From: tony@expotera.com
Date: Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 12:12 AM
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Expotera Pre-Launch Statement of Work]
To: billg@microsoft.com, jonde@microsoft.com, stuart@implex.net,
steve@implex.net, miked@sierra-bravo.com,
toneill@sierra-bravo.com, mikes@sierra-bravo.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Cashman
Date: Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 12:37 PM
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Expotera Pre-Launch Statement of Work]
To: Tony Whitcomb
Hey Tony,
Jim Cashman here, I have noticed a couple of your emails in the
past year or so, and am not quite sure what it is you are doing.
If it is suing people for damages that had something to do with
the demise of Expotera then go get em!
It sure would be nice to see you prevail and get justice and be
fairly compensated, and likewise people like us.
Good luck
Jim
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Bring It On!
From: tony@expotera.com
Date: Friday, January 27, 2012 11:11 AM
Subject: Bring It On!
To: jonde@microsoft.com stuart@implex.net
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------
Subject: Expotera
From: "Pat Shriver"
Date: Fri, July 13, 2007 12:34 pm
To: stuart@implex.net
Cc: br-redd@usfamily.net
tony@sierra-bravo.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. DeVaan, attached please find correspondence regarding Expotera.
Pat Shriver
Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A.
Flagship Corporate Center
775 Prairie Center Drive, Suite 400
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
Phone: 952-224-7285
Fax: 952-995-9577
pat.shriver@fmjlaw.com
www.fmjlaw.com
<>
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Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A.
Attorneys At Law
Flagship Corporate Center
775 Prairie Center Drive, Suite 400
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
Telephone: 952-995-9500
Facsimile: 952-995-9577
Website: www.fmjlaw.com
July 13,2007
Via Email and U.S. Mail
Mr. Stuart DeVaan
Implex.net Inc.
109 South 7th Street, Suite 255
Roanoke Building
Minneapolis, MN 55402
stuart@implex.net
Re: Expotera, LLC v. Implex.net Inc.
FMJ File No.: 61068-4
Dear Mr. DeVaan:
Expotera, LLC ("Expotera") is in the process of determining whether to commence litigation against Implex.net, Inc.
Please accept this letter as formal notice of our request that you will maintain all electronic and hard copy documents that refer, relate or pertain, to Expotera, Mr. Tony Whitcomb and Mr. Brad Reddick.
These electronic and hard copy documents may be subject to future discovery request after litigation commences.
Under both state and federal law, parties have a duty to preserve documents when litigation is foreseeable. Patton v. Newmar Corp., 538 N.W.2d 116, 118 (Minn. 1995); Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 216 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).
This includes all documents, including electronic documents stored
or located in computers or other electronic storage systems.
Accordingly, please disable any automatic delete functions on your compters systems to preserve information relevant to the litigation.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Very truly yours,
Ernest P. Shriver
EPS:cau
cc: Tony Whitcomb
cc: Brad Reddick
Date: Friday, January 27, 2012 11:11 AM
Subject: Bring It On!
To: jonde@microsoft.com stuart@implex.net
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------
Subject: Expotera
From: "Pat Shriver"
Date: Fri, July 13, 2007 12:34 pm
To: stuart@implex.net
Cc: br-redd@usfamily.net
tony@sierra-bravo.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. DeVaan, attached please find correspondence regarding Expotera.
Pat Shriver
Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A.
Flagship Corporate Center
775 Prairie Center Drive, Suite 400
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
Phone: 952-224-7285
Fax: 952-995-9577
pat.shriver@fmjlaw.com
www.fmjlaw.com
<
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Fafinski Mark & Johnson, P.A.
Attorneys At Law
Flagship Corporate Center
775 Prairie Center Drive, Suite 400
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
Telephone: 952-995-9500
Facsimile: 952-995-9577
Website: www.fmjlaw.com
July 13,2007
Via Email and U.S. Mail
Mr. Stuart DeVaan
Implex.net Inc.
109 South 7th Street, Suite 255
Roanoke Building
Minneapolis, MN 55402
stuart@implex.net
Re: Expotera, LLC v. Implex.net Inc.
FMJ File No.: 61068-4
Dear Mr. DeVaan:
Expotera, LLC ("Expotera") is in the process of determining whether to commence litigation against Implex.net, Inc.
Please accept this letter as formal notice of our request that you will maintain all electronic and hard copy documents that refer, relate or pertain, to Expotera, Mr. Tony Whitcomb and Mr. Brad Reddick.
These electronic and hard copy documents may be subject to future discovery request after litigation commences.
Under both state and federal law, parties have a duty to preserve documents when litigation is foreseeable. Patton v. Newmar Corp., 538 N.W.2d 116, 118 (Minn. 1995); Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 216 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).
This includes all documents, including electronic documents stored
or located in computers or other electronic storage systems.
Accordingly, please disable any automatic delete functions on your compters systems to preserve information relevant to the litigation.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Very truly yours,
Ernest P. Shriver
EPS:cau
cc: Tony Whitcomb
cc: Brad Reddick
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Drowning in Hypocrisy
Drowning in Hypocrisy
By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
January 25, 2012
The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has
become a caricature of hypocrisy.
Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA
director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on
the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining
a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against
Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal
with us through diplomacy.”
If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will
Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to
get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us
through diplomacy.”
The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of
military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that
Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo.
Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by
Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and
puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding
a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars.
The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs
to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian
Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment
by equating free speech with terrorism and spying.
Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm
Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in
the City of Chicago.
The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.
Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the
American “media” and in the debates for the Republican
presidential nomination.
The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while
goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens
who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.
But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy.
The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up
heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars
and sending them off to be tried as war criminals.
All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of
civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes
as “collateral damage.”
Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.
On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers
reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched
an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison.
The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into
CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.
Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to
investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might
add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in
determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”
There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the
US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law.
But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that
might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces
into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.
The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials.
No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred
millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions
over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in
order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal
to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.
No government can be perfect, because all governments are
composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted
by power and profit.
Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary
deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States.
We have reached the point where nothing that our government says
is believable.
Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth
rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state,
and its foreign and domestic policies.
Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes.
War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.
The pursuit of war continues.
On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets--the EU member states--did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU.
Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.
The embargo is a reckless act.
If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.
It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war.
Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over
Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military
attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive
of Gaddafi.
As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the
mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the
sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions.
With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.
Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs.
The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.
War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed
on the western “democracies.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30349.htm
By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
January 25, 2012
The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has
become a caricature of hypocrisy.
Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA
director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on
the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining
a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against
Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal
with us through diplomacy.”
If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will
Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to
get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us
through diplomacy.”
The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of
military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that
Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo.
Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by
Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and
puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding
a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars.
The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs
to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian
Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment
by equating free speech with terrorism and spying.
Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm
Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in
the City of Chicago.
The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.
Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the
American “media” and in the debates for the Republican
presidential nomination.
The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while
goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens
who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.
But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy.
The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up
heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars
and sending them off to be tried as war criminals.
All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of
civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes
as “collateral damage.”
Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.
On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers
reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched
an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison.
The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into
CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.
Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to
investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might
add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in
determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”
There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the
US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law.
But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that
might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces
into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.
The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials.
No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred
millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions
over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in
order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal
to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.
No government can be perfect, because all governments are
composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted
by power and profit.
Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary
deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States.
We have reached the point where nothing that our government says
is believable.
Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth
rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state,
and its foreign and domestic policies.
Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes.
War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.
The pursuit of war continues.
On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets--the EU member states--did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU.
Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.
The embargo is a reckless act.
If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.
It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war.
Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over
Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military
attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive
of Gaddafi.
As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the
mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the
sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions.
With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.
Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs.
The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.
War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed
on the western “democracies.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30349.htm
Monday, January 23, 2012
Our Last Chance for Freedom, Their Last Chance for Global Dominion
We each can decide the fate of humanity every single day.
By Tony Cartalucci
End the Lie
January 23, 2012
“And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical
branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right
now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully
affect the destiny of our descendants.
It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps
our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or
stupidty we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time
between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissaince.
But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our
intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an
abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.
To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe,
and to carry us to the stars.” -Carl Sagan, astronomer
Indeed, we teeter on a precipice upon which technology and human
innovation will either free us from chains that have collectively
bound us since the beginning of civilization, or enslave us within a
global scientific dictatorship that will crush us so completely we will
cease to even be human.
They, the global elite know this, while the average person snickers
and giggles at what is perhaps the greatest struggle with the most
at stake ever in human history.
As the global elite mobilize the summation of their power and
wealth on a daily basis, many of us do nothing at all to assert
ourselves or our claim to our own destiny.
Worse yet, many of us witlessly pay into a system that seeks to supplant individual human sovereignty and achieve the ultimate culmination of megalomaniacal dominion over the human race.
A fear stalks the global elite however – the fear of inevitable
technological breakthroughs slipping from their monopolistic
grip and into the hands of the people.
Technology like file sharing, blogging, open source software,
and cheaper hardware have allowed the masses to challenge
and in some ways dismantle the structure of domination the
global elite are attempting to build over free humanity.
Rules and regulations, bills like SOPA and PIPA, and other legal tactics attempt to stem the tide or indeed reverse it.
In other ways, this “disruptive technology” is below the radar of
most in both politics and throughout the public – but a potential
battlefield the global elite are already preparing to fight upon.
One example, and perhaps the most profound, is that of advanced
computer controlled manufacturing that is starting to appear on
desktops around the world.
An article on the globalist Lowy Institute’s “Interpreter” notes the
emergence of this technology in an article titled, “The replicator:
Life imitates Star Trek,” which concludes, “I don’t think we yet
have any idea of the disruptive capacity of such technology, for
good and ill.”
The implications are that the average person will be able to design
and create their own goods and no longer depend on the crass
consumerism that has characterized, aligned, and controlled society
for the last several decades.
Instead of having the TV tell people what they want, people could
decide for themselves. And while we could collaborate globally, we
would be able to decide locally how best to employ our time, energy,
and resources to solve local problems.
The blending of designers, manufacturers, and end-users would make collaboration and the erasing of the concept of “intellectual property” an inevitability.
It would deconstruct walls standing in the way of progress like
never before – as well as diminish both corporate profits and
the unwarranted power these profits have granted corporations
for generations.
And while computer-controlled manufacturing entering into the
hands of the masses would bring a quantum leap to human progress,
reducing material scarcity as the technology improved, none of this
is being talked about in political or public circles beyond a handful of
universities and enthusiasts who genuinely want what’s best for humanity.
In attempts to garner government support, many organizations are
told specific rules exist that prevent governments or corporations
from assisting projects that turn consumers into producers and thus
opening the door to the personal manufacturing revolution.
It is a good bet that the upper echelons of the global elite are well aware of the impending personal manufacturing revolution – and would rather keep it silent.
Concepts and predictions of “universal constructors” have been around since the 1940′s.
Even the most obedient and servile amongst the globalists’ helping hands would see the value and allure of such a paradigm shift finally becoming reality and might be tempted to stray from servitude if such ideas became more mainstream.
Keeping this quiet buys the elite time to put their global system
in place, increase interdependency between people and nations
as well as increasing dependency on their contrived international
institutions – when technology already exists that make such
global empires both unnecessary and entirely unpalatable.
Globalists through deindustrialization have made it more difficult to continue making advances in manufacturing technology that would normally trickle down to hobbyists and the general public.
Perpetuating and celebrating ignorance and ineptitude amongst a population that now values pop stars and athletes more than those seeking to advance the frontiers of humanity has also served the global elite well in staving off this paradigm shift.
