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.