House Resolution 707
H.Res.707 - Condemning all forms of anti-Semitism and rejecting
attempts to justify anti-Jewish hatred or violent attacks as an
acceptable expression of disapproval or frustration over political
events in the Middle East or elsewhere.
[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H. Res. 707 Engrossed in House (EH)]
H. Res. 707
In the House of Representatives, U. S.,
September 18, 2014.
Whereas there is clear evidence of increasing incidents
and expressions of anti-Semitism throughout the world;
Whereas on April 30, 2014, the United States Department of State
released the International Religious Freedom Report for 2013 and
noted that,
``Throughout Europe, the historical stain of anti-Semitism
continued to be a fact of life on Internet fora, in soccer stadiums,
and through Nazi-like salutes, leading many individuals who are
Jewish to conceal their religious identity.'';
Whereas anti-Semitic acts committed and recorded in 2014 around
the world, including countries in the Middle East, Latin America,
Europe, and North America, include incidents of murder at Jewish
sites, violent attacks and death threats against Jews, as well as gun
violence, arson, graffiti, anti-Semitic cartoons, and other property
desecration at Jewish cemeteries, places of worship, and communal
activity;
Whereas a survey by the Anti-Defamation League of attitudes
towards Jews in more than 100 countries around the world,
released in May 2014 found that over a quarter of the people
surveyed (26 percent), and nearly three quarters of those surveyed
in the Middle East (74 percent) hold anti-Semitic views, a stunning
indicator of the stubborn resilience of anti-Semitic beliefs, even in
countries where few Jews reside;
Whereas the Anti-Defamation League survey also found that
a majority of people surveyed overall have either not heard
of the Holocaust or do not believe it happened as has been
documented by factual accounts and recorded by history;
Whereas President Barack Obama said in his remarks at the USC
Shoah Foundation Dinner on May 7, 2014, ``. . . if the memories
of the Shoah survivors teach us anything, it is that silence is evil's
greatest co-conspirator. And it's up to us--each of us, every one
of us--to forcefully condemn any denial of the Holocaust. It's up
to us to combat not only anti-Semitism, but racism and bigotry and
intolerance in all their forms, here and around the world. It's up
to us to speak out against rhetoric that threatens the existence of a
Jewish homeland and to sustain America's unshakeable commitment
to Israel's security'';
Whereas in 2004, Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review
Act, which established an Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-
Semitism, headed by a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-
Semitism;
Whereas the United States Government has consistently supported
efforts to address the rise in anti-Semitism through its bilateral
relationships and through engagement in international organizations
such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organization of American
States (OAS);
Whereas in recent decades there has been a clear and troubling
pattern of increased violence against Jewish persons and their
property, purportedly in connection with increased opposition
to policies enacted by the Government of Israel;
Whereas during Israel's 2014 Operation Protective Edge aiming to
stem the rocket fire and terrorist infiltrations by Hamas, Jews
and Jewish institutions and property were attacked in Europe and
elsewhere, including attempts to invade a synagogue in Paris, fire-
bombings of synagogues in France and Germany, assaults on Jewish
individuals, and swastikas spray-painted in a heavily Jewish area of
London and also in Rome's historic Jewish quarter;
Whereas anti-Semitic imagery and comparisons of Jews and Israel to
Nazis have been on display at demonstrations against Israel's actions
in Gaza throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and
Latin America, including--
(1) placards comparing Israeli leaders to Nazis, accusing Israel of
carrying out a ``Holocaust'' against Palestinians, and equating the
Jewish Star of David with the Nazi swastika, and
(2) demonstrations that have included chants of ``Death to Jews'',
``Death to Israel'', or expressions of support for suicide terrorism
against Israeli or Jewish civilians;
Whereas the Governments in France, Germany, and Italy, the three
countries where the majority of incidents have occurred, have
strongly condemned anti-Semitism as unacceptable in European
society and have all made clear statements that such attacks on
their Jewish communities are intolerable, and they have matched
those words with strong law enforcement;
Whereas some civil society leaders have set strong examples,
including the condemnation by the Union of Mosques of France,
on behalf of their 500 mosques, called the attacks ``morally unjust
and unacceptable'', and stated, ``nothing can justify any act that
