The Revolution Continues blog is news, views, opinion and other expressions of hope from a leftist point-of-view. (We are not affiliated with any candidate, political party or organization. All are welcome.)
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. (Happy Black History Month, too.)
It
does seem funny wishing a good day in honor of a late great American
(assassinated by our own security state), but what else can I say?
I
suppose I could say “Happy Inauguration Day!” but some folks would have
a complete and utter meltdown if I dare mention Donald Trump being
sworn in as president for a second time. So, I won’t say that, but what
could I say instead? Maybe: “Trump is living in the White House again.
Get use to it”?
I
find it interesting how most of the individuals I know who have
constantly worried and fretted over or made fun of the “Orange Man”
won’t live any differently whether Trump is president or not. They still
have their white privilege. They still live solidly middle- to
upper-class lives. They will keep their jobs or be able to retire as
planned. This is in complete contrast to the poor people that Dr. King
spoke about frequently who struggled to pay their bills and never once
considered retirement to be possible...
And now a short excerpt from our guest blogger's piece:
Swords Into Plowshares
by Coast Watcher
...Instead
of scrapping one or both of the huge and expensive super-carriers
Britain could instead donate them to the United Nations for use as
disaster relief ships. Able to travel quickly to wherever they’re
needed, each carrier could house dozens of search-and-rescue helicopters
and other aircraft. Current hangar space below decks can be repurposed
as hospitals equipped for emergency surgery, storage space for medical
supplies, food, water, disaster relief equipment, tents and anything
else required in a disaster relief operation. The ship’s nuclear power
plant can be hooked up to shoreside facilities to provide electricity
wherever local power generation has been damaged or destroyed...
Please continue reading the remainder of these two essays by copying or clicking on this Substack link: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com.
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Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!
This
article is the 503rd blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began
in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading,
sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years.
I
have a thing for Christmas trees. I love to decorate them and collect
ornaments from all over the world. Come the twelfth day of Christmas
(Epiphany) on January 6, I’m compelled by the “social norm” to take down
my tree* and store it and the decorations away until next December.
(Who is this “Norm” and why is he always raining on my parade? Not very
“sociable” of him.) The empty space in my living room where the
Christmas tree once stood makes me sad, so I began a new tradition.
I
put away the tall tree and put up a shorter, table-top sized tree* in
its place. I decorate it with ornaments symbolizing love (after all,
Valentine’s Day is in February) and peace. The past couple of years the
little tree has become not a mere Christmas tree substitute but a “Peace
Tree” dedicated to world peace.
I
leave the Peace Tree standing as long as there is conflict anywhere on
the planet. You guessed it—the Peace Tree hasn’t been put away for quite
some time now. In the summer, I move it upstairs where I stand it on
top a short bookcase in our bedroom. We put a window a/c unit in the
downstairs window, and the little tree could get blown over if it stayed
put, but it isn’t taken down. I see it every day, a reminder that
humans are still warring with each other somewhere on the planet. We
need world peace, and we needed it yesterday.
This holiday season I decided to give the Peace Tree a makeover...
To see more photos of the Peace Tree--and to read a poem excerpt by Maya Angelou and the rest of this article--please click on this Substack link: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com. There
you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics,
and be able to leave comments. You can also subscribe and receive the
weekly blog post in your email box.
Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today! Power to the people!
Happy
Holidays—Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice and a good
Kwanzaa and peace to you and yours. May we all plant “Peace Trees” and
together reap a harvest of goodness some day soon.
Light of the world, shine on me Love is the answer Shine on us all, set us free Love is the answer
--From Love Is the Answer by England Dan and John Ford Coley
If you’re reading this, this means I’m still recuperating from a long weekend away to attend my late uncle’s celebration of life. My uncle didn’t want a funeral—he wanted a party. I think it’s a great way to be remembered by your loved ones. To be remembered as a human being embracing life to its fullest and never surrendering to the sadness. To go out fighting for the right and loving others for as long as humanly possible. And he did.