The wisdom of Carl Sagan yielded the observation that we live in a society constructed on science and technology, but where the public has little or no knowledge at all regarding either.
So then who, Sagan asked, is determining the fate of humanity?
The answer is simple, the corporate-oligarchies that hold a monopoly on science, technology, and engineering and who seek through rules and regulations to defend, consolidate, and expand further that monopoly.
In many ways we already live under a scientific dictatorship.
We are faced with a series of decisions. Do we allow the petty,
short-sighted self-serving corporate oligarchies to continue
dominating society by our paying into their system on a daily
basis?
Will we allow corporate-funded think-tanks like the Brookings
Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations to continue
determining national policy for us, but on behalf of their
corporate sponsors?
Will we continue hoping for political leaders and political solutions
to come and improve our lives for us like needy children?
Or are we prepared to grow up as a civilization and take on these responsibilities for ourselves?
Are we prepared to starve into extinction the antiquated elitist
parasites that have misled us from one dark age to another, one
war to the next, from one economic depression to even worse, and
who have brought us to the edge of perhaps the most frightening
abyss in human history?
Personal manufacturing is here, a paradigm shift of immense proportions stands before us.
People around the world are already utilizing it to solve real world problems, as demonstrated by MIT’s FabLab – and improves lives where politics have categorically failed.
Society will continue to march forward with an expanding scientific and technological infrastructure. It is up to us and our will to get involved that will determine whether that infrastructure serves the elite or the people.
Above all others, Americans should be scientifically and technologically literate.
The “bread and circus” of corporate-funded spectacles like the NFL, American Idol, and all the other pointless diversions that have absorbed our time and energy and even our own will to determine our destiny are like the ancient Sirens of Greek mythology guiding us into the rocks of our own destruction.
It is time for us to determine whether we will command the direction of our own destiny, or if the cage the global elite have constructed around us incrementally is sufficiently comfortable enough to resign the destiny of humanity for.
For those interested in personal manufacturing, the above
Interpreter article features the “Makerbot” designed and
constructed by a collaborative workspace in New York City
called “Resistor.”
America used to have a thriving DIY industry, with an abundance
of clubs, organizations, contests, and publications.
Today there is a resurgence – only this time augmented with technology like personal manufacturing that has immense implications that go beyond a constructive pastime.
It would be a good idea to connect with these people and add our talent, energy, and free time to something more constructive than vegetating on the couch behind the glow of the Fortune 500 TV programming that has lulled a great nation to sleep.
The future is as bright as we make it – not through merely voting
and protesting, but through the use of our two hands and to whom
we choose to pay our money, time, and attention to.
The fate of humanity is determined each and every day by how
we choose to spend these personal commodities.
Technology has reached a point of no return granting whoever
wields it, control of human destiny well into the foreseeable future.
Let’s make sure it is we the people that are wielding it.
Source - http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/01/our-last-
chance-for-freedom-their-last.html
By Tony Cartalucci
End the Lie
January 23, 2012
“And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical
branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right
now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully
affect the destiny of our descendants.
It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps
our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or
stupidty we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time
between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissaince.
But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our
intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an
abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.
To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe,
and to carry us to the stars.” -Carl Sagan, astronomer
Indeed, we teeter on a precipice upon which technology and human
innovation will either free us from chains that have collectively
bound us since the beginning of civilization, or enslave us within a
global scientific dictatorship that will crush us so completely we will
cease to even be human.
They, the global elite know this, while the average person snickers
and giggles at what is perhaps the greatest struggle with the most
at stake ever in human history.
As the global elite mobilize the summation of their power and
wealth on a daily basis, many of us do nothing at all to assert
ourselves or our claim to our own destiny.
Worse yet, many of us witlessly pay into a system that seeks to supplant individual human sovereignty and achieve the ultimate culmination of megalomaniacal dominion over the human race.
A fear stalks the global elite however – the fear of inevitable
technological breakthroughs slipping from their monopolistic
grip and into the hands of the people.
Technology like file sharing, blogging, open source software,
and cheaper hardware have allowed the masses to challenge
and in some ways dismantle the structure of domination the
global elite are attempting to build over free humanity.
Rules and regulations, bills like SOPA and PIPA, and other legal tactics attempt to stem the tide or indeed reverse it.
In other ways, this “disruptive technology” is below the radar of
most in both politics and throughout the public – but a potential
battlefield the global elite are already preparing to fight upon.
One example, and perhaps the most profound, is that of advanced
computer controlled manufacturing that is starting to appear on
desktops around the world.
An article on the globalist Lowy Institute’s “Interpreter” notes the
emergence of this technology in an article titled, “The replicator:
Life imitates Star Trek,” which concludes, “I don’t think we yet
have any idea of the disruptive capacity of such technology, for
good and ill.”
The implications are that the average person will be able to design
and create their own goods and no longer depend on the crass
consumerism that has characterized, aligned, and controlled society
for the last several decades.
Instead of having the TV tell people what they want, people could
decide for themselves. And while we could collaborate globally, we
would be able to decide locally how best to employ our time, energy,
and resources to solve local problems.
The blending of designers, manufacturers, and end-users would make collaboration and the erasing of the concept of “intellectual property” an inevitability.
It would deconstruct walls standing in the way of progress like
never before – as well as diminish both corporate profits and
the unwarranted power these profits have granted corporations
for generations.
And while computer-controlled manufacturing entering into the
hands of the masses would bring a quantum leap to human progress,
reducing material scarcity as the technology improved, none of this
is being talked about in political or public circles beyond a handful of
universities and enthusiasts who genuinely want what’s best for humanity.
In attempts to garner government support, many organizations are
told specific rules exist that prevent governments or corporations
from assisting projects that turn consumers into producers and thus
opening the door to the personal manufacturing revolution.
It is a good bet that the upper echelons of the global elite are well aware of the impending personal manufacturing revolution – and would rather keep it silent.
Concepts and predictions of “universal constructors” have been around since the 1940′s.
Even the most obedient and servile amongst the globalists’ helping hands would see the value and allure of such a paradigm shift finally becoming reality and might be tempted to stray from servitude if such ideas became more mainstream.
Keeping this quiet buys the elite time to put their global system
in place, increase interdependency between people and nations
as well as increasing dependency on their contrived international
institutions – when technology already exists that make such
global empires both unnecessary and entirely unpalatable.
Globalists through deindustrialization have made it more difficult to continue making advances in manufacturing technology that would normally trickle down to hobbyists and the general public.
Perpetuating and celebrating ignorance and ineptitude amongst a population that now values pop stars and athletes more than those seeking to advance the frontiers of humanity has also served the global elite well in staving off this paradigm shift.
The wisdom of Carl Sagan yielded the observation that we live in a society constructed on science and technology, but where the public has little or no knowledge at all regarding either.
So then who, Sagan asked, is determining the fate of humanity?
The answer is simple, the corporate-oligarchies that hold a monopoly on science, technology, and engineering and who seek through rules and regulations to defend, consolidate, and expand further that monopoly.
In many ways we already live under a scientific dictatorship.
We are faced with a series of decisions. Do we allow the petty,
short-sighted self-serving corporate oligarchies to continue
dominating society by our paying into their system on a daily
basis?
Will we allow corporate-funded think-tanks like the Brookings
Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations to continue
determining national policy for us, but on behalf of their
corporate sponsors?
Will we continue hoping for political leaders and political solutions
to come and improve our lives for us like needy children?
Or are we prepared to grow up as a civilization and take on these responsibilities for ourselves?
Are we prepared to starve into extinction the antiquated elitist
parasites that have misled us from one dark age to another, one
war to the next, from one economic depression to even worse, and
who have brought us to the edge of perhaps the most frightening
abyss in human history?
Personal manufacturing is here, a paradigm shift of immense proportions stands before us.
People around the world are already utilizing it to solve real world problems, as demonstrated by MIT’s FabLab – and improves lives where politics have categorically failed.
Society will continue to march forward with an expanding scientific and technological infrastructure. It is up to us and our will to get involved that will determine whether that infrastructure serves the elite or the people.
Above all others, Americans should be scientifically and technologically literate.
The “bread and circus” of corporate-funded spectacles like the NFL, American Idol, and all the other pointless diversions that have absorbed our time and energy and even our own will to determine our destiny are like the ancient Sirens of Greek mythology guiding us into the rocks of our own destruction.
It is time for us to determine whether we will command the direction of our own destiny, or if the cage the global elite have constructed around us incrementally is sufficiently comfortable enough to resign the destiny of humanity for.
For those interested in personal manufacturing, the above
Interpreter article features the “Makerbot” designed and
constructed by a collaborative workspace in New York City
called “Resistor.”
America used to have a thriving DIY industry, with an abundance
of clubs, organizations, contests, and publications.
Today there is a resurgence – only this time augmented with technology like personal manufacturing that has immense implications that go beyond a constructive pastime.
It would be a good idea to connect with these people and add our talent, energy, and free time to something more constructive than vegetating on the couch behind the glow of the Fortune 500 TV programming that has lulled a great nation to sleep.
The future is as bright as we make it – not through merely voting
and protesting, but through the use of our two hands and to whom
we choose to pay our money, time, and attention to.
The fate of humanity is determined each and every day by how
we choose to spend these personal commodities.
Technology has reached a point of no return granting whoever
wields it, control of human destiny well into the foreseeable future.
Let’s make sure it is we the people that are wielding it.
Source - http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/01/our-last-
chance-for-freedom-their-last.html
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism
Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism
By Charles Sullivan
Information Clearing House
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Contrary to everything we have been taught, there is no actual United States of America.
The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America.
If the geopolitical states are united, the people are not.
We are a nation divided by ideology and by social and economic
class.
The U.S. is not a democracy and it never was.
The systems of power do not allow the voice of working people to
be heard or their collective will to be acted upon.
Despite the subterfuge of freedom and democracy, the rights of
corporations have consistently superseded the sovereign rights of
the individual and those of the community.
Labor history and a litany of environmental catastrophes bear this
out.
For instance, everywhere one looks government agencies, ostensibly
created to protect the public welfare, are allowing hydraulic
fracturing of Marcellus shale, even when it poisons municipal
drinking water and causes incalculable harm to the environment.
Our diverse forests are commodified, measured in board feet
to be clear-cut and off-shored at prodigious bargain rates,
like a liquidation sale.
World class biodiversity is yielding to desertification and monoculture.
Money changes hands. The few are getting rich at the expense of
the many.
The world and the people who live in it are treated like products to
be exploited.
We are told that nothing is sacred, save for the dollar and markets.
Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that no human being,
including corporate CEOs and members of Congress, can live
without potable water or breathable air.
We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and
mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of
a few grotesquely wealthy individuals.
Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that
self-interested greed is in their best interest.
The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits, the Holy Grail of American capitalism, are more precious than life itself.
The remorseless people in power are without conscience.
History confirms that sociopaths do not hesitate to take what
they want from their unsuspecting victims by any and all means.
But surely, even among Friedmanites, it must be allowed that
some things cannot be commodified or bought and sold.
For instance, clean air and potable water are the birthright of every living organism. These are necessities that belong to the commons; they cannot ethically be privately owned.
In contrast to this assertion, two edicts of modern capitalism are private ownership and the commodification of workers and nature.
Capitalism, and the market fundamentalism that is associated with it, has stripped bare the Earth’s biodiversity and substituted a world of commodities in its stead.