could harm our Jewish compatriots, their institutions or their places
of worship'';
Whereas the largest newspaper in circulation in Germany, Bild,
featured statements against anti-Semitism from politicians,
business leaders, civic leaders, media personalities and celebrities
with ``Never Again Jew Hatred'' on the front page; and
Whereas Congress has played an essential role in illustrating and
counteracting the resurgence of anti-Semitism worldwide: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) unequivocally condemns all forms of anti-Semitism and rejects
attempts to justify anti-Jewish hatred or violent attacks as an
acceptable expression of disapproval or frustration over political
events in the Middle East or elsewhere;
(2) decries and condemns the comparison of Israel to Nazis as an
insult to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and an
affront to those who survived and their children and grandchildren,
the righteous gentiles who saved Jewish lives at peril to their own
lives and to those who bravely fought to defeat the Nazis;
(3) applauds those foreign leaders who have condemned anti-
Semitic acts and calls on those who have yet to take firm action
against anti-Semitism in their countries, to do so;
(4) reaffirms its support for the mandate of the United States
Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism as part of the
broader policy priority of fostering international religious freedom;
(5) supports expanded Holocaust educational programs that
increase awareness, counter prejudice, and enhance efforts
to teach the universal lessons of the Holocaust; and
(6) urges the Secretary of State to--
(A) maintain combating anti-Semitism as a United States foreign
policy priority;
(B) ensure that the instruments of United States public diplomacy,
including the United States Representative to the
Organization of Islamic Conference, are utilized to effectively
combat anti-Semitism;
(C) ensure high-level United States participation in the 2014
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) high
level event marking the 10th anniversary of the 2004 OSCE Berlin
Declaration against anti-Semitism;
(D) urge governments to ensure that adequate laws are in place
to punish anti-Semitic violence against persons and property;
(E) continue robust United States reporting on anti-Semitism by the
Department of State and the Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor
Anti-Semitism;
(F) provide necessary training and instruction for personnel posted
in United States embassies and missions to analyze and report on
anti-Semitic violence against persons and property as well as the
response of governments to those incidents;
(G) ensure that United States Government efforts to train law
enforcement personnel and prosecutors abroad incorporate tools
to address anti-Semitic violence against persons and property; and
(H) strongly support the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe's specialized efforts to monitor and address anti-
Semitism, including through support for its law enforcement and
civil society training programs.
Attest:
Clerk.
https://www.congress.gov/…/113th-…/house-resolution/707/text
Monday, November 17, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
All Of My Friends Are Dying
All Of My Friends Are Dying
A Veteran Commits Suicide Every 65 Minutes In The USA, With Over
30% Of Veterans Having Considered Suicide.
By Vince Emanuele
Telesurtv.net
November 12, 2014
Today, for the second time in less than a month, a veteran in my
circle of activist-friends has committed suicide.
His name was Ethan. Last month, my friend Jacob, another anti-war
veteran, took his life in rural Arkansas.
Earlier this year, I lost two members of the platoon I served in; they
died of cancer; neither of them smoked or drank.
In fact, both Stephen and Sinbad were some of the most straitlaced
veterans in our platoon.
In the previous three years, two other anti-war veterans died
prematurely—Anthony from a drug overdose and Joshua of cancer.
As the years roll along, I'm beginning to better understand Plato's
statement on war.
I've now lost more friends since returning home than I did in the
combat-zone.
The first time I read Plato's famous quote, I was thinking about
personal struggles, how to remember, or forget, the war, and how
to move forward.
I didn't expect my friends to keep dying. But they are vanishing
at an astounding pace.
The Center for Public Integrity reports that, "Veterans are killing
themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population
with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 and 2011."
To put it another way, a veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes in the USA, with over 30% of veterans having considered suicide.
Increasingly, these stories and statistics are making headline news.
Many journalists, such as Aaron Glantz, have made it their
duty to report on veterans issues.
Still, today, most Americans are unaware of the catastrophic
consequences of never-ending wars of aggression.
