Whistleblower Karen Silkwood: Driven Off the Road TWICE?

 

A burgeoning nuclear industry clashing with a growing unionization movement.  Increasing knowledge of the effects of radiation exposure combined with the shoddy handling practices and frequent contamination incidents at a nuclear facility in a small Oklahoma town.  40-66 pounds of missing plutonium hand-waved away by a government that moved the goalposts of how much nuclear material was allowed to go "missing" before corporations had to report it.  A fatal one-car crash of a union leader on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter on a desolate stretch of highway on a cold November night in 1974.   These are just some of the horrifying and still-unsolved aspects of the Karen Silkwood case.  

The 1970s were a very different time.  We were still friendly with Iran, which had yet to undergo the Islamic revolution.  Studio54 was all the rage and its patrons were powered by pure Colombian and Bolivian cocaine.  Quaaludes, a powerful depressant (sedative-hypnotic) that fell somewhere between barbiturates and benzodiazepines, were handed out at anxiety clinics the same way opioids were at pain clinics in the early 2000s.  The Vietnam war was just ending around the mid-70s, bringing home a generation of mentally and physically wounded men.  But aside from that, things tended to feel like one big party.  Baby Boomers were in their 20s and bands like Queen, Aerosmith, Funkadelic, the Bee Gees and Black Sabbath ruled the airwaves.  Jimmy Carter was president, and his focus was on things like solar power and pot legalization.  

But dig a little deeper and you'll see the '70s weren't all that glamorous.  Musicians and celebrities routinely had sex with underage "groupies" and drugged women to rape them without consequence.  Women's rights in general were abhorrent, and Black people and gays were still treated like 3rd class citizens.  Homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the APA until early 1974.  This was also the year that Karen Silkwood, a high-level lab technician at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant in Cimarron, OK, died in a mysterious one-car crash on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter.

Silkwood's badly crushed vehicle.

Karen first got on her employer's bad side when she engaged in an unsuccessful strike in 1972.  (Actually, she probably already had a strike against her for being female in the male-dominated factory/technician field).  Strike 2 (or 3) came when Karen became the 1st woman elected to the union's bargaining committee, for which her job was to document health & safety violations.  Among the many disturbing violations she noted was missing plutonium--specifically between 40 and 66 POUNDS of it.  

To this point, none of the workers had been informed that plutonium could cause cancer.  Sounds insane  today, but it's true.  Karen was informed at a September 1974 meeting and was shocked.  She pulled the legislative director aside and told him:

"I work in a quality-control lab, and I noticed the lab technician would use a felt pen on the X-ray to cover over that little thin line that showed a crack in the control rod welds." And [she told me] there was some fooling with the computer data, too."

Silkwood herself had been so badly contaminated (in highly suspicious ways) she likely would've died a horrible death from radiation-related illness if she hadn't been killed in a car wreck.  It's still debated how her apartment became the source of exposure of both plutonium and uranium, and how the inside of her unused work gloves came to contain dangerous amounts of plutonium despite no punctures.  Kerr-McGee outrageously claimed she contaminated herself to make the company "look bad" even though she was legitimately upset to she learn the radioactive material caused cancer.  She'd always taken safety very seriously, so it's unlikely she or anyone else would've done such a thing.  By the end of her life she was very depressed and those who knew her cited the radiation exposure as the major cause of her low mood.




The Crash

Crash site, 2026

Silkwood crashed her car shortly after leaving a meeting with the union at a small cafe, during which she cried quietly about her fear of developing cancer due to plutonium exposure.  She allegedly said the only bright spot was all the documentation she carried and planned to show the reporter later that night.  She was heading Oklahoma City to meet New York Times reporter David Burnham and carrying a folder, a spiral notebook and a packet of documents with her when she left the union meeting.  None of those were recovered from the car or the surrounding scene.  

Her autopsy found levels of methaqualone (Quaaludes) nearly twice the medicinal dose in her system.  Two tablets of the potent drug were found in her car along with a couple of cannabis joints.  A marijuana plant was also present in her apartment.  She was not wearing her seatbelt.  Her car bore signs of possible ramming from behind, and it appeared to some that she'd been awake at the time of the crash.  From Wikipedia:

"In most one-vehicle accidents where the driver has gone to sleep, or because of impaired abilities," Pipkin noted, "the vehicle has always gone off to the right because of the contour of the road, namely the crown." The second thing Pipkin reported was that the Honda tracks in the grass showed the car did not drift, but was actually out of control before it left the highway. "The only way that this car could have been put in that attitude," he wrote, "was either an impact by an unknown vehicle or a combination of an impact by an unknown vehicle and driver over-reaction and subsequent loss of control."

 

The Aftermath

Nuclear bombs: then & now

Turns out, all of Karen's allegations against the plant were proven true and the plant was ultimately shut down a year later.  (The company itself remained a powerful force in Oklahoma, operating a number of gas stations and other filthy businesses for decades).  The plutonium that contaminated her apartment came from a part of the plant she hadn't accessed in years.  Her family sued Kerr-McGee and was initially awarded a record-setting 10.5 million settlement, but it was overturned by the federal government on the grounds that "state governments can't award punitive damages due to federal regulations of nuclear plants".  Never mind that their "regulation" was a fucking joke.  

The real mystery is what happened to all that missing plutonium.  Once you get to the bottom of that rabbit hole, you start to realize why this evil corporation might have wanted to shut Ms. Silkwood up forever.  About 70 other workers at the same plant had already been contaminated, so that alone wouldn't have been motive to literally have her killed.  But having concrete proof of the company selling nuclear material on the black market in a manner that broke world anti-proliferation treaties would definitely do it.  Because you see, the government had a hand in allowing this material to go unaccounted for.  Regulatory agencies kept moving the goalposts, increasing the amount that was allowed to be "missing" from these facilities until it reached an insane 250% margin of error allowed, according to a 1977 Rolling Stone article.  There was also a media blackout on the issue of missing plutonium, allegedly for "national security" reasons. Convenient.

