#rainy fascist island

[thedreadvampy]

fuck me so the migration bill passed in Commons yesterday.

still gotta go through Lords so it MIGHT get slightly defanged but let's look at how well that worked for the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill last year which passed into law despite native public outrcy with most of its anti-protest and all of its anti-Traveller clauses intact. and there's not been nearly the same degree of concerted protest against this one yet.

in a bid to """""""stop the small boats"""""", the bill will:

Override the rights enshrined in international law to seek asylum, instead prioritising the Home Office's new legal duty to deport any undocumented migrant to concentration camps in Rwanda. yes I said concentration camps they are mass internment camps for a specific group of people to be incarcerated indefinitely without trial. that is what a concentration camp is. here's home secretary Suella Braverman laughing in front of the "estate" built in Rwanda to house deported asylum seekers

allow for indefinite detention of children suspected of being undocumented until they can be removed to the Rwanda camps. Tory rebels said 'could we not have to review that after 3 days to justify their detention?' and the Tory government said 'no but if we pass the bill we pinky promise that we'll think about maybe adding in an indefinite review period at some point' so it passed.

remove temporary protections allowing people claiming they've been trafficked as slaves to stay in the UK while their case is reviewed, and to recieve some support and leniency if it's found that they are Literally Here As Slaves. that's off the table in this bill, if you get trafficked to Britain as a slave who give a shit it's off to Rwanda with you buddy. even former PM Theresa "We Have To Create A Really Hostile Environment For Immigrants" May was like hey steady on there lads. that is incredibly specifically going to make preventing modern slavery way harder because who the fuck is going to come forward and say "help I'm being enslaved and trapped against my will in bad conditions in an unfamiliar country" when the thing that the government will do with that information is trap you against your will in bad conditions in a different unfamiliar country? NOBODY IS GOING TO DO THAT meaning that victims will be penalised in law for being victimised and traffickers will face even fewer consequences. which to be fair is the Tory playbook.

it's fucked. it's fucked and I feel so sick about it and so afraid of how overtly fascistic and genocidal this government continues to get.

meanwhile their new voter ID laws are in place and they've already been caught lying to voters in high-opposition areas by sending out flyers from party HQ claiming you don't need ID to vote. which you now do.

it's very bad lads. it's very very very very bad.

in the past 24 months we've seen a constant flow of legislation targeting Gypsy/Roma/Traveler communities, migrants, LGBTQ+ people (particularly trans people), disabled and chronically ill people, and protesters and dissidents. meanwhile we're in our biggest cost of living crisis in 45+ years, protections for the poor are being stripped and national services are being privatised.

the best case interpretation as far as I can see is that they expect to be ousted in the next General Election (but that isn't until 2025) and are getting everything they want to do in terms of attacking human rights and wellbeing as far as possible so that the next government will struggle to roll them all the way back

the thing is though that Labour are just nodding along with all these policies and are in the process of aggressively removing the remainder of open leftists from the party's core power structure, having already removed the ordinary membership's ability to guide party leadership or policy, and the SNP, which has often lately been the only meaningful opposition party in Westminster, is in freefall and on fire over an embezzlement and corruption scandal. that plus the voter suppression laws and control over media that the government are wielding FEELS A LOT LIKE even if we make it to the 2025 election we might still get another Tory term.

Winter of Discontent...2!!!! has been something of a damp squib - there have been widespread strikes but little obvious impact. this winter felt like the time things were gonna snap but I'm just not sure we're ever gonna snap hard enough.

Idk I feel sick as a fucking dog. I don't know what to do. If anyone knows of any ways to help (in Edinburgh, I can't travel easily out of the city) with the Migration Bill situation or with stuff more broadly, hmu. I'm pretty well tuned in on trans rights and abortion rights protests but I don't have connects for most other stuff.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Hey, so, if you didn’t know, there are legit racist pogroms happening in the UK, primarily targeting Muslim and South Asian communities especially refugees and immigrants. So for those of you who, like me, have the misfortune to live on rainy fascist island, and might want to help, here’s my list of advice. If any of this is unhelpful, POC please feel free to correct me as I want to be as accurate and useful as possible.