And while many stories highlight the plight of veterans, very little
is written about the devastating effects the wars have had on the
civilian populations who endure such brutality.
But that's expected in a society as introverted as ours.
Surely, Americans are blind to the fact that they live in an Empire.
In Empires, soldiers, civilians and veterans die, and often.
Personal Struggles
I returned home from my first deployment to Iraq, back in June,
2003.
As the war raged on, Americans busied themselves with banal
forms of entertainment and mindless politics.
There was an anti-war movement, but it was marginal at best
and totally impotent at worse.
The 2004 Presidential Election was an utter farce.
John Kerry, the Democratic candidate that year, stumbled over
himself with such ease, it almost seemed as though he was
throwing the election for Bush.
In fact, Kerry, in many ways, represents the absolute bankruptcy
of modern-liberal-ideology.
Once a prominent anti-war activist, the Massachusetts Senator
quickly switched gears, bootlicking his way to the top of American
political society.
In the meantime, young GIs fought another endless war abroad,
this time in the Middle East.
At the time, I was largely politically ignorant.
I grew up in a home filled with Democrats.
My father was a union ironworker and my grandfathers were
union steelworkers.
Many of my cousins, aunts and uncles worked, or still work,
in steel mills or manufacturing industries.
It was a union home.
In some ways, one could say that I grew up class-conscious.
My father always told me that rich people ran the show.
He told me that cops, judges and lawyers were corrupt and
couldn't be trusted.
However his analysis didn't go much deeper.
When I told him I was joining the Marine Corps, he told me
that I would end up fighting another senseless war.
He reminded me of his friends who came back from Vietnam
in the late-1960s, early 1970s, depressed, addicted and violent.
During the summer of 2003, my friends were returning home
from their first year at college.
Most of them attended state schools, primarily Indiana University.
They shared their stories of late-night romps with various sexual
partners, drug-induced parties and intellectually stimulating
classes.
The classes interested me the most, as I had my own drug-induced
experiences in the Marine Corps, with plenty of late-night adventures.
Perched around our parents' kitchen tables, we talked about
politics, society, art, death and war.
Subjectively, their biggest concern was whether or not they were
going to pass these classes, graduate and eventually get a decent
paying job.
My biggest concern was whether or not I'd ever see them again,
as our unit was gearing up for a second deployment to Iraq.
Quickly, it became apparent that my journey through life was going
to be drastically different from the vast majority of Americans.
Now, to be clear, some Americans' experiences are similar to
veterans.
For example, young African Americans and Latin Americans living
in the most violent American neighborhoods have a good idea what
it means to be a veteran, or a victim of war.
After all, they're veterans of a different kind of war: The War
on Drugs.
Constant news of dead friends, suicides, shootings and drug
overdoses plague the discourse in crumbling neighborhoods.
The same is true for veterans.
Just as most Americans are afraid of the Ghetto, they also
shy away from the brutal reality of America's wars abroad.
Both struggles seem too distant, too strange for the average
American to comprehend.
In some ways, it's true: Americans who do not live in the Ghetto
have no idea what Ghetto entails; and people who have not
experienced war cannot comprehend what it's like to be in war.
Throughout the course of my second deployment, I became
increasingly opposed to the war.
This happened for many reasons, but primarily because of the
insane brutality inflicted on the Iraqi people by my fellow Marines.
They took it upon themselves to shoot at innocents, torture
civilians and enemy combatants, steal goods from the local
populations, mutilate dead bodies, take pictures with corpses
and cover-up any evidence of said actions.
According to MSNBC, CNN and FoxNews, we were the good guys.
Hell, many veterans didn't even believe such nonsense.
But most Americans did.
They bought the hype.
And the so-called anti-war movement wasn't much better.
Their critique of the war in Iraq wasn't principled, nor was
it serious.
If they were serious, they wouldn't have disappeared once
Obama took office.
In hindsight, the movement was more of an anti-Bush/Cheney/GOP
struggle than it was an anti-war social movement, committed to
identifying and confronting militarism throughout American society.
In any case, by the time I returned home from my second tour,
it was more than obvious how different my life was going to be.