The attorney for the Silkwood family, Daniel Sheehan, claims the missing plutonium was actually weapons-grade material and it went directly to the uber-trustworthy Israel, who was directed to split it with the Shah of Iran and South Africa.  (Remember, Iran was our ally at the time).  This is the side of the nuclear power industry that's rarely discussed today when aggressive nuclear power proponents fill Reddit comment sections with their propaganda.  But even Wikipedia contains a prominent section on the "dual uses" of this "technology," which can be used both for power and weapons like those used in Nagasaki & Hiroshima. 

The nuclear industry has a long and torrid history of scandals that prove human beings are utterly  incapable of responsibly handling such deadly material on a scale large enough to make it a viable energy alternative to oil and gas.  It's not unlike the BSL-IV laboratories that handle the most deadly pathogens on Earth with no informed consent from the public, or the psychopathic scientists tinkering with "mirror life" and AI viruses.  Some among us just can't resist playing God with the most hazardous killing materials in existence (I can't even say "known to man" because some of these things aren't known even to the most science-minded among us.  Even those at the highest levels of government).  That's a problem.



A SECOND Wreck?

Quaaludes were ultimately banned largely for their role in date rapes and causing car crashes.  If not for this detail, it would be 100% clear that Karen Silkwood was murdered.  The pills were prescribed legally for her anxiety and depression, but they alter judgment, coordination and cognition to such a degree that they're never safe to drive on.  The irony is that depressants like benzos, methaqualone, alcohol and barbiturates can worsen depression and other mood disorders to a dangerous degree, yet they're still prescribed for it to this day (mostly benzos).  

But even this detail comes into question when you learn of a little detail that's almost never mentioned in even the most thorough documentaries about Karen Silkwood.  Just 2 weeks before the fatal crash, Karen was involved in a bizarre wreck at 1:15 a.m. on Highway 33 in which she drove BACKWARDS over a 13-foot embankment!  Interestingly, she didn't report it to the police, instead just calling a wrecking service to have her car towed from a desolate country road West of Guthrie, OK.  She did report it to her car insurance company.  But here's the most important detail:  she wasn't taking Quaaludes yet. 

Here are the details from an official FBI report:

In regard to SILKWOOD* s accident that preceded 
the fatal accident, this matter was not investigated by 
the OHP when the accident occurred, however, it has been 
determined that at 1:15 A.M, , on October 31, 1974, 
(Thursday), at a point 3.8 miles west of Guthrie, Oklahoma, 
on State Highway 33, SILKWOOD* s car, a 1973 Honda, went off 
the highway going over backwards off a 13 foot embankment 
and coming to rest against a fence post. 

SILKWOOD left the car in the ditch until 
morning and thereafter contacted Martin* s Wrecker Service 
in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Wrecker service extracted vehicle 
from ditch and as he previously indicated, this accident 
was not reported to the OHP. It is his understanding that 
as result of this accident SILKWOOD filed a claim with the 
Allstate Insurance Company for damage to the left rear 
quarter panel of the vehicle. It is also his understanding 
the wrecker driver who picked up the SILKWOOD car after the 
fatal accident observed in her car a recent estimate from 
the Eskridge Pontiac-Honda Company relative to damage to 
the left rear quarter panel. It is his understanding this 
estimate Was in excess of $300. 

Inquiry by his department determined that SILKWOOD, on November 1, 1974, 
contacted Dr. CLARENCE in Oklahoma City, 
She subsequently contacted the doctor on November 4, 1974, at which time she 
complained she could not sleep.  It is my understanding that 
he prescribed the metnaquaione (methaqualone) as result of SILKWOOD* s visits. 

Emphasis mine.

It's believed the back-end damage to her car came from that incident, yet if that's the case, it only makes the whole thing look MORE suspicious because she wasn't taking downers yet!  The only place I've seen this mentioned was in one Youtube video, which cited the FBI's own document quoted above.  That vid attempted to write off the fatal crash as a result of intoxication and failed to make the connection with the previous wreck and possible foul play, instead insinuating that Karen was just a bad driver. 

The fact that this happened so close to the fatal incident definitely adds fuel to the murder theories IMHO.  If we could know for CERTAIN that Karen wasn't taking methaqualone prior to seeing Dr. Clarence on November 4, 1974, this would all but seal the case as a murder for me.  The fact that she first contacted this doctor THE DAY AFTER the first wreck suggests it caused her significant distress.  

Was Karen having problems sleeping because she was being followed and feared what ultimately ended up happening?  Did somebody tamper with her car in a way that would cause it to suddenly go backwards and plummet off an embankment?  Was some of her depression and crying at the final union meeting due to being shaken up by her previous late night wreck?  We'll never know because the only person who can answer those questions is no longer with us.





The Fate of Whistleblowers in America

Whistleblowing = a deadly exercise in the "Land of the Free"

What do I think happened to Karen Silkwood?  The same thing happening to whistleblowers today. Manning was thrown in a military prison; Snowden has been exiled in Russia since 2013.  Assange was tortured at Belmarsh prison for years, and they were the lucky ones because they're still living.  In more recent times, multiple corporate whistleblowers have turned up dead of alleged suicide.  Thus is the danger of corporate fascism. 

Even if it turns out that all 5 of those men actually committed suicide, it's 100% unacceptable that an employer or ex-employer would be allowed to harass, threaten, defame and otherwise drive workers to that point for having the audacity to report blatant health, safety & environmental violations.  Clearly, our whistleblower protection laws are NOT being enforced.   Meanwhile our government is trying to write laws banning VPNs and other forms of internet anonymity that make it possible to report the crimes of governments and corporations in a safe manner!  They want to make damn sure we can be driven off the road like Karen Silkwood or pushed out a 10 story window like Frank Olson. 