Disclaimer: this is written from my perspective as a white person with full citizenship. Asylum seekers and communities of colour don’t need my advice, and know best what they need and how to practice their own care and mutual aid. This is for people not directly targeted by the riots who want to show solidarity. So,

1) listen to those most impacted and be led by their needs and wants.

2) if there’s disorder going on in your local area, mobilise with other anti-fascists to outnumber and counterprotest the rioters so they can’t attack individuals or institutions trying to help migrants or local minority communities

3) similarly, volunteer on local cleanup and donations if places like Mosques, libraries, advice bureaus or refugee housing is targeted where you live

4) join a local mutual aid network to build cohesion and solidarity in your community and be able to respond rapidly to evolving emergency situations

5) donate money to charities or organisations that work to protect and care for immigrants, refugees, religious minorities and people of colour in the UK

6) learn street first aid, including how to help someone after an acid attack

7) write to your MP, mayor and councillors and ask them to stand up vocally against racism and to take action to stamp out fascism in your community. Arrange a meeting to discuss your concerns if possible

8) donate blood in anticipation of further violence

9) don’t be a bystander if you see individual hate incidents, there have been repeated cases of lone POC being cornered by racist mobs. Be ready to step in or seek help but don’t make stupid decisions that will just put the person (or you!) in further danger

10) make an effort to educate yourself more on other cultures and spend time with neighbours who come from a different background than you

11) learn about systemic racism and the legacy of fascism and colonialism that has made the UK the kind of place where this happens

12) this is also about your own safety, but put together a go bag and have an evacuation plan for you and your family/friends/neighbours in case of local violence

13) organise a solidarity rally in your town

14) argue with your racist relatives, have difficult conversations, hold them to account and make it crystal clear that these attitudes and behaviours are absolutely unacceptable

15) send complaints in to media outlets when they refer inaccurately to ‘protests’, ‘anti-immigration rallies’, ‘pro-British groups’ and ‘legitimate concerns’, when discussing fascist pogroms, or when they imply communities of colour organising in self-defence is equally dangerous and violent

16) check in with your friends who are more likely to be targeted and offer to help in any way that’s useful, but understand they might just want time and space to process and for you to leave them alone

17) donate money to the effort to rebuild Spellow library

18) carry a spare scarf or jumper to offer to any hijabis who might have their hijab torn off

That’s everything I can think of. Let me know if you can think of anything else or if any of these suggestions aren’t useful. Stay safe out there folks, solidarity with POC and as ever, fuck the fash.

[thejaymo]

A decade on from the UK student protests, one of its memetic legacies is 'Rainy Fascist Island'.

It was either @huwlemmey or @piss_wizard. Due to the vagaries of attribution I give them a joint award for their contribution to British culture🎖️

[hyperions-fate]

Performative outrage about pantomime Tory villains like Truss and Rees-Mogg ultimately serves a purpose beneficial to power. It distracts many from thinking critically about the centuries-long structural inequalities and contradictions that define the British State. It concentrates focus instead on the spectacle created by largely-interchangeable and ghoulish figureheads, whilst encouraging the liberal delusion that all problems can be resolved simply by appointing more respectable, more 'sensible' sounding politicians. This is the attitude that colours almost all political commentary in the UK, including on the Labour left, and is another reason why the Westminister system is effectively unreformable.

[houndsofbalthazar]

the census is coming up soon and it’s going to have an “are you trans” question and I’m torn because I don’t think the govt having a list of every trans person in the country is a good idea at all but also if not many people say they’re trans they’ll use that as an excuse to deny life saving healthcare

[zvaigzdelasas]

Meanwhile on dogshit rainy fascist island

[canmom]

Animation Night 86: Rainy Fascism Island

Fuck damn, it’s been an entire year (minus one day) since Animation Night 34, on which we watched Akira on New Year’s Eve. We’ve had a few time slippages, but we’ve not missed a week yet!

Since I landed back on these shores not so long ago, I think it’s time we took another look at the animation of miserable old Blighty.

