Ian bears down with bigger threats looming
While Cuba, Florida and parts of Georgia brace for the incoming Hurricane Ian, I get daily reports from relatives and friends near Tampa/St Pete on up to northern Florida, about their preparations. With my past experiences living near Tampa, I feel the upper Floridians to be more at risk though I’m well aware that tracking adjustments will occur over the next two days so it’s still really a crap shoot.
At the moment, forecasts indicate Tampa may get hit by its worst in more than a century. They’re anticipating evacuating around 300,000 people from coastal areas.
CBS News: The evacuation zone is all along Tampa Bay and the rivers that feed it, encompassing MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa International Airport and well-known neighborhoods such as parts of Hyde Park, Davis Islands and Ybor City.
And:
A surge of up to 10 feet of ocean water and 10 inches of rain, with as much as 15 inches in isolated areas, was predicted for the Tampa Bay area. That's enough water to inundate low-lying coastal communities.
A satellite shot from this morning.
Anticipated rainfall, also from NOAA:
Beyond that threatening weather…
Here’s a photo of the growing phenomenon of a world-class piehole.
Following up on yesterday’s newsletter about the separation of church and state coming under attack by proponents of theocracy, the old adage of ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’ is certainly pertinent.
Conservative Christians in America and Europe have allied with mega-wealthy Russians (often called oligarchs in the media), some of whom funded Ukrainian separatists. It’s gotta be hard claiming to be pro-life while sponsoring or aligning with funders of war.
Along with efforts to outlaw abortion, this secretive group - CitizenGO - has been going after LGBTQ people in Africa and elsewhere, provoking violence from citizens and governments alike.
Their politics embrace deadly bedfellows and a whole lot of hypocrisy, per usual.
From The Guardian:
Since the bill came out, we’ve seen a sharp rise in many types of violence,” says Leila, a queer activist in Ghana, describing the impact of a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ draft bill introduced to parliament a year ago. “Attacks from individuals, from communities. We’re also seeing a big rise in ‘corrective rape’.”
She describes a recent case she worked on where three women in their 30s were raped and robbed by six men. In another incident, a 15-year-old girl was raped by men who said the girl was a lesbian. Many rapes are not reported, as they are committed by family members or people within their own community.
“Just the introduction of the bill has meant a lot of ignorant people in the country act as though it has been passed,” she says. “And people see it as giving permission that LGBTQ+ people should now be killed, should be abused, should be stopped in any way they want to.”
The “anti-LGBT bill” introduced in Ghana last August and currently under review by a parliamentary committee, would be one of the harshest and most sweeping of such laws in Africa.
The current draft of the bill, proposed by opposition MPs and publicly backed by officials in President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government and ruling New Patriotic party, criminalises gay and queer acts or identifying as a LGBTQ+ person, punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
It also criminalises any form of advocacy for LGBTQ+ people with up to 10 years in prison. Anyone who hosts advocate groups or meetings on their premises or website would also be criminally liable.
I’m still wading through the streaming 3 part documentary from Ken Burns about the US in the years preceding and during The Holocaust. Between the eugenics movement (espousing the notion that some people are genetically defective because of their place of birth or choice of religion), the unregulated speculation of capitalism (which was busy creating a stressed out underclass in working class families), nationalism began escalating with its concurrent embrace of anti-immigrant laws in multiple countries including the US.
I can’t emphasize enough to my audience that the documentary needs to be seen and digested. It doesn’t matter where your current politics are. Burns does his usual moderate description of events as they occurred and they track closely to what we’re seeing across the globe today.
I can’t think of any logical reason to avoid watching it unless one is committed to the increasing violence and mass murder that is certain to come if the world stays on this track.
And I also can’t emphasize enough that we have much more serious concerns than trying to neuter the influence of Donald Trump, who’s just one piece in the death-dealing struggle.
Italy just elected its most rightwing government since Mussolini. Like several European and Asian and South/Central American governments before it. (See France, Great Britain, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Sweden, India, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, for some examples over the past decade. Immigrants to everywhere are being blamed for violent crime like murder and rape, inflation, drug smuggling, immorality and basically anything negative that is occurring anywhere. Which is vastly overstated, since most of them are fleeing from violence and repression.
The fears are being spread on purpose. By people who profit financially and politically by provoking those fears.
It’s difficult to report objectively on matters political as I am, by nature, an unreformed optimist. I have to temper that with my understanding of political science and history which points to a lot of reasons for pessimism at this juncture.
I’m convinced that Trump will be legally barred from running for office in 2024. I’m not yet convinced that the law will be enforced.
As I noted several weeks ago, both the Saudis and Putin lowered oil production deliberately to force higher pump prices on us which ratchets up inflation. Last week, over a 2 day period here in Oregon, pump prices rose 90 cents a gallon, from $4.10 to $5. That’s not just due to the decisions of those two big oil producers. Big oil companies are adding extra to reap record profits.
Which inevitably leads to an almost certain probability that one or both Houses of Congress will shift to GOP control. If the House goes Republican, that ultimately means lots of repetitive investigations that will ultimately lead to no or very few convictions. It will spread more conspiracy BS because it’s intended to divert attention from people actually guilty of crimes. It’ll mean multiple attempts to impeach President Biden, which won’t result in a conviction.
It means no legislation of any value will get passed for two years. And if this rightwing shift continues, you know lots of worse outcomes will follow 2024.
The immediate solution remains turning out the vote.
Don’t waste time and money on races where the GOP registration is 2-to-1 higher than Democratic ones (Matt Gaetz/Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example). Just register, vote and do your best to convince everyone center or left to vote too. Especially voters under 30 who historically shun midterms.
The GOP has been working for years at state and local levels, down to school boards. Every election matters now. Try to get them to watch the Ken Burns documentary. After all, with isolationism, nationalism and xenophobia rising so fast now globally, with mega-wealthy funders paying internet and news show influencers to introduce lots of lies and conspiracies while clamping down on public education to keep the populace dumber (not just here in the US), we really can’t wait till some law threatens you and me specifically.
Trump has all the couth of a barroom drunk and the wits of an addicted scammer, but his advisors have repeatedly limited his propensity to use violence. Putin is just evil and nuts. China may be transitioning to an even worse military authoritarian with a Taiwan conflict in sight. This series of events can way too easily tip into another world war.
Voting is that important. That has to be impressed on more people. The time to quit is not now.
We live in a violent country, more prone to violence than most of us like. There’s another documentary on Paramount plus that should make that clear to any doubters. Russia is now seeing an uptick in that bloody nonsense too, without benefit of a Second Amendment.
I wish I could offer something more upbeat for today, but offline duties demand my attention right now. Please do your best to convince others to watch the documentaries. And to vote.
Pass this forward.