First of all, I was badly addicted to drugs, alcohol and violence.
Yes, violence.
There is an addictive quality to extreme forms of subjective violence.
The act of killing someone is not simply traumatic and brutal,
it's also invigorating and powerful.
The drugs and alcohol only staved away my violent urges.
If someone didn't say "thank you" at the supermarket, I thought
about the various ways in which I could torture them.
When someone at the local gas station wouldn't hold the door
open for the next patron, I fantasized about killing them.
Their lack of discipline and manners made me physically ill.
Sometimes, when I drove around town, I'd find myself dreaming
about a confrontation with someone, anyone.
I wanted to show them what war was all about.
I wanted to release my anger through violence, often imagining
the most gruesome scenarios.
Really, I wanted them to feel the same anxiety and anger that
I felt during those days.
My thinking was shallow: Why should they go through life
unscathed by war?
Of course, all of this had a tremendously negative impact
on my life.
I've lost friends, intimate partners and family members due
to my personal battles with PTSD.
Indeed, I still struggle with these ailments.
The nightmares stalk my nightly sleep.
Violent urges shadow my daily activities.
Each day is a struggle.
The more I try and put the war behind me, the more the dog
of war bites at my heels as I run away from the grief.
One day, my mother asked me to stop smoking in her and my
father's garage.
I picked up a garbage can, threw it at the wall and threatened
to kill her.
Two hours later I was sobbing, head in hands, trying to explain
to my friend what happened.
He didn't know what to say.
How could he?
Activism As Therapy
I first became involved with the anti-war movement in 2006.
The first event I attended was at Valparaiso University.
It was a roundtable discussion, with three panelists in favor
of the war in Iraq, and three against the occupation.
After each participant spoke, they opened the event to a
question and answer segment.
Listening to people talk about the war made me uncomfortable,
even the folks promoting an anti-war message.
How could they know?
How did they know?
Finally, I stood up and said, "I'm a combat veteran who was
deployed to Iraq on two separate occasions and I agree with
the three panelists who are against the war."
Heads began to turn.
People started to whisper.
Some in the crowd started to clap their hands.
Even the panelists seemed dumbfounded.
Three years into the war and it was still out of the ordinary for
people on a college campus to hear the opinion of an anti-war
veteran.
Amazing, indeed.
After the event, a Vietnam veteran came up to me and
introduced himself as "Nick."
He continued, "I'm so glad to meet you!
Do you realize how important your testimony is going to
be to the movement?
There's a couple of veterans I'd like you to meet so come
out to our next event."
Nick handed me a flier and we exchanged phone numbers.
I remember driving home and thinking about how significant
this minor event meant to me.
For once, I felt powerful again.
I knew that my story, my emotions, my life, mattered.
For so many years I had viewed my life as worthless,
easily discardable.
Suicide was always an option.
Homicide was always a fantasy.
Now, I had a new commitment: the anti-war movement.
I wanted to turn the tide, roll back the negativity and
participate in something positive.
Eventually, I linked up with Iraq Veterans Against the War.
To me, this was a new beginning.
So far, my anti-war feelings had been relegated to poems,
music and art.
Now I was contributing to an organization that aimed to stop wars,
stand in solidarity with the Iraqi and Afghan people, and assist
returning veterans with their healthcare and educational benefits.
I remember being outlandishly happy about the whole process.
I mean, here I am, a working-class kid who barely graduated high
school, talking with college-educated activists about ending the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was the first time I felt genuine happiness in a long, long time.
Plus, the activists were great.
Many of the veterans I started to work with had similar stories.
They too came from small towns and working-class backgrounds.
Unlike my time in the Marine Corps, I felt comfortable in the
anti-war community.
I cannot properly recall the amount of organizing workshops,
protests, writing workshops, fundraisers, speaking events and
street theatre actions we conducted during my first few years
with IVAW.
But it was a lot of work, both emotionally and physically.
Members came and went.
Some stuck around for several years. Others are still involved.
This work has kept many of us out of jail and alive.
For this, I will always be grateful to the anti-war community.
