Global Citizenship and You

Gee, I hate bursting anyone's bubble but I'm afraid I have to.
It's kind of important. I'll start with what brought this on.

Late Wednesday night, well into the wee hours, I decided to catch up on the news buzz for the week. I wanted to see what kind of news induced national neurosis, comatosis, blow yer nosis we were being pushed and pulled into, divided by, lied to about and beaten senseless with at the current moment. They like to prepare our minds like hors d'oeuvres to be the tasty accompaniment to their champagne, lies and bullets game plans. Such things are carefully crafted after all to imprint a certain, how shall I say it, "ambiance" in the minds of the people.

Sometimes it's panic, like last year when they pumped the BS story about the guy who got on a plane with TB and flew off to Greece to get married "against doctors orders", possibly infecting hundreds of people.

The implication was that it should be illegal to not obey doctors orders. Wait for it, it's coming, mark my words.

The trouble with this story was that this guy a) was NOT infectious, b) did NOT have any such doctors orders, in fact he was told he could travel to get married, no problem, and c) not one single person was at any risk, nor did one single person on the whole planet get infected. It was cooked up hysteria mongering. I'll bet you didn't read about any of those late breaking facts in the news.

The head game pros whipped up a heck of a froth with that manipulative lie fest. People were clogging up doctors offices all over the country whining and wringing their hands to get their TB tests, just certain they were exposed to that young man because they lived less than three states away from the airport he flew out of and they were sure they were going to die.

The chatter was that guys like that should all be rounded up in the name of public safety, people were angry and quick to call for drastic, oppressive, illegal measures to be taken. There were serious discussions about requiring people to wear surgical masks in public if they were sick; and another real frenzy inducing piece made a straight-faced case for locking these people behind bars, even if it meant keeping them in there forever. People were outraged and wanted the government to "do something".

Like what? Lock up sick people? Yes, that's such a good idea. I couldn't agree more, but I think we should only focus on the sickest, most diseased ones in top level government positions. Their terminally gangrenous humanity is a far more prevalent and immediate threat to our health than a few guys with cooties walking the streets. We'd be better off getting TB than being infected by what they've got.

And the skunky little instigating twits behind all this just sat back and laughed at how easy it is to spook the herd into a stampede and drive them right into the desired corral. Or would that be slaughterhouse?

Will we never learn, my dear fellow citizens? My, my.

But it's not always a Panic week. Sometimes it's an Outrage week. You can take your pick in this category, we've got a million outrage stories. From last year there was the late leaked information about Pat Tillman's murder by not so friendly, friendly fire. It sure stuck in my craw. It was a good distraction from the heat of the Iraq "war".

War. I hate using their words, they are all such head-twisting lies. We're not at war, we don't even have an enemy we can name or describe or point to, or even attempt to go talk to and try that unspeakable thing called diplomacy. What would you call it? The official organized, synchronized and legalized mass killing of civilians with concurrent extensive destruction of homes, businesses and cities. That pretty much covers it.

The story of Pat Tillman's political murder was just the ticket to take our attention off the other nasty despicable things the oil-igarchs were up to and didn't want us to notice, like ending our rights to privacy and legitimizing this phony president's imaginary power to spy on every last one of us, in order to stave off more terror attacks. Which insulted the hell out of me since our own government was involved in every terror attack we've ever had on American soil, including 9/11.

Letting the facts of the assassination of Pat Tillman spill out into the public consciousness was standard distraction procedure. No one responsible for the murder had a snowball's chance in hell of being held accountable, neither those who ordered it nor those who committed it. The killers and thugs would stay safe and cozy while the disgusted public went into conniption fits over the testimony of first hand eye witnesses describing several shots to the head fired at close range, the destruction of evidence and Tillman's personal diary, and the military's indelicate measures to bury, hide, cover up and flat out lie about the whole thing. It got people talking and it got everyone distracted. It was a job well done by the propaganda and manipulation team who's healthy salaries and generous benefits packages we all get to pay for. Killers and thugs do real well in this country and I bet they don't pay taxes either.

Nothing came of that belated shocking first hand testimony. And nothing came of the charade Congressional investigation. They got away with it. They always do.

This Wednesday there was the Outrage story of Bushco's defiance of the third Supreme Court ruling last week, which stated that even the detainees... wait, they're doing it again. Those men aren't "detainees". They're illegally held civilian prisoners being denied rights to council, visitation, and due process; imprisoned without charges, denied media access, and tortured repeatedly until they confess to everything from shooting JFK to masterminding September 11th. 'Detainees' sounds so innocuous and down right comfy, like they're putting them up for the weekend at the Baghdad Holiday Inn. What they're doing breaks one of our most critically important laws, denying due process to not only citizens, but everyone in this country or in our 'care'. It's an outrage. See how they do us? I just hate that.

Anyway, the Supreme Court for the third time did rule against the pro-torture Christian President and said that even those men in Guantanamo were entitled to the very same rights we all used to have in America. They have to be treated as if Bush and Friends really believed in our values, believed in the right of the people to be free, to have due process, to be treated with dignity, to have a say over what their government does. All that stuff that the government clearly hates so much they spit every time the subject comes up.

There's no doubt left after bushco's three tries to get the Supreme Court to kiss fascist fanny, that they're not about to pucker up. The public heaved a huge sigh of relief too, because lets face it, torture is just way out there. It's no good coming or going, and it's just a slightly huge contradiction to everything we stand for. We Americans don't like torture and we really don't support it. Only the super stupid people think it's a good idea to demoralize, dehumanize and sexually violate other human beings, and there's not that many of them. They're only the ones in charge plus a small group of very obnoxious, loud people who think freedom means obedience to the government.

Not everyone is born with a full deck, but we have to tolerate them anyway, even if they are the number one twits of all time.

So what did Bushco do after this third ruling against him? Did he finally realize that torture is just too against the law to pretend it's not depraved and inexcusable and that he needs to give it a rest now? Don't be funny. They're already putting together a 4th set of twisted and sick trial strategies and lies to go for it again.

In the meantime they are going right on ahead with their military tribunals, blowing off the law the Supreme Court just triple verified is for sure the law and must be obeyed, claiming the ruling doesn't apply to them. "I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," US Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters during a visit to Tokyo.

In Thursday's news, they were kind enough to throw us a bone. We got some good news for a change. "345 arrested, kids rescued in prostitution busts". Now you're talking. "Hundreds of people have been arrested and 21 children rescued in what the FBI is calling a five-day roundup of networks of pimps who force children into prostitution."

Hundreds of adults but only 21 children were rescued? I think they missed a few children, I mean, do the math. What's wrong with that picture? Oh, and it turns out those people they arrested were allegedly adult prostitutes who the authorities say are the ones pimping these children.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that there are scum bags that sell children's bodies for capital gain, or the fact that there's enough scum bag customers to keep hundreds, no, let's get real, thousands of these scum bag pimps busy turning brisk profits selling children's bodies to world class perverts, and for use in Intelligence blackmail ops.

It honestly makes me want to hurl.