I decided to write this essay before I left town. Since I’ll be without a laptop for a few days, and I have a rather crappy cell phone with a too small screen to read easily, I’ll be in internet withdrawal by the time I return. I’ll probably be incoherent from lack of sleep as well because of the weird early flights I had to take to get there and back again, but it’ll be worth it to see my aunt and cousins and at least two of my siblings together in one place, celebrating our dearly departed loved one as a family.
I realize this piece will probably get zero likes and probably even fewer reads than my recent article entitled The Fight (where in I used the “z-word” once to describe a person’s political viewpoint, forcing Facebook to censor it), but some things need to be said. They need to be said no matter how popular or unpopular they are to the masses. If my worse fault is my bluntness, then so be it...
To read the rest of this article, click on this link to go to our Substack page: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com There
you'll also see the related article and video links, all the images,
and be able to leave comments. You can subscribe to receive the
weekly blog post in your email box as well. Subscribe today! Power to the people!
Has anyone ever tried to pull the wool over your eyes? Fooled you into believing something that turned out later to be false? How did you feel after you discovered that you'd been bamboozled? Sad? Angry? Determined never to let something like this happen to you ever again?
Now you know how the Arizona Green Party (AZGP) feels upon learning that Green voters could become the victims of a series of terrible tricks. This scam essentially denies all Arizona voters a choice for US Senate. And who are these con artists attempting to pull a fast one over on the electorate? They're none other than the Democratic Party.
The Arizona Green Party has discovered compelling evidence that suggests that the Democratic Party is attempting to interfere in our primary election process for the U.S Senate race via the campaign of faux-Green candidate Mike Norton.
First, Norton isn’t even a registered AZGP member AT ALL. Voter data provided to us from the Maricopa County Elections Office indicates that Norton’s most recent change in party affiliation was to “Independent”, which he registered as on August 17th, 2023, not as a “Green”.
Norton filed a Statement of Interest to run for the U.S. Senate as a Green on March 17th, 2024, a mere two weeks before the deadline to submit a sufficient number of candidate nomination petitions. He had no prior involvement or contact with the AZGP whatsoever before this.
On March 18th, the first of 7 total out-of-state paid petitioners, all claiming to be working for Wells Marketing LLC, begin to register with the AZ Secretary of State’s Office via the Circulator Portal and designate that they are circulating petitions for Norton’s campaign.
The next day, March 19th, Mike Norton files a Statement of Organization with the FEC for his candidate committee, “Mike Norton for Arizona”. FEC Law stipulates that this has to happen once a Congressional candidate raises or spends a combined total of $5K.
On March 21st, the “Save Democracy PAC” a super-PAC with ties to the Democratic Party, donates the max contribution of $5K to Norton’s candidate committee. Reminder: anybody who knows anything about the Green Party knows that we DO NOT EVER accept contributions from super PACs.
[Editor’s note: You can learn more about the Green Party at https://gp.org]
On March 27th, two more Democratic Party linked super-PACs (“End Citizens United” and “Defend The Vote”) max out donations to Norton’s campaign, contributing $5K each.
Both these super-PACs have already officially endorsed Ruben Gallego for the 2024 US Senate seat in Arizona. [Editor’s note: Ruben Gallego is running as a Democrat.]
Get ready, cuz this is a BIG one. On March 28th, 5 individuals made maxed out contributions of $3300 each to Norton’s campaign, and 1 contributed a lesser $1000 donation. The names/backgrounds of these individual donors may surprise you, so let’s go through them one by one.
Michael D. Smith is a Principal/Director at Cornerstone Government Affairs. He’s also a member of the DSCC Majority Trust Legacy Circle since 2008, and a formerly appointed member of the DNC Credentials Committee. Smith contributed the maximum $3300 to Norton’s campaign. [DSCC—Democratic Senate Congressional Committee]
Paul Bernon is a Managing Partner at PMB Ventures, a Co-Chair of the Emily List Creative Council, and a member of the DNC Finance Committee. Bernon contributed the maximum $3300 to Norton’s campaign.
Devin Rhinerson is a Partner at Pace LLP and a former senior policy advisor to the (now deceased) Democratic Senator from the State of California, Diane Feinstein. Rhinerson contributed the maximum $3300 to Norton’s Campaign.