What we see and think we know is not real. It is the product of marketing and perception managers—a hologram.
There is growing conflict between capitalism and the planet’s ecology, its essential life support systems.
A fierce struggle between capital and democracy is in progress.
The booted foot of capitalism is pressing upon the throat of democracy.
We inhabit a dying world and are inheriting dying freedoms.
Corporate greed and over-population is the culprit. Conflict is everywhere.
Virtually all of the social upheaval, inequality, and environmental problems of today in some way ensue from capitalism, including overpopulation and armed aggression.
Capitalism requires continuous economic expansion and a
burgeoning market for consumers.
This is simply not possible on a finite planet.
These tensions are manifested no more clearly than throughout the coal belt and mountains of West Virginia, where I make my home.
Here, mountains are cleared of forests before being blown to
smithereens in order to cheaply extract coal to enrich Massey
Energy Corporation.
The process, known as mountaintop removal, has poisoned streams, altered their courses, and changed the contours of the land and its hydrology.
It has devastated both human and biological communities
while filling the coffers of the timber and coal industries.
Conventional underground mining has claimed the lives of thousands of coal miners trying to scratch out a modest living from the Earth.
At times, it has led to armed conflict between miners and the
Pinkertons hired by the mining companies in places like Matewan
and Blair Mountain.
In West Virginia, King Coal and the gas and oil industry run
the state’s legislature.
The government is effectively owned by corporate lobbyists.
As a result, it is futile to make legal and moral appeals to government for redress of our grievances.
If we limit ourselves to the tools that our oppressors provide us,
the entire region will become a sacrifice zone. Working people
and the poor make the sacrifices; billionaires and industry carry
off the profit.
We are left to deal with the aftermath.
The illusion of democracy, including voting in the absence of
meaningful choice, is a poor substitute for direct action and
anarchy.
Democracy cannot flourish in the sterile soil that capitalism leaves
in its wake.
Either we have democracy or we have capitalism, or we create something entirely different. Radically opposing ideas cannot be reconciled.
Modern humans inhabit a human-engineered world of absurdities
and contradictions.
Regardless of the Supreme Court’s assertions, corporations are
not people, and money is not speech.
Every sentient human being knows this. However, the law says otherwise.
We must deny the corporate state that victory by refusing to capitulate.
The struggle for community rights, egalitarianism, and social,
economic, and environmental justice must occur outside of the
system that creates inequality and fosters wanton destruction
of the commons.
Countless species of plants and animals that provide essential
ecological services are being eliminated to create space for strip
malls, gated communities, gambling casinos and golf courses.
As a result, ecological and economic catastrophe loom. We are
facing global famine in an anthropocentric over-heated world.
Globally, wealthy multi-national corporations are gorging
themselves on the biological and mineral wealth of the commons.
What could be more absurd or unethical?
The brainchild of Adam Smith, capitalism, which replaced feudalism during the French Revolution, is founded upon demonstrably false premises, many of which were unknown in Smith’s time.
Nevertheless, classically-trained economists assert that capitalism is
a primal force of nature rather than the defective human construct
that it is.
Modern capitalism has produced pathological symptoms and
endorsed an ethos that is antithetical to life and to liberty.
It is killing the world and foreclosing evolutionary possibilities.
Indeed, ethical considerations aside, and speaking purely from a biological perspective, one may emphatically state that modern capitalism is an aggressive cancer that is devouring its host.
But most of us are in denial.
People like me are asked not to utter the “C” word in public spaces.
It might offend the well-intentioned believers.
Whenever this occurs I am reminded of Thoreau, who uttered, “Any
truth is better than make believe.”
One has an ethical obligation to state what one knows succinctly and
clearly.
It is not in dispute that the ideology of constant expansion on a
finite planet is contradicted by inviolable ecological dictums—among
them, carrying capacity, ecological overshoot, and die-off.
But classical economists act as if these laws do not apply, or they are mysteriously overridden by the irrational exuberance of capitalism.
In reality, every political economy is underlain by ecology and by
living, evolving, biological systems. Ecology is the only economy
that really matters.
By possessing even a modest degree of ecological literacy, one can make some revealing predictions with mathematical certainty.
For example, the continuation of capitalism as the primary political
economy can have one of two possible outcomes: the virtual
destruction of the biosphere, meaning the death of the host
organism, or the abolition of the capitalist system.
What would a post-capitalism world look like and how might it work?
Global capitalism, with its dependence on the availability of cheap
fossil fuels and petrochemicals for food production, must give way
to small-scale local economies and organic agriculture.
Food must be locally grown and, as far as possible, other necessities locally produced. The age of cheap fossil fuels is ending.
Industrialized man must bravely confront his addictions and embrace sobriety or he will self-destruct.
It is said that nature bats last. Humans do best when they emulate natural systems that have evolved over eons of time.
A moneyless economy based upon need must supplant the current profit-driven system of exploitation.
Accordingly, goods and services may then be exchanged without the
conduit of markets. These exchanges would be of equal value and
thus inherently fair.
The classic business models will be replaced by worker-owned and worker-operated cooperatives.
In this arrangement, workers—not a board of directors—make all of
the business decisions.
They share the risks and benefits and distribute the surpluses of
production, while significantly reducing the work day and the work
week.
A portion of the surpluses of production is allocated to the betterment of the community and to the protection of the commons.
New economic models must be predicated upon ecological principles
or they will fail.
Existing alternatives to capitalism, such as Spain’s Mondragon
Worker Cooperative, must be critically analyzed and evaluated as
a model that could, with modifications, be implemented elsewhere.
There is no better teacher than evolution and natural selection.
History confirms that the most revolutionary ideas are occasionally
the oldest.
For instance, anthropological studies indicate that early Homo sapiens evolved by implementing egalitarian principles into their tribal clans.
People and the cultures they create must either evolve or perish.
The egalitarian societies of the future will look radically different
from the capitalism of today.
Political campaigns and elections will recede into history and quickly forgotten.
Evolved societies do not need leaders or elected officials.
Every member of an egalitarian community is a leader.
Power flows in a circular form rather than a linear, top-down hierarchy. It is derived directly from the people.
There will be no social or economic stratification. No one
shall have privileges or rights that are denied to others.
Every member of the community must be equally empowered and equally valued. All people will have equal access to opportunity.
Healthcare and higher education, like pure water and clean air,
will be regarded as a right of birth and provided without cost.
Direct action will replace voting in political elections.
Rather than consent to be governed, sovereign people can create
the world they want to live in.
In communities where people are empowered and where they have
an equal stake, they will want to participate.
Everyone brings something to the table. Everyone contributes and
all of society benefits.
Communities will become as interconnected and interdependent as
ecological systems. But each will remain autonomous within the
larger matrix of nature.
States and nations as we know them may eventually recede into history and disappear.
Rather than the callous competition and exploitation nurtured by capitalism, communities can be organized around the principle of cooperation and social need.
As in healthy ecosystems, the welfare of the individual is dependent upon the well-being of the community—and vice versa.
No one will be left behind. All of us shall rise together.
All living organisms share a common origin and a common destiny.
Ecology and economy must merge into an integrated natural system suited to long-term survival in a world already ravaged by industrialized man.
Ecological and social healing must be part of the process of building sustainable communities.
The transition from capitalism to cooperation will be neither smooth nor easy.
There will be many false starts.
At first, there will be fierce resistance to revolutionary change.
People cling to the familiar and the comfortable, to what they know, even when the dominant paradigm and popular culture does them harm.
The first tentative steps of a journey are often the most difficult.
There are no clear blueprints to follow. There will be trepidation
and uncertainty.
But we must commit to beginning.
The alternative is oblivion.
But if we embark on the voyage the survival of the species, and a new age of enlightenment will be possible.
Charles Sullivan is a Master Naturalist, community activist, and free-lance writer residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West Virginia.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30304.htm
By Charles Sullivan
Information Clearing House
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Contrary to everything we have been taught, there is no actual United States of America.
The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America.
If the geopolitical states are united, the people are not.
We are a nation divided by ideology and by social and economic
class.
The U.S. is not a democracy and it never was.
The systems of power do not allow the voice of working people to
be heard or their collective will to be acted upon.
Despite the subterfuge of freedom and democracy, the rights of
corporations have consistently superseded the sovereign rights of
the individual and those of the community.
Labor history and a litany of environmental catastrophes bear this
out.
For instance, everywhere one looks government agencies, ostensibly
created to protect the public welfare, are allowing hydraulic
fracturing of Marcellus shale, even when it poisons municipal
drinking water and causes incalculable harm to the environment.
Our diverse forests are commodified, measured in board feet
to be clear-cut and off-shored at prodigious bargain rates,
like a liquidation sale.
World class biodiversity is yielding to desertification and monoculture.
Money changes hands. The few are getting rich at the expense of
the many.
The world and the people who live in it are treated like products to
be exploited.
We are told that nothing is sacred, save for the dollar and markets.
Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that no human being,
including corporate CEOs and members of Congress, can live
without potable water or breathable air.
We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and
mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of
a few grotesquely wealthy individuals.
Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that
self-interested greed is in their best interest.
The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits, the Holy Grail of American capitalism, are more precious than life itself.
The remorseless people in power are without conscience.
History confirms that sociopaths do not hesitate to take what
they want from their unsuspecting victims by any and all means.
But surely, even among Friedmanites, it must be allowed that
some things cannot be commodified or bought and sold.
For instance, clean air and potable water are the birthright of every living organism. These are necessities that belong to the commons; they cannot ethically be privately owned.
In contrast to this assertion, two edicts of modern capitalism are private ownership and the commodification of workers and nature.
Capitalism, and the market fundamentalism that is associated with it, has stripped bare the Earth’s biodiversity and substituted a world of commodities in its stead.
What we see and think we know is not real. It is the product of marketing and perception managers—a hologram.
There is growing conflict between capitalism and the planet’s ecology, its essential life support systems.
A fierce struggle between capital and democracy is in progress.
The booted foot of capitalism is pressing upon the throat of democracy.
We inhabit a dying world and are inheriting dying freedoms.
Corporate greed and over-population is the culprit. Conflict is everywhere.
Virtually all of the social upheaval, inequality, and environmental problems of today in some way ensue from capitalism, including overpopulation and armed aggression.
Capitalism requires continuous economic expansion and a
burgeoning market for consumers.
This is simply not possible on a finite planet.
These tensions are manifested no more clearly than throughout the coal belt and mountains of West Virginia, where I make my home.
Here, mountains are cleared of forests before being blown to
smithereens in order to cheaply extract coal to enrich Massey
Energy Corporation.
The process, known as mountaintop removal, has poisoned streams, altered their courses, and changed the contours of the land and its hydrology.
It has devastated both human and biological communities
while filling the coffers of the timber and coal industries.
Conventional underground mining has claimed the lives of thousands of coal miners trying to scratch out a modest living from the Earth.
At times, it has led to armed conflict between miners and the
Pinkertons hired by the mining companies in places like Matewan
and Blair Mountain.
In West Virginia, King Coal and the gas and oil industry run
the state’s legislature.
The government is effectively owned by corporate lobbyists.
As a result, it is futile to make legal and moral appeals to government for redress of our grievances.
If we limit ourselves to the tools that our oppressors provide us,
the entire region will become a sacrifice zone. Working people
and the poor make the sacrifices; billionaires and industry carry
off the profit.
We are left to deal with the aftermath.
The illusion of democracy, including voting in the absence of
meaningful choice, is a poor substitute for direct action and
anarchy.