Where the hell is the media?  That's right:  they've got corporate sponsors to suck off.  I can't wait until they're put completely out of business by citizen journalists, who consistently put them to shame with faster, more accurate information and often even beat law enforcement to the punch when it comes to developing stories.  

Whatever caused this woman's death, there's no question she was ultimately a very brave and important figure in the fight against corporate evil and eventually in shutting down the nuclear industry in the U.S.  The Three Mile Accident in 1979 was the final nail in the coffin, but Karen's death drew enough national attention to get Kerr-McGee's shitty plant shut down.  A major motion picture was even made starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher.  Sadly, unions have lost most of their power since the 1970s as relations between regulators and corporations have grown ever more incestuous.  Working conditions continue to deteriorate and whistleblowers arguably face an even more uphill battle than they did back then. 

Rather than staying and fighting when things get hard, most employees just change jobs or even career paths because we've been so thoroughly propagandized and stripped of our historical knowledge of unionizing, labor strikes and civil disobedience in America.  The U.S. just saw its first general strike in EIGHTY YEARS in response to the ICE killings of 2 people--a fact that would've been unthinkable to the workers of the 1930s-1950s.

R.I.P. Karen Silkwood and all victims of state-sanctioned violence whose only "crimes" were telling the truth to protect the public.  For a country that pushes "personal accountability" so hard, you'd think there'd be at least a couple corporate CEOs in prison or on death row for decisions that killed hundreds of thousands of people for no reason other than enriching themselves.  (BP oil spill, Bayer AIDS blood scandal, Vioxx peddlers, Monsanto Agent Orange pushers, etc).  If "corporations are people," they must be held to the same legal standards as the average Joe.

Karen Silkwood
1946 - 1974

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When Intuition and Gut Feelings Can't Be Trusted

Intuition and "gut feelings" are a true gift.  Even the paralyzing fear one feels when their life is in danger is a positive thing, as discussed in the classic book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin DeBecker.  Women are trained from a young age to prioritize "niceness" and congeniality above our own safety and often ignore our internal warning system for fear of appearing "bitchy" or ungrateful.  This is to our detriment.  That feeling when a man is following a little too close, when someone behaves okay on paper but their "vibe" gives you a sickly feeling...  that sort of thing should NEVER be ignored or downplayed.

However, intuition (including "mother's intuition") has its limits.  Because it's a survival instinct that originates in the primitive part of our brain, it has no ability to be rational or carry out complex analytical or critical thinking processes.  Its only purpose is IMMEDIATE survival--outrunning the lion on the Savannah, escaping seconds before lightning strikes... avoiding modern-day human predators, freak accidents or natural disasters.  The feeling is often indescribably intense and sets in seemingly out of nowhere, prompting immediate action before one even has time to think.  

This is exactly the kind of thing that works against rational, logical thought.  Intuition or doing "what feels right" when it comes to complex medical decisions or other things requiring expert levels of knowledge is dangerous because these things don't adhere to our "common sense" beliefs about what's good/bad for you, etc.  Example:  Genetically modified foods (GMOs) scare a whole lot of people, but there's 0 medical or scientific evidence to justify that fear.  Vaccine ingredient lists sound intimidating, plus nobody likes to see their child cry from the pain of being jabbed with a needle. 

Viral infections, not vaccines, trigger chronic illnesses like autoimmune disease.

But vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and far less risky than the diseases they prevent.  It SOUNDS reasonable that just letting a child acquire infections "naturally" would "build a strong immune system" but that idea actually comes from the largely discredited Hygiene Hypothesis.  In fact, the #1 reason kids didn't make it to adulthood before the 1950s was infectious disease, and many of the autoimmune diseases & chronic conditions blamed on vaccines are actually proven to be triggered by viral infections.  Entire sections of cemeteries called "baby gardens" were dedicated to just infants and toddlers who died from transmissible disease prior to childhood vaccination.  The fact that we've largely forgotten this horror speaks to their safety and effectiveness.  





Natural ≠ Safe

We tend to believe that "natural = safe" and "chemical = dangerous" but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Plenty of things in nature* will kill you with amazing speed and acuity while synthetic things like antivirals for AIDS and shingles, antibiotics, Naloxone, Epi-pens, Albuterol inhalers and the various and sundry drugs for cancer treatment, cardiovascular conditions, Type I and II diabetes and mental illness save countless lives around the world every year, month, day, minute and second.  Disagree?  Then keep your science-hating ass away from the hospital/doctor's office next time you're nursing a 104F fever or slice an artery.  Go visit your spice rack or consult a green witch.  Walk your talk.

The nonsense that started it all... Why'd it take TWELVE years to retract tho?

The anti-vaccine movement has been around since the first vaccine but gained a dangerous foothold when the internet became ubiquitous.  Measles, for instance, was declared eliminated in the U.S. in the year 2000.  Cue Andrew Wakefield's bogus retracted study and the shitstorm of celebrity advocacy by geniuses like Jenny McCarthy, Rob Schneider & others with 0 medical education/experience.  Unfunny clowns with a platform and a crowd of equally uneducated followers.  Now we're staring down the barrel of a full-blown measles outbreak.  As of late 2019, 140,000 people worldwide died from the disease, many of whom were children.  2025 saw the most cases of any year since 2000.  We're not just losing ground, we're falling off the edge of the flat Earth.

All this when it takes two fucking seconds to answer the big scawy question on all the concerned parents' minds:  whether vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.  Here's your answer:

Courtesy the NHS.

I encourage you to try Googling, Bing'ing, Yandexing, Gibiru'ing, DuckDuckGo'ing and otherwise searching this question in as many ways as you can think of, because the answer is always the same.  You don't develop autism after birth just like you don't "develop" Down Syndrome post-natally.  You're born with it and will die with it, therefore vaccines nor any other thing can cause it after you exit the womb.  It's a brain wiring disorder of neurology, not psychology, and it happens when the brain's neurons, axons, myelin sheaths and other hardware is laid down in the womb. 