"Gee Wally, what about the scum bags who pay to molest those children? Why weren't they arrested too?"

"That's easy Beav. Congress was in session. They were too busy selling out America to get arrested. They had to approve legislation to retroactively let Bush and the big phone companies totally off the hook for all that illegal spying on Americans, and clear the path for them to spy on us all they want from now on. It was, stay here and vote this legislation through or get implicated in the most embarrassing, large scale child prostitution bust of all time. Besides, you know the rules. Punish the victim and let the perpetrators go free, remember?"

"Gosh Wally, that's right. I forgot."

Don't feel too bad Beaver, we all forget. Every single time it happens we get national amnesia. It must be some kind of kooky coincidence, huh? I mean, what are the odds of EVERYone forgetting EVERY time it happens? Those odds must be waaaaaaay up there.

I also tried reading some other "mainstream" news but after seeing the word 'McCain' 212 times and the word 'Obama' 176 times in one article, I decided big media "news" has to be the all time, number one method of self-instigated brain death. So I hopped over to Adbusters Magazine instead, figuring I'd get a detoxifying dose of counter culture there. Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out that way.

In fact I found something that made my hair stand up. It's still standing up too, I should get a picture of it and enter it in a Don King look alike contest. I doubt I'd win but I love a good contest, which is what led me to today's topic.

Adbusters is having a design contest. The idea of a politically agreeable, anti-corporate, pro-justice artwork design challenge appealed to me. It might be fun to try to come up with a new official anti-big business, pro-people design that would, ostensibly, be printed off in droves and spread like wildfire all across the country for freedom loving guys and gals to wear on T-shirts, have printed on book bags, and shimmy up flag poles everywhere. I decided to check it out.

There wasn't much there, only two short paragraphs which I read through quickly. My focus was on what they were looking for, what the theme was, what the actual product would be. As soon as I read it, a very definite concept came to mind. A number one. A world. It was all so cliché and obvious that it left a bad taste in my creative mouth. I sat back and thought to myself, "I feel like I was directly led to this wanker of an idea." Was I?

I read through those two paragraphs again, but slowly this time. It wasn't long before the words 'global citizenship' stuck out, and I wanted to know what exactly they thought that means. What is the ideology being promoted here? And what does it have to do with living natural, or with social and global justice, or with shrugging off mass produced cheap imported corporate goods and shopping small and local instead? Well it had nothing to do with those things.

What it has to do with is something else entirely. I think you should see this. Let's read through it together, shall we?

"The One Flag"

"A First Things First Project"

"Design is at war with itself."

IT IS? Design is at war with itself? How so? That doesn't even make sense. How can something be at war with itself? Is this another one of those wars against a concept? Because those are stupid. Why are we talking about war in the very first sentence if we're against all that rapacious corporate gluttony and war mongering? We don't like war. Remember?

"We are taught that design is about finding solutions. But the success of these solutions is judged so narrowly – Did it ooze desire? Did it shift units? – that we find ourselves implicated in problems far greater than the ones we solve."

Shift units? Do they mean 'ship' units? Finding ourselves implicated? Are we guilty by having to earn a living in a corporate dominated world? Anyone who's working for some big company is working against their own ultimate best interests. It's not being at war with yourself, it's being forced into a system of compliance in order to survive. I'm sorry, but this is not sounding right. I'm putting my hip boots on before I go any further, and I suggest you do the same.

"The time has come for a radical shift in priorities."

Yes but which priorities are we talking about? Are we supposed to switch our own priorities to global citizenship or are the controllers supposed to shift their priorities out of psychopathy? The only shifting we need is reversing the policies of consumption and predation and waste and greed that are causing all of the wider death, destruction and environmental crisis. You and me holding hands won't change a thing.

"We are now faced with some of the most daunting global challenges in human history."

What we're facing is the murder of the world due to corporate and government greed and collusion. That's not a challenge it's a fact.

"These are real targets, worthy of our problem-solving skills, ripe for our intervention."

Targets?? What's with all of the aggressive war talk? Interesting choice of subconscious imagery, no? By the way, who talks like this? "Ripe for our intervention". Are we conspiring to intervene somewhere? And where would that be? This is stupid. It's a lot of vague, politically correct buzzwords that force assumptions and conclusions without getting specific about a single thing. This could easily go both ways. This could easily be them using propaganda to pull people over to their side just by making it sound pretty and compelling with all that vague greenspeak.

"Yet those who have the vision to rise above national and political boundaries still have no symbol to rally under."

Bingo. Busted. There it is. This is about national and political BOUNDARIES. What's that got to do with anything?

The message is that people with vision, smart people, creative people, design people, if they're "cool" and forward thinking, would naturally look at national and political boundaries as a very bad thing. What's wrong with boundaries? How are boundaries related to psychopathic oligarch corporations destroying the planet? Are national and political boundaries responsible for the most daunting challenges in human history? Dang those boundaries! They're horrible! What fuckers boundaries are. Who knew? All this time I thought they were just lines on maps. But they are sneaky, evil things going around and causing all of our problems. It's not the corrupt, psychopathic oligarchs of Earth forcing us into eternal peonage, it's the silly ass boundaries. Well am I ever embarrassed.

Wait! I know! We need a world government. That's it. One big happy central global government. Let's get rid of all those creepy, terrible, trouble making boundaries and let our hair down. As soon as we erase all of the boundaries all of our troubles will be over! Yay! Everyone together now. It will be so great. We can all hold hands and sing the Coca-Cola song about buying the whole world a Coke. Because it's so anti-corporate and shit. Sign me up baby, I can't wait. THIS is the real thing.

"We invite you to create a flag"

Am I good or what? A global government has to have a FLAG. A "ONE" flag. As in, We are all ONE. United. Together. Forget individuality. Identical standardized human units, all standing together, facing the U.N. with our hands to our foreheads in loving and joyous salutes, just like the Hitler Youth. Boy that's heart warming isn't it? Family values, here we come.

" – free from language and well-worn clichés – that embodies the idea of global citizenship. A symbol that triggers pride and cohesion, whether worn on a backpack, displayed on a door, or flown on a flagpole. A symbol for anyone to declare membership in a growing and vital human cooperative. We invite you to prove that design has a real role to play in the fate of our world."

Where do I begin? "Free from language", so that anyone from any country can gaze upon my swell design and know exactly what it means: You are so screwed. "Triggers". More aggression verbiage. No more well worn clichés because, I guess they need some new ones. "A growing and vital human cooperative". Like, come on everyone, join up. Cooperative is such a green word. It's sure to appeal to a very specific group of people. Yes we have massive problems. Yes we should have more unity amongst different peoples and nations. So what's their point? Global citizenship. That's what this is all about. They're doing it again. That word thing. It makes it sound so cozy and friendly. Citizenship. Aw, come here and hug me. I'm just in a good mood thinking about it. Not.