Democracy cannot flourish in the sterile soil that capitalism leaves
in its wake.
Either we have democracy or we have capitalism, or we create something entirely different. Radically opposing ideas cannot be reconciled.
Modern humans inhabit a human-engineered world of absurdities
and contradictions.
Regardless of the Supreme Court’s assertions, corporations are
not people, and money is not speech.
Every sentient human being knows this. However, the law says otherwise.
We must deny the corporate state that victory by refusing to capitulate.
The struggle for community rights, egalitarianism, and social,
economic, and environmental justice must occur outside of the
system that creates inequality and fosters wanton destruction
of the commons.
Countless species of plants and animals that provide essential
ecological services are being eliminated to create space for strip
malls, gated communities, gambling casinos and golf courses.
As a result, ecological and economic catastrophe loom. We are
facing global famine in an anthropocentric over-heated world.
Globally, wealthy multi-national corporations are gorging
themselves on the biological and mineral wealth of the commons.
What could be more absurd or unethical?
The brainchild of Adam Smith, capitalism, which replaced feudalism during the French Revolution, is founded upon demonstrably false premises, many of which were unknown in Smith’s time.
Nevertheless, classically-trained economists assert that capitalism is
a primal force of nature rather than the defective human construct
that it is.
Modern capitalism has produced pathological symptoms and
endorsed an ethos that is antithetical to life and to liberty.
It is killing the world and foreclosing evolutionary possibilities.
Indeed, ethical considerations aside, and speaking purely from a biological perspective, one may emphatically state that modern capitalism is an aggressive cancer that is devouring its host.
But most of us are in denial.
People like me are asked not to utter the “C” word in public spaces.
It might offend the well-intentioned believers.
Whenever this occurs I am reminded of Thoreau, who uttered, “Any
truth is better than make believe.”
One has an ethical obligation to state what one knows succinctly and
clearly.
It is not in dispute that the ideology of constant expansion on a
finite planet is contradicted by inviolable ecological dictums—among
them, carrying capacity, ecological overshoot, and die-off.
But classical economists act as if these laws do not apply, or they are mysteriously overridden by the irrational exuberance of capitalism.
In reality, every political economy is underlain by ecology and by
living, evolving, biological systems. Ecology is the only economy
that really matters.
By possessing even a modest degree of ecological literacy, one can make some revealing predictions with mathematical certainty.
For example, the continuation of capitalism as the primary political
economy can have one of two possible outcomes: the virtual
destruction of the biosphere, meaning the death of the host
organism, or the abolition of the capitalist system.
What would a post-capitalism world look like and how might it work?
Global capitalism, with its dependence on the availability of cheap
fossil fuels and petrochemicals for food production, must give way
to small-scale local economies and organic agriculture.
Food must be locally grown and, as far as possible, other necessities locally produced. The age of cheap fossil fuels is ending.
Industrialized man must bravely confront his addictions and embrace sobriety or he will self-destruct.
It is said that nature bats last. Humans do best when they emulate natural systems that have evolved over eons of time.
A moneyless economy based upon need must supplant the current profit-driven system of exploitation.
Accordingly, goods and services may then be exchanged without the
conduit of markets. These exchanges would be of equal value and
thus inherently fair.
The classic business models will be replaced by worker-owned and worker-operated cooperatives.
In this arrangement, workers—not a board of directors—make all of
the business decisions.
They share the risks and benefits and distribute the surpluses of
production, while significantly reducing the work day and the work
week.
A portion of the surpluses of production is allocated to the betterment of the community and to the protection of the commons.
New economic models must be predicated upon ecological principles
or they will fail.
Existing alternatives to capitalism, such as Spain’s Mondragon
Worker Cooperative, must be critically analyzed and evaluated as
a model that could, with modifications, be implemented elsewhere.
There is no better teacher than evolution and natural selection.
History confirms that the most revolutionary ideas are occasionally
the oldest.
For instance, anthropological studies indicate that early Homo sapiens evolved by implementing egalitarian principles into their tribal clans.
People and the cultures they create must either evolve or perish.
The egalitarian societies of the future will look radically different
from the capitalism of today.
Political campaigns and elections will recede into history and quickly forgotten.
Evolved societies do not need leaders or elected officials.
Every member of an egalitarian community is a leader.
Power flows in a circular form rather than a linear, top-down hierarchy. It is derived directly from the people.
There will be no social or economic stratification. No one
shall have privileges or rights that are denied to others.
Every member of the community must be equally empowered and equally valued. All people will have equal access to opportunity.
Healthcare and higher education, like pure water and clean air,
will be regarded as a right of birth and provided without cost.
Direct action will replace voting in political elections.
Rather than consent to be governed, sovereign people can create
the world they want to live in.
In communities where people are empowered and where they have
an equal stake, they will want to participate.
Everyone brings something to the table. Everyone contributes and
all of society benefits.
Communities will become as interconnected and interdependent as
ecological systems. But each will remain autonomous within the
larger matrix of nature.
States and nations as we know them may eventually recede into history and disappear.
Rather than the callous competition and exploitation nurtured by capitalism, communities can be organized around the principle of cooperation and social need.
As in healthy ecosystems, the welfare of the individual is dependent upon the well-being of the community—and vice versa.
No one will be left behind. All of us shall rise together.
All living organisms share a common origin and a common destiny.
Ecology and economy must merge into an integrated natural system suited to long-term survival in a world already ravaged by industrialized man.
Ecological and social healing must be part of the process of building sustainable communities.
The transition from capitalism to cooperation will be neither smooth nor easy.
There will be many false starts.
At first, there will be fierce resistance to revolutionary change.
People cling to the familiar and the comfortable, to what they know, even when the dominant paradigm and popular culture does them harm.
The first tentative steps of a journey are often the most difficult.
There are no clear blueprints to follow. There will be trepidation
and uncertainty.
But we must commit to beginning.
The alternative is oblivion.
But if we embark on the voyage the survival of the species, and a new age of enlightenment will be possible.
Charles Sullivan is a Master Naturalist, community activist, and free-lance writer residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West Virginia.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30304.htm
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Martin Luther King: Praised in Words, Defamed in Deeds
Martin Luther King: Praised in Words, Defamed in Deeds
By Tony Cartalucci
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
What a spectacle, the "first black president" of the United States
celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day. How far we've come, or so
it would seem.
And while King was primarily a civil rights activist seeking equality amongst men based on their humanity, not the countenance of their skin, and the fact that a black man can become president is indeed progress, King was also a champion for humanity in general.
He was a peace activist as much as a civil rights activist.
In a speech given on April 4, 1967 in New York City titled, "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," King gives what is perhaps the widest encapsulation of his philosophy and worldview, one that would undoubtedly criticize and clash with the disingenuous US president celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.
And the beauty of the equality King helped usher in is, the fact that Obama is black should not shield him from the criticism of the very man that helped pave the way for his accession to office.
One section of King's enlightening speech criticizing the Vietnam
War states:
"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a
thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights,
are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of
racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the
fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be
transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes
to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see
individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money
in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out
with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and
say, "This is not just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say
of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can
well lead the way in this revolution of values.
There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism.
War is not the answer.
Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons.
Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided
passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in
the United Nations.
These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.
We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice.
We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops."
It is safe to say that America has not mended its ways and only traveled further down the dark path King warned us of back in 1967.
The man "leading" us, or at least the front-man for the corporate-
financier interests that drive America's destiny, may honor King
with carefully contrived words and well orchestrated ceremony, but
in deeds and actions Obama and the corporate-financier elite that
hold his leash, defame and dishonor King in every way imaginable.
If you want to honor King and his life's work, honor it by
implementing the words he uttered while alive, not by playing
along with a system that resisted him until his death, and has
since dishonored him with disingenuous praise while maliciously
carrying out an agenda contra to everything King ever stood for.
Land Destroyer is an alternative news blog based in Bangkok, Thailand covering geopolitics. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30259.htm
By Tony Cartalucci
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
What a spectacle, the "first black president" of the United States
celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day. How far we've come, or so
it would seem.
And while King was primarily a civil rights activist seeking equality amongst men based on their humanity, not the countenance of their skin, and the fact that a black man can become president is indeed progress, King was also a champion for humanity in general.
He was a peace activist as much as a civil rights activist.
In a speech given on April 4, 1967 in New York City titled, "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," King gives what is perhaps the widest encapsulation of his philosophy and worldview, one that would undoubtedly criticize and clash with the disingenuous US president celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.
And the beauty of the equality King helped usher in is, the fact that Obama is black should not shield him from the criticism of the very man that helped pave the way for his accession to office.
One section of King's enlightening speech criticizing the Vietnam
War states:
"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a
thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights,
are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of
racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the
fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be
transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes
to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see
individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money
in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out
with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and
say, "This is not just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say
of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can
well lead the way in this revolution of values.
There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism.
War is not the answer.
Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons.
Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided
passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in
the United Nations.
These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.
We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice.
We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops."
It is safe to say that America has not mended its ways and only traveled further down the dark path King warned us of back in 1967.
The man "leading" us, or at least the front-man for the corporate-
financier interests that drive America's destiny, may honor King
with carefully contrived words and well orchestrated ceremony, but
in deeds and actions Obama and the corporate-financier elite that
hold his leash, defame and dishonor King in every way imaginable.
If you want to honor King and his life's work, honor it by
implementing the words he uttered while alive, not by playing
along with a system that resisted him until his death, and has
since dishonored him with disingenuous praise while maliciously
carrying out an agenda contra to everything King ever stood for.
Land Destroyer is an alternative news blog based in Bangkok, Thailand covering geopolitics. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30259.htm
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Republican Socialists, Democratic Capitalists
GOP Pols Exploit Anti-Wall Street Rage
By Ted Rall
Information Clearing House
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Newt Gingrich made a name for himself as the right-wing ideologue who led the 1994 “Republican Revolution.”
What a difference the wholesale collapse of international capitalism makes.
Forget 9/11—everything changed on 9/14/08, when Lehman Brothers hit the skids.
Millions lost their jobs. Millions more lost their jobs. And the government refused to help them.
The government’s masters, the bankers, wouldn’t let them. They wanted all that taxpayer money for themselves.
The system was finally exposed as the corrupt, inefficient, cruel pseudodemocracy that we on the Left had always known it was.
More than three years have passed yet neither the political class
nor its corporate bosses have found the wherewithal to sate the
anger of America’s roiling masses with the traditional bundle of
social programs.
To the contrary, the powers that be are calling for austerity, for gutting what’s left of the safety net.
They’re stealing the rope with which we will hang them.
Political disintegration is disruptive and painful. But it sure is entertaining.
The rise of the Republican primary season’s Anti-Capitalist Brigades is the center ring of this circus of death.
At the head of the anti-Romney cadres is one of Newt’s well-heeled supporters, who is dropping a cool $3 million on an ad blitz that denounces Mitt Romney for engaging in slash-and-burn capitalism.
Is there another kind?
“There’s a company in The Wall Street Journal today that Bain
[Capital, Romney's company] put $30 million into, took $180
million out of and the company went bankrupt,” Newt Gingrich
said on January 10th.
“And you have to ask yourself: Was a six-to-one return really
necessary? What if they only take $120 million out? Will the
company still be there? Will 1,700 families still have a job?”
Good questions all.
But the heartless beasts who populate Wall Street venture capital firms don’t worry about the blood and tears they leave in their wake. Like all vampires they feast and flee.
Their pet Republicans don’t care either. Not usually.