Elizabeth E. Steinglass (David’s wife) is a Harvard graduate, a poet/author, a Research Fellow at NYU School of Law, and- like her husband- a frequent big money donor to Democratic campaigns. Elizabeth contributed the maximum $3300 to Norton’s campaign.
Capping off the individual contributions is Timothy Webster, an Associate Professor of Law at WNE University who made a more modest contribution of only $1000 to Mike Norton for Arizona. While we have not yet confirmed Webster as being tied to the Dems, the timing is suspicious.
In a SINGLE day on March 28th, and between only 6 individual contributors, “Mike Norton for Arizona” received a whopping $17.5K, the majority of which came from Democratic Party insiders and their big money donors. But wait, there’s still more…
The following day, March 29th, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU-COPE) ALSO made a maximum $5K contribution to Mike Norton’s campaign. “Why the Transit Union?”, you ask? Norton’s background is as a CEO, Senior Executive, and Legal Counsel to 3 major transportation companies.
But that undersells it, because those companies specialize in the transportation of “High Security Products”. Can you guess what kind of products those may be? Here’s the answer: weapons, ammunition, explosives, and radioactive materials. A decidedly un-Green career, we’d say. [Editor’s note: The Green Party platform states clearly that they are for “People, Planet and Peace (over corporate profits). You can see now why this contributor is highly suspect.]
So, let’s summarize: Norton’s not a registered Green, and never has been. In the span of ONLY 12 DAYS after filing an initial Statement of Interest, he received over $15K from confirmed Democratic Party insiders. And now he’s trying to fool the Green Party voters of Arizona.
And if you’re wondering, as some of you surely would be, “What do the Democrats gain from heavily funding a fake Green Party candidate?”, consider the case of ‘18 Senate candidate Angela Green, who dropped out and endorsed Sinema at the very last minute against McSally.
Sinema ultimately won regardless of Green’s endorsement, but it was a close race, and the AZ Dem Party, the DSCC, and the DNC have no desire to take that chance with Ruben Gallego in 2024. They’re willing to fight dirty and do everything they can to sabotage the competition.
And what better way is there to stop any possible *real* competition for Gallego from our party than by implanting an operative in our primary, funding him so heavily he easily wins, and then immediately having him drop out in the general to endorse the Democratic candidate?
Well, Mike Norton you may be a smart man, and you may be well-funded by the corrupt DNC, but you can’t fool us, and you won’t get away with your lies and dirty tricks. We know a true Green Party candidate from a fake like you. And now, Arizona knows you’re a fraud too.
Wow… After making quite a few sloppy moves, do the Dirty Dems really think they’ll get away with this conman of a candidate? Do they think Arizona’s voters are stupid enough to vote for a “faux Green”?
I think you know the answer to both those questions. It’s “yes.”
The saddest part about the Dems pulling dirty tricks is that most voters won’t do much in-depth research into candidates running for office at any level. They’ll believe whatever is put before them in the mainstream media without questioning it. Most have never heard of OpenSecrets.org where they can check out where politicians are getting their money and just how much they've taken. Most voters have never thought of researching the party platform that the candidate says they’re promoting, which in this case is very important as Norton seems to stand for the complete opposite of the Green Party's philosophy.
If voters did do their research, they would learn that the Green Party is for “People, Planet and Peace” and their candidates pledge to never take money from PACs or Super PACs. They’d think twice about Mike Norton’s acceptance of money from an industry dedicated to war along with large donations from Democratic Party insiders.
I mean, why would well-heeled Democrats give money to a Green Party candidate in the first place? That should be a big giveaway right there. But wait, there’s even more nefarious activity going on in the Dems’ dirty tricks campaign to undermine the Arizona Green Party's primary. The AZGP has also reported there is yet another possible “faux-Green” candidate being promoted by the DNC.
In addition to the meddling by the DNC in our primary election via the campaign of Mike Norton, the Arizona Green Party has found irregularities in the campaign finance reporting of Arturo Hernandez, the other faux-Green candidate for U.S. Senate. Here’s what we found.