They're even helpfully suggesting what we forward thinking types can do with our "ONE" flag. And then we can declare membership. Declare? When was the last time you used the word "declare" in a sentence? I don't think I ever have. That's either something Scarlet O'Hara would say or it's relegated to customs forms. This just doesn't flow for me. It's stiff and contrived and manipulative and deceitful and dishonest and creepy and full of shit. Who the hell wants a human cooperative? Are we going to be the Borg? And do you know what? Phrases like "the fate of our world" don't bode well with me. They don't sound at all comforting.

Since when have any of us had any say over the fate of our world? If we did have say over the fate of our world we wouldn't need a flag. And we wouldn't need any global governance. We wouldn't need any human cooperatives. We wouldn't need any slogans or politically correct cleverly loaded, misleading sales pitches. We would already be living in peace and doing things in a much more creative, laid back, just way. We'd be doing our own thing and not having the giant fist of controlling forces pushing us to swallow crap like this, and wars, and profits, and slavery and throwing people into prison cells for growing and ingesting a plant.

In fact I'd have to say that there's nothing warm or fuzzy about any of this. What the hell happened here? Has Adbusters been infiltrated too? Is there anything left standing that hasn't been taken over by nazi goons bearing lots of green stuff?

Oh Adbusters. I am so bummed. Dang.

Another one bites the dust.

"Ready to Submit?"

Don't hold your breath bucko. That won't be happening. Need I say more?

I have to take one last minute to clean out the dirty concept of global citizenship and global government, and global anything for that matter. As warm and fuzzy as it sounds, and as greasy and slick as the double think ad campaign is, it is not warm and fuzzy.

Global means centralized. A single centralized government would be the end of freedom on this world. By definition it ends freedom. It means a single small group of individuals would decide everything for everyone. That's not freedom. That's the exact opposite of freedom.

If this had been a real, grass roots instigated idea, it would have talked about different things. What this whole world needs is justice and freedom. It needs to be free from the choking control and brutal violence perpetrated on people everywhere by control freaks and wanna be kings. It needs the oligarchs slapped back down to hell where they belong so people can be free to use their own country's resources for themselves and share them and profit from them, benefiting all of the people, not just the greedy corporations.

It needs law and order that's legitimate, not this corrupt shoot people first and don't bother asking questions at all attitude of disdain for the people. People need to stop having their heads bashed in and having bullets shot into their bodies, that would go a long way for making the world a much better place real quick.

The intoxicating slogan of global citizenship is the code word for global governance. Citizenship implies duty. It also implies obedience and loyalty. If those things are required then disagreement, or failing to perform them makes you a criminal. People are not all the same. They do not want or need all of the same things. And while the thought of forcing peace and friendship on the world sounds like an answer, it isn't an answer and it never can be. People cannot be forced to conform to anything. And conformity is the kiss of death to all new ideas. Conformity means thinking alike and being given what to think from some central authority.

We need a world filled with individuals who do their own thinking. A world filled with ideas and creativity, problem solving, inventions, cultures, styles, tastes, all the opposite of conformity. Variety. Differences. We should not all be the same, which is a totally different thing than sharing values. We can believe in the same things and by and large, we do, but it doesn't mean taking our marching orders from a centralized global government who decides what we're all going to be and do every single day of our lives. We don't need to be judged and controlled by people we'll never see or be able to speak to. It doesn't mean having no choice and becoming a hive. There is no freedom there. There is nothing but oppression and control, arbitrary rules and judgments made by people who have no qualifications and who are not concerned with every small town in America or what it needs. A global government will never serve us, we will be there to serve it.

Good try globalist twits but you lose. And you'll keep losing. In the end, we will be the ONES left standing. You can take your little ONE flag and shove it.

So that's what I found in the news for this week. More and more proof that information is a weapon, and when it's in the wrong hands none of us are safe. If they want a motto I've got one for them. How about "Conformity sucks". I like that one a lot. I think I'll start working on that design right away. Later gator.

Independence Day Is Coming

As we approach that day we set aside each year to celebrate our independence, it would seem sensible to take inventory of that independence before we whip out the sparklers. After we face up to the reality that independence is a nice idea, but we don't actually have much in the way of that good stuff around here any more, we could still decide to party for three days. Or we could, possibly, sit down and think about some things.

The government is the embodiment of the will of the people. At least in theory.

Being a country of self-ruling people was a new and unusual idea back in the beginning. The experiment, as it is strangely called, refers to the unique, bazaar, anarchistic, rebellious, unconventional, rule breaking, law breaking, authority hating, independent people called Americans, who threw off the chains of others controlling their lives, and decided they were just going to call their own shots from now on instead.

It wasn't a very popular idea back then, because then just as now, people were too wedded to the notion that they must be loyal to their controllers and obey them. In fact, if the founders were here today and did exactly the same things they did then, they would be branded terrorists by our own government.

Being free is not for chickens.

At least there was once a moment in time when enough of us were not chickens, in order to get this experiment off the ground. What a shame it is that we've come full circle, having watched as our own government unraveled and undid all of the hard work it took to get to independence. All of the blood that was selflessly shed by others so that we could be left alone by wicked, greedy, brutal authority has in the end, all been for nothing.

A great deal of blood has been shed for the idea of freedom. But now our minds are pumped so full of propaganda and clever bromides of illogic, that we actually believe freedom means obeying the government and meeting with its approval. We are beyond lost.

There were good reasons that our founding anarchists decided to stand up to authority and throw it off. Authority back then, as it is now, was corrupt and completely disinterested in the well-being of the people. It was greedy, brutal and unconcerned with the social realities and needs of the average person.

Then as now, it was almost impossible to make a better life for yourself because the roads to opportunity were monopolized and controlled, by the king, by the rich, by the corporations, by the soldiers, the authorities and the police. They ran rough shod over the people and nobody gave a damn for your rights, you had no rights. Nobody gave a damn if you were injured or starving or needed help. They only wanted your money, your taxes, your labor, and your obedience and otherwise, as far as they were concerned, you could FO and die.

Back then, as now, people just didn't matter unless they were wealthy, and if you weren't wealthy you might as well forget having any kind of a life worth living.

Then as now, the king took your crops in taxes leaving you to starve, and punished you if you didn't pay up, no matter how outrageous the demands. You didn't get a choice then, and you don't get one now. Don't think so? Just try to defy the IRS, go ahead, I dare you.

What's behind all of this is the same old story. Greed and power. The two things that really make the whole world go round. We can see pretty movies and read pretty books about freedom and democracy, love and compassion, but there's no money in any of that, and there's no power to get either. There's no room for the brutality the rich so enjoy meting out on those they victimize and enslave. That is, after all, how the rich and powerful get rich and powerful in the first place. The reality is, they are nothing but criminals that attack and brutalize others to use them and steal their wealth for themselves. Instead of calling it crime they call it business. Call it what you will but the outcome speaks for itself. A rose is a rose.

Our founding anarchists knew all about this, and they knew when it was time to do something to finally, finally, break free of the grip of the controllers. They wanted freedom and independence bad enough to risk everything, absolutely everything, including their lives and property, to become subversives and move against the control of the king. They wanted to be in charge of their own lives and prosperity, they didn't want anyone telling them they could not do what they wanted to do. They were tired of being robbed by endless taxes and kept down underneath those who monopolized prosperity. So they fought.