“I think there’s a real difference between people who believe in the
free market and people who go around, take financial advantage,
loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people
on unemployment,” the former speaker continued.
Not much difference. Not when you think about it. Still, this is a serious slap-the-forehead moment.
Bear in mind, Gingrich is still a man of the Right. A few weeks ago
his proposal for forced child labor of impoverished waifs marked
the Dickensianest moment of the 2011 Christmas shopping season.
Newt isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate attacking capitalism’s sacred right to loot and pillage.
Texas governor Rick Perry, whose brain freezes and loutish yucks
over his role as the nation’s top executioner of lower-class
misérables (and at least one innocent man) make his predecessor
George W. Bush look like Adlai Stevenson, calls buyout specialists
like Romney “vultures” who “swoop in…eat the carcass, and…leave
the skeleton” of companies they target.
Romney, he said, is a “buyout tycoon who executed takeovers,
bankrupted businesses, and sent jobs overseas while killing
American jobs.”
“Governor Romney enjoys firing people—I enjoy creating jobs,” added Jon Huntsman.
These are Republicans?
What’s up?
“For all the talk about this being a center-right nation, there’s
a realization that Americans are uncomfortable with excessive
greed and the kind of ruthless, screw-the-workers style of
capitalism Romney used to get rich,” Steve Benen writes in
Washington Monthly.
Greg Sargent of The Washington Post chimes in:
“The leading GOP candidates are on record arguing that Romney’s
practice of [capitalism]—which he regularly cites as proof of his
ability to create jobs, as a generally constructive force and even
as synonymous with the American way—is not really capitalism at
all, but a destructive, profit-driven perversion of it. Thanks to
them, this is no longer a left-wing argument.”
(Actually, destruction and profit-taking are the essential cores of capitalism. But why quibble? Everyone agrees that capitalism sucks. Yay!)
Times are changin’. According to polls, communism is more popular than Congress.
So why isn’t the party of the left jumping on the Wall Street-bashing bandwagon?
Throughout the 2008 campaign and his presidency Barack Obama has taken pains to reassure the 1 percent that if he’s not exactly one of them he’ll look out for their bank accounts.
Certainly he has enacted policies that have increased the gap
between rich and poor while sucking the life out of the dry husk
of the middle class.
Meanwhile, revolution looms.
Why don’t the Democrats see it? Don’t they understand that capitalism is discredited?
Newt Gingrich does. So do most Republicans.
It comes down to a simple explanation: Everything has changed,
but not the Democrats.
They’ve always been slower than the GOP to recognize the shifting winds of American politics, slower to respond, inept when they try.
We used to be a center-right country. Now we’re left-right. Soon we’ll be left-left. Both the Dems and the Reps will be left behind.
In the meantime, watch the dying Republicans make the most of
an agenda that ought to belong to the dying Democrats: bashing
the rich and greedy.
If nothing else, it’ll be entertaining.
Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His
website is tedrall.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30227.htm
By Ted Rall
Information Clearing House
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Newt Gingrich made a name for himself as the right-wing ideologue who led the 1994 “Republican Revolution.”
What a difference the wholesale collapse of international capitalism makes.
Forget 9/11—everything changed on 9/14/08, when Lehman Brothers hit the skids.
Millions lost their jobs. Millions more lost their jobs. And the government refused to help them.
The government’s masters, the bankers, wouldn’t let them. They wanted all that taxpayer money for themselves.
The system was finally exposed as the corrupt, inefficient, cruel pseudodemocracy that we on the Left had always known it was.
More than three years have passed yet neither the political class
nor its corporate bosses have found the wherewithal to sate the
anger of America’s roiling masses with the traditional bundle of
social programs.
To the contrary, the powers that be are calling for austerity, for gutting what’s left of the safety net.
They’re stealing the rope with which we will hang them.
Political disintegration is disruptive and painful. But it sure is entertaining.
The rise of the Republican primary season’s Anti-Capitalist Brigades is the center ring of this circus of death.
At the head of the anti-Romney cadres is one of Newt’s well-heeled supporters, who is dropping a cool $3 million on an ad blitz that denounces Mitt Romney for engaging in slash-and-burn capitalism.
Is there another kind?
“There’s a company in The Wall Street Journal today that Bain
[Capital, Romney's company] put $30 million into, took $180
million out of and the company went bankrupt,” Newt Gingrich
said on January 10th.
“And you have to ask yourself: Was a six-to-one return really
necessary? What if they only take $120 million out? Will the
company still be there? Will 1,700 families still have a job?”
Good questions all.
But the heartless beasts who populate Wall Street venture capital firms don’t worry about the blood and tears they leave in their wake. Like all vampires they feast and flee.
Their pet Republicans don’t care either. Not usually.
“I think there’s a real difference between people who believe in the
free market and people who go around, take financial advantage,
loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people
on unemployment,” the former speaker continued.
Not much difference. Not when you think about it. Still, this is a serious slap-the-forehead moment.
Bear in mind, Gingrich is still a man of the Right. A few weeks ago
his proposal for forced child labor of impoverished waifs marked
the Dickensianest moment of the 2011 Christmas shopping season.
Newt isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate attacking capitalism’s sacred right to loot and pillage.
Texas governor Rick Perry, whose brain freezes and loutish yucks
over his role as the nation’s top executioner of lower-class
misérables (and at least one innocent man) make his predecessor
George W. Bush look like Adlai Stevenson, calls buyout specialists
like Romney “vultures” who “swoop in…eat the carcass, and…leave
the skeleton” of companies they target.
Romney, he said, is a “buyout tycoon who executed takeovers,
bankrupted businesses, and sent jobs overseas while killing
American jobs.”
“Governor Romney enjoys firing people—I enjoy creating jobs,” added Jon Huntsman.
These are Republicans?
What’s up?
“For all the talk about this being a center-right nation, there’s
a realization that Americans are uncomfortable with excessive
greed and the kind of ruthless, screw-the-workers style of
capitalism Romney used to get rich,” Steve Benen writes in
Washington Monthly.
Greg Sargent of The Washington Post chimes in:
“The leading GOP candidates are on record arguing that Romney’s
practice of [capitalism]—which he regularly cites as proof of his
ability to create jobs, as a generally constructive force and even
as synonymous with the American way—is not really capitalism at
all, but a destructive, profit-driven perversion of it. Thanks to
them, this is no longer a left-wing argument.”
(Actually, destruction and profit-taking are the essential cores of capitalism. But why quibble? Everyone agrees that capitalism sucks. Yay!)
Times are changin’. According to polls, communism is more popular than Congress.
So why isn’t the party of the left jumping on the Wall Street-bashing bandwagon?
Throughout the 2008 campaign and his presidency Barack Obama has taken pains to reassure the 1 percent that if he’s not exactly one of them he’ll look out for their bank accounts.
Certainly he has enacted policies that have increased the gap
between rich and poor while sucking the life out of the dry husk
of the middle class.
Meanwhile, revolution looms.
Why don’t the Democrats see it? Don’t they understand that capitalism is discredited?
Newt Gingrich does. So do most Republicans.
It comes down to a simple explanation: Everything has changed,
but not the Democrats.
They’ve always been slower than the GOP to recognize the shifting winds of American politics, slower to respond, inept when they try.
We used to be a center-right country. Now we’re left-right. Soon we’ll be left-left. Both the Dems and the Reps will be left behind.
In the meantime, watch the dying Republicans make the most of
an agenda that ought to belong to the dying Democrats: bashing
the rich and greedy.
If nothing else, it’ll be entertaining.
Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His
website is tedrall.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30227.htm
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Secrets of Empire And Self-Deceptions Of Partisans
A howling defiance into the darkness of the corporate state night
By Phil Rockstroh
Information Clearing House
Saturday, January 07, 2012
It is laughable (in a weeping outright sort of way) that Obama
and his fellow Democratic Party supporters and apologists can't
find a more resonant campaign theme than, "We carry out the
agendas of the national security/bankster/militarist state (i.e.,
the one percent) while appearing to be less crazy than Republicans."
The notion of even possessing a preference as to whom should be president of this crumbling, faux republic...is a bit like asking what color uniform one would prefer that the crew tasked with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic should don as they go about their duties.
In times such as these, when escaping into one's comfort zone is
no longer a viable option, one is advised to evince the audacity
of hopelessness, because the act leaves one desperate enough to
embrace this daunting proposition:
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
Although, for the present and foreseeable future, the propitious
aspects of the sentiment will not hold true for Bradley Manning…
whose plight displays the punitive, hyper-authoritarian nature of
late U.S. empire.
As is the case with Manning, in a national security state, few acts will cause one to lose his freedom in a more rapid manner than to reveal the secrets of lawless, ruthless power.
Apparently, Bradley Manning guarded secrets of his own…not
shameful ones--but traits that would cause him to become
subject to derision if revealed.
Manning desired to practice transvestism. This U.S. Army private
was privy to illusion. Innately, he grasped how being coerced into
suppressing one's secrets damages one's soul.
Manning merely harbored the desire to practice a bit of gender
bending; in contrast, the operatives of empire demand that they be
allowed to bend and twist the world itself towards their exploitative
ends.
To live in empire--in the service of its imperial military or in the
thrall of the pursuit of careerist vanity and consumerist compulsions-
-is to live a selfish lie, day in and day out.
Rupaul (Andre Charles) averred, "We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.”
We all make choices as to what form of drag we practice.
Does my lie promote the truth? Is my act educational, entertaining
or edifying? Does it allow me to inhabit my true self yet transcend
my narcissism?
Does my act and attendant actions bring balm or does it deliver
more suffering than necessary to a world where it is impossible
to escape suffering?
Ask yourself and those around you these questions in regard to
Private Manning and the operatives and denizens of U.S. Empire.
On the subject of identity, authentic or dubious: Even after being an almost constant public presence for more than half a decade, Barack Obama's true nature and authentic identity remains elusive.
After all this time, he still seems less man than marketing rollout, less of a political leader than an object lesson in product placement.
The situation is like having the role of chief executive of the nation filled with a disposable razor or a heavily hyped iPhone application.
The U.S. presidency, as is the case with almost all aspects of life in the corporate consumer state, has become increasingly dominated and defined by commercial/public relations-type legerdemain.
The constant commercial come-ons of the media hologram mask its hollow core; the proliferation of weightless lies serves to overwhelm the gravity of perilous times.
Obama's nebulous nature works to ensure the continued irrational
ardor of his supporters, who, against all evidence, insist on clinging
to fantasy and projection regarding the president's much in evidence
anti-democratic tendencies; hence, progressive types seem prone to
project their own redeeming qualities on the blank slate that Obama
creates and deploys as his public persona--a method similar to that
used by con artists who exploit the decency of their marks to
achieve their criminal ends.
Apropos, this indefensible, Bush-era type of deceit connecting 9/11
and the invasion and occupation of Iraq:
"The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs
to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line
of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who
overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced
down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought
for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered
justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.”— President Obama
speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., December 14, 2011
In this instance, the shape-shifter Obama morphs from hollow man
to Death's slick, narrow-ass, public relations representative.
I've noticed that debates with Obama's apologists have a very similar trajectory as those with Republican partisans.
Because partisans are hard pressed to explain away the affronts to
truthful discourse and good governance displayed by the politicians
they support, any attempt to engage them in debate involving the
merits (or lack thereof) of the policies of said politicians (e.g., their
unwavering support of the 1% and U.S. militarist imperium)--quickly
devolves into volleys of ad hominem attacks launched from the ranks
of their supporters.
