If you’re thinking this article is about the student teachers', graduate assistants', and researchers' strike throughout the University of California system, you’re partially right. “Lab rats” is slang for laboratory assistants, and a strike of over 48,000 of them in the UC system is quite notable. What’s also notable is how very little mainstream media coverage there’s been of this massive strike by mostly young persons desperate to be paid a living wage.
The average yearly wage in the UC system for student teachers/assistants is $24,000 a year—this in a state where rents have been skyrocketing, with the average rent for an apartment being between $2,000 to $3,000 a month. You’d think with rising tuition costs the university system could afford not to starve the people who do the lion’s share of the work on their campuses.
But the lab rats I’m actually referring to in the title of this blog doesn’t just stop with the student workers at the University of California. It includes all of us. We are all lab rats according to a New York Times article called Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Grounds For Weapons. And we all know that the Times is a “newspaper of record,” don’t we? That’s a source that the big name mainstream media pundits gladly quote from, so there’s got to be some grain of truth in what they say, right?
I’ll admit I’m being a bit facetious here, but in this case I think they’re reporting truthfully. If you don’t believe the NYT, then at least believe this military bigwig:
"This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said US STRATCOM head Charles Richard at a naval conference earlier this month. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”
The current proxy war in Ukraine and all wars being waged overtly or covertly right now in the world are simply experiments to see how various newfangled war gadgetry works against flesh and blood targets before "the big one" gets started. And by targets they mean real live human beings like you or me.
But why? Well, step back and unclutch your pearls for a moment and consider this: What good is a costly weapon of war if it doesn’t kill or dismember as advertised? Would you spend billions of dollars on a weapon that doesn't deliver the lethal results promised?
Congress has sent about $100 billion worth of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Only about 30% of the weapons can be accounted for according to a CBS 60 Minutes documentary. (Yes, another mainstream media outlet might possibly be telling us actual facts! But don’t worry—CBS took the documentary down from the internet after the government of Ukraine complained about it. I had a link to the archived version of the documentary, but it seems to have "disappeared." This article has a link to the archived documentary.)
That 30% of weapons accounted for that the US has sent to Ukraine has got to destroy, maim, intimidate, and annihilate enough to make up for the missing 70% or else the Ukrainians might feel like they have to push for more military aid from NATO by triggering "article five." Doing so could change the "cold" proxy war into a genuine nuclear Armageddon, but don't worry Zelensky and company would never do such a dangerous thing. (If you believe that, I have some swampland along the Pecos River to sell you.)
So, where did all the missing arms sent to Ukraine go? Most intelligent people assume these weapons have been sold onto the black market and gone into the hands of other groups such as the neo-Nazi groups Italian police have investigated.
Five members of an Italian neo-Nazi organization known as the “Order of Hagal” were arrested on November 15th while an additional member remains wanted by authorities. He happened to be in Ukraine, fighting Russian forces alongside the Azov Battalion, which has been formally integrated into the Ukrainian military.
The “Hagal” members are accused of plotting terrorist attacks on civilian and police targets. A sixth member of the Hagal group, now considered a fugitive, is in Ukraine and embedded with the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
Members of the Order of Hagal reportedly maintained “direct and frequent” contacts over Telegram with not just the Azov Battalion, but also the neo-Nazi Ukrainian military formations Right Sector and Centuria, “probably in the view of possible recruitment into the ranks of these fighting groups,” according to Italian media.
The police investigation was launched in 2019 and has included extensive computer searches and wiretapping; tactics which have revealed members of the group’s intent on carrying out violent acts in Italy.
Killing people on the battlefield or through hate group crimes in our cities gives valuable feedback to military-industrial complex manufacturers as to the lethality of their weapons. Simply put, dead and wounded lab rats like you and me mean more sales. Selling weapons means more profits for MIC investors. Lab rats dying is a win-win in the investors’ eyes.
So, why do we lab rats, white mice, and cute little guinea pigs allow these horrible events to happen? Do we want to be killed? Do we enjoy watching others being killed simply to make profits for billionaire capitalists? If you say “no” to these two questions, then you no longer have any excuses. You know what is needed. We must take action to prevent more deaths. We have to say "no more war" and actually mean it and do what it takes to stop it.
Just like the striking lab rats of the University of California system, the warehouse workers of Amazon, and the baristas of Starbucks, we need to take this message to the streets. We must strike, protest, do whatever to get our message out to the public and get it on the airwaves and tweeted around the world. We need to make the owners of our lab cages afraid of us tiny little rodents who outnumber them 99 to 1. We must escape the cages of our own making and rattle their cages instead.
We can’t just sit back and nibble our cheese (or whatever lab rats/white mice eat) and watch Netflix. We can’t offer up “thoughts and prayers” alone about this situation and expect practical results. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin don’t read minds, and they certainly don’t hear our prayers. They simply accept large amounts of US taxpayers’ dollars and laugh all the way to the bank. What’s another million dead lab rats to them if they turn a profit?
Our planet’s very survival depends upon this generation’s actions. Do we run back into our mouse holes and allow homicidal maniacs to kill us all in the name of capitalism and profits? Or do we use our teeth and claws to fight for our lives? Rats are known for their bravery and for deeply caring for their offspring. Let’s not cower in our cages any longer.
Lab rats of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our cheese (and our planet's safety to gain).
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