And for a while we benefited because of the many lives that were willingly sacrificed for freedom's sake, and then we forgot all about the fact that freedom is never free, nor is the battle to stay free ever over.

After centuries of history, of civilizations that were always comprised of a ruler, a king, an emperor, a pharaoh, a pope, a warlord, whatever form it took, it has always boiled down to one guy and his cronies way above everyone else, cut off from and indifferent to the people, inaccessible, disinterested, warring, selfish, completely detached from reality, spoiled to beyond comprehension, obsessed with wealth and getting more wealth for themselves to get more unnecessary stuff for themselves to look and act rich with. That knowledge and being good and tired of the status quo made a handful of ordinary people decide that the whole situation of rulers over people was a truly bad plan.

That truly bad plan finds its perfect symbol in the pyramid, a symbol you'll find on the back of our own dollar bill. A pyramid is an enormous structure, four sided and immovably sturdy, wide at the bottom and growing ever and ever smaller as it nears the top where it comes to a tiny single point.

That very same shape expresses the structure of the truly bad plan, with the masses of the people making up the bottom, those with no wealth or power who comprise the majority of the population. It then grows ever smaller in width as wealth and personal power increases, until eventually it reaches the top where there is room for only one. The one at the top has the most wealth and the most power of all.

It is interesting to note that superimposed over the symbol of the pyramid could be the shape of an exact duplicate of that pyramid upside down. This second pyramid represents the distribution of wealth and power of the first pyramid, with the vast majority of the wealth and power up at the top, then going downward in ever decreasing amounts until it gets to the bottom where the many have so little. A very precarious structure indeed.

This is the structure I refer to as the truly bad plan. This is the structure those fed-up, founding anarchists understood so well, and rejected so fully.

There is a good reason for this. It doesn't work. Or rather, it only works for a very small number of people. Those at or near the top massively benefit, but everyone else loses out. Everyone else has to struggle to get enough, and world wide, even greater numbers cannot even do that.

It is an unfair, unreasonable system that has no justification. There is no reason or justification for the few to have so much more than they could ever use, or want, or need, for a thousand life times, while at the same time so many have nothing and suffer and die never knowing the feeling of a safe warm bed and a continuously full belly. It is easy to see that simply turning the 2nd pyramid right side up would create a state of equity and a logical, necessary, stable distribution of wealth and power, leaving no one in particular in possession and control of the vast resources encapsulated in that structure. It would in fact negate the pyramid shape, because the structure would no longer symbolize the reality of that civilization. Instead we would use a circle, which is equal all around with no discernible head or tip or point, with nowhere that any congestion or monopolization of the flow could occur.

If we could get honest just this once we would have to concede that it makes no sense at all for the few to have more than anyone has any excuse to have while so many don't have enough.

If we could stay honest for just a few more seconds we would also admit there is no argument to the notion that by now, with all of our supposed technological advances, we should all be living comfortable middle class lives.

We should have no rich, and we should have no poor. Rich and poor both are completely useless, pointless and socially self-defeating for exactly opposite reasons. Eliminating them both by transforming them into a center class where all needs are met and there is enough time and wealth and power for all to be involved in the meaningful living of life, that would be the best possible situation not only for all involved, but even more so for everyone as a whole.

A great deal of solid good could be accomplished when there is no longer poverty and no longer monopolization of power and decision making. It would greatly reduce the largess and corruption and do more than anything else to take a real bite out of crime. Much that is unbalanced and destructive in our present system would fairly well cease to be.

Unfortunately, this will never happen for several reasons. The first is that a system of sensible equity could never be imposed, it would have to be done voluntarily or it would never work. There is no way to force people to be fair, or decent, or honest, or nonviolent. There is really no way to force people around to any method of belief. Regardless of how necessary and beneficial those concepts are, they cannot be forced on human beings. And because there are human beings who are never content unless they have much more than the other guy has, and they can get more by legalized theft and by force to benefit themselves, there will never be a voluntary agreement and restructuring of the rules and methods of a system to do those things.

There always has been and there always will be an absolute refusal of the rich and powerful to concede their control over the people of the world because they don't care about humanity. They don't care about the suffering of others at all. They are people who's human values either never existed or were poisoned by raging greed and other diseases of the personality. Their focus is only on themselves and having everything their way, not because it's justified or valid or because it makes any sense, but only because that's the way they want it.

Who hasn't asked themselves why things are allowed to continue this way when its so obviously unfair and disgusting? We have all more than likely stopped along the way to notice this disparity of justice, hope and quality of life and more than a few have agonized with deep sincerity over it, not understanding why we simply cannot live in a decent, kind world when it would be so easy to do. The answers are not in the laws or the system, it is because we agree to it. We accept to one extent or another that we should all have the right to try to get more for ourselves than the other guy.

Instead of turning it around and working to get more for those who have the least, and thereby eliminating poverty and lifting the world at the same time and getting our own needs met, we do the opposite and achieve the opposite. We focus on the people at the top getting ever more for themselves, just for themselves, and we all do the same, creating ever more poverty and ever more disparity as we go. It will not be until we remember that selfishness is one of the causes of all of these problems that we as a species will ever decide to finally make the adjustments necessary to see to the needs of those without, until there are no more without. It only makes sense.

We have modeled ourselves after the worst human beings in the world. The greediest, most violent, most self-centered, arrogant, self-serving, bigoted criminals on record. Their ceaseless advertising and self-promoting self-glamorization has saturated our society and saturated our brains for the last century, until we all but forgot the simple difference between right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, humane and inhumane. We all want to be exactly like they are. Rich and pointless. Depraved and indifferent to the whole rest of the world. We just want our fine wines and fancy chef's meals, our nice cars and our external appearances of affluence. We've actually bought into the stupid idea that money makes the man. We don't know that what we need most, what we need in order to survive, in order to be sustainable on this earth, are the things that money cannot buy.

It is well into the time where our personal levels of comprehending how the world works should be brought to the foreground of public discussion. It will take a long time until the majority of people are willing and able to rethink the power structure we are all so familiar with and so invested in. Many many people have bought into the thick mesh of overlapping mutually supporting ideologies that sell us this power structure as a good thing that benefits everyone. But it is becoming ever more clear that it does not benefit everyone, and it doesn't even really benefit the few at the top beyond the mere count of dollars and fleeting privilege that is only good for the span of their own one lifetime.

The truth is that we may all be well intended but we've got it all wrong. We're doing it backwards and can't see that, so we keep asking the same questions of why things are the way they are. Because things will never change. They are the way they are because we keep doing the same things that can only come out the way they always come out.

Our entire focus upward is incorrect. Our focus needs to be reversed. Instead of serving those who have it all, we should ignore those who have it all and always want more, and focus on those who have nothing.