For example, from the right, OWS activists are labeled dirty, America-hatin' hippies who supports swarthy terrorists, yet from the liberal camp, OWSers who refuse cooperation with the Democratic Party are cast as purer-than-thou types--too above it all to sully themselves by an acceptance of the pragmatic nature of political reality.
What is the reason for this irrational response from liberals--from
folks who scoff at teabaggers and religious fundamentalists for
their less than sane and sanguine approach to political discourse?
There is simply no reasonable way to defend the acts of our blood-
sustained empire abroad and the machinations of a predatory
economic elite at home; hence, the testiness evinced by the
enablers of the duopolistic state.
Withal, when I post an article or FaceBook status critical of
President Obama--the tone and tenure of the ensuing debate
with his defenders takes on a Bush era aura.
As a general rule, when the rationalizations of both Bush and
Obama supporters are countered with facts regarding their
dismal governance, the invectives fly.
Granted, the grammar and syntax of Obama apologists is superior to that of Republican loyalists--but their fallacy arguments are every bit as dodgy.
Consequently, the policies of both parties (bulwarked by the
concretized support of partisans) translate into unnecessary
suffering and death--the calling card and ground level criteria
of the oligarchic/imperialist state.
And sorry, Obama loyalists--your man is not the lesser-of-two evils candidate: He is among his peers.
In many ways, he has proven himself a more deceitful, ruthless crime boss than his predatory, Republican predecessors, in other words, the chief executive of a militarist empire.
The 1% and their advocates and operatives in the U.S. political class have thrown us to the wolves.
How does one make an ally of uncertainty and keep close the verities of the heart while negotiating this howling political wilderness?
Even in this era of oversized fear and diminished imagination, there are some among us--nonconformists, creative thinkers, artists and occupiers--who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical image of wolves (that are recognize as fellow outcasts).
Instead of being shamed by outsider status, they have been suckled and raised by wolves--i.e., by embracing their fate of having been cast-out into the wilderness.
Nourished by the spirit of defiance, some thrive when freed from
the constraints of a habitual adherence to groupthink.
The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural
habitat: They howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of
bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their
own interior darkness and, as a result, gaining understanding into
the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.
The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their
home: They don't clean-up nicely for the polite company demanded
by political duopoly; they don't let themselves be bred down (as a few
domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a
few food scraps.
When you're looking at a Toy Poodle--you're looking at a former wolf,
as, for example, when your looking at corporate press members,
you're looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.
One moment, you're loping through the woods, snout held high,
smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, but the next thing
you know--you're being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted
with tacky rhinestones, and you're salivating at the sound of an
electric can-opener.
One moment, you're a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity--next moment, you're sitting at work and your passions, hopes and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas . . . You're truckling for your boss's approval; you're counting the minutes until break time.
Like domesticated livestock and unfortunate animals incarcerated in zoos, you are no longer a noble animal--you have become a Thing That Waits For Lunch.
To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast.
The signs bode well for us: Over the last few months, in the
company of the OWS pack, I have witnessed the awakening of many…
have been graced with the privilege of being in their lupine company
as we howled defiant into the darkness of the corporate state night.
One must remember this: We human beings are of nature as well.
Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, our authentic nature will awaken and arise.
Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and
claw, to retake the lost landscape of our collective humanity, and,
by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and
empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, imperium-countenancing, sick puppies.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in
New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30167.htm
By Phil Rockstroh
Information Clearing House
Saturday, January 07, 2012
It is laughable (in a weeping outright sort of way) that Obama
and his fellow Democratic Party supporters and apologists can't
find a more resonant campaign theme than, "We carry out the
agendas of the national security/bankster/militarist state (i.e.,
the one percent) while appearing to be less crazy than Republicans."
The notion of even possessing a preference as to whom should be president of this crumbling, faux republic...is a bit like asking what color uniform one would prefer that the crew tasked with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic should don as they go about their duties.
In times such as these, when escaping into one's comfort zone is
no longer a viable option, one is advised to evince the audacity
of hopelessness, because the act leaves one desperate enough to
embrace this daunting proposition:
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
Although, for the present and foreseeable future, the propitious
aspects of the sentiment will not hold true for Bradley Manning…
whose plight displays the punitive, hyper-authoritarian nature of
late U.S. empire.
As is the case with Manning, in a national security state, few acts will cause one to lose his freedom in a more rapid manner than to reveal the secrets of lawless, ruthless power.
Apparently, Bradley Manning guarded secrets of his own…not
shameful ones--but traits that would cause him to become
subject to derision if revealed.
Manning desired to practice transvestism. This U.S. Army private
was privy to illusion. Innately, he grasped how being coerced into
suppressing one's secrets damages one's soul.
Manning merely harbored the desire to practice a bit of gender
bending; in contrast, the operatives of empire demand that they be
allowed to bend and twist the world itself towards their exploitative
ends.
To live in empire--in the service of its imperial military or in the
thrall of the pursuit of careerist vanity and consumerist compulsions-
-is to live a selfish lie, day in and day out.
Rupaul (Andre Charles) averred, "We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.”
We all make choices as to what form of drag we practice.
Does my lie promote the truth? Is my act educational, entertaining
or edifying? Does it allow me to inhabit my true self yet transcend
my narcissism?
Does my act and attendant actions bring balm or does it deliver
more suffering than necessary to a world where it is impossible
to escape suffering?
Ask yourself and those around you these questions in regard to
Private Manning and the operatives and denizens of U.S. Empire.
On the subject of identity, authentic or dubious: Even after being an almost constant public presence for more than half a decade, Barack Obama's true nature and authentic identity remains elusive.
After all this time, he still seems less man than marketing rollout, less of a political leader than an object lesson in product placement.
The situation is like having the role of chief executive of the nation filled with a disposable razor or a heavily hyped iPhone application.
The U.S. presidency, as is the case with almost all aspects of life in the corporate consumer state, has become increasingly dominated and defined by commercial/public relations-type legerdemain.
The constant commercial come-ons of the media hologram mask its hollow core; the proliferation of weightless lies serves to overwhelm the gravity of perilous times.
Obama's nebulous nature works to ensure the continued irrational
ardor of his supporters, who, against all evidence, insist on clinging
to fantasy and projection regarding the president's much in evidence
anti-democratic tendencies; hence, progressive types seem prone to
project their own redeeming qualities on the blank slate that Obama
creates and deploys as his public persona--a method similar to that
used by con artists who exploit the decency of their marks to
achieve their criminal ends.
Apropos, this indefensible, Bush-era type of deceit connecting 9/11
and the invasion and occupation of Iraq:
"The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs
to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line
of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who
overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced
down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought
for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered
justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.”— President Obama
speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., December 14, 2011
In this instance, the shape-shifter Obama morphs from hollow man
to Death's slick, narrow-ass, public relations representative.
I've noticed that debates with Obama's apologists have a very similar trajectory as those with Republican partisans.
Because partisans are hard pressed to explain away the affronts to
truthful discourse and good governance displayed by the politicians
they support, any attempt to engage them in debate involving the
merits (or lack thereof) of the policies of said politicians (e.g., their
unwavering support of the 1% and U.S. militarist imperium)--quickly
devolves into volleys of ad hominem attacks launched from the ranks
of their supporters.
For example, from the right, OWS activists are labeled dirty, America-hatin' hippies who supports swarthy terrorists, yet from the liberal camp, OWSers who refuse cooperation with the Democratic Party are cast as purer-than-thou types--too above it all to sully themselves by an acceptance of the pragmatic nature of political reality.
What is the reason for this irrational response from liberals--from
folks who scoff at teabaggers and religious fundamentalists for
their less than sane and sanguine approach to political discourse?
There is simply no reasonable way to defend the acts of our blood-
sustained empire abroad and the machinations of a predatory
economic elite at home; hence, the testiness evinced by the
enablers of the duopolistic state.
Withal, when I post an article or FaceBook status critical of
President Obama--the tone and tenure of the ensuing debate
with his defenders takes on a Bush era aura.
As a general rule, when the rationalizations of both Bush and
Obama supporters are countered with facts regarding their
dismal governance, the invectives fly.
Granted, the grammar and syntax of Obama apologists is superior to that of Republican loyalists--but their fallacy arguments are every bit as dodgy.
Consequently, the policies of both parties (bulwarked by the
concretized support of partisans) translate into unnecessary
suffering and death--the calling card and ground level criteria
of the oligarchic/imperialist state.
And sorry, Obama loyalists--your man is not the lesser-of-two evils candidate: He is among his peers.
In many ways, he has proven himself a more deceitful, ruthless crime boss than his predatory, Republican predecessors, in other words, the chief executive of a militarist empire.
The 1% and their advocates and operatives in the U.S. political class have thrown us to the wolves.
How does one make an ally of uncertainty and keep close the verities of the heart while negotiating this howling political wilderness?
Even in this era of oversized fear and diminished imagination, there are some among us--nonconformists, creative thinkers, artists and occupiers--who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical image of wolves (that are recognize as fellow outcasts).
Instead of being shamed by outsider status, they have been suckled and raised by wolves--i.e., by embracing their fate of having been cast-out into the wilderness.
Nourished by the spirit of defiance, some thrive when freed from
the constraints of a habitual adherence to groupthink.
The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural
habitat: They howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of
bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their
own interior darkness and, as a result, gaining understanding into
the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.
The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their
home: They don't clean-up nicely for the polite company demanded
by political duopoly; they don't let themselves be bred down (as a few
domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a
few food scraps.
When you're looking at a Toy Poodle--you're looking at a former wolf,
as, for example, when your looking at corporate press members,
you're looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.
One moment, you're loping through the woods, snout held high,
smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, but the next thing
you know--you're being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted
with tacky rhinestones, and you're salivating at the sound of an
electric can-opener.
One moment, you're a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity--next moment, you're sitting at work and your passions, hopes and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas . . . You're truckling for your boss's approval; you're counting the minutes until break time.
Like domesticated livestock and unfortunate animals incarcerated in zoos, you are no longer a noble animal--you have become a Thing That Waits For Lunch.
To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast.
The signs bode well for us: Over the last few months, in the
company of the OWS pack, I have witnessed the awakening of many…
have been graced with the privilege of being in their lupine company
as we howled defiant into the darkness of the corporate state night.
One must remember this: We human beings are of nature as well.
Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, our authentic nature will awaken and arise.
Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and
claw, to retake the lost landscape of our collective humanity, and,
by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and
empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, imperium-countenancing, sick puppies.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in
New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30167.htm
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
To Uncle Sam Social Activism Equals Terrorism
To Uncle Sam Social Activism Equals Terrorism
By Brennan Browne
Activist Post
January 04, 2012
Are you a devoted, grassroots activist with an effective strategy for feeding the hungry? Sheltering the homeless? Giving aid, compassion and equal consideration to both human and non-human beings? Are you dedicated to protecting the environment and promoting peace?
If so, Uncle Sam wants YOU.
He may not recognize your efforts immediately, but if you are
successful in your field, well organized and making a difference
in the lives of those he has abandoned, then rest assured, he will
find you.
Uncle Sam keeps tight purse strings on programs he feels do not further his goals. Social safety nets are out -- saving the sick and desperately needy is far too expensive.
He prefers to spend like a drunken sailor -- on himself.
He uses the bulk of his money to attain more power and wealth
by commandeering other countries' resources.
Being the violent old geezer he is, endless and expanding carnage
is the strategy of choice in his ongoing global plunder.