Just because it's not noticed by parents or others before a certain age doesn't mean it wasn't always THERE, it just means it gets worse at certain developmental stages (being a developmental disorder and all), such as when the brain grows more rapidly than at any other point between ages 1-3, or during the adolescent and teen years when puberty hormones and pruning cause extreme changes.  These developmental periods are difficult for ANY child, but for the autistic or ADHD child, they can be catastrophic in the absence of major nutritional, emotional & neuroprotective supports.

Plus, infants don't tend to do a lot of the things you'd need to do to be diagnosed with autism--playing with toys "wrong," toe-walking, hand-flapping, echolalia, extreme pickiness with food, repetitive behaviors/stimming, lack of eye contact/reciprocal emotion.  They just lay there sucking a bottle.  Still, professionals have diagnosed autism in infants as young as 6 months old because they know what to look for.





Where SHOULD You Go for Reliable Health Info?

Smart people know when to defer to the experts.  Idiots think they know more than them.

Reliable does not mean "whatever confirms my existing beliefs."  It means factual and unbiased.  People seem to have lost the ability to tell fact from opinion and to know when to defer to actual experts.  When life-altering medical decisions are involved, you can't just pick a side like you would pick a political party or Superbowl team.  There are people whose entire adult lives have been devoted to studying all the intricate and boring details of these issues and then applying them in the real world, and you will NEVER know more than they do (nor will I). 

Just as you wouldn't go to a mechanic for a root canal or a veterinarian for a colonoscopy, you should NEVER go to social media (TikTok & Youtube vids, Facebook groups, memes or other unofficial sources) for important medical info.  If you wouldn't trust a random layperson or group to perform a complex surgery or make big medical decisions for your loved one, do not accept the bullshit these non-experts churn out just because it appeals to your gut reaction or instincts.

.what?  How common web addresses stack up.

That doesn't mean nowhere on the internet is reliable, but social media algorithms are set up to show you more of what you like/follow/interact with, not more of what's reliable, fact-based or true.  This is why Zuckerberg has been on trial so many times: his website has caused civil wars in Myanmar, tampered with election outcomes in the U.S. and promoted deadly medical misinformation via this dangerous algorithm whose only goal is to get you to spend more time on the site--facts be damned.  What you want is factual, evidence-based information with no regard for opinion or what's convenient, comfortable or profitable.  Here are some places you can find that:

Cochrane

NIH

AAFP.org (American Academy of Family Physicians)

Medlineplus.gov

Harvard Health

Yale.edu

World Health Organization (WHO.int)

Science-Based Medicine (sciencebasedmedicine.org)

NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)

Just go to Google or another search engine to find these.  Generally, well-known hospitals and health orgs like The Red Cross, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, American Heart Association & American Cancer Society are high-quality as well.  And here's a list of the top-rated charities.  Plenty of well-known ones, like the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity (still the highest-grossing and most well-known of its kind) are incredibly shady.  Recall their pink drill bit controversy among others.  

Not satire:  a real Susan G. Komen ad

* Oh yeah, here's that list of 100% natural things that will kill your ass deader than a hammer.  

Ricin

Oleander

Botulism

Lead, mercury & arsenic

Mosquitoes (Malaria and Zika)

Ticks (Lyme, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever & this terrifying list of tick-borne diseases) 

Anthrax

Ionizing radiation (aka "the sun")

Asbestos
the broken pits of cherries, apricots, peaches & plums (cyanide)
Tobacco, morphine, ephedra, ergot, Betel nut
Deathcap mushrooms
Deadly nightshades (scopolamine, datura, henbane, etc)
High doses of Vitamin A, E or D
Wood smoke
Carbon monoxide, radon, methane, phosgene
HPV, HIV, Black plague, rabies, Ebola, Nipah, Smallpox, Polio
Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis, floods

...to name a few.  


Oh yeah, a newborn baby in New Mexico just died of listeria because its mother drank raw milk, which has been under increasing scrutiny due to the presence of Avian flu in cow's milk.  So you can add that to the list.

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Disproportionate Outrage

Let me start by saying I firmly denounce the vile, Nazi-esque actions of ICE.  Acting as the judge, jury & executioner by shooting people dead in the street and then having a ready-made media spin narrative blaming the victim is criminal and should be treated as such.  

With that said...

Nothing else comes close.

I'm having a hard time drumming up the same amount of outrage as others about this situation.  After losing over 1 million Americans to COVID (many more if you count all those lost to cardiovascular complications or immune suppression-related cancers), 2 deaths just doesn't seem worthy of the disproportionate levels of outrage I'm seeing.  The first general strike in EIGHTY YEARS?!  Are you fucking kidding me?  No wonder this country's working conditions are in the shape they're in.  Countries like France consider striking part of their national culture and civic duty, and striking is a near-constant reality that helps maintain their above-average working conditions.  Here?  People crack jokes about how protesters and strikers don't actually have jobs, as if that's some kind of huge "gotcha".  The concept of withholding labor to improve working and living conditions is as foreign in America as the products on store shelves. 

And Kaiser Permanente nurses are striking--good for them!  Where was this energy when hospitals were overrun with COVID patients who were largely there due to refusal to stay home and mask up in public?  When nurses and other healthcare workers were given trashbags as PPE at the deadly start of the pandemic when nobody had any immunity?  Rather than telling those selfish, murderous disease-spreaders to fuck off, they continued prioritizing them over everyone else, then they quit nursing en masse due to burnout because they refused to strike when it would've been an effective form of harm reduction AND protest.

Please fucking make that make sense, oh levelheaded nurses.