This isn't about biblical values, although the bible so many claim to take to heart espouses the same principles. Perhaps the bible doesn't go far enough by explaining why, when Jesus walked the earth he ignored the rich and destroyed the temple of the money changers, and went directly to the poor and the sick to heal them. Jesus didn't act like he was better than everyone else and he wasn't impressed with anyone who did act that way.

If Jesus came to Earth and went to live with and amongst the people who were suffering the most, then you'll have to tell me why the hypocrites who claim to be so religious and holy would sooner be caught dead than to care about anyone but themselves. Men are greedy and petty, jealous and selfish and Christ knew it. But Christ didn't act that way, he acted in spite of men who commit their lives to selling themselves out to everything dark and destructive just so that they could wear fancier clothes and feel like they were something.

We believe that a man is truly great when he has more than anyone else while others have nothing, and he can order other people to their death. What's not to admire about that? It does so much for the world. Though Jesus would say and do exactly the opposite, let's not notice that and just pretend he thinks so too.

Jesus led by example which is the best way to lead, but even he knew he would not find too many followers behind him. Perhaps it would have helped if he'd also explained why he came to Earth and lived as he lived, not as a rich powerful man as he surely could have, but as one of the many. Not as someone who judged others as beneath him but as just like him. Perhaps when the bible was written people didn't need to have it explained to them. People today most certainly do. Christ did not snub his nose at the prostitutes or the felons or the lepers, he lived among them. He had no desire or use for pieces of gold or silver. That's not what it was about then, and that's not what it's about now. Gold and silver are not where the answers lie. If it was where the answers lie we could have bought our way out of this mess a long time ago. Clearly that's not the answer.

As self-evident as that fact is, and as often as we can hear somebody say they know that money can't buy happiness, none the less seeking money is still the number one activity in this world. It is what everyone gets up in the morning to do. It is the accepted primary activity that defines how we live on this world. It is what we do. It is what we are most concerned about and it is what we spend the lion's share of our precious time doing. We all seek money.

After centuries of this money-seeking based societal behavior we have not achieved anything in the realm of true improvement. That glaring fact is easily overlooked however because in the endless quest for money, we have created many things. Many things that make money. Many things that cost money. Many things to spend money on. And we are delighted with those things and we accept them as a reasonable substitution for having what really matters and what we really need in this world. We are content to accumulate and play with our myriad toys and brag of our expensive achievements, not because they've accomplished anything of note, because they haven't, but because there is nothing else for us to brag about.

We have lost track of reality and feel more comfortable with lies than truth. We are amazingly capable of failing to see the forests for the trees, of missing the point of damned near everything, and yet are absolutely certain that living as selfishly as possible makes us Godly people.

The biblical story of the loaves and fishes is one example where so many people completely miss the point. Jesus tore off enough bread and meat for himself and then passed the rest along, and everyone else in attendance did the same. The result was that everyone ate their fill and afterwards there were bushels of food still left over. This is chalked up to magic and otherworldly miracles without fail, when miracles had nothing to do with it. It was the simple act of everyone taking what they needed for themselves and sharing the rest of what they had with everyone else that not only fed everyone, including those who came with nothing, but in the end yielded more than enough to do it again. That is the point of this story, but I know the thought of such sharing with those who have nothing disgusts many. It is no wonder the religious set prefers to chalk it up to magic rather than common sense that everyone can duplicate, and benefit every bit as much from.

The fact of the matter is that because we are so disgusted at the notion of helping others, we live in constant fear of not having enough for ourselves. Because of our refusal to make sure other people are getting their needs met, we know better than to expect anyone to care about us or help us. We are all on our own.

Our access to having enough is always and eternally precarious and we know it. At some level we all understand that we have no control over this system and because of that we have little control over our own lives and well-being. For most of us, it is always up to somebody else how well we'll do in this life and we have no power to change that.

In case it needs to be said, that makes us slaves. We are not free, and we are not independent. We don't call our own shots. We report where and when we are told to report and we do whatever we're told, even if it offends us or bores us to tears. Even if the pay is lousy and the job is beneath us and has no future, even if it has no meaning to us. Even if it means killing perfect strangers, locking people in cages for what they eat or say or wear, or torturing people because they are bad and we are good. We have been reduced to obedient, silenced laborers who don't even complain as our pay is reduced, slashed, by the removal of benefits, by corporations consuming our retirement savings, by the bankers slashing the value of our dollars by over 60%, just in the last six years.

We believe we must not speak out or stand up for ourselves because our prosperity, such as it is, is wholly dependent on us pleasing those who decide what we are worth to them. Fear is our greatest motivator and that, sadly, makes for a very poor motivator. When we do what we do out of fear we are living in a constant state of fight or flight syndrome, a steady low level chronic fight or flight feeling if we're middle class, and a raging fight or flight feeling if we're upper or lower class for the exact opposite reasons. No one is able to extricate themselves from the chronic illness of underlying fear. It is fear that motivates us through our entire lives, and the world today is in the condition it's in because of all that chronic and selfish fear.

We are depleted and exhausted as a species, working ever faster and harder in the aim of ridding ourselves of that fear. We want to be free of it, to experience security, and finally be able to relax and feel at peace. We're constantly coming up with ways to increase output and productivity and always with the stated goal of not having to work so hard and long, and yet no matter how much productivity increases we end up working even longer hours and have less to show for it. We can never feel at peace.

Increased productivity is not a human need, or a natural need. It is not one of the things that sustains us. An artificial goal created to achieve selfish, artificial results, could only be a bad thing. Productivity is only something corporations salivate over. For the rest of the world it's a bad idea.

Increased productivity actually increases all of the evils and things we fear and wish would disappear from this world. Increased productivity increases poverty, because it reduces the number of jobs, not the hours in a work week. Increased output creates an exponential increase in pollution, environmental damage and the depletion of limited natural resources, what other outcome could there be? We could see it if we looked, and when we look we do see it. But still we keep doing all the wrong things some more in the deluded hope that maybe this time it won't come out making everything worse, even though there is no other way it could come out.

There are many who are driven to the point of destroying themselves, their families, or others in the aim of securing themselves financially. They are highly motivated and focused almost entirely on freeing themselves of that chronic underlying insecurity. Ironically, very few ever reach a point of leaving their fear behind because once they have accumulated the wealth they gave up everything else to achieve, they now must fear losing it. It never ends.

Getting as much as we can for ourselves and our own is what is at the heart of our blind selfishness and self defeating way of seeing the world. Even though we know it's not possible, we continue to try to buy happiness with dollars. I don't know that we'll ever finally conclude that it cannot be done and decide to try something else instead. I do know that the sooner we reach that point the sooner we can achieve those things that we really need. Not just for ourselves but for the whole world.

Perhaps if we could begin to see the mechanics behind it, the rational, definable causes and results of making the selfish pursuit of wealth our number one planetary activity, we could begin to see there is no mystery to why things are the way they are. It is not mysterious. It is no more mysterious than a mathematical equation. This plus that equals this. It's simple stuff. It's something you can count on, it can only come out one way.