Uncle Sam also needs every dollar he can choke out of his own
citizens, whom he considers nothing more than 313 million
individual ATMs.
He needs this money because he is grossly corrupt and egregiously irresponsible in his allocation of the money he receives.
It's not that there isn't more than enough money; there is, but
Uncle Sam diverts most of it to pay his cronies at the top,
because whether it be his corporate partners, Wall Street
parasites, predatory, thieving banksters, legions of warmongers
or the now ubiquitous surveillance pimps, all must share in the
spoils of their unholy alliance, and this leaves little for the rest
of us.
You would think in supporting so much evil, Uncle Sam would be grateful to those who lessen his financial burden.
By privately funding programs which aid the most abused, ignored and forgotten within society, conscientious activists never ask him for a single dime. Through creativity, hard work and shoestring budgets, industrious citizens have found countless ways to improve lives and circumvent our Uncle's involvement (or lack thereof).
Perhaps this is what's pissing him off.
Maybe he can't handle the fact that instead of sitting back in desperation and waiting for the moldy crumbs he flicks in our direction, some of us have empowered ourselves to help others.
And we didn't need obscene wealth or elite connections to do it.
Maybe because of the overbearing monstrosity he has become,
he can't stand being disenfranchised and relegated to the back
seat treatment he regularly dishes out, but obviously can't take.
Like the famous Twilight Zone episode in which a vile-spirited,
adolescent bully "wishes people away to the cornfield" who don't
agree with him, Uncle Sam spends an inordinate amount of time
and resources on creating, then "tracking down" phantom terrorists
social progressives to the rest of us -- to imprison, publicly smear
and assassinate, both figuratively and literally.
Through a never-ending campaign of fear-based, neo-fascist politicizing, non-violent acts of civil disobedience and/or exercising the First Amendment, are now categorized as "terrorism."
According to Uncle Sam's vastly expanding terrorist database(s)
we have (growing) millions of individuals who pose a threat to
our totalitarian "freedoms" in America.
If you have ever volunteered your energy or money to help
disadvantaged people, non-humans or the environment,
consider yourself on his terrorist list.
Uncle Sam's 'war on terror' has reached absurdly ridiculous, asinine levels.
As an outlandish example -- one which sounds like a plot straight out of a comic strip -- he believes veganism (those who choose not to consume or buy animal-derived products due to their aversion to non-human suffering, environmental degradation and health concerns) constitutes a terrorist lifestyle.
This is why he finds it necessary to infiltrate vegan potlucks. He
feels that anyone taking a view that "ALL life is sacred" and doesn't
just pay it empty, hypocritical, neocon lip service, must be a sick,
twisted bastard poised to violently overthrow the government. (No
one ever said Uncle Sam possessed common sense, sanity or was
the sharpest pair of cleats on the field.)
His self-serving philosophy is that if a real terrorist threat doesn't exist -- invent one.
He considers this a capitalistic strategy for generating and funneling vast sums of wealth to the corporate surveillance and military communities, as well as luring a complicit, ill-informed or gullible Congress into believing there is a legitimate need for funding trillions more to fight his largely manufactured version of reality.
The masses of unquestioning, compliant rubes who do his bidding, facilitate his omnipotent presence.
He demands ALL in return for NOTHING and expects a joyous acceptance of his increasingly sadistic injustices.
When he feels threatened, our Uncle is a harsh taskmaster. Case in point: Individuals being illegally arrested for recording video on their cellphones. He considers the ubiquitous cellphone a weapon if it is pointed in his direction as he commits acts of unjustified barbarity against his own citizens.
His hypocrisy is legendary.
While giving rousing speeches espousing democratic principles to
the rest of the world (ironically, in police states which he funds and
controls), he crushes them at home.
Uncle Sam is the uninvited guest at the dinner table who engages in
a slew of outrageous, repulsive habits which showcase his gluttony,
despotism and contempt for those forced to feed his cancerous addictions.
His stench invades and permeates every facet of life as he denies, rapes and splays open everyone else's privacy and rights, while increasingly granting himself god-like status and shielding his own dark and evil perversions.
While there is no concrete way of knowing whether you are on his
delusion-based terrorist list, you can assume that if you are a
decent, empathy-filled individual with a strong sense of fairness
and justice, who is attempting to better our world through social
activism, you probably are.
The following is Wikipedia's definition of 'domestic terrorism' as outlined by the FBI. If one removes all references to "government" (which I have done) it becomes apparent that Uncle Sam is the biggest domestic and international terrorist cell of all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_United
_States
According to a memo produced by the FBI's Terrorist Research and Analytical Center in 1994, domestic terrorism was defined as "the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
Under current United States law, set forth in the USA PATRIOT Act,
acts of domestic terrorism are those which: "(A) involve acts
dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws
of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended to
intimidate or coerce a civilian population; or to affect conduct by
mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur
primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."
Uncle Sam's war isn't on terror. Perhaps he needs to change his
catch phrase to reflect reality.
He has become, more correctly, the perfect 'proxy' terrorist,
creating far more destruction and fear to his citizens than any
group of foreign zealots with a religious agenda ever could have.
Uncle Sam's war is bent on annihilating the best humanity has to offer.
Caring, compassionate people who should be lauded for getting off their duffs and unselfishly doing something to elevate humanity.
Using government agents and turncoat snitches in an attempt to provoke individuals into committing "terrorist" acts is a widespread ploy as the FBI infiltrates groups with absolutely no history of violence: Peacenik coffee clatches, vegan potlucks, Granny's knitting circles, local book club meet-ups, groups feeding the homeless and giving assistance to the poor; these are "home-grown extremists or potential al-Qaeda hotbeds" of terrorism only in the minds of those who need a good long rest in a rubber room and lots of psychiatric help.
Of course, it must now be obvious to many, that none of these
government crackdowns are about terrorism or inside threats to
our 'democracy'.
Put simply, we currently have the finest army of corporate goons money can buy and this is the real reason social justice activists are being targeted for persecution, prosecution and imprisonment -- to smooth the way toward total enslavement by an ever more diseased system run by psychopathic monsters.
By Brennan Browne © Copyright. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title and content remain unchanged. Brennan is a freelance writer whose commentaries have appeared on web media and numerous blogs.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/to-uncle-sam-social-activism
-equals.html#more
By Brennan Browne
Activist Post
January 04, 2012
Are you a devoted, grassroots activist with an effective strategy for feeding the hungry? Sheltering the homeless? Giving aid, compassion and equal consideration to both human and non-human beings? Are you dedicated to protecting the environment and promoting peace?
If so, Uncle Sam wants YOU.
He may not recognize your efforts immediately, but if you are
successful in your field, well organized and making a difference
in the lives of those he has abandoned, then rest assured, he will
find you.
Uncle Sam keeps tight purse strings on programs he feels do not further his goals. Social safety nets are out -- saving the sick and desperately needy is far too expensive.
He prefers to spend like a drunken sailor -- on himself.
He uses the bulk of his money to attain more power and wealth
by commandeering other countries' resources.
Being the violent old geezer he is, endless and expanding carnage
is the strategy of choice in his ongoing global plunder.
Uncle Sam also needs every dollar he can choke out of his own
citizens, whom he considers nothing more than 313 million
individual ATMs.
He needs this money because he is grossly corrupt and egregiously irresponsible in his allocation of the money he receives.
It's not that there isn't more than enough money; there is, but
Uncle Sam diverts most of it to pay his cronies at the top,
because whether it be his corporate partners, Wall Street
parasites, predatory, thieving banksters, legions of warmongers
or the now ubiquitous surveillance pimps, all must share in the
spoils of their unholy alliance, and this leaves little for the rest
of us.
You would think in supporting so much evil, Uncle Sam would be grateful to those who lessen his financial burden.
By privately funding programs which aid the most abused, ignored and forgotten within society, conscientious activists never ask him for a single dime. Through creativity, hard work and shoestring budgets, industrious citizens have found countless ways to improve lives and circumvent our Uncle's involvement (or lack thereof).
Perhaps this is what's pissing him off.
Maybe he can't handle the fact that instead of sitting back in desperation and waiting for the moldy crumbs he flicks in our direction, some of us have empowered ourselves to help others.
And we didn't need obscene wealth or elite connections to do it.
Maybe because of the overbearing monstrosity he has become,
he can't stand being disenfranchised and relegated to the back
seat treatment he regularly dishes out, but obviously can't take.
Like the famous Twilight Zone episode in which a vile-spirited,
adolescent bully "wishes people away to the cornfield" who don't
agree with him, Uncle Sam spends an inordinate amount of time
and resources on creating, then "tracking down" phantom terrorists
social progressives to the rest of us -- to imprison, publicly smear
and assassinate, both figuratively and literally.
Through a never-ending campaign of fear-based, neo-fascist politicizing, non-violent acts of civil disobedience and/or exercising the First Amendment, are now categorized as "terrorism."
According to Uncle Sam's vastly expanding terrorist database(s)
we have (growing) millions of individuals who pose a threat to
our totalitarian "freedoms" in America.
If you have ever volunteered your energy or money to help
disadvantaged people, non-humans or the environment,
consider yourself on his terrorist list.
Uncle Sam's 'war on terror' has reached absurdly ridiculous, asinine levels.
As an outlandish example -- one which sounds like a plot straight out of a comic strip -- he believes veganism (those who choose not to consume or buy animal-derived products due to their aversion to non-human suffering, environmental degradation and health concerns) constitutes a terrorist lifestyle.
This is why he finds it necessary to infiltrate vegan potlucks. He
feels that anyone taking a view that "ALL life is sacred" and doesn't
just pay it empty, hypocritical, neocon lip service, must be a sick,
twisted bastard poised to violently overthrow the government. (No
one ever said Uncle Sam possessed common sense, sanity or was
the sharpest pair of cleats on the field.)
His self-serving philosophy is that if a real terrorist threat doesn't exist -- invent one.
He considers this a capitalistic strategy for generating and funneling vast sums of wealth to the corporate surveillance and military communities, as well as luring a complicit, ill-informed or gullible Congress into believing there is a legitimate need for funding trillions more to fight his largely manufactured version of reality.
The masses of unquestioning, compliant rubes who do his bidding, facilitate his omnipotent presence.
He demands ALL in return for NOTHING and expects a joyous acceptance of his increasingly sadistic injustices.
When he feels threatened, our Uncle is a harsh taskmaster. Case in point: Individuals being illegally arrested for recording video on their cellphones. He considers the ubiquitous cellphone a weapon if it is pointed in his direction as he commits acts of unjustified barbarity against his own citizens.
His hypocrisy is legendary.
While giving rousing speeches espousing democratic principles to
the rest of the world (ironically, in police states which he funds and
controls), he crushes them at home.
Uncle Sam is the uninvited guest at the dinner table who engages in
a slew of outrageous, repulsive habits which showcase his gluttony,
despotism and contempt for those forced to feed his cancerous addictions.
His stench invades and permeates every facet of life as he denies, rapes and splays open everyone else's privacy and rights, while increasingly granting himself god-like status and shielding his own dark and evil perversions.
While there is no concrete way of knowing whether you are on his
delusion-based terrorist list, you can assume that if you are a
decent, empathy-filled individual with a strong sense of fairness
and justice, who is attempting to better our world through social
activism, you probably are.