We're just so fucking bad at threat evaluation & predicting what is actually likely to take our lives.  We pour disproportionate levels of outrage into terrorist attacks, mass shootings and one-off assassinations/police brutality cases when public health crises are by far the biggest killers in this nation.  The top 3 crises in U.S. history since this nation was founded?  Infectious diseases and drug epidemics.  AIDS, the opioid crisis and COVID to be precise.  These are not mere unavoidable acts of nature but public health policy choices.  Lack of universal healthcare combined with abhorrent working conditions (lack of paid sick leave/vacation time/parental leave; no unified federal mandates like lockdowns or mask mandates during highly contagious airborne pandemics), the defunding of public health institutions, vaccine disinformation and all the rest are POLICY CHOICES.  Insanely high drug costs?  Choices.  Private insurance delays/denials/premiums/deductibles?  Choices.  Ridiculous hospital and doctor bills?  Choices.  We know this because other developed nations do not deal with any of this shit. 

These and other plagues will leave you just as dead as being shot in the street, which would actually be a much quicker and less horrific way to go.  While Charlie Kirk's death left onlookers traumatized, he never knew what hit him.  All those people who died drowning in their own bodily fluids on ECMO and ventilators during COVID absolutely felt fear and pain and benzo-induced delirium and God knows what else on their way out.  JFK?  Not so much.  Martin and Malcolm?  Ehh, no.  Nobody deserves to die prematurely, but there are absolutely better and worse ways to die.  

Maybe I'm jaded after living through the deadliest crisis in U.S. history while both parties shrugged, but I'm frankly a little sick of certain types of violence being decriminalized and even encouraged while others are given 24/7 coverage.  Shoot someone dead in the street?  That's a crime, but if you kill them by spreading a deadly virus or denying them health coverage they've already paid for, they need to get over it.  Starve a child by not sending out SNAP benefits or push a family out of their home onto the street to freeze to death and that's actually the victims' fault somehow, but heaven forbid you kill a mass murderer by shooting him in the street.  I don't care much who's on the receiving end, we need to get it through our thick skulls that guns, bombs and knives aren't the only tools of violence.  If you cause someone's death regardless of the means or your intention, you are a murderer.  Period.  

Where was this outrage during Biden's presidency?  Was police violence solved?  Did ICE get defunded and magically go away?  Did we tear down the wall?  No.  In fact, Tom Homan who is currently being labeled a Nazi by leftist orgs and the liberal media, was awarded some kind of gay Obama medal and held senior positions at ICE throughout the Obama years without so much as a critical word from the media or advocacy groups.  Funny how these street soldiers go silent when a Democrat is in office.  Guess they've gotta eat brunch sometime.  To me, this just proves it really was the "mean tweets" they took issue with all along.

Until we start judging deadly events by death toll instead of entertainment value/polarization potential, we'll keep missing the point and dying by the millions.  Sorry transmissible diseases aren't as "sexy" and exciting as gun violence, but they've proven far more deadly in a nation with no universal healthcare, slave-like working conditions, a weak central government and a libertarian "individual freedoms over common good" mindset.  And that's saying a lot because our police are so militarized and we're swimming in guns. 

To be clear, I'm GLAD to see the general strikes and protests and hope they continue.  I fully support the community efforts to help scared undocumented immigrants and others hiding from these animals... the mutual aid type organizing.  And I love the criticism I'm seeing of useless Democrat politicians at the moment.  But I'm under no illusions it will make any difference come voting time.  I've seen one too many elections where 3rd parties should've gotten far closer to 5% and didn't even get 1%.  Fool me once... shame on you.  Fool me, you can't get fooled again.

On the "Goal Digger" Epidemic 🪙⛏

Hoes really have the nerve to say shit like.....

"Looking for a soulmate/twin flame.  Someone to connect with on a deep spiritual level.  No time for surface-level shit in 2026.  Must have a strong work ethic!  Broke mfs need not apply."

....With a straight face.
0% awareness of the contradiction.  😒

It would appear that you're mixing up your dating resume with your actual resume, love.  Unless you're hiring seasonal help or seeking a sponsor for your Rent-A-Coochie startup, things like "work ethic", job title or your partner's checking account balance are neither relevant nor any of your damn business.   As long as they're not coming at you with their hands out or constantly being dragged into court for late child support, writing hot checks or other legal fuckery, their finances are not your concern (and vice versa). 

You're both autonomous, grown-ass adults, and that doesn't change when you enter a relationship or even a marriage.  Trying to outsource basic adulting tasks like earning a living/handing the finances or cooking/cleaning/grocery shopping is a one-way trip to Codependence Country and Learned HelplessnessLand.  This brand of passive laziness makes it harder to leave if the relationship goes South or even becomes abusive, which it often does due to resentment when you both serve as workhorses for each other instead of actual romantic partners.  I know because I've SEEN'T it up close.  

Obviously you don't wanna take on your partner's debt or legal headaches, so you have a right (and a responsibility if you're indeed responsible) to make sure they're not hiding anything in that regard before signing marriage or mortgage papers.  But that's about as far as your "rights" extend.  Digging through your partner's W2s, checking your spouse's bank balance, pay stubs or other private financial records is not only tacky but batshit crazy.  It's also a massive red flag that reveals your true motives if they somehow missed the verbal warnings. 

The truth is, no one has a right to demand that another person hand over their money or possessions just because they entered a relationship or marriage.  The entitlement would be laughable if not so delusionally arrogant!  Who do you think you are?  Nobody owes your grown ass a damn thing in this world that you didn't earn--not your parents, your spouse, your 8th grade gym teacher...  Merely possessing a pussy does not give you the right to hold your partner's financial account ransom.  I have one myself, a nice one, and so does half the human population.  While they're certainly a plus, you still have to treat people with respect and take care of your basic self-care tasks.   And bepenised people (men) can do their own housework/portion of the parenting too.  Do all the things you'd fucking do if you were single, and stop treating your partner like The Help or The Bank!

