Mastodawn

DoomsdaysCW Aug 6, 2023

So, some of you may be wondering where my handle comes from. "Doomsday" is my nickname from high school -- because I was aware even in the late 1970s that humans were trashing the planet, and would pay the price if they didn't stop (and nuclear weapons are the ultimate in pollution, and yes, nuclear plants and weapons go hand-in-hand). As for the "CW"? It didn't stand for "Content Warning" (though that's approrpriate). The "CW" stood for "Conspiracy Watch," and my original FB page was originally about calling out some of the more ridiculous conspiracy theories floating around at the time (2010). And then the #Fukushima meltdown happened, and I realized that those who were whistleblowers, were being censored and branded as conspiracy theorists. That's when my investigative journalist antennae started buzzing, and what was meant to be satire was turning into reality. I mean, I was aware that big corporations did bad things to cover up stuff (Silkwood), but the Fukushima coverup went all the way to the top (Obama and Hillary Clinton knew how bad things were, but only told their close friends. And yes, I FOIA'ed the emails, and have copies). I also discovered that #TEPCO was rejecting potential technologies to deal with #FukushimaWater rather than dumping it in the ocean, but hey, they thought they were "too expensive" (at what cost a living ocean?). I moved DoomsdaysCW to the BirdSite in 2014, and came over to Mastodon in November 2022. I just wanted to let folks know where the moniker comes from -- and why I'm sometimes snarky with a dark sense of humor. And as for the topics I post about? I've been posting about them even before FB and birdsite, and started the first online 'zine back in 1994 with my friends (where I wrote about a lot of the same issues I write about now). And regarding the current state of the planet? I honestly can't believe we let things go this far -- and yet, I can believe it. The merger of corporations and government made sure everything was greenwashed and covered up, and now we're all paying the price.
#Activism #IsItLikeToday #Coverups #Greenwashing #Oligarchy #Capitalism

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DoomsdaysCW Aug 6, 2023

And as for my past activism, I was the youngest member of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Aliiance, and a founder of the #ThomasMortonAlliance -- a pagan group whose motto was "Earth Religion, Earthly Concerns". One of the TMA founders was a Wiccan feminist. Another was a Native American activist. I met both of them through the Clamshell Alliance years ago. During the mid-late 1980s to early 1990s, we worked with #HumanRights groups and even collaborated with the local #EarthFirst group. Unfortunately, tragedy tore our group apart, but several members went on to become journalists (I was one of them), and continued to participate and organize events. I'm not as active as I used to be, but thanks to the internet, I know things were even worse than I suspected...
#Activism #IsItLikeToday #Coverups #Greenwashing #Oligarchy #Capitalism

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DoomsdaysCW

Who was #ThomasMorton?

He lived during the #Puritan period, but was no Puritan. He was a self-professed "heathen" who joined with the local Native Americans and other English settlers who rejected Puritan values, to openly celebrate #MayDay on top of a prominent hill south of Boston, Massachusetts. Morton also provided weapons to Native Americans to use against the Puritans. Eventually, Miles Standish had Morton banished (to the Isles of Shoals, where he was eventually rescued), and destroyed the Maypole and caused those who sought a different way of life to disperse, or face arrest.

Excerpt from "The Pagan Pilgrim: Thomas Morton of Merry Mount"

Intellectual "heathen" remains an inspiration

by Steve Rasmussen, 2001

"Those dour Puritans who knelt in thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock before marching forth to conquer the wilderness and its native inhabitants with Bibles and guns weren't the only pilgrims to seek spiritual freedom on the New World's shores. Just a few leagues up the Massachusetts coast from Plymouth's fortress of fundamentalist conformity, a poet and lawyer named Thomas Morton founded a colony that, had it survived Puritan persecution, might have spawned a far more Earth-friendly and egalitarian history of America than the one that's come down to us.

"Morton, a senior partner in a Crown-sponsored trading venture, sailed to New England in 1624 with a Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured young men. They settled and began trading for furs on a spit of land given them by the native Algonquin tribes, whose culture the classically educated, broad-minded Morton soon came to admire as far more civilized and humanitarian than that of his intolerant, brutal European neighbors. When Wollaston began seeking more profits by selling off the indentured servants to hard labor on the Virginia tobacco plantations, Morton persuaded the remaining servants (it wasn't hard) to reject their harsh master and throw in with this visionary as free members of a colony that would trade and live in harmony with the local tribes."

http://www.oldenwilde.org/srasmus/oldentext/merrymount.html