Traditional animation is pursued only rarely here, but when it has been, mostly in the brief flourishing of countercultural animation in the 70s and 80s, the results have been genuinely striking - and, notably, quite overtly political and boldly violent, deeply unsympathetic to their host state

We’ve encountered two of them before in the course of this series: Watership Down (1978, Animation Night 23) dir. Martin Rosen stands in a realist tradition of animation (unrelated, so far as I know, to the one that would later develop in Japan) to depict the struggles and spirituality of rabbits poised on the edge of death at the hands of all and sundry: foxes, cats, humans the elements, and indeed a colony of fascist rabbits. Meanwhile,When The Wind Blows (1986, Animation Night 26) dir. Raymond Briggs quietly watches an old couple die slowly of radiation poisoning after a nuclear war.

Friends, it’s not good here!

Tonight, I’m going to bring you Rosen’s second film, The Plague Dogs (1984), which landed four years after Watership Down to a much colder reception. Like it’s predecessor, it’s adapted from a novel by Richard Adams, focusing on a group of animals in a hostile world. This time around, the role of humans is much more direct: the dogs are escapees from an animal testing lab - a subject that’s common in animation from Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH (Animation Night 31) to Osamu Tezuka’s Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature but rarely treated with level of tragic seriousness.

This time around, the British animators collaborated with a team in San Francisco, among them a couple of experienced dog animators: Brad Bird of Iron Giant fame, who was at the early point working on troubled Disney films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981), and Retta Scott, whose drawings of vicious hunting dogs for Bambi once persuaded old Walt to draw an exception in his strict gender-segregationist policy in the 30s. Beyond that... I can find relatively little about its production. So let’s go on to talk about the film itself!

The story concerns two dogs who, heavily traumatised by their brutal experiences in the testing lab, go on the run across England pursued by a state which has marked them for death as potential disease carriers. Rowf, large and cynical, grudgingly follows the terrier Stitter who holds out hope that somewhere at the end there will be freedom.

Compared to Watership Down, the film offers very little comfort to soften the blow. There is no straightforward villain who could be defeated or happy release; its ending is at best ambiguous. Its characters have been praised for their emotional depth, e.g. here:

In Rosen's film, anthropomorphic animals are not used to delight children or to shock adults, but instead are there to direct a viewer's eye to humanity's many sins against nature. The film does this with compassion, and miraculously, without an ounce of preachiness, allowing everything to first and foremost be in service of the characters and their journey. These dogs are not silent Old Yellers looking cute in the background, waiting for their big tear jerker death scene; Stitter and Rowf are given the dignity of having distinct personas that have a truly primal animal quality to them despite the fact that they were crafted by human storytelling.

Tragically, audiences of the time were not appreciative of such an uncompromising and painful animated film, and Rosen never got the chance to make another; soon all that remained of animation in this country would be Aardman (Animation Night 50) and relatively low-effort childrens’ shows, with stop motion largely giving way to CG.

If Rosen’s adaptations of Adams’s novels suggest a certain stance by depicting the bucolic British countryside shot through with violence and animal cruelty, Pink Floyd’s The Wall seems to be far more direct - though I’ll be able to discuss its themes in more depth once I’ve actually seen it >< The origins of the film, and its accompanying album, lie in the mid 70s, and the discomfort of songwriter Roger Waters with the machinery of fame. He channelled this into a very self-reflexive film, presenting the biography of a rock star facing existential questions and going through a breakdown in which he dreams of goose-stepping hammers as he is pushed to continue to perform.

A full history of Pink Floyd and their significance would be well outside my bailiwick, so let’s talk about animation. In this case, it’s all the work of Gerard Scarfe. Primarily a political cartoonist - working, I was surprised to notice, for mostly right-wing papers - Scarfe began working with Pink Floyd (I almost wanted to shorten that to Floyd there like it’s a personal name lmao) after they saw his BBC film A Long Drawn Out Trip.

Before long, they were collaborating on comics and animation to support their tour of America, with the centrepiece being the seven minute video for Welcome to the Machine featuring some impressive gore (with blood especially being a recurring motif in Scarfe’s work). Scarfe’s animations here are unusual in eschewing cel shading, going instead for an airbrushed look which I can only imagine must have been incredibly difficult to keep consistent even at the fairly low drawing count. So the plan for The Wall was that Scarfe would create even more animation, interspersed with live action sequences, for a full length film.

