The Madness

You'd have to be mad not to understand that we are on the brink of another world war. There are a bunch of megalomaniacs in the US (and elsewhere) driving these forces of world domination. Trump has been the useful idiot. All of this feeds into his narcissistic sociopathic personality. He has no empathy or compassion; he is the tool, the face. Some report he gets all his information and biases from Fox News (or as I like to call it Faux Nooz). And to add to his disdain, he wore a cheap Trump baseball hat to the reception of the dead military returning to the US a couple of days ago. He promises there will be loads more. But *shrug* that's the cost of war, ya know. But that's not a war, he contradicts himself. 

Iran is not going to take this endless provocation and deaths (now at least 30,000, including countless children). They have better military equipment than the US and can hold out far, far longer. 

Meanwhile, the world pays for this folly, with skyrocketing energy costs affecting everything, food, travel, and survival.

Today's headlines cover men getting cheap hair transplants in Turkey and Americans overloading therapists' offices for sessions dealing with Trump anxiety.

Canada is under threat too, and we are very aware of it. Every mouthful of venom he spurts brings us closer.

Cuba is next on his menu. Followed by possibly Ecuador. Then Canada.

Here's the full list:

• Greenland: Frequently mentioned for acquisition due to its natural resources and strategic location.
• Canada: Cited as a target for absorption as the "51st state" through economic pressure.
• Venezuela: Following proposed invasion, the administration claimed it would "run" the country.
• Mexico: Mentioned in the context of territorial acquisition in the Western Hemisphere.
• Panama: Specifically, control of the Panama Canal Zone.
• Gaza Strip: Referred to as "property" for potential redevelopment.

Also known as the "Donroe Doctrine" after the Monroe Doctrine of Annexation.

We are in dark, unknown territory in these nuclear times. Netanyahu and Trump are busy keeping themselves out of jail on criminal and war crime charges. They don't care who gets in the way as the bodies mount to horrifying levels.

We can't shut our eyes to it. Many in Canada are buying guns for the first time. Daughter is a good shot. I was not bad in my time. But neither of us ever felt the need to own a gun.

Overreacting you might say? Realistic, I'd respond.

Maybe now is the time. In all my born days, I never thought I'd be writing about defending Canada. The most polite nation on the face of this earth. Except when we're threatened. 

Elbows Up!

Rage Against the Patriarchal Machine

It's the third day of it and I don't know what triggered it. Perhaps an accumulation of patriarchal rights and ownership over and of women. I hesitate to write here as I wait for it to subside. I mean the rage of course. And it hasn't. So here I go. The journal isn't doing it for me so maybe the blog will.

I asked a friend this morning, she's 83 today, does she feel rage? A rage that leaks angry hot tears, a rage that trembles the hands and falters the feet. Yes, she said. Her younger husband, second, love of her life, five years younger, died a few years ago. Some disorder of the blood, the body. they had just bought their Newfoundland home. Had B&B plans, he was a great cook, she a wonderful host. All smashed to bits in a four week hospital stay.

Oh good then, I'm not alone in my rageful week.

My rage is against male ownership of women. Triggered in no small part by what's happening in Iran. A young woman, showing a few stray bits of hair beneath her hijab jailed and killed. The protests are mighty. More women killed for protesting. For not covering their heads properly.

And this all whirled me back to my own adolescence in the fifties and my hair becoming an "occasion of sin" for leering men and boys unless I covered it with a mantilla for mass or confession or hell and damnation retreats or.....Catholic Ireland where women had no voice. 

An occasion of sin. I imagine this twisted logic is applied by Iranian men. Women with uncovered heads tempting men who are otherwise pure and unsullied by sinful thoughts.

The Machine of the Patriarchy. Making young girls and women feel dirty and ashamed and the object of unbridled desire from male human animals who can't control their baser instincts, their desire to rape, at the sight of a stray hair on a woman's head. All her fault if she's gang-banged then. She and only she has released the male rampaging raping monster by not covering her head. Only herself to blame.

So I was taught. So I believed. I lived in fear of men having been molested by an old fellah when I was barely six. My fault. I sat on his lap. I released his carnal instincts. Life long trauma submerged until I had therapy in my forties.

Raised like this, objectified because of our sex, women bury their rage. My mother had ulcers in her forties. Ulcers are repressed rage (as many have it). Some exhibit depression, the internal mirror of rage (looking at myself). I knew she was angry for many valid reasons. Because she was a woman with no voice. Except to me. And she died young.