It would take weeks for me to name all of the veterans whose
lives are better off today due to the work of anti-war activists
and community organizers.
Where politicians and doctors failed, many of these folks
have succeeded.
Turns out, many of us simply needed a new mission, a mission
dedicated to peace and justice, not war and destruction.
Nonetheless, activism isn't enough, as time has illustrated.
Our activist friends are not immune to suicide.
In fact, I would venture to assume activists are more prone
to suicide than their non-activist counterparts.
It's difficult to commit one's self to the world of political activism.
Engaging in lengthy conversations about suicide, genocide, ecocide,
racism, patriarchy, capitalism, poverty, mass incarceration, etc.,
is, at times, overwhelming.
For me, reading history has helped.
I try to remember that I'm a part of a long line of political activists
fighting for revolutionary change.
I try to remember that I'm a part of a long line of veterans enduring
the emotional and physical burdens of war.
Throughout the history of Western Civilization, soldiers have fought
for imperial interests in far-away lands, only to come home to a
farcical society, void of decent values.
Fighting To Live
This year, US citizens have been inundated with stories about
suicide, from Phillip Seymour Hoffman to Robin Williams, the
topic remains on the tip of every American's tongue.
In the veteran community, suicide is often joked about.
The same way that nurses joke about ill patients, or coroners about
corpses.
Often, the only way to engage with death is to obscure the darkness
with a fog of humor.
Indeed, comedy often dovetails the absurd.
It's the only way to deal with extreme levels of violence and death.
Dark humor, as it's often called, helps us deal with the emptiness
of death.
But the jokes only function as a topical ointment.
At home, alone, or with loved ones, we're reminded of this
emptiness.
It's an emptiness that will not go away.
At the same time, our efforts are needed now more than ever.
The casualties of US wars do not have the luxury of VA hospitals
or pro-bono therapy sessions.
Victims of US aggression, unlike US veterans and their families,
are not awarded preferential medical treatment, educational
programs or disability benefits.
They live, like so many around the globe, in a constant war-zone.
While veterans like myself hope to catch a decent night's sleep,
Iraqis and Afghans are lucky to have a bed to sleep in.
This isn't a "race to the bottom"; it's simply a recognition of
the insanity endured by the primary victims of US aggression.
Sure, veterans have it bad.
But those we occupied have it much worse.
This dynamic must be recognized and confronted in a serious
fashion if we ever hope to bridge the gap between justice and
absurdity.
Meanwhile, my friends continue to die—my Iraqi friends, my Afghan
friends, my Syrian friends, my Libyan friends, my Pakistani friends,
my Palestinian friends, my Somalian friends, my veteran friends…
http://www.telesurtv.net/…/All-of-My-Friends-are-Dying-2014…
A Veteran Commits Suicide Every 65 Minutes In The USA, With Over
30% Of Veterans Having Considered Suicide.
By Vince Emanuele
Telesurtv.net
November 12, 2014
Today, for the second time in less than a month, a veteran in my
circle of activist-friends has committed suicide.
His name was Ethan. Last month, my friend Jacob, another anti-war
veteran, took his life in rural Arkansas.
Earlier this year, I lost two members of the platoon I served in; they
died of cancer; neither of them smoked or drank.
In fact, both Stephen and Sinbad were some of the most straitlaced
veterans in our platoon.
In the previous three years, two other anti-war veterans died
prematurely—Anthony from a drug overdose and Joshua of cancer.
As the years roll along, I'm beginning to better understand Plato's
statement on war.
I've now lost more friends since returning home than I did in the
combat-zone.
The first time I read Plato's famous quote, I was thinking about
personal struggles, how to remember, or forget, the war, and how
to move forward.
I didn't expect my friends to keep dying. But they are vanishing
at an astounding pace.
The Center for Public Integrity reports that, "Veterans are killing
themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population
with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 and 2011."
To put it another way, a veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes in the USA, with over 30% of veterans having considered suicide.
Increasingly, these stories and statistics are making headline news.
Many journalists, such as Aaron Glantz, have made it their
duty to report on veterans issues.
Still, today, most Americans are unaware of the catastrophic
consequences of never-ending wars of aggression.