The most notable thing about the production of The Wall was that, outside of the Waters/Scarfe duo, everyone involved seems to have despised each other. Waters was originally set to star, but after some tests, he was replaced with Bob Geldof, who ranted to his manager about his disdain for the role unaware that his taxi driver was in fact Waters’s brother. But worst was the relationship with director Alan Parker:

Parker, Waters and Scarfe frequently clashed during production, and Parker described the filming as "one of the most miserable experiences of my creative life."[15] Scarfe declared that he would drive to Pinewood Studios carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel's, because "I had to have a slug before I went in the morning, because I knew what was coming up, and I knew I had to fortify myself in some way."[16] Waters said that filming was "a very unnerving and unpleasant experience".[17]

When the film landed, it met a mixed reception - but a lot of praise went to the Scarfe’s vivid, surreal depiction of fascist rallies and war in the dream sequences dreamed up at the height of the protagonist’s self-isolation. Such themes have recurred occasionally in animation, from Todd McFarlane’s music videos to Mahiro Maeda’s short The Second Renaissance on the Animatrix, but this seems to be one of the oldest. The use here was interpreted by at least one critic to refer to Thatcher’s war over the Falklands, but while Thatcher certainly deserves the comparison, I feel like that is too narrow: it’s the entire psychic structure of this country, right?

Our last instance of that brief window of traditional animation in these parts comes from, sigh, the Beatles. The film Yellow Submarine (1968) is notable in animation history terms for being an early instance of a film breaking out of the ‘only for kids’ orthodoxy, and especially for its early use of limited animation techniques (albeit postdating the Dover Boys) and experiments with unusual animation media. A package film that’s cheerfully light on plot, it comprises a series of vignettes illustrating different Beatles songs, not unlike old Walt’s Fantasia, with a distinctive art direction created by Czech-German illustrator Heinz Edelmann. Some use rotoscopy, some depict surreal morphing; it is cited widely when later animators wish to depict a psychedelic sequence.

Hopefully, even with the Beatles at the centre, it will be a little of a colourful, weird palate cleanser after grinding your face into the muck of humanity with the other two films!

What to say of these films? In terms of their era, they might be placed in the clumsy rise of more adult-oriented animation, such as Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat. They definitely all feel like they’re reaching for a possibility for expression that had not really been explored before; they’re also broadly rooted in a period of ‘counterculture’ in the 70s and 80s that has for the most part since been either recuperated or suppressed.

At the same time as all this, in Japan's economic boom half a world away, for better and worse, animation managed to construct an adult subculture it could cater to with the otakus. This certainly came with its limits, and many of these films started to lose their more overt political content, but it did manage to incubate a very distinctive and diverse tree of animation traditions (see: ~70% of animation night posts) which, by virtue of the sheer amount of animated film being produced and a production system which allowed animators to develop an individual voice, would put out real gems almost every year, even through the subsequent downturns. Anime now ‘enjoys’ a period of intense overproduction; it remains to be seen how it will snap, but it has established enough of an overwhelming presence in the psychic plane that it is unlikely to disappear.

Meanwhile in continental Europe and Ireland, animation found a different place to rest with somewhat more arthouse films, supported by various governments’ arts council funding and the infrastructure of film festivals such as Annecy. These films run wild through the aesthetic space, tending to reinvent themselves over and over with each change of production techniques rather than standardise a pipeline as in America or Japan. Still, it seems to work!

Alas, the same did not happen here; while the BBC would occasionally throw its money behind an interesting short film, these creative, compelling feature films remain a handful of oddities that are unlikely to ever be revived.

Which is a shame! But that’s the UK. It wouldn’t be British without being kind of disappointing.

Animation Night 86 will be starting very shortly at the usual place of twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you there!

[cakesandfail]

If anyone was wondering what else the terfs are up to on rainy fascist island this week, here's a summary:

shrieking about how they'll say "no thank you" if anyone asks them about their pronouns

boycotting a soap brand for a single positive comment about a trans woman

So basically, they've got less understanding of grammar than a primary school child, and they don't wash. That's what I'm getting from all of this.