Arturo filed his statement of interest with the AZ Secretary of State’s Office on March 1st, 2024, and he filed his FEC Statement of Organization (Form 1) and Statement of Candidacy (Form 2) on March 11th, 2024.
While it’s not required for a candidate to reach the $5K threshold before they file paperwork and start submitting FEC reports, as soon as they file that paperwork, they are obligated to report all funds that are raised or spent by the candidate’s committee.
Because Hernandez filed his Statement on the 1st of March, he was officially campaigning as of that date and cannot claim to have been “testing the waters” in the form of an exploratory committee, as is allowed for and outlined in FEC guidelines.
Part of that FEC Form 2 Statement of Candidacy requires candidates to declare their intent to expend personal funds if they are a candidate for Congress. Hernandez’s FEC Form 2 indicates that he claimed intend to spend $0 of his personal funds in the primary and general election.
However, if you examine Mr. Hernandez’s Q1 FEC reports, he has also claimed $0 in receipts and expenditures. Here’s where things start to get really fishy…
We know from personal testimony from AZGP members like @jonralstonlmt and research done during the signature challenge period that Mr. Hernandez had paid circulators distributing his candidate nomination petitions. Yet, Mr. Hernandez has not reported any money raised or spent.
Additionally, we know that Mr. Hernandez is a client of “In Compliance Inc.”, and his designated Treasurer and Custodian of Records is Chrissie Hastie, President/CEO of In Compliance Inc. However, no payments to In Compliance Inc. have been reported by Mr. Hernandez in Q1.
Even if the paid petitioners AND In Compliance Inc. were to have worked pro bono for Mr. Hernandez, they would still need to report this as an “in-kind contribution”. No such reporting has been made on the Q1 FEC report for “Arturo for Arizona”.
It is no secret that Mr. Hernandez is a sham candidate who has jumped onto our ballot line with the intent to fool Green Party in Arizona into wasting their vote on an infiltrator with nefarious intentions. Mr. Hernandez has even been so bold as to contact us to gloat.
While we are continuing to investigate further evidence of wrongdoing, we believe that it is highly probably that Mr. Hernandez and his candidate committee “Arturo for Arizona” have violated the FECA of 1971. We urge all AZ Green Party members to NOT vote for or support him.
To be clear, the Democrats are trying to kick faux-Green Arturo Hernandez off the ballot, while they have installed a well-funded Democratic operative to run in our primary named Mike Norton. The AZ Green Party’s endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate race is @Quintana4Senate
Even the Republican US Senate candidate, Kari Lake, is exposing these Dem shenanigans:
It appear the AZ Dem Party is attempting to kick the AZ Green Party candidate off the ballot so that their Trojan horse candidate can drop out & endorse Ruben Gallego.
These are the people who lecture us about democracy.
Mr. Hernandez doesn’t sound like the brightest bulb in the box to me. Could he be yet another DNC faux Green candidate that didn’t quite work out as well as they’d hoped, so they brought Mr. Norton on board later to be their “official faux Green candidate” instead? Why does the DNC pull such criminal stunts like this? Are they worried their own candidate, Mr. Gallego, isn’t electable?
From what I gather AZ Green Party thinks if Norton wins their primary he will drop out leaving no Green Party Candidate to run against the Dem and Republican candidates in the general election.
The official Arizona Green Party candidate is Eduardo Quintana.[@Quintana4Senate]:
My name is Eduardo Quintana, I am a dedicated Green Party activist in the Tucson area, and I am running a grassroots, corporate-free campaign for the U.S. Senate with the AZ Green Party
The Dems' actions demonstrate how very scared they are of losing the US Senate seat in Arizona. They possibly fear that voters see them as supporters of Genocide Joe Biden, repellent genocide-enablers. They’re willing to spend large sums of their donors' money and risk committing fraud to take away the voters' choices at the ballot box.
When the news of these dirty tricks in Arizona eventually leaks out to a wider audience, won’t the Dems be helping their Republican opponent by making her look more honest than they are? This time around the Dems can’t claim the Green Party candidate is stealing votes from them because they are, in fact, funding “spoilers” like Mike Norton and Arturo Hernandez in the Green primary.