If you want a higher living standard, take another job or work overtime.  Invest in the stock market or another passive source of income.  I really DGAF how you get your "side money".  I'm perfectly content with my lifestyle.  My bills are paid and I don't owe a dime in debt, taxes or unpaid bills.  My car is paid for in full and I never have trouble paying the rent on time.  Whether you're impressed with my stuff is another story, but at least it's MINE free and clear.   I'm not in over my head, working myself to an early grave to buy shit I can't afford to impress people I can't fucking stand.  I have extra time and extra space, which will always be more important than extra STUFF.  I had time to write this screed...





If Women Were Honest...

🤮

You're not fooling anybody with terms like "work ethic"; this ain't a Zip Recruiter ad.  If you're gonna be a shameless moneyhungry skankbot, at least have the guts to say it wit ya chest.  Here's how I envision a more honest dating ad: 

"Grown-ass woman seeking replacement Father Fig to be my walking ATM.  Duties include funding my lifestyle, opening jars and fixing stuff around the house (that you'll buy or build).   Must buy me designer shit and take me to exotic places on your dime.  I want excitement and adventure and to keep up with the Joneses and then make the Joneses eat my dust.  I want my friends to be so jealous they turn 50 shades of green; for total strangers to cry themselves to sleep after one look at my stunning social media photos in Bora Bora and Antigua and Dubai.  I want to escape into a world of make-believe and play acting that puts my own inner child to shame. She was always a sniveling loser anyway.

Oh yeah, I fully intend to use sex and physical intimacy as a reward/punishment in our relationship, as it holds no value to me outside of its ability to "motivate" (read: control)  you.  If you're lucky and be a good little sponso--, err, spouse, you might even get missionary 2x a year-- your birthday and 4th of July.  Or Fat Tuesday and Thanksgiving.  Depending on my mood.  Anyway, love you Snookums!" 

What'd I leave out?

Exclusion Works Both Ways

*Pandemic

Let me be clear:  It's your prerogative to avoid "broke bitches" if you so choose.  While I may think it's petty, superficial and rude, I'd never try and deprive you of that freedom.  Dating and relationships are inherently exclusionary and you don't owe your affection to anyone, nor do you owe anyone an explanation for WHY you rejected them.  Any explanation you do give is a courtesy. 

By the same turn, both "broke bitches" and wealthy candidates alike reserve the right to shut your shameless gold digging ass down, no questions asked.  If you were to ask why, we'd likely tell you that your motives are repulsive; that no person rich, poor or in between wants to deal with an ungrateful, entitled womanchild bleeding them dry for the rest of their days! It's the behavior that's intolerable; the size of the victim's bank acct. is a non-factor.  NOBODY wants to be used for what they have or what they can do for someone, especially in a totally optional relationship that's supposed to be about love!

Which brings me to my next point:  you'll never know whether I'm in the former or latter category: dead broke or quietly sitting on a gold mine.  (Maybe it's because I'm genuinely poor.  But maybe it's because truly wealthy people who come from generations of wealth know not to flaunt their money, nor to blow it on flashy status symbols that depreciate before you even get them off the lot.  They know it's better to invest that money in stocks and bonds or put it in a savings account where it will passively draw interest that you can live off later.  That dressing casually serves a dual purpose:  avoiding unwanted attention from criminal jewelry snatchers and legal thieves like the IRS and FBI who can put you in the poor house for the rest of your days if you put yourself on their radar.   

We--err, THEY--never flash fat stacks of cash like the idiots in rap videos, instead spreading their wealth among multiple diverse mediums ranging from actual gold coins to Bitcoins.  Safes full of cash surrounded by loaded guns are another good option, or so I hear.  Lot harder for the three-letter agencies to account for and collect taxes on it that way.  

While having a bank account is pretty much required in this day and age, the downsides are also massive:  the IRS is notified automatically when a person withdraws over $10,000 in a single business day, for instance.  And it's becoming increasingly common for crypto scammers to drain the personal and business accounts of elderly people in countries like Australia, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. without the bank ever sending the victims a single automated notification (which they've all signed up for).  This money just vanishes and is almost never retrieved.  Entire nest eggs and life savings, gone in an instant.  Between that and the overdraft fees, daily spending limits, temporary "POS purchase holds" that are often as much as the actual charge and can take 5 days to be refunded... let's just say banks don't have a lot going for them.  The customer bears nearly the entire burden for all of this.   

Again, It wouldn't matter whether I was one of these theoretical old money Nepo baby hags or a homeless panhandler posting this from an internet cafe--either way, I'd never blow my dough on big stupid purchases for an able-bodied partner who can get it herself.  I'm not a big spender even on myself; I'm low-maintenance and have nothing to prove.  If you do, may I suggest  working through that in therapy.  It's okay to enjoy the finer things in life, provided you don't mind paying for them yourself and don't actually need them to be happy.  Nice things are called "nice" for a reason... because that's all they are:  Nice, not necessary.  Sometimes it takes a major health catastrophe or loss of a loved one to realize what really matters, and still, and some people never do.

Unless a mofo is openly living their paypig kink, it should be considered shameful to exhibit even the mildest gold digger behavior.  And lesbians, there truly is no place for this heteronormative transactional nonsense in our community.  If you as a self-proclaimed "goaldigger" wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of dating another person who identified as such, why would you think anyone else would be?   

In closing, I'd implore anyone thinking of getting hitched in 2026 to have your lawyer draft a pre-nup or at least a strongly worded post-nup.  With U.S. divorce rates hovering around 40-50% for first marriages and even higher for subsequent ones, it would be foolish to do otherwise.  Nobody thinks their blissful union will fall into this half of the married population, but that's magical thinking.  Or wishful thinking.  Or failure to think at all.  In any case, it's a good way to lose your life's hard-earned savings. 