[eldritchamy]

thank u for your sympathy, it's a ✨ fucking nightmare✨ here on rainy fascist island

god I am so sorry

everything I learn about being trans in the UK is an unfathomable nightmare

I saw someone on twitter the other day posting about a form they had to fill out for a dentist

the second question on the form was for assigned sex at birth.

that question came before "do you need to see a dentist"

and because it's the UK, if they had answered it honestly, the NHS would SOMEHOW have incorporated the assumption that they have a dick into their DENTIST APPOINTMENT, which would not have even been correct since they got bottom surgery last year

the lengths the UK goes to discriminate against trans people are unreasonable, obviously, but also BATSHIT NONSENSICAL.

the wait for a gender clinic is up to like five fucking years now, isn't it? it's fucking AWFUL and I'm so sorry you have to live on an island that's been dominated by t*rf politics for decades.

the tweet I mentioned in the tags:

the dentist thing I mentioned here, they deleted the original tweet so they wouldn't have to deal with hundreds of people in their mentions so I've blocked out their deets for privacy

[thedreadvampy]

You know, The DWP, you can just say 'we think poverty should be a capital crime', you don't have to couch it in pretend sanctions if you think missing an appointment is worth cutting off a moneyless person for a minimum of a full month (long enough to starve in! yay!) and up to THREE YEARS.

Like, it just occurred to me while checking stuff that some people might be unaware of just how profoundly fucked the sanctioning system is. It is PRO-FUCKING-FOUNDLY fucked. Honestly, by definition if you need to apply for JSA it's because you're incapable of supporting yourself without it. Constantly threatening vulnerable people by reminding them that it's both possible and highly likely that you'll sweep away their last support if they put a foot wrong is so deeply fucking evil it genuinely throws me every time.

(usual disclaimer: most ground-floor level dwp employees are fine, even lovely and helpful people, but prevented from doing good and incentivised to do harm by the legitimately evil system in place organisation-wide. the problem is not with individual employees but with a system set up to support the needy being consistently not only chipped away but also used as a weapon against the poor)

(I have been through a lot of shit in my life (viz. a decade of rape and sexual abuse, late stage abortion, Mental Health Bullshit) and come through the other side. like, a lot, I'm only beginning to scratch the surface in therapy. but the only thing that has been bad enough to bring me to the brink of suicide has been trying to survive within the systems set up by the DWP to dehumanise and induce perpetual fear in the 'undeserving' poor. because the party line of the political class, even many supposedly left-wing politicians, is that poverty is a moral failing worthy of, and only curable by, extreme punishment)

(anyway fuck the DWP. 156 weeks my arse)

[vladimir-nabokov-official]

putting the uk election down to one issue of racism or corbyn or brexit woefully misjudges the situation on rainy fascist island & anyone who says so is probably a charlatan

[hyperions-fate]

Holy Fuck, time to buckle up - this is going to be a hellish time on rainy fascist island.

Fuck the monarchy, forever.

[nedsecondline]

Sunak’s plan to criminalise ‘hating Britain’ is a throwback to empire | openDemocracy

Sunak’s plan to criminalise ‘hating Britain’ is a throwback to empire | openDemocracy

Now Sunak wants to extend the reach of Prevent even further. Of course, subjecting everyone who speaks ill of Britain to a ‘deradicalisation’ programme is entirely unworkable. Social media is awash with people expressing their rage at ‘rainy fascist island’. As Andrew Neil’s recent diatribe in the Daily Mail points out, some of them even publish in The New York Times. The idea may be…

[zvaigzdelasas]

Am I being overly optimistic about the future of rainy fascist island or does it seem like the monarchy might end sometime relatively soon

[brainfoodgp]

Brain Food Garden Project Blog February/2017

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”  –Cicero-

Reading has been important to me from my earliest childhood memory. My grandmother taught me to read when I was very young and gave me my first “big boy” series of books, 9 lovely stories of early prairie life starting with Little House in the Big Woods, as a gift when I graduated kindergarten. My first and lasting literary memory is of a little Laura Ingalls playing a game of throwing a hot pigs bladder, like a ball with other children, after the seasonal slaughter and preserving of the pig of course. Now that’s a memory you want sticking with you for the rest of your life…right?