What does Norton in particular get out of all of this skullduggery? It seems his connection with the weapons industry is behind his reasoning for doing this so he can continue to fund Gallego and other Dem candidates who love passing huge military budgets. The military-industrial-Congressional complex operators don’t really care what label a candidate wears as long as she/he votes the way they want them to. As long as the duopoly remains in power, billionaires will thrive and workers will suffer as more and more money is siphoned out of the workers' pockets and slipped into the oligarchs’ bank accounts.
Worse yet, more innocents will continue to suffer and die as more US bombs are provided to apartheid Israel to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people in Gaza. A Green Party senator from Arizona would work hard to end this horrific situation and all US military interventions worldwide.
What can the Arizona Green Party do to shut down this scam? They can take legal action against Norton for misrepresenting himself as a Green, but court cases take time, and it wouldn’t come up until after November. The Dems are counting on that. It’s why they waited until almost the last moment to sneak Norton in on the Green primary. In the meantime, they’re probably “rewarding” (i.e., bribing) all the Arizona judges to make a ruling in the DNC’s favor when the case finally does come to court. Criminals do tend to stick together.
If you’re a person who loves democracy and wants to help the voters of Arizona, there are a few things you can do. First off, share this story (and the X posts/Tweets) with others. The mainstream media certainly won’t cover this DNC trickery. They wouldn’t dare anger their corporate owners. So, it’s up to us everyday people, indie journalists, and independent podcasters to get the word out.
Secondly, file a complaint with the FEC if you feel moved to do so. And if you’re able, donate your time, talents and/or money to the AZGP and/or the GPUS. Lawyers don’t come cheap, and a party like the Green Party that only accepts donations from voters like you and me (not millionaires/billionaires) needs all the backers they can get.
It’s why the Dirty Dems pick on the people-powered Greens—the Dems receive billions of dollars from their wealthy Super PAC donors but no real support from the masses. The Dems use their corporate donors’ money to pull undemocratic stunts like this one in order to manipulate us, We the People. Remember, “freedom isn’t free” when the people are being blatantly outspent by billionaires bribing politicians.
Last and certainly not least, support causes that are working to take big money out of US politics. Just think if the DNC wasn’t able to pull all this money together and create fake candidates to thwart voter choice, we might not be seeing these kinds of dirty tricks in the first place. Check out the Move to Amend and Ranked Choice Voting initiatives.
Whatever you do, don’t give up hope. Make a vow to never let the Dems get away with dirty tricks ever again. Power to the people—not the corporations who own the Dems, their criminally minded minions!
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Editor's
note:
I had a dream about this whole hot mess the
world finds itself in. I wanted to share my vision, but I struggled to put it
into words until I decided to write it as a short short story. Other
than the odd poem (not very often and very odd), I haven't posted
anything like a short story at the The
Revolution Continues
before. This is a first. I've not written much fiction in recent
times because, frankly, I don't feel like writing anything funny or
with a happy ending. My last
novella is set in a dystopian world where an anarchist commune that practices mutual aid is
struggling to survive alongside a fascist state. My publisher
insisted it at least have a "happy for now" ending.
(You can buy a copy of it here. It would make my publisher very happy. Or you can drop me a donation via my
Paypal.me page here. That would make me very happy!)
If you decide you'd like to read more short fiction posts, let me know. I'll
see what I can do. If you'd rather I didn't post fiction here, leave a
comment stating your preference. Thanks for your feedback.
A must-watch short video:
We can put an end to this genocide. We have the power.
The
Miracle
by C.A. Matthews
“That’s
my planet,” I confessed, trembling. I pointed to the big blue marble that is Earth through the spaceship observation port. The
tallest of the grayish, bulb-headed, big-eyed, mouthless alien beings
nodded in understanding. “You can tell it’s inhabited from the
amount of pollution in the atmosphere detectable from this…
height.”
