Join Team Orca!
by C.A. Matthews
It’s not every day that warming oceans and the detrimental effects they cause make the news in four separate, but not unrelated stories.
One would hope that a warming ocean would be as relaxing and therapeutic as a warm bath, but unfortunately this isn’t the case. Warming oceans can generate more and more intense storms on land—higher winds, more outbreaks of larger tornadoes, more flooding. They can also cause more havoc in the oceans themselves, generating more hurricanes and typhoons, as well as practically boiling microscopic food sources that many aquatic lifeforms rely upon for life, and these lifeforms, in turn, provide food for even larger lifeforms that prey on them.
To put it bluntly, warming oceans means we all are up Shit Creek without a paddle. Warming oceans are yet another component of the climate catastrophe caused by too many greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
But what can we do? We’re addicted to fossil fuels to run our power grids. We adore our gasoline-guzzling vehicles. Huge Big Oil lobbyist groups promote the interests of the fossil fuel industry to keep the best politicians that money can buy in charge and in their pockets. We the poor and unconnected are screwed. We could become extinct before you know it.
One of the most intelligent creatures on our benighted planet is the orca. Orcas are the largest member of the dolphin family. These beautiful sea mammals were once labeled killer whales because they can hunt down and consume other sea creatures much larger than themselves, including giant squids and full-grown whales. Orcas, not us, are probably the most successful mammal on Earth. They’ve been around in their evolved state for 6 million years and have no known predator. Except humankind, that is.
You might remember how adorable the famous orca “Shamu” was, as pictured on SeaWorld posters. Why don’t we see these majestic beasts in aquatic theme parks anymore? If you guessed it was because orcas have actually lived up to their former name of killer whale when it came to occasionally hurting and killing their human zookeepers, you’d be right.
Highly social creatures, orcas being forced to live by themselves in tiny swimming pools and made to jump through hoops in order to entertain crowds really started to piss them off. You can’t blame the orcas for acting out. Would you like being jammed into a fish pond and kept away from your family members? Of course they got violent in order to express their anger and frustration at their imprisonment. Wouldn’t you?
In other words, orcas aren’t a creature to ignore or whose actions should ever be taken lightly. We can learn a lot from them.
Orcas hang out together in pods, which are family groups of 50 or more orcas run by a grandmother, and they are highly capable of communicating behaviors with each other and with other pods of orcas. Scientists have always been fascinated at how quickly orcas do communicate with each other and with other pods and how multiple pods can join together to form an even larger army of orcas.
What’s even more fascinating is that orcas from far distant pods are actually imitating the yacht ramming behaviors that were noted in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Uh-oh. They’ve attacked yachts in the North Atlantic as well.
But orcas are a very adaptable species—they live in every ocean of the Earth, from the North Atlantic down to the Antarctic Ocean and across the wide and woolly Pacific Ocean. You’d think a smart animal like an orca would do just like humans do when climate change causes the place they call home to be less than hospitable to live in. They’d migrate to a better place.
And here comes the third story of life on the warming oceans I promised.
Migrants of the human variety cannot simply move themselves from their war-torn and/or climate-ravished homelands and cross oceans to find a new home and make a new life for themselves in another part of the world. No, there are other humans who don’t want these climate and/or war refugees crossing oceans to live in the same country with them. US mainstream media pundits and more than a few politicians label these climate/war refugees “illegals” and “hordes” and “unwanteds”. We are told to fear them and treat them as inferiors, ignore them and send them away.
Homeless migrants are not welcome anywhere in the European Union apparently, either. Only 104 people have been rescued from a boat that carried an estimated 750 refugees after it capsized on June 13 in the open sea near the coastal town of Pylos. Hundreds of lives were lost, mostly children and their families, when the boat didn’t make it to shore in Greece and the surrounding Coast Guard operations couldn't have cared less about rescuing them.