(Sorry if this doesn't sound very "radfem" but it needs to be said.  You can't be outraged at (legal) old guy/young girl relationships that are clearly based on his money and her looks when you seek out the same thing in your relationships.  It's a transaction, just like how a man buys a lapdance in a strip club or a sex act from a prostitute in the streets.  When you present yourself as some kind of prize to be awarded to the highest bidder, you render yourself a high-priced prostitute.  If some of you put as much work into just getting your own shit as you put into manipulating people, you'd be set for life). 

Privilege vs. Power: How Identity Politics Halts Progress

Feminism does not mean co-signing everything a woman does simply because she's female.  3rd wave feminism is an oxymoron and the people who subscribe to it, actual morons.  Yes, I'd love to see a female president in my lifetime after 250 years of male rulers, but I didn't vote for Hillary or Kamala, nor would I have voted for Tulsi Gabbard or Elizabeth Warren or Roseanne Barr.  Shirley Chisholm?  Hell yeah!  Jill Stein?  Absolutely, if my state allowed 3rd party votes or write-ins.  But that's based on policies and behavior that goes beyond their stated views or superficial traits (race, sex). 

Sure, women have the right to be video vixens & strippers and hookers and Playboy bunnies and tradwives & similarly brainless things, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to support them in that.  More importantly, when I call them out it doesn't make me "anti-woman" or anti-feminist.  It makes me a woman with an opinion that feminism fought to allow me to have.

I stand with Black people & all oppressed minorities against their oppressors, but that doesn't mean everything every minority individual says or does is worth defending.  Diddy, R. Kelly, Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, the Sinaloa cartel, MS-13, Bill Cosby, Hamas, President Obama, Tawana Brawley, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West... the list goes on.  These people and groups are NOT above criticism based on their skin tone or the hardship that comes with it, nor does my criticism imply that I'm racist or don't acknowledge that hardship.  Jeffrey Dahmer was a gay man but he also killed/cannibalized gay men, therefore my condemnation of him is not "anti-gay".  



Privilege vs. Power

Maleness = privilege; the ladder = power

You cease to be a victim the moment you become a victimizer.  No billionaire on the planet is oppressed or marginalized in any meaningful way regardless of their race or sex.  While white skin and male anatomy definitely remove a few hurdles in life, that's privilege, not power.  Privilege is an absence of obstacles.  Power is the added ability to control others & the outcome of situations that others would be at the mercy of.   

When you can walk through airports all over the world with no TSA checks like Epstein (a Jew) after decades of raping/trafficking underage girls, or be a serial rapist of men, women and children as young as 10 and have people killed like Diddy (a Black man), and not spend ONE DAY IN PRISON for it or even have it mentioned at your trial, that's power.  Power is the ability to pay off judges and prosecutors, to issue NDA's that cover illegal acts & bully hoardes of people into silence about their own experiences.  It's handpicking the next tween sensation/industry plant to be groomed & pushed on the public like Bieber or Billie Eilish or Katy Perry or Milli Vanilli or Fletcher while ignoring actual talent.  Power is the ability to commit illegal, evil acts and still be treated like a V.I.P.  To buy up newspapers & social media platforms & influence society at a macro level.  To set trends, make or break careers.  Declare war silently with drones & sneak attacks.  To determine who lives and dies, who eats & who starves.  To buy off politicians & be granted unfair advantages.  To control the food supply, the banks, the nukes and the natural resources of this planet.  

Black Rock is power.  Israel is power.  Military contractors like Halliburton & Raytheon are power.  NAFTA, the 3 Strikes Crime Bill, the Affordable Care Act, the Big Beautiful Bill & other deceptively-named wide reaching bills are examples of power transfers from the weak to the strong.  Bezos, Musk, Maxwell, Zuckerberg, Sackler, the Royal Family... that's power.  A poor ignorant redneck in West Virginia has privilege, not power.  And all his racist ranting is because he's acutely aware of it.  His race is the only thing he DOES have, so he clings to it with all his might to convince himself he's not a total failure in life.  His anger is justified but badly misdirected.  Unless he picks up a gun and walks into a school, church, grocery store or other public venue and starts mowing people down, he has no power to influence your life or mine.  Politicians and billionaires of all races, political affiliations & persuasions DO.  

When you align yourself with bad people because you share superficial traits like sex, sexual orientation, race or religion, you aid the power imbalance that is killing the planet & ruining our lives.  Gloria Steinem is a woman and a feminist who looks like me (white), but she doesn't represent me because I've never worked for the CIA or owned a print publication & do not have a net worth in the millions.  I do NOT believe that working outside the home is innately empowering.  It only means that 100% instead of 50% of the adult population is now available for wage slavery & exploitation.  More workers = less pay for each individual worker & the ability to fire anyone who stands up for themselves, knowing you can just hire someone else in their place (or hire NO one in their place and just divide their responsibilities up among existing workers).  It means mothers no longer get to stay home and bond with/care for their children.  Couples are forced to pay for expensive, neglectful childcare and the children suffer. 

Ask any Black working mother from the '60s or '70s whether she found work "empowering" and prepare to be laughed at.  Now we're all in that position.  That was the goal of Steinem's CIA-backed feminism crusade whether she knew it or not.  Working outside the home should be a choice; something you do because you have a talent to share with the world, not something you have to do to avoid starvation.  There's more than enough wealth & resources to pay for this many times over but it's being hoarded in tax havens by a powerful few who don't even pay federal taxes on it.  AND AMERICAN IDIOTS DEFEND THEIR "RIGHT" TO DO IT.