When you are bullied as a child for being different or not behaving exactly the same way everyone else behaves you look for any means of escape. You don’t at eight years old identify diving with the Nautilus for deep sea adventures or escaping pirates on Treasure Island as a “wellness tool.” However, at 44 when you are waving your wand around at a Death Eater for let’s  hypothetically say the millionth time, reading the Harry Potter series, it is probably time to make the connection…OK!

All joking aside, the importance of reading for me is one of my most important wellness tools. And that is why this month’s feature section is a short list for some of the books that keep me going or informed me in some way or that I discovered at that perfect moment in time. In “Notes From The Resistance” this month, we continue to share some important and relevant news stories about the current state of our democracy. And who says a healthy meal can’t be decadent. One of or BFGP gardening family members brought this Cauliflower Crust Grilled Cheese Sandwich to our attention. Every time I make it I’ll thank Ruth Gendreau Bennett and trust me when I say you will too. Whatever you read in the coming months I hope you are entertained, educated or inspired to change the world to make it a better place. Happy reading.

The BFGP Feature:

So many books so little time. These are a list of books that I have been reading since the election in November until now. Next month I will bring back the “What I’m Reading” section but all of these books listed in this feature are books that literally have helped keep me focused and have worked their magic to keep me mentally healthy.

In A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness by Dr. Nassir Ghaemi a book I read several years ago that I picked up and started  re reading after the outcome of the election. This amazing read helped to prepare me for what was to come with the new leader of the free world being a fascist authoritarian. Dr. Ghaemi breaks down the leadership styles of many historical figures to showcase how their mental health concerns, if there had been such a diagnosis in their time, contributed or hindered their leadership styles. It is a fascinating read that covers Lincoln to Kennedy and Gandhi to Hitler.

Long before my hero Khizr Khan offered to loan the fascist his copy of The United States Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I myself have been carrying around my own copy of the Constitution for years. There is no better sword for fighting ignorance in those that probably haven’t read the document since high school government class. You want to argue why our founding father’s wanted to build a “Christian nation” let me slap you down with their own words. You don’t understand why the fascists contempt and suppression of our free press is Unconstitutional please let me introduce you to Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights. You think all Americans should have the right to bare semi-automatic weapons let me introduce you to the actual second amendment. I can’t help but feel if more Americans carried around a copy of the US Constitution instead of a gun we all might be better off for it.

Books have always had this magical way of finding me just when I am at my lowest and always in the most unexpected ways. In this scenario picking up a book from my mother’s bookshelf that I had never read and sent her as a Mother’s Day gift. Relationships between mothers and sons can often be challenging even difficult. However, add a Christian fundamentalist mother to a gay, bipolar activist son and life is often combustible. The Rainbow Comes and Goes by: Anderson Cooper and his mom Gloria Vanderbilt entered my life at the perfect time. Although their story is far different than my mothers and my story. It made me realize that even the best mother and son relationships have limitations. It is how we deal with those limitations that make us stronger.

The Book of Joy By: His Holiness the Dali Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a gift from a friend waiting for me after the long holiday break. Reading their discussions and breakdown of the 8 pillars of joy helped me through a growing depression that could have gotten much worse. The four pillars of the mind: perspective, humility, humor and acceptance and the four pillars of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity continues to heal me every day. One of the books greatest teachings that I am still processing is you cannot truly have forgiveness unless you are fully capable of total acceptance of things you have absolutely no control over.

Gardening as everyone reading this blog knows is one of my greatest wellness tools it is the very foundation that Brain Food Garden Project is built on. Starting my first two Farm School classes in January and February—Food Justice and Botany opened up many lines of questions for me. The reading material that accompanied each class opened my eyes to new ideas and concepts that I had been thinking about for a long time but provided answers in a completely different context. Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City By: Kristen Reynolds and Nevin Cohen, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution By: Lynn Margulis, Botany for Gardeners By: Brian Capon and A Botanist’s Vocabulary By: Susan K. Pell and Bobbi Angell. I am grateful to the teachers that provided these resources, answered my questions and inspired many more questions that only I can answer for myself.