When our number one focus is achieving wealth for ourselves, then whenever the expected benefits are a portion of wealth, we will inevitably ignore the expected consequences. Repeating this pattern millions upon millions of times can only lead to what? An ever increasing load of ignored consequences that will inevitably reach a point where they can no longer be ignored. Those accumulated ignored consequences will end life on earth. That's not a scientific prediction, its merely simple common sense.

Right now in 2008, it is beginning to come into common awareness that we are going to have a global, financial, social and environmental collapse. Those ignored consequences, the consequences of the selfish pursuit of personal wealth, are catching up with us and overtaking us. The so called Global Warming phenomenon will not be what kills us. It's only one of the symptoms and we could argue over whether or not it is a man made phenomenon but there is little point in doing so. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't detract one iota from the overwhelming reality that our decades of pursuing wealth for ourselves instead of for each other while ignoring the consequences have all been a sick, sad joke. It's been nothing more than a slow form of suicide for all. We don't need a single dollar in our pockets to survive but we do need clean, drinkable water, and fresh breathable air to live. We need fresh, nutritious, unadulterated food to survive. If those things are gone we will die. It is that simple. That is a truth that cannot be circumvented and we all know it.

If you had the choice between wealth beyond your wildest dreams OR having fresh air and clean water, you'd be stupid to choose the wealth. You couldn't live longer than two minutes without air in your lungs so it would be the least intelligent choice anyone could make.

Tell me then why we all make exactly that choice every single day of our lives? We all choose wealth over clean water, clean air, natural clean foods and environmentally nondestructive styles of living. We don't even do it for wealth beyond our wildest dreams, we do it for just enough to get by. Surely we've figured out by now we'll never get rich working for someone else.

Every single one of the choices we make today that ignores destructive byproducts is a choice for our own obsolescence and in support of that which is unnecessary. We didn't have cars until a hundred years ago, we don't need cars to survive. We only need cars to survive in a world that is solely fixated on achieving personal wealth. Not for all, but one by one, one at a time, every man, woman and child for themselves. It's an incalculable amount of duplicated, wasted energy that overproduces, and results in pollution, depletion, horrendous waste and lots of money for a very few people. And those very few people pocket the money instead of keeping it in circulation for the common good.

Putting the extra wealth back to work for everyone would be absolutely contradictory to the whole paradigm of "it's all about me and getting more for myself" that we all live in and we all subscribe to, even though in growing numbers that may be largely to do with the fact that we seem to have little other choice. That is our system. We don't worry about tomorrow, we only care about getting our needs met today, right now. So we keep doing everything we've been doing and then some, and it keeps bringing the day of total planetary suicide closer and closer. It will come. It's already here.

Forty percent of our rivers and lakes are now so polluted they are toxic to human health and cannot be used for drinking water. Sixty percent or more of the large sea mammals are gone. 25% and counting of our small invertebrates are dying off; as are our bees, creatures who's extinction spells a rather immediate end to having food to eat.

It is plain to see that our failure to make our priorities what they must be, to continue to believe that money matters more than life on earth, to pretend there is any choice in the matter, is to sign our own death warrant. There is no choice. It is illogical to do other than to turn our priorities upside down and inside out and worry about the condition of the earth and it's creatures first, then move up the food chain. We have to make our bed to lie in, and the one we're making now is actually one we're simultaneously hacking to bits with an ax. There will be nothing left at the end of the day but splinters to lie down in.

We can do better than this. It's completely within our grasp. It's 100% possible to make the changes, they are all within our ability to do. We did after all create the mess we're living in today, we can un-create it. What we can't do is bring back lost lives or nature that is lost or destroyed because those are irreplaceable. We do not create nature and cannot replace it once we use it up, kill it, pollute it, or poison it with depleted uranium munitions that will last 8 billion years. At the breakneck pace we're going now it's not going to be a case of slow suicide, but rather fast suicide.

So what is the problem? What's keeping us from putting on the brakes and stopping the madness? If you're willing and I'm willing to make the radical changes that must be made before it's too late, what's holding us up?

I return to where I came in. Government. The government is supposed to be an expression of the will of the people. It is not. It possibly never has been or if it was it lasted a very short time. Because the nature of people as previously mentioned includes those who cannot grasp that there is more that is important than just themselves. It is they, and they alone who are forcing us to commit planetary suicide and continue living in a violent, brutal, unfair world. Their fixation and addiction to money and power, their obsessive compulsive drive for wealth and control has the whole world by the gonads and they will never, ever let go.

Which leaves it literally, completely and totally up to us to let go of them. It is we who will have to reject the financial system that defines planet earth, and find the alternative lifestyles that will allow us to continue not just our species but all of the species detrimental to our continued existence.

In the world of corporate strategy, all that matters is more money. Corporations are the beast consuming the world and it is you and I who must stop feeding the beast. That means going without things that we ignorantly believe make life worth living. We have to fully comprehend that money can't buy us happiness, and only when we really get that will we be able to let go of the social mind control programming that is completely and totally about buying and selling your way to happiness.

We must reject all that is mindlessly mass produced because it is a form of violence. Serious violence against all of us. We're hurting ourselves by supporting these vast machines of supposed supply and demand. We have to return to the natural common sense strategy of making what we need for ourselves. Life is local and it must be lived locally. To force a contradictory paradigm like globalism onto the world weakens us, and makes us dependent on a system owned and operated at the whim of corporations and their sole interest of profit making. What's to stop any global producer from simply deciding there's not enough profit in shipping products from China to the United States? What if it was food? Then where would we be?

Why should we agree to leave ourselves so vulnerable to such a forced, destructive system that can't even supply us with fresh, clean or nontoxic foods in the first place? Is this government our servant or our master? It is clear our little democracy has fully reverted to what systems have always been. A pyramid of power of the few over the many, with the primary goal of using the populace for it's labor and stealing it's wealth, leaving us impoverished and without necessities while those at the top literally bathe in wealth and privilege. We do not have the power to change this. It is done.

Unless blood is to be spilled by the thousands of gallons again on our own soil, the people fighting each other while the rich get rich off it, the only other option is to simply refuse to comply. This comes down to the individual level, one by one, each and every one, deciding and determining their own way that life should be. Joining with others of like mind will start the revolution. There are many ways to do this, our creativity and ingenuity can finally be put to real use and the satisfaction it brings will nourish and empower us, and feed us like never before as well as being the best kind of advertising there is.

Simple and obvious ideas include: instead of using our front lawns to grow pointless grass, we should grow our own clean, healthy and natural food. We can produce massive amounts of food on very small lots, and when the majority of any community does this, we'll have variety as well. We can learn to sew again, and even learn how to weave our own cloth. I hate to tell you this but we're going there anyway. It's better to do it our way and by choice than to have it forced on us when we're least able to respond to it.

We don't have to stay brainwashed into believing everything costs money. It doesn't have to. We can choose to simply share and exchange, just because we can. We can remember all the realistic good that comes of giving and sharing, taking care of our community, and making life more important than cold hard cash. Everything does not have to boil down to money, believing it does is what's keeping this whole world entrapped by the masters of manipulation and accumulation of wealth.