This isn’t the first capsizing of a ship full of human beings trying to escape terror that was denied a safe port in Europe. Over 23,000 refugees have drowned or gone missing while trying to reach European shores between 2014 to 2022, but the real number is probably much higher. No one is keeping records of how many people embark on these deadly journeys in the first place. (Working as an advocate with immigrants in the US, I can’t say it’s any better when climate/war/cartel violence refugees try to cross our borders to find a safe haven here. Read The Unwelcoming Society to see how Americans sometime treat strangers and others.)
Orcas and human beings trying to escape dangerous situations have something in common—they’re not wanted by the status quo. Those with money and power don’t care if they continue to pollute our oceans and rage war to make their obscene profits. The billionaires/oligarchs simply don’t care if orcas and poor people looking for safety suffer or die, which leads to my last story related to oceans.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, a “tourist submarine” (I never knew there was such a thing before) imploded and killed a handful of billionaires who wanted to view the wreck of the Titanic in the cold depths of the North Atlantic. These super-wealthy persons (who each could afford a $250,000 ticket) were engaged in “tragedy tourism.” They wanted to go beneath the waves and ogle the ocean graves of hundreds of poor immigrants, unfortunate working class human beings who were stuck in the lower decks and drowned in the sinking of the Titanic. The horrible loss of life happened because the rich passengers were given first pick of the seats on the inadequate number of lifeboats onboard. Only those who could afford first class tickets were considered worth saving apparently.
This tourist submarine story was repeatedly broadcast on mainstream media outlets every night and day for a week. (Check out Lee and Eleanor’s video for their excellent analysis of this story.) The salaciousness of the taxpayer-funded rescue operation was built up for maximum effect in order to divert attention away from several other embarrassing news stories that came out this past week. It was used as a distraction to keep the working classes from thinking about just how horrible the fate of other workers can be at times.
Do you recall hearing much about the hundreds of human beings drowning off the coast of Greece? Did you know that US Supreme Court says it's okay for cops to not read you your rights and to keep innocent people in jail? How deep Biden family corruption goes? No, you probably didn't hear anything about it. Perhaps the worst tragedy is that propagandized viewers will never realize how they were manipulated not to see the inhumanity of our treatment of refugees and the corruption happening in US because of the celebrity rich dying in such a novel way.
At $250,000 a pop, billionaires must really love looking at drowned working class people’s remains and their personal effects lying on the ocean’s floor. In another hundred years or so, billionaires will be taking tourist submarine rides to go down and ogle the corpses of the migrant children lying off the coast of Greece, right?
The
Earth
doesn’t
need more
billionaires
and their sycophants.
The
Earth can certainly do without the
Big Oil lobbyists and
their ilk,
causing global climate change and ocean warming. We don’t need more
sociopaths
staring at our corpses and giggling over how silly we were to
attempt migrating
to safer lands that
don’t really exist.
We
the
workers, the wage slaves,
are the people who make things and grow food and clean toilets—what is it that
billionaires actually do
to make the world a better
place for all? Nothing.
This is where the orcas in their family pods ramming yachts have the right idea. The orcas aren’t taking shit from the bourgeoisie class that causes the most pollution on the planet any longer. And neither should we. (Read The Average Billionaire for data on just how much these super-wealthy persons pollute.)The workers of the world need to form pods or groups and get out there and “ram” the “yachts” or “tourist submarines” or whatever else billionaires flaunt as symbols of how they oppress us and dominate all useful discourse in our world to the point of environmental collapse. Workers’ pods could communicate to other pods about what ways they found the most effective to “sink the yachts” just like the orcas in their pods are doing.
We the workers no longer need to put up with these billionaires' contempt and ill-treatment of us. We need to swim in formation and save our oceans and our homes before it’s too late. Will you join me? Will you become like the orca, a majestic sea mammal who doesn’t put up with shit from anybody?
Welcome
to Team Orca! We're glad to have you onboard. Let's get to work.