One of the reasons I love gardening so much is its ability to make us all more mindful. I have been revisiting a book I read many years ago in preparation to introducing the material to my garden club members this season at ACMH. The book Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening By: Fran Sorin. This lovely book with wonderful exercises helped me to envision my best self at a time I needed it most. Now I’ll see if Sorin’s message will inspire others.

Reading has brought me greater empathy for others, a deeper understanding of my true inner self and immense joy and pleasure throughout my life. During dark and difficult times books have lifted me up making it easy to embrace reading as a cherished tool for recovery. If any of the books I discussed here find their way onto your reading list drop me a message and let me know about your thoughts. I started this writing with the line so many books so little time. I plan on getting through as many wonderful books as I can before I take my final breath! Reading truly brings me infinite joy.

Notes From The Resistance:

So we are 15 weeks in and the fascist authoritarian party (formally known as Republicans) have been busy. They have enacted an un Constitutional ban on Muslim immigrants and citizens in many cases. They have ended protections in schools to stop bullying and keep our Transgender kids protected. They are working overtime to kill The Affordable Care Act taking vital insurance or limiting resources for some 20 million Americans. These are some stories from the front lines over the past month. We must never normalize any of this hatred we must keep fighting and resist.

1.)  The regime still continues to attack science any way they can… Click here

2.)  Many of us living with mental health concerns cringe a little when we hear people refer to the fascist leader as mentally ill. This article sums up those feelings… Click here

3.)  The protests over the fascists police state immigration round up continues as “detention” camps and private prisons profit… Click here

4.)  The big Agriculture farmers that voted for the fascist are starting to have doubts over his leadership… Cick here

5.) Guns let’s put them in the hands of our most vulnerable citizens sound like a good idea?… Click here 

Healthy & Delicious Recipes:

When I curl up with a good book on a rainy afternoon nothing makes the day even more perfect than sipping and munching two of my childhood favorites a cup of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich! You know cauliflower is one of my favorite brain foods and this recipe for a Cauliflower Crusted Grilled Cheese Sandwich is going to become one of your favorites, trust me.

Ingredients

Makes 2 grilled cheese sandwiches

Cauliflower crust “bread” slices

1 small head cauliflower, cut into small florets (should yield 3 cups of cauliflower rice)

1 free-range organic egg, lightly beaten

½ cup / 1.7 oz / 50 gr shredded mozzarella cheese

½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Grilled cheese

1 tablespoon butter, room temperature

⅓ cup / 3 oz / 85 gr sharp cheddar cheese, grated/shredded, room temperature

Directions

Cauliflower crust “bread” slices

Preheat oven to 450°F (220°C) and place a rack in the middle.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and liberally grease it with olive oil. Set aside.

In a food processor rice the cauliflower florets (it should be evenly chopped but not completely pulverized).

Transfer cauliflower rice (about 3 cups) to a microwave-safe dish and microwave on high for 8 minutes, until cooked.

Place the cauliflower rice in a tea towel and twist it to squeeze as much moisture as you can (I usually squeeze out over a cup of liquid). This is very important. The cauliflower rice needs to be dry, otherwise you’ll end up with mushy dough, impossible to use as slices of bread.

Transfer the cauliflower rice to a mixing bowl, add egg, mozzarella, salt and pepper and mix well.

Spread cauliflower mixture onto the lined baking sheet and shape into 4 square.

Place in the oven and bake for about 16 minutes until golden.

Remove and let cool 10 minutes before peeling them off the parchment paper (be careful not to break them!)

Assemble cauliflower crust grilled cheese

Heat a pan over medium heat.

Butter one side of each slice of cauliflower crust bread (preferably the top part).

Place one slice of bread in the pan, buttered side down, sprinkle on the cheese and top with the remaining slice of cauliflower crust bread, buttered side up.

Turn the heat down a notch and cook until golden brown, about 2 to 4 minutes.

Gently flip and cook until golden brown on the other side, about 2 to 4 minutes.

[anarchogypsy-blog]

As much as I rag on Britain for being Rainy Fascist Island, I quite like the scenery sometimes.