Work is only empowering when it's compensated fairly & when pay keeps pace with the cost of living.  HAVING to work and not being paid fairly is indentured servitude.  You canNOT do/be/have it all, nor can I.  That mindset shaves years off your life via stress, sleep deprivation, increased blood pressure, poor health choices & self-neglect.  This is why the sad phrase "self-care is revolutionary" exists.  Because simply taking a minute to goddamned BREATHE outside of work IS revolutionary when you live in a capitalist hellscape like the U.S.  A system whose only intention is to use you up and throw you away once you break down, replacing you with a freshly propagandized able-bodied worker before your funeral.  THEN they have the nerve to whine about low birth rates!  Maybe stop making the planet unlivable and life unaffordable if you want people to bring new defenseless lives into the world.   

Where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, capitalism blows and identity politics is irrational tribalism.  Class solidarity > everything.  

  

History Lesson: Iran Before and After U.S. Intervention

 

This was the Iran of the 1960s and '70s:  Women dressed in the fashions of the day enjoying time with friends of both sexes, studying in universities and participating in the workforce.  The country had a secular democratically-elected leader and was considered a safe oasis in the Middle Eastern desert for Western countries like the U.S. and Great Britain.  The way Israel is seen today.







...and this is Iran from 1979 to the present day.  After Jimmy Carter formed a secret alliance with Ayatollah Khomeini, putting "U.S. interests" ahead of human rights and freedom for the people of Iran.  Like all the other presidents before and after him, he stuck his nose where it didn't belong & the locals of the region paid (and continue to pay) dearly.  To his credit, Carter seemed to feel great remorse about this for the rest of his life, making statements like the following: 

But the damage was done.  Carter's otherwise admirable legacy (well, compared to other presidents of the 20th-21st Centuries) was tarnished, forever blemished by the suffering he brought to the region.

While Carter gets most of the heat for turning Iran into an Islamic fascist shithole, I'm sure the CIA and other three-letter deep state agencies played an even bigger role in this massive, monumental fuck-up.  Just like they did by installing the "Jamaican Labour Party" (JLP) (read: CIA) puppet Edward Seaga in 1980s Jamaica and illegally funding the Contras in Nicaragua around the same time... to name a few of their Greatest Hits.

As an American I'd just like to offer my meaningless but sincere apologies to all the women & girls of Iran, past and present.  Please know that not all of us (or even fully half of us) support U.S. intervention and meddling abroad.  In fact many violently oppose it, whether for altruistic reasons or selfish personal ones like keeping our own people safe from terrorist blowback.  Like the Middle East, the U.S. is run by dogmatic hypermasculine aggressors who pursue their own selfish agendas at the cost of countless human lives.  Freedom and democracy are but an illusion and the few freedoms we do have are as fragile as those of pre-1979 Iran.  

Unfortunately too few Americans accept this, preferring instead to blame Islam or whatever belief/economic system the people of faraway lands subscribe to.  The truth is, Christian fascism, crony capitalism and Western neo-liberalism are every bit as dangerous to democracy and quality of life here as Islamic militancy, communism and Sharia law are to the people of our "enemy" nations abroad.   

COVID or Flu? A Quick Biology Lesson

(Click photos to enlarge)

 

Location of sialic acid (flu) receptors in the body.





Location of ACE-2 (COVID) receptors in the body.

For anyone wondering how a "respiratory virus" can cause such widespread and baffling symptoms, the reason is simple:  COVID never was a "respiratory virus" to begin with.  In addition to its horrific immune-suppressing effects, COVID attaches to receptors located in practically every organ system of the body, which means it can cause symptoms in any of those systems.  Influenza attaches to totally different receptors located primarily in the throat and lungs. 

COVID's onset is typically 3-6 days after exposure, and symptoms generally last up to 2 weeks (or longer with Long COVID).  Symptoms can creep up gradually and may be anywhere from nearly asymptomatic (like mild allergies) to severe, and they often get better and worse in "waves".  Flu, on the other hand, hits hard and fast with severe fatigue, full-body muscle aches and respiratory symptoms like coughing and sneezing.  Symptoms can be quite similar for some, but influenza is NOT associated with changes in taste or smell.  COVID is also far more infectious (contagious) than influenza, and that aspect is getting worse with each mutation.  

The R-naught value of a virus is the number of people one sick person is likely to infect.  Here are the R0 values for COVID and flu:

R0 values for influenza:  1.2 to 1.8

R0 values for COVID (Omicron strain):  9.5


To make it plain:  if someone has influenza of any strain, they're likely to infect, at most, 2 other people.  If they have COVID, they're likely to infect NINE others. 

Some of those infected may not have severe symptoms immediately, but COVID causes changes to the body that increase a person's risk of heart attack and stroke (among other things) for months or years after infection--even totally asymptomatic ones.  Influenza shares this trait, but because it's less infectious it doesn't pose as big a threat as COVID, which generally surges twice per year and may have multiple strains circulating at once, like the Nimbus and Stratus variants.  Flu peaks in the winter months and generally only has one strain per year. 

That means if a person catches COVID twice per year 6 months apart, their risk of severe complications stays elevated the entire year.  Studies show immunity to COVID only lasts only 3-4 months after severe infection, which is a disturbingly short period of time.  And if two different strains (like Delta and Omicron) are going around at the same time, you may be reinfected in even less than 3-4 months. Unfortunately, immunity from the vaccine doesn't last any longer.  

There's a lot more than can be said of COVID's effects on viral reactivation in the body (primarily herpesviruses like zoster & Epstein-Barr), immunosuppression and even things like cancer, but I wanted to keep this simple so I'll stop here. 🦠  But click those blue (red?) links to learn more about those aspects of the virus from actually reliable sources.

It should go without saying, but mask up indoors when COVID is surging and get your annual booster for COVID and flu, especially if you're over 65 or have any other health issues (obesity, Type II diabetes, lung diseases like COPD, etc).  These measures may not prevent illness entirely, but they will reduce the severity and duration of illness, keeping you out of the hospital for severe complications like pneumonia or ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome).  

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