The point is for local communities to make their own decisions and rules and laws, to decide for themselves based on their own principles and real values how to best see to the needs of all so that there is prosperity everywhere, not this blind and selfish obsession with more for self and screw everyone else and the whole planet too. It doesn't matter so much what the particulars are. What matters is closing down corporate control over our lives by seeing to our needs ourselves, and by reconnecting with reality, because it's really not a choice anymore.

We can do it smart or we can do it stupid, and waiting and hoping for the elites in our government to do anything that will change the status quo is the height of ignorance. They will not help. In fact they will do everything in their power to prevent us from disconnecting from their system of dominance and control.

If it's all too much for you to think about, just boil it down to the bottom line. Do you want to be a slave that's slowly dying in a polluted world? Or do you want to be free and live a meaningful life in a different way that you yourself decide? To me that's an easy choice, how about you?

In closing, the most important aspect of gaining true independence means thinking in all new ways. Remove the boundaries inside your mind, and don't think about how things are set up today, think about how they should be set up that would most benefit everyone. Business hours and business days are somebody else's paradigm, break on through to the other side. Nothing has to be the way it is.

What are you to do? Where do you start? What are the steps? That is for you to decide. There is no one but you who knows what you should do or where you should start. There are no steps. There is no one who will tell you when and where to report and what your duties are. That's all for you to figure out. That's what independence means, doing it yourself. You will have to work with others, talk, discuss, share ideas, help each other. Perhaps you'll hit on a system that you can share with everyone else, no doubt a few good basic systems could be widespread and adapted to help others get started. We have a lot to do. And in doing it we will for the first time in our lives, and for the first time in a very long time for our country, be doing what we were supposed to be doing all along. Living as independent people, self sufficient, not dependent on and not beholden to anyone who can claim to be above us, or who can claim to have a right to what we make for ourselves. The benefits are obvious, the rewards are limitless, and the only thing that's stopping us, is us.

Intellectual Violence

Something I've learned over the last few years is that there really is such a thing as evil in this world. True, sheer evil.

I've also learned that all evil is perpetrated by force; and that can be physical violence or it can be intellectual violence, i.e. by deceit and deception. Lies. Lies are every bit as much a form of violence as guns, clubs and bombs because just like physical violence, lies are used to violate someone else's free will and free choice.

The reality is that the violence of lies is infinitely more common than physical violence. There's just no contest there. Lies are the single most prevalent form of violence in our country today, and that intellectual violence is taking a serious toll.

What is violence and why is violence used? It is used as a means to an end. More specifically it is the quickest way to get what you want from somebody else. You can either just shoot someone and take what you want or you can lie them out of what they have that you want, either way, you achieve the goal of getting what you want from somebody else. Lying is the means to perpetrate a robbery or theft. Just like a mugging in a dark alley, individuals and nations alike are violently attacked with the aim of destroying the true owners of something to take what they own for yourself.

The mere threat of using violence against somebody is often enough to get them to hand over the desired things. It works well because everybody knows what violence is and nobody wants to be violated, which is exactly what violence is. It is violating another person. It's using whatever superior tools or strength or advantages you posses to harm, or threaten to harm another with the aim of taking something that belongs to them and that you have no right to take. It means over riding the free will and free choice of another person and to force your own will on them, so that you can have it your way. And that's just wrong.

Depriving others of the God given right of having free choice over their own lives, bodies and property is the very definition of what we think of as crime. That is the DNA behind all crime, that's the reason that we even have the concept of crime. Forcefully depriving another of their free will is what all crime is. It violates a person in the most serious, egregious ways. It's an insult that goes very deep into the psyche of any victim of violence, physical or intellectual.

Victims of violence do feel violated. They feel the terror of powerlessness over their own lives. They feel the horrible loss of control over their own fate. The overwhelming insult of not having any choice in matters regarding their own life and best interests. They are reduced to irrelevance because of the appetites and will of their attackers.

Being made to feel irrelevant is probably the most damaging experience that any human being can go through. It's the worst feeling in the world to suddenly become nothing and no one as far as some dominating, violent others are concerned. To be deprived of the obligatory recognition of your sentience and inherent right to be treated as an equal to other human beings is to feel one's own life being negated, as if it had no meaning, importance or significance. There is no greater insult and no greater harm that can be perpetrated on another.

To become nothing more than the extension of another man's will is to become a slave or an object, and we are not slaves or objects. We are equals with the same human rights in this world, and we all deserve to retain our dignity and sovereignty at all times. No one has a right to take those things from us. When they do take those things they defy known reality and relegate us to a realm of confused suffering, and permanent damage that cannot be undone or recompensed.

The only way anyone can make you feel that way is by violating you, depriving you of your dignity and personal sovereignty, and this is why the concept of simple respect for others is such an important thing. It's a huge thing. In fact I'd have to say it's the biggest thing there is.

In a decent world we would all agree to respect the others in our lives and all over the world. We would comprehend the simple fact that those others do not owe us anything. They don't owe us their prosperity or their lives. They don't owe us their property or their rights. They are not in any way obligated to do as we desire so that we may feel happy.

The only people who think the opposite is true are the people in this world who are truly evil. They are the criminals who commit all the worst crimes in this world. Although those crimes can take many forms the bottom line is that it's always the same crime being committed, the crime of depriving another of their free will and their right to determine their own fate and their own life choices, whether or not anyone else happens to like those choices. It's just not our call to make for anyone else.

That's where we run into problems because there are a great many people, people who think of themselves as upright, good people, religious people even, who will not agree that everyone has the same right to self determination in this world. Right off the bat, that attitude is criminal.

The Liar's Toolbox

Today there is much killing of innocents happening in the name of the good guys vs. the bad guys, but what is never called to account is who defines good and bad. Without exception it is never a simple case of good guys versus bad guys; it is in fact a case of aggressors calling the others bad because those others are not doing what is desired by the aggressor. They are the legal owners of lands and resources the aggressor covets, they exist in the way of the aggressors and in blatant contradiction to false claims to ownership of the land and its resources. The others who have what the aggressors want are always automatically the bad guys, and that's nothing but a big fat lie. It's hypocrisy. And that's always attached to lies. Hypocrisy is one of the main tools in the liar's toolbox.

Hypocrisy is when we believe we deserve to have free will but we refuse to extend the same human right to others. This is a very important tool in the Liar's toolbox. It is used to try to justify violence against others with all manner of lies and excuses, like religious differences, racial differences, any kind of differences will be used to try to justify perpetrating violence against others when we want what belongs to them. Where ever there is hypocrisy there is lying going on and the sad reality will be that a lot of good people will have bought in to those lies and will be an opposing force to the truth. They will not be able to see their own hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a serious, dangerous sin and it's one we should add to the list of things we want to find in ourselves and do away with.

Another item in the Liar's Toolbox is indifference. Sometimes called depraved indifference the meaning is simple enough to gather. When we are indifferent to the suffering of others we are committing a crime of violence against them. When big corporations or governments take steps in their own self interests that result in harm being done to others, directly or indirectly, they know it. That they proceed anyway makes it criminal.