I’d
never believed in alien abduction before, but now that it was
happening to me it didn’t seem all that bad. No anal probes. No
poking or prodding of any kind really, unless you count the mental
probing my hosts—I hated to label them “my captors”—had
gently done to determine how best to communicate with me. I spoke
out loud, but I realized fairly quickly that they were reading my
mind and communicating me mentally, so using
my vocal cords
wasn’t
necessary. Talking just made me feel less nervous in their presence,
and they didn’t seem
to mind.
The
pollutants and toxins in your biosphere are slowly killing your kind
and many other species. Do you understand?
The tallest
of the aliens
sent its
thoughts directly into my head. Its tone and intonation made me
imagine it was coming from an
older, wiser individual. Itcommunicated
slowly and kindly as if speaking to a lost child. Would
you like them removed?
“The
pollution, you mean, not the people, right?” I laughed
and then gasped
as
what it meant hit me fully.
“You’re saying that you all can actually clean up our polluted
planet
after
all we’ve done to it?”
Yes,
we have the means to return your planet’s biosphere to its state
before the mass burning of fossil
fuels began. We can purge the toxins from the atmosphere,
the water
cycle, and from the soil. Crops
and forests will thrive. No longer will adverse climate effects harm
food production or the wildlife. We
can replace the
engines that run your
vehicles, machinery, and industrial plants that cause pollution and
radiation
with ones that do not. We can eliminate rogue viruses and bacteria
that cause serious illness and provide your
healers with instruction on how to cure through natural means, not
through
the
use of synthetic chemicals. Allow
us
to demonstrate.
With
a wave of its hand—or what I thought would pass as a
hand
on Earth—Tall
Guy
gave
its
compatriots
the signal to start Operation Earth Clean-Up. I’m not sure if what I
witnessed from the spaceship
window happened instantaneously or was happening over a period of
days,
years,
or centuries,
but within what seemed only a few short minutes to
me
the face of the Earth looked much
greener
and bluer and...well, healthier.
“Wow…”
I whispered. “Thank you! I am very impressed. No more bad air
quality days? No more boil warnings for our tap water? I can actually
swim in the lake now and not get covered with an outbreak of
poisonous blue-green algae?”
We
have purged
the toxins that are hazardous to life on your planet, my
host mentally informed me. Your
kind can be cured of sicknesses
now
with simple medicines and techniques available
to all.
“No
more need
for bad
health
insurance that never covers what you really need? Cancer cured? It
all
sounds
too good to be true.” I shook
my head in
disbelief.
“In my country, big corporations make
lots of money from keeping people sick and addicted to drugs.”
Tall
Guy blinked. If it
had possessed a mouth, it might have frowned. The
concept
of capitalism was probably as foreign and strange to my hosts as
their spaceship and advanced technology were to me. If they were
reading my mind at that moment, they might have regretted lavishing
such kind gifts upon our selfish species.
Is
there anything else we can do for your kind before we return you? Tall
Guy asked.
I
couldn’t wait to return to Earth—the beautiful, unpolluted Garden
of Edenwhere
sickness would be no more. I
sighed. There was something
niggling
me
in the back of my mind. I
had to know ifmy
hosts could
grant methis
one last, grandwish.
“Can
you rid our
world of war? Can you remove all the weapons—that
is, the
tools of violence
and destruction? Guns,
cannons,
nukes,
tanks, submarines, bomber
jetsand
the like that
humans use
to
kill other humans?”
Tall
Guy blinked again.
I was pretty sure this time it was
frowning
inside even without a mouth.
I
probably had asked too big of a favor. After all, extracting
pollution out of the biosphere could be just an
elaborate
chemical equation to them, but taking weapons away from warmongers? If
the concepts of capitalism andgreed
were incomprehensibly
horrible
and cruel to my
hosts,
can you imagine what they would have thought of humanity’s
insatiable need
to slaughter their
neighbors
and steal each
others’ land
and resources?
A
few
minutes later, after much discussion
as I called my hosts’ method of communicating as a group by
touching their foreheads
together,
I got my answer.
We
will try.
