead and bring chicken and dumplings to the potluck instead of paneer dosas and spinach aloo. It's OK to be queer if you don't, y'know, throw it in everyone's faces by bringing your spouse around. You can be black as long as you're not *urban* black. You can be Hispanic if you want people to come to America the "right" way. And so on.

But this only works for so long too, and this is the mistake that assimilators make. As far as I can tell, there were a ton of Jews who assimilated into German culture and changed their names and cut their pays and threw away their beaver hats and tried to just be German. And it didn't matter in the end. Because there is never enough blood to satisfy the citizen animal, the pyres never burn high enough to satisfy their need to annihilate and purify. And like Göring said, it works in every country... especially the ones that believe in preserving their own ethnic purity at the expense of others.

And so I think there might be no way to avoid what's happening now everywhere. It's not a white thing or a Christian thing or a Western thing; the whole world is convulsing and everyone wants a bloodletting. Even the leftists and peaceniks want guillotines on Wall Street. Even me.

But I think things are different now. This isn't the 1930s. The threat of actual annihilation is quite real this time. Humanity has finally accumulated enough power and agency to actually end itself, or at least its domination of the Earth. We're doing it every single day as a byproduct of the bad ideology that has come to dominate the earth as thoroughly as the old ideas of kings and emperors: capitalism without brakes. It is the source of both our power and our discontent, but like junkies we refuse to accept that the real problem isn't the cops or the dealers or even the needle and spoon; it's what's in them. As long as we keep trying to make deals with the universe - which does not bargain - to hold on to fossil fuels and our ability to concentrate ungodly amounts of wealth and power - in our hands this time, surely, it will be different - we are going to be heading down the hill into the dark.

That great spasming of anger and resentment and a simple desire for violence and bloodletting... if it is allowed to come this time, might not end in anything as mild as the industrial murder of millions. It might be the end of us all.

The interview mentioned in the top paragraph can be found here in the Guardian. I recommend subscribing to the Guardian. 

And Joshua's site can be found here.

Rude

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imagine

Trump's gestapo seems to be running unabated. People getting disappeared with no trace, some people getting shipped overseas with no due process, no assistance, no help, no sympathy. It's a little hard to believe that we seem to be OK with ICE doing this shit. I mean, no one is really happy about it, except for Trump and most of the Republican Party, but let it happen to one of them and suddenly this is an outrageous situation. I sure hope someone, somewhere, is keeping tabs on all the offenses and illegalities Trump and his sycophants are committing.

Imagine, you are walking to your car after work. Three men in masks jump you, throw you in the back of an SUV and take you to an unmarked building in the middle of nowhere. There is no judge, no jury, no habeas corpus.

The men are rough. Your wrist gets broken, or maybe they sprain your ankle. You are not only denied medical treatment, but you are degraded and humiliated because you are injured.

More men come in and rough you up even more.

You ask for your phone call, for your right to an attorney; this just brings more beatings. You wait days, no medical treatment is ever given. You are shackled to a wall at the waist and your ankles and wrists are bound, too tightly.

More come in like you. You hear screaming at all hours. Violence surrounds you. Then with no warning, no communication, you are thrown into another unmarked vehicle. This one pulls up to the tarmac with a private jet waiting with the engines on. You are dragged on board and shackled too tight, too packed in, tied to the wall. You can’t even see out the window.

The plane takes off. Several hours later, you are shoved off the plane. It’s hot. Nobody speaks English. Nobody speaks any language you recognize.

You are pushed past a barrier and that is the last thing you experience before you have to figure out how to survive, where you are, how to get home, what even happened.

Welcome to The United States of Amerika, courtesy of Donald J. Trump’s private gestapo: the unvetted men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Steven Witt

The Cornell 7

And yet another story about seven male pigs in a fraternity, this time at Cornell University, gang-raping a woman after drugging her. These seven even put out Snapchat messages saying "free pussy! come and get it!" Those messages were seen by another 50+ Cornell students, who did absolutely nothing to stop the assault. As bad as the seven disgusting perps were, those 50+ others who read the messages but did not participate in the rape, deserve some opprobrium too. And, hey, parents of the seven, that is some HORRIBLE PARENTING you did there, raising a bunch of rapists. And what is it about fraternities that turns young men into assholes and pigs? No wonder I didn't ever join one when I was in college.

The Cornell 7 story has me (and a lot of us) thinking.

I am so fucking tired of hearing about a man's future when we're talking about consequences for sexual assault and rape.

I don't care if he's 19 and has his whole life ahead of him. I don't care if he's a promising student, a star athlete, headed to medical school, or has a great career waiting for him.

I don't care if he's 70 now and what he did happened 40 years ago. I don't care if he's built a nice life since then.

He should have thought about his future before he violated someone else's.

We have spent entirely too much time worrying about what accountability might cost men who commit sexual violence, while barely acknowledging what the violence itself costs their victims.

Her education.

Her career.

Her relationships.

Her sense of safety.

Her mental health.

Her ability to trust.

Sometimes the entire trajectory of her life.

But somehow, when consequences finally reach him, we're supposed to stop and ask whether ruining his future is really fair? No.

And I am so damn tired of watching men accused of horrific things disappear quietly back into anonymity once the news cycle moves on.

At this point, I'm about ready to bring back the scarlet letter.

Tattoo it on their foreheads.

You don't get to destroy somebody else's life and then ask the rest of us to be concerned about yours.

Edited for clarity because some people refuse to read: Photos below are of 3 convicted "promising young men", Brock Turner, Austin Wilkerson, and Derek Nygaard. They were all convicted of rape or sexual assault but received ridiculously light sentences, specifically because they were "promising young men."

THIS POST ISN'T ABOUT THE CORNELL 7, or what they're accused of. It's about how even if (now that it's *finally* being investigated) they're charged and convicted, there's a very good chance that their consequences will be minimal. THIS POST IS ABOUT A HUGE PROBLEM IN OUR SOCIETY. NOT JUST THAT RAPE HAPPENS, BUT THAT THE PUNISHMENT SO RARELY FITS THE CRIME.

#potential #cornell #rape #survivor

Sarah Maria Boudreaux