Failing to notice or consider that our actions harm others is not an excuse and it cannot be justified. Saying they just didn't know, or worse, framing and promoting illicit depraved concepts like "collateral damage" is no excuse either. There is no such thing as lives that don't matter.

No matter what claims are being made to justify violence in the name of self interest, there is no justification. When we are led to believe otherwise that in itself is a crime being perpetrated on all of us. We are being insulted every bit as much as their innocent victims. The message is that others don't matter in the name of their personal goals and desires, and that's invalid on its face. Others always matter and life always matters more than any ideology or game plan. More than any government's desire for power and prestige, more than any corporation's greed and psychotic lust for endless expansion. Those things in fact and in reality are worthless up against human life and well being. Pretending otherwise is always and only a lie.

It's Not Just About Stuff

We're encouraged to believe that crime is all about property and ownership rights, and that there can be no crimes without property or life being involved but that's only seeing the peel and missing the entire banana beneath it. Every dishonest contract, every con job, every petty theft, every rape or act of child molestation, every bogus war we're led into based on lies, is always about depriving people of something that's rightfully and only theirs. That can be property, rights, dignity, life or limb, freedom of choice, or even the information needed to make the best decisions. Again, all of that boils down to overriding the free will of others. These are all forms of violence, ways of violating the human birthright to have free will and freedom of choice in all things pertaining to our own lives, persons, and property.

Violence used at any other time than in literal, imminent self defense from a violent attacker is criminal. It is unnecessary and unjustified. Yet it is prevalent and it is everywhere, from behind the closed doors of private homes to out in the open in the streets, the kinds of violence of wars and political unrest. Take Africa for example and the carnage going on there. It's all completely unjustified, it's criminal, people are getting hurt and dying and there is no end in sight. No good comes of this way of getting what you want at the expense of others without the consent of all involved.

There is no need to fund and instigate the social crisis there, which is what is being done by powerful, wealthy corporations and their copartners in governments. It is being done to consume the rich resources of that land for the benefit of those who already have more than enough, so that they can have even more for themselves. Greed is not good. It is just another weapon in the liars toolbox. Greed is always fed with the blood of innocent people and it is a crime.

Depriving others of what's rightfully theirs is what it always boils down to and that's why violence beyond literal, imminent self defense from a violent attacker is always criminal. It can not be tolerated. Not any more. Not in the 21st Century. It is long past time for humanity with its consciousness raised and its improved access to education to make the necessary spiritual/emotional/doctrinal adjustments to go along with that increased knowledge and awareness. Meaning, it's time for us to change for the better.

It's time for us now to take responsibility, which is what must be done when we become world aware and educated. To posses and use knowledge without responsibility is an unforgivable failure. It's also self-defeating because it enables that which is not true to dominate us.

Honesty isn't just the best public policy, it's the only public policy because dishonesty is literally a criminal act. It's an act of violence because it violates the peoples right to exercise their free will. It undermines our ability to make intelligent, meaningful choices for ourselves by giving us false information and forcing false perspectives on us that will lead us to draw conclusions based on that false information. The public will then be infinitely more likely to agree to whatever the liar or liars want. That's every bit as violent as holding a gun to our heads, it's just not recognized as such, and that's no accident. It's so obvious as to be painful, yet how many of us have ever made the connection? They're taking what they want by force and we can't even see it anymore, we expect no less.

We tend to think of violence only in terms of physical things, blood, bullet wounds, physical harm. But being lied to can do equal damage to our minds and souls, and can and does cause terrible harm and injury to the collective consciousness of mankind.

We're living in a society which, at this moment in time, is being controlled and dominated by people who have no respect for others. By people who by the very nature of how they think and act are criminals. There's no wiggle room here, it's quite simple when you stop to remember that the essence of crime is depriving others of their free will and their right to act in their own best interests. Those who dominate our reality right now are master liars, and the damage they are perpetrating has no historical equivalent in this country. The destruction they're wreaking is total and we're only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg. By the time they're done there won't be much left standing, and a whole lot of people are going to suffer, and a whole lot of people are going to die. You tell me what's not criminal about that. Everything about it is criminal.

These controllers have managed to get a dominant foothold into every major aspect of society. The justice system, the departments of government, the church, public and higher education have all been infiltrated and are in the process of being ideologically raped. They own and control the media and they do this with the specific purpose of being able to withhold the truth about themselves and what they do, what they want and how they're getting what they want, from the public. You can't even buy TV time today if you have a different perspective than the one they want to dominate the public consciousness with. They can't afford the truth going out to the people because they know the people would never agree to go along with them. Therefore, they either have to shoot us all, which simply isn't possible, or they have to violate our consciousness with an endless stream of lies to make us want to go along with them. And they're experts at this. And we pay them to do it and they use our money to do it to us.

Every aspect of how they operate is an insult and a violation of the public's right to choose in their own behalf. We can no longer make appropriate choices because we no longer have access to all of the information, to truth, or to all of the sides to any story. All we will ever hear again as long as the media laws stay the same is only what they want us to hear.

We have only to look around us to gauge the numbers of innocent people dying both here and abroad to get an accurate idea of just how much evil has managed to insinuate itself into our minds and lives. We have only to witness the metamorphosis of ordinary men who once upheld our laws to protect us, into militarized, soulless, dishonest inhuman robot killers and thugs to recognize that evil is transforming our society from its very roots and defining principles into its exact mirror opposite. We are being turned into everything we claim to hate and would risk our lives to fight against, and we no longer seem capable of recognizing it.

Our laws are quickly being changed from things that protect our God given right to exercise our free will without encumbrance from power and privilege, into things which give all permission to power and privilege to encumber us and prevent us from living in freedom. The lie is that it is being done to secure us, but we are not secure. We could never be kept safe by anyone, and especially not by a government so obsessed with secrecy, so disdainful of being bound by the laws that bind the rest of us, and so unconcerned with our core principles of protecting every individual from violence and interference by the government into their private lives. This government represents everything we once fought to be free of, and then some.

They use every form of violence and force conceivable, and have many others being developed, most of which are further insults to freedom and free will. All of them have the intended goal of depriving us of even more freedom, of our right to speak openly about what we see happening, of our hope and expectation that justice will be done and that they will be made to stop. Now that they are making the rules they will not stop. We are drowning in a sea of lies.

When lies dominate us then evil dominates our society. We are willingly or unwillingly forced to be complicit in the actions that evil desires to carry out. And it will always desire to perpetrate the greatest possible evils it can get away with. It spells the destruction of centuries of hard work and struggle specifically to stop, control and prevent evil from taking over our government, our country and our private lives. When lies are so common they become what feels normal and rational to us, we are certainly lost and it's only a matter of time before we'll have to pay the price of our ignorance and inability to discern something as simple as right from wrong.

We are all victims of intellectual violence, and knowing right from wrong will always be the first thing to go, and the last thing we'll ever recognize. Until it's far too late.

posted at Information Clearing House June 6, 2008