It
took more than ahand
wave from Tall Guy to bring peace about on Planet Earth. Several
different groups of gray aliens
started to work out different aspects of the challenge. I was allowed
to walk about and watch each team
tackle their part of the problem. I watched a view screen with
fascination as one group disintegrated
the biggest and most obvious weapons of war. They
focused what must have been a laser upon anaircraft
carrier and
then poof!
It was vaporized. Gone. Likewise to nuclear subs and battleships. The
sailors aboard were all magically transported to the closest port.
I
couldn’t help but clap my hands with glee as another group took out
an entire fleet of bombers and nuclear silos.
Zap! They
disappeared.
But
my hosts didn’t stop there. Another
group worked on eliminating all the small arms and automatic
weapons on
the planet. I’m not sure how their scanners could pick up on the
millions of firearms, some of which were hidden in cellars and barns
by the thousands in
my country,
but they did it. Abracadabra!
They vanished.
Wars
aren’t only fought on the battlefields, but in the cities and towns
where the oppressed are helpless to defend themselves. Several groups
of my gray hosts worked on tearing down barbwire fences and concrete
walls that had imprisoned so many within their own homelands or kept
them from entering a place of safety. I don’t know how they did
it, but my hosts flung open the prison doors that had incarcerated
freedom fighters and innocents alike, setting them free.
In
turn, the
politicians and the corporate war lords who had profited greatly
from
eternal wars for oil and similar
land grabs were escorted by invisible forces to trade places with the
unjustly imprisoned. Ta-da!
What
a brilliant move!
The
destruction of homes, family farms, and small businesses, the results of the wars
and genocides, was instantly reversed. Homelessness and
hunger were no
more. All who had been separated by violence and
divisions were
once again reunited with their family
members
and friends.
I
wept
tears of joy.
It
is accomplished,
Tall Guy communicated to me. Why
do you experience sadness?
“I’m
not sad. I’m happy.” I wiped my tears away with the back of my
hand and gazed upon one
of the
view screens
where a neighborhood, once reduced to rubble by bombing, now stood
whole and complete. “I am so
happy
with
the results of your
wonderful talents. How
can we ever thank you?”
And
then I caught a glimpse of something on the screen that caused my
smile to fade.
“What the hell… What is he doing?”
A
man picked up a rock and threw it hard at another man just about to
enter his rebuilt home. The second man fell to his knees, blood
pouring from a deep
gash
on his forehead. The
first
man and his group
ran toward the second man’s home,throwing
more rocks at it as
well as the
peopleof
the rebuilt neighborhood.
“I
thought you had eliminated all war?” I
whispered.
My
hosts assembled and pressed their foreheads
together in communion. After a long
minute,
Tall Guy approached,
its
appendages spread open in an imploring fashion.
We
eliminated all the human-made tools of war and violence as you had
asked us to, but we cannot take away the feelings of hatred and greed
and fear from inside each human being. That is something humanity
must do for itself. Do you understand?
I
nodded
and closed my eyes. “I understand. I appreciate all that you’ve
done for us. I realize now that I
can’t
expect you to perform a miracle.”
A
miracle? Explain.
“Something
that seems impossible, but it can and does spontaneously
occur
on rare occasions.”
Tall
Guy nodded. Its gaze appeared softer, more sympathetic.No,
we cannot perform a miracle. We cannot change the minds of living
beings set on hurting others.
“How
long will it take until humankind rebuilds
all the weapons it
had?”
I sniffed.
“Years? Months? Days?”
Not
long. Tall
Guy’s
tone
registered upon my mind
as
resignation.
I
turned toward the window. The
skies above the Earth weregrowing
darker and dirtier by
the second.
Humanswere
already rebuilding
the polluting factories to
create instruments of death, to
destroy each other and Earth’s fragile ecosystem without mercy.
Can
we help? Tall
Guy communicated
to
me.
I
slowly
smiled
at
my gracious
hosts.
“We’d all better start praying for that miracle,
or else I’ve wasted your time.”
This meme of Israeli girls writing their names on bombs to drop on Gaza is a couple months old. Recent estimates say 15,000+ children have been murdered in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
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