Related articles and other interesting links:
Orcas are ramming yachts off the Spanish coast – is the whale world rising up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/25/orcas-ramming-yachts-spanish-whale-behaviour-trauma-humans
Orca rams into yacht off Shetland in first such incident in northern waters https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/21/orca-rams-yacht-off-shetland-first-such-incident-northern-waters
Orcas have sunk 3 boats in Europe and appear to be teaching others to do the same. But why? https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why
Shipwreck in Pylos. Open Letter by Over 180 Human Rights Organizations https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/22/shipwreck-in-pylos-open-letter-by-over-180-human-rights-organizations/
The Mediterranean Shipwreck Tragedy Was an Outcome of Militarism https://truthout.org/articles/the-mediterranean-shipwreck-tragedy-was-an-outcome-of-militarism
Missing Sub Gets 100X More Coverage Than Drowning Refugees https://youtu.be/Y0XxGHOUpIw
Two episodes at sea: The submersible Titan and hundreds of refugees drowned in the Mediterranean https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/22/ilqz-j22.html
Brutal Heat and Storms Grip Southern States and Mexico on First Day of Summer https://truthout.org/articles/brutal-heat-and-storms-grip-southern-states-and-mexico-on-first-day-of-summer/
The Pacific Northwest’s Deadly 2021 Heat Wave Fuels a New Lawsuit Against Big Oil https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/24/the-pacific-northwests-deadly-2021-heat-wave-fuels-a-new-lawsuit-against-big-oil/
El Niño Is About to Accelerate the Global Climate Crisis. It’s Time for Action. https://truthout.org/articles/el-nino-is-about-to-accelerate-the-global-climate-crisis-its-time-for-action/
The Irony Of World Refugee Day: Celebrating, Then Blaming The Victims https://popularresistance.org/the-irony-of-world-refugee-day-celebrating-then-blaming-the-victims/
Mediterranean Migrant Shipwreck Reveals Cost of Cruel European Asylum Policies https://truthout.org/articles/mediterranean-migrant-shipwreck-reveals-cost-of-cruel-european-asylum-policies/
Supreme Court rules out suing police for Miranda violations https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna35012
East Coast Wildfires Put Incarcerated People on Frontlines of Climate Crisis https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/20/east-coast-wildfires-put-incarcerated-people-on-frontlines-of-climate-crisis/
Biden’s Asylum Policy Continues Tradition of US Cruelty to Haitians https://truthout.org/articles/bidens-asylum-policy-continues-tradition-of-us-cruelty-to-haitians/
Merrick Garland STUNNED By Investigation RESULTS (clip) https://youtu.be/H78mfJK34uA
Cornel West TACKLES Liberal & Conservative MEDIA (clip) https://youtu.be/hdh98yKyVeg
Lithium Nevada Lawsuit Aims To Stop Praying At Sacred Site
https://popularresistance.org/lithium-nevada-lawsuit-aims-to-stop-praying-at-sacred-site/
Debunked: Media falsely claims China is building spy base in Cuba
https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/media-china-cuba-spy-base
Biden’s Refusal to Demand Accountability for Israeli Army Killings Is an Open Farce https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/22/bidens-refusal-to-demand-accountability-for-israeli-army-killings-is-an-open-farce/
The Unlimited Campaign Spending by Corporations and Billionaires Has Destroyed Democracy https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/22/the-unlimited-campaign-spending-by-corporations-and-billionaires-has-destroyed-democracy/
The Elite War on Free Thought
https://www.racket.news/p/the-elite-war-on-free-thought
Pastor Fined for Feeding and Housing the Homeless https://youtu.be/OOzByUAsSBQ
The Average Billionaire https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-average-billionaire.html
The Unwelcoming Society https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-unwelcoming-society.html
Seen on Twitter:
Yet another killer whale attack on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar has been caught on camera.
— DW News (@dwnews) June 26, 2023
More than 20 such incidents occurred last month alone, baffling scientists. pic.twitter.com/0nF30Ml4T5
Coming soon, the first book from The Revolution Continues blog: The Little Red Book of Revolution
How can you get your e-copy? The easiest way is to subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack as a paying subscriber. Choose what level you'd like to subscribe at via the buttons on any post online at: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com
If you'd like to help out in the meantime, buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/therevolutioncontinues
More details to come. Power to the people!