Women are taught, were taught, I speak for myself, not to show anger, not to show discomfort, not to show hurt.

Rage is the best weapon we have. My sheroes are in Iran and other cities now. Protesting loud and long. Not afraid to show the rage.

I am hopeful the rage spills out over the USA for the mid-term elections and the declaration of ownership of women's bodies by their "Supreme" Court. Note quotation marks. That it spills out all over the world to right the grievous wrongs that have been done to all girls and women, second class citizens, victims of a patriarchy intertwined with religions that deem them unworthy of equal status.

Rage. 

Own it. 

Touched by an Explosion

The Republican Plot at St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork

It was 1961 in Cork City. Life was very peaceful. There was an enormous pride in one of our own, John F. Kennedy, being President of the U.S.

I had been to a dance at the university with a boyfriend. We were both very young but very much into the bands of the era who would play all the favourites, the rock ‘n roll, the slow dances, the fox trots, the jiving. Dancing was really big then. You could go to a dance every night in Cork. There was an innocence to us all.

I hadn’t even heard of drugs and I wasn’t what you would call sheltered either as I was involved in theatre and folk-singing so if there were some drugs around I would have been offered them.

Alternative life-styles were so far removed from me that it came as an awful shock when a very famous female singer propositioned me. I had read of lesbians but had never known any.

I'm mentioning all of this to show how very uncomplicated and naive I was.

In those days, after eleven at night there were no buses and as we were always broke, no money for cabs either so we would walk home. Often a boyfriend lived at the other side of the city but he would walk a girlfriend home and then walk all the way back to his place. Kisses were the most on offer then. French kisses if you were going steady.

So B and I walked along after the dance, holding hands, talking. As we turned a corner of the road, nearing the cemetery, always a very lonely, eerie place at that hour of the night, the world seemed to explode and the ground trembled. B pulled me against a wall and we were both paralysed for what seemed like hours. Everything went still and we didn’t move until we heard the sounds of sirens in the distance. Then we cautiously moved away from the wall, not exchanging a word, and slowly walked along the Glasheen road towards the graveyard.

The explosion had come from the cemetery, that was immediately clear. Just inside the huge gates. There was smoke and blood and body limbs everywhere, it seemed. And a dreadful, unforgettable smell. The Gardai - the Irish police - arrived and quickly took control of the situation, cordoning off the graveyard and shunting B & I and what was now a sizeable gathering off to the side and briefly taking notes from each of us on what had happened.

We didn’t want to hang around. I was in shock, shaking badly and nauseated. We woke my parents up when we got home though it was by that time two o’clock in the morning.
My mother gave both of us a shot of brandy, the cure-all for shock in those days and then B went home.

The following morning the Cork Examiner had the headline. It was an IRA engineered “shock and awe” effort that had gone horribly wrong. An offensive monument was the target for the IRA operatives but instead they had blown themselves up, leaving the monument virtually intact.

The incident still haunts some of my dreams, another minute and we would have been injured, or dead that night.

But more than that, when I think of Iraqis and the constant barrage of explosions and gunfire, every hour, every day as they move about their lives, my heart sympathizes. I was there. If only for a minute in time.

A brilliant analysis of U.S. Politics {LINK}

Jane Smiley is one of my very favourite writers and she churns up some riveting stuff in the above link - well worth reading.

Like the late, great Molly Ivens, she is fearless in her analysis of how things went so terribly wrong in her country.

The Iraq quagmire is sucking the life out of our neighbour down south, the dollar shrinking, housing markets decimated, personal bankruptcies through the roof, no health care for its citizens, New Orleans a no-go for the people who used to live there, one out of every 150 of its citizens in jail and more jails being built every day, its military outsourced to private and for profit mercenaries (was there ever a name with such a death knell ring to it as 'Blackwater'?), and the Patriot Act in all its permutations stripping the Constitution of any of the 'freedoms' so proudly bandied about by the flag wavers. And the media operating at just about the level of a trained poodle (Blair, anyone?)

And Iran may be the next target for the bringing of 'democracy'?

Bumper Sticker seen on U.S. vehicle here in Newfoundland:

Be nice to me or I will bring democracy to your country too!

Thank heavens for Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Stephen Colbert who through satire and wit (and lately a healthy disgust) bring the actual truth to their audiences.