“Water Whirl”

It was my first official Tea Party.

Personally invited by my friend, Central Valley Tea Party Coordinator, John Pero, and further enticed by a front page story in this very paper headlined, “Speaker to Address Water Crisis”, I was present and accounted for at last Tuesday’s monthly meeting of our local group at the Best Western Yosemite Restaurant.

Although known and recognized as a writer of the Star’s “Commie Column” (my phrase – not theirs) (I think) – I was greeted with extraordinary courtesy by all and made to feel right at home. I hope to attend more of these get-togethers in the future and trust John and associates will be present at upcoming Oakhurst Democratic Club functions as they have in the past. Cross-pollination is a very good thing.

The evening’s main attraction was Debbie Bacigalupi, a reasonably credentialed former Congressional candidate from Siskiyou County, that political entity whose supervisors have already opted to leave California and become part of “The State of Jefferson” at some fanaticized point in time.

Ms. (or “Miss” should that be her preference) Bacigalupi put on a fine, highly spirited, emotionally charged show from start to finish, the conclusion of which included the usual de rigueur comparison of Barack Obama with Adolph Hitler – such evaluation scoring not much difference between those two at all, save complexion.

It was a remarkable, whirling spin — all sound and fury — signifying nothing other than a bit of selective sharing — given the fact that the bulk of Debbie’s presentation was a tiresome, tedious Power Point presentation on “Agenda 21”. This was the fifth time I’ve endured the pitch, having pulled four other iterations off the Internet for review these last few years.

Although being quite active in Progressive Politics through time (I put Michael Moore on the radio back in the late ‘70’s), I honestly can’t recall hearing of “Agenda 21” until I learned about it from the Tea Party.

For the fortunately uninitiated, “Agenda 21” is a non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development — a product of the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro back in ’92. Just being nice, the United States signed on, even though it’s not even an actual treaty. Then most players pretty much forgot about the whole deal except a handful of folks with wild imaginations and well-funded friends. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Consequently, “Agenda 21” in certain circles has come to mean a concerted effort by (?????????) (Undefined?) (The Tri-Lateral Commission?) (Obama?) (The Easter Bunny?) that will result in the abolition of private property, loss of national sovereignty, an 80% reduction in global population, the disarming of all citizens, U.N. control of the military and the replacement of religious values with primitive nature worship. And that’s just where the bad stuff starts.

Debbie did add something new with tears in her eyes, accompanied by somber, dirge-like music and a screen filled with dozens upon dozens of remarkably piled sheep carcasses – presented as proof that a presumably Agenda 21-inspired introduction of Grey Wolves into the Idaho wilderness had brought about such horrible slaughter. A subsequent check of “Wildlife News” following the meeting revealed “the sheep apparently were stampeded off a rocky slope by two remnant members of a local wolf pack, most of which had already been killed off by the Federal Government’s Wildlife Services. While uncommon, this sort of thing has happened before.”

Sierra Star readers might hearken back to August of 2009 when a similar phenomenon dumped 35 dead cows into the Fresno River near Coarsegold “having been chased through a barbed wire fence and off a 50 foot cliff by either coyotes or a pack of dogs.”

This single illustration of inappropriate interpretation pretty much sums up my disappointment with the content of the evening’s proceedings. Ms. (Miss) Bacigalupi kept adding two and two and coming up with – twenty-two. Connecting divergent dots can be dangerous.

It wasn’t until the last few minutes of the program that we finally got down to the subject that drew me there in the first place — WATER.

We were shown a brief, well-produced video clip of a documentary with which Debbie is involved as “co-director” – entitled – “No Water. No Farmer. No Food.”

No kidding.

That’s why I posed this exact question to John and Debbie and a few others following the event verbally and in writing:

“What percentage of the current drought crisis is man made (by governmental regulations) vs. our Good Lord cutting way back on the faucet these last three years as a natural, albeit undesirable phenomenon? Saying it another way, how much water would we find available right now if ALL regulations were lifted, even on an interim basis?”

So far, a definitive response has proven extraordinarily elusive.

Did you know that when a Delta Smelt gasps for air, its socialistic lips form the “O” in “Obama.”

I just made that up.

But – let’s see if it spreads

““Dawn?” Plan It!”

Ground Zero is a four-hour drive from Oakhurst.

Muir Woods is on the Pacific Coast of Southwestern Marin County, just northwest of San Francisco. In this postmodern world, it represents a primeval paradise. That’s where we last saw Caesar.

He’s back again starting tomorrow in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, a follow-up to 2011’s Oscar-nominated “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.

While many still shake, shudder and shiver over the notion that our human species has descended from apes, I have always deemed “ascended” to be more appropriate terminology and have never felt theologically threatened by such notion, sensing a deity of any determination should be given proper credit and acknowledgment for bringing us about any old way deemed divinely desirable at the time of extended origination. Who are we to question or contradict an ultimate causal effect? Huh?

Avoiding any plot spoilers here, suffice it to observe that this latest (eighth) addition to a story line that started with 1968’s original “Planet of the Apes” starring Charlton Heston is the best one yet, combining electrifying cinematic action with surprisingly insightful reflection. Chill out, Cheetah. This hairy hit gets down with it.

What I can relate is the central point of focus. What makes us kill each other? What intuitive, instinctive, integral aspect of our nature often brings us to a biochemical boiling point from which we can only obtain release, relief and retribution through violently forceful action against fellow creatures?

The Middle East has seen enough insanity these last few weeks with I.S.I.S. unilaterally carving out its own new nation from parts of Syria and Iraq as an Islamic Caliphate. This well-armed, tightly disciplined Sunni military group exclusively recognizes Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi as “leader for Muslims everywhere”, a distinction dramatically bolstered by his systematic use of torture, beheadings and crucifixions as a preferred means of winning friends and influencing people. Even Al Qaida dispises him.

And now we see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacting with Old Testament style vengeance against Hamas, a radical Palestinian organization he accuses of kidnapping and killing three young Jewish teenagers, although leaders of that rebellious body, never reticent in the past to admit culpability in acts against the Jewish state, have disavowed any connection with the crime.

As Israeli jets bombed and strafed Palestinian Gaza, Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, a 16 year-old Palestinian teen, was burned alive, simultaneously igniting what threatens to become a Third Intifada – another major Palestinian uprising against Jewish rule. As recorded on security cameras, Muhammed was sitting on a wall outside a mosque and his home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat at 3:34 a.m. Wednesday of last week, waiting for dawn prayer, when a gray Hyundai pulled up and two people forced him into the car. His charred body was found 90 minutes later in the Jerusalem Forest. That’s all video verified.

Over 200 members of the Muslim Brotherhood have now been sentenced to death in Egypt, a country ruled by a former leader of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, who was democratically elected President in June of 2012, only to be overthrown by the military barely more than a year later in July of 2013.

Syria remains a quagmire of tangled allegiance and Afghanistan a nightmare of betrayed alliance.

Hatred even finds a home in Murrieta, California, when busloads of refugee children from Central America are angrily confronted by hundreds of openly hostile, epithet screaming, flag-waving “patriots”, providing a new portrayal of “Ugly Americans” reminiscent of Selma, Alabama and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

How ironic to perhaps discover Abraham Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” in a wildly imaginative monkey movie, but isn’t that what the finest of films are for?

You never know what you just might learn.

“Ape alone weak. Apes together strong” – Caesar – “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011)