The following is Wikipedia's definition of 'domestic terrorism' as outlined by the FBI. If one removes all references to "government" (which I have done) it becomes apparent that Uncle Sam is the biggest domestic and international terrorist cell of all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_United
_States
According to a memo produced by the FBI's Terrorist Research and Analytical Center in 1994, domestic terrorism was defined as "the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
Under current United States law, set forth in the USA PATRIOT Act,
acts of domestic terrorism are those which: "(A) involve acts
dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws
of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended to
intimidate or coerce a civilian population; or to affect conduct by
mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur
primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."
Uncle Sam's war isn't on terror. Perhaps he needs to change his
catch phrase to reflect reality.
He has become, more correctly, the perfect 'proxy' terrorist,
creating far more destruction and fear to his citizens than any
group of foreign zealots with a religious agenda ever could have.
Uncle Sam's war is bent on annihilating the best humanity has to offer.
Caring, compassionate people who should be lauded for getting off their duffs and unselfishly doing something to elevate humanity.
Using government agents and turncoat snitches in an attempt to provoke individuals into committing "terrorist" acts is a widespread ploy as the FBI infiltrates groups with absolutely no history of violence: Peacenik coffee clatches, vegan potlucks, Granny's knitting circles, local book club meet-ups, groups feeding the homeless and giving assistance to the poor; these are "home-grown extremists or potential al-Qaeda hotbeds" of terrorism only in the minds of those who need a good long rest in a rubber room and lots of psychiatric help.
Of course, it must now be obvious to many, that none of these
government crackdowns are about terrorism or inside threats to
our 'democracy'.
Put simply, we currently have the finest army of corporate goons money can buy and this is the real reason social justice activists are being targeted for persecution, prosecution and imprisonment -- to smooth the way toward total enslavement by an ever more diseased system run by psychopathic monsters.
By Brennan Browne © Copyright. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title and content remain unchanged. Brennan is a freelance writer whose commentaries have appeared on web media and numerous blogs.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/to-uncle-sam-social-activism
-equals.html#more
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Rain and the Reckoning
The Rain and the Reckoning
"...and soon now we shall go out of the house and go into
the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and
the awful responsibility of Time."
- Robert Penn Warren
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout.org
January 01, 2012
Dewey Square, the patch of earth in the shadow of the Federal
Reserve Building and One Financial Center that Occupy Boston
protesters called home from September to December, is empty
now.
The same can be said for the original Occupy space at UC Davis,
where a dozen kneeling and defenseless protesters were hosed
down with pepper spray, and for Oakland, where the police
rioted and very nearly killed a two-tour Marine Corps veteran
of Iraq.
Occupy encampments sprang up in hundreds of cities in all fifty
states of the union over these last four months. Many, if not most,
are gone now, done in by police invasion or uncooperative weather,
or both.
You may have noticed the sudden lack of attention paid to the
Occupy movement, now that the gendarmes of the status quo
have wielded their truncheons and rolled up the encampments
like so many windowshades.
Nightly reports by the "mainstream" news media about Occupy
actions all across the country have dwindled to almost nil, and
for those so disposed, this is a good thing.
The roused rabble have been crushed and scattered, and all this talk
of inequality and justice can finally be replaced with what has for so
long now been the real American anthem: everything is fine, nothing
to see here, your betters are in control, go back to work.
The uprising has been quelled, it would seem, and it is time to
consign the Occupy movement to the dustbin of history. Nothing,
but nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth.
This is not over. Not by a long, long chalk. It is not over because
the American conversation has been irrevocably altered in ways
both subtle and sublime.
For those predisposed to rocking the boat, the Occupy movement
has provided an opportunity to give voice to the overarching sense
that matters in America have gone horribly wrong: uncounted
thousands dead in a war of choice that provided a wonderful
opportunity for the transfer of hundreds of billions of taxpayer
dollars into the bloated coffers of "defense" contractors with friends
in high places; billions more stolen in broad daylight by Wall Street
gangsters; billions more given back by way of "bailouts" - read:
socialism - to these same gangsters thanks to the aforementioned
high-placed friends; no jobs, and no jobs, and no jobs, because it
is more important to score political points than it is to ease the
suffering of millions.
For those not immediately predisposed to boat-rocking - the fathers who lay awake at night worrying about mortgage payments, the mothers with sick children who live in terror of the mailman bringing more medical bills, the retail workers making a shamefully substandard minimum wage who are holding on by their fingernails - such highblown talk has always been drowned out by the necessities and requirements of the immediate present.
Who has time to camp out in Zuccotti Park when there are bills to pay, mouths to feed and time-cards to punch?
And yet...and yet...
And yet those same hard-working over-burdened Americans who
have been thus far unable to take up the Occupy banner - who, in
many instances, dismiss the whole thing with a contemptuous "Get
a job, hippie" - are the same Americans who have had a bug put in
their ear, and the buzzing of that bug will not go away.
Four months of national dialogue about fair taxation, burden-sharing
and the overwhelming power of the corporate state have done their
work, and done it well.
The conversation in America about wealth and power has been
redirected: instead of blindly worshipping the power and prestige
of these Sheriffs of Nottingham, who drink the sweat and blood of
the toilers for their sustenance and entertainment, a great many
people have been made to remember Robin Hood, and what the
genuine definition of fairness, equality and patriotism really is.
The story of America on the eve of this new year can be summed
up by the old tale of the two donkeys who meet on the road.
The first donkey is fresh as a daisy, unencumbered, brushed and
bright-eyed. The second donkey is tired and broken, sad-eyed and
swaybacked from the monstrous burden he carries.
The first donkey looks at the second donkey and says, "Boy, that's
quite a load you're carrying." The second donkey looks at the first
donkey in exhausted confusion and replies, "What load?"
Get it?
The second donkey had been carrying his burden for so long that he
no longer even realizes it is there, though his back breaks from the
strain.
For generations now, that has been the sorry lot of the 99%, but it
will not be so in 2012; after carrying the load for so long that they
didn't even see it anymore - a fact that suits the 1% right down to
the ground, mind you - a vast majority of Americans have finally
looked up from their fruitless toiling, seen the unfair and over-
burdensome load they carry, and recognized the fundamental
injustice that has left them as beaten and swaybacked as that
donkey on the road.
Occupy is not over.
We come now to another winter of our discontent, and though
the tents and signs and shouts of the movement have been
momentarily subdued, they will return.
Spring is coming, the rocks are already rolling down the
mountainside and while there is still time for the pebbles
to catch up, gravity is an absolute.
Sooner or later, those rocks will reach the reckoning that has been
so long in coming, and when that happens, nothing in this country
will be the same again.
With Spring comes the rain, and the rain is coming to this dry and
thirsty land.
The rain is coming.
By God and sonny Jesus, the rain is coming.
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a
New York Times and internationally bestselling author who lives and
works in Boston.
http://www.truth-out.org/rain-and-reckoning/1325105757
"...and soon now we shall go out of the house and go into
the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and
the awful responsibility of Time."
- Robert Penn Warren
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout.org
January 01, 2012
Dewey Square, the patch of earth in the shadow of the Federal
Reserve Building and One Financial Center that Occupy Boston
protesters called home from September to December, is empty
now.
The same can be said for the original Occupy space at UC Davis,
where a dozen kneeling and defenseless protesters were hosed
down with pepper spray, and for Oakland, where the police
rioted and very nearly killed a two-tour Marine Corps veteran
of Iraq.
Occupy encampments sprang up in hundreds of cities in all fifty
states of the union over these last four months. Many, if not most,
are gone now, done in by police invasion or uncooperative weather,
or both.
You may have noticed the sudden lack of attention paid to the
Occupy movement, now that the gendarmes of the status quo
have wielded their truncheons and rolled up the encampments
like so many windowshades.
Nightly reports by the "mainstream" news media about Occupy
actions all across the country have dwindled to almost nil, and
for those so disposed, this is a good thing.
The roused rabble have been crushed and scattered, and all this talk
of inequality and justice can finally be replaced with what has for so
long now been the real American anthem: everything is fine, nothing
to see here, your betters are in control, go back to work.
The uprising has been quelled, it would seem, and it is time to
consign the Occupy movement to the dustbin of history. Nothing,
but nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth.
This is not over. Not by a long, long chalk. It is not over because
the American conversation has been irrevocably altered in ways
both subtle and sublime.
For those predisposed to rocking the boat, the Occupy movement
has provided an opportunity to give voice to the overarching sense
that matters in America have gone horribly wrong: uncounted
thousands dead in a war of choice that provided a wonderful
opportunity for the transfer of hundreds of billions of taxpayer
dollars into the bloated coffers of "defense" contractors with friends
in high places; billions more stolen in broad daylight by Wall Street
gangsters; billions more given back by way of "bailouts" - read:
socialism - to these same gangsters thanks to the aforementioned
high-placed friends; no jobs, and no jobs, and no jobs, because it
is more important to score political points than it is to ease the
suffering of millions.
For those not immediately predisposed to boat-rocking - the fathers who lay awake at night worrying about mortgage payments, the mothers with sick children who live in terror of the mailman bringing more medical bills, the retail workers making a shamefully substandard minimum wage who are holding on by their fingernails - such highblown talk has always been drowned out by the necessities and requirements of the immediate present.
Who has time to camp out in Zuccotti Park when there are bills to pay, mouths to feed and time-cards to punch?
And yet...and yet...
And yet those same hard-working over-burdened Americans who
have been thus far unable to take up the Occupy banner - who, in
many instances, dismiss the whole thing with a contemptuous "Get
a job, hippie" - are the same Americans who have had a bug put in
their ear, and the buzzing of that bug will not go away.
Four months of national dialogue about fair taxation, burden-sharing
and the overwhelming power of the corporate state have done their
work, and done it well.
The conversation in America about wealth and power has been
redirected: instead of blindly worshipping the power and prestige
of these Sheriffs of Nottingham, who drink the sweat and blood of
the toilers for their sustenance and entertainment, a great many
people have been made to remember Robin Hood, and what the
genuine definition of fairness, equality and patriotism really is.
The story of America on the eve of this new year can be summed
up by the old tale of the two donkeys who meet on the road.
The first donkey is fresh as a daisy, unencumbered, brushed and
bright-eyed. The second donkey is tired and broken, sad-eyed and
swaybacked from the monstrous burden he carries.
The first donkey looks at the second donkey and says, "Boy, that's
quite a load you're carrying." The second donkey looks at the first
donkey in exhausted confusion and replies, "What load?"
Get it?
The second donkey had been carrying his burden for so long that he
no longer even realizes it is there, though his back breaks from the
strain.
For generations now, that has been the sorry lot of the 99%, but it
will not be so in 2012; after carrying the load for so long that they
didn't even see it anymore - a fact that suits the 1% right down to
the ground, mind you - a vast majority of Americans have finally
looked up from their fruitless toiling, seen the unfair and over-
burdensome load they carry, and recognized the fundamental
injustice that has left them as beaten and swaybacked as that
donkey on the road.
Occupy is not over.
We come now to another winter of our discontent, and though
the tents and signs and shouts of the movement have been
momentarily subdued, they will return.
Spring is coming, the rocks are already rolling down the
mountainside and while there is still time for the pebbles
to catch up, gravity is an absolute.
Sooner or later, those rocks will reach the reckoning that has been
so long in coming, and when that happens, nothing in this country
will be the same again.
With Spring comes the rain, and the rain is coming to this dry and
thirsty land.
The rain is coming.
By God and sonny Jesus, the rain is coming.
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a
New York Times and internationally bestselling author who lives and
works in Boston.
http://www.truth-out.org/rain-and-reckoning/1325105757
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