And while many stories highlight the plight of veterans, very little
is written about the devastating effects the wars have had on the
civilian populations who endure such brutality.
But that's expected in a society as introverted as ours.
Surely, Americans are blind to the fact that they live in an Empire.
In Empires, soldiers, civilians and veterans die, and often.
Personal Struggles
I returned home from my first deployment to Iraq, back in June,
2003.
As the war raged on, Americans busied themselves with banal
forms of entertainment and mindless politics.
There was an anti-war movement, but it was marginal at best
and totally impotent at worse.
The 2004 Presidential Election was an utter farce.
John Kerry, the Democratic candidate that year, stumbled over
himself with such ease, it almost seemed as though he was
throwing the election for Bush.
In fact, Kerry, in many ways, represents the absolute bankruptcy
of modern-liberal-ideology.
Once a prominent anti-war activist, the Massachusetts Senator
quickly switched gears, bootlicking his way to the top of American
political society.
In the meantime, young GIs fought another endless war abroad,
this time in the Middle East.
At the time, I was largely politically ignorant.
I grew up in a home filled with Democrats.
My father was a union ironworker and my grandfathers were
union steelworkers.
Many of my cousins, aunts and uncles worked, or still work,
in steel mills or manufacturing industries.
It was a union home.
In some ways, one could say that I grew up class-conscious.
My father always told me that rich people ran the show.
He told me that cops, judges and lawyers were corrupt and
couldn't be trusted.
However his analysis didn't go much deeper.
When I told him I was joining the Marine Corps, he told me
that I would end up fighting another senseless war.
He reminded me of his friends who came back from Vietnam
in the late-1960s, early 1970s, depressed, addicted and violent.
During the summer of 2003, my friends were returning home
from their first year at college.
Most of them attended state schools, primarily Indiana University.
They shared their stories of late-night romps with various sexual
partners, drug-induced parties and intellectually stimulating
classes.
The classes interested me the most, as I had my own drug-induced
experiences in the Marine Corps, with plenty of late-night adventures.
Perched around our parents' kitchen tables, we talked about
politics, society, art, death and war.
Subjectively, their biggest concern was whether or not they were
going to pass these classes, graduate and eventually get a decent
paying job.
My biggest concern was whether or not I'd ever see them again,
as our unit was gearing up for a second deployment to Iraq.
Quickly, it became apparent that my journey through life was going
to be drastically different from the vast majority of Americans.
Now, to be clear, some Americans' experiences are similar to
veterans.
For example, young African Americans and Latin Americans living
in the most violent American neighborhoods have a good idea what
it means to be a veteran, or a victim of war.
After all, they're veterans of a different kind of war: The War
on Drugs.
Constant news of dead friends, suicides, shootings and drug
overdoses plague the discourse in crumbling neighborhoods.
The same is true for veterans.
Just as most Americans are afraid of the Ghetto, they also
shy away from the brutal reality of America's wars abroad.
Both struggles seem too distant, too strange for the average
American to comprehend.
In some ways, it's true: Americans who do not live in the Ghetto
have no idea what Ghetto entails; and people who have not
experienced war cannot comprehend what it's like to be in war.
Throughout the course of my second deployment, I became
increasingly opposed to the war.
This happened for many reasons, but primarily because of the
insane brutality inflicted on the Iraqi people by my fellow Marines.
They took it upon themselves to shoot at innocents, torture
civilians and enemy combatants, steal goods from the local
populations, mutilate dead bodies, take pictures with corpses
and cover-up any evidence of said actions.
According to MSNBC, CNN and FoxNews, we were the good guys.
Hell, many veterans didn't even believe such nonsense.
But most Americans did.
They bought the hype.
And the so-called anti-war movement wasn't much better.
Their critique of the war in Iraq wasn't principled, nor was
it serious.
If they were serious, they wouldn't have disappeared once
Obama took office.
In hindsight, the movement was more of an anti-Bush/Cheney/GOP
struggle than it was an anti-war social movement, committed to
identifying and confronting militarism throughout American society.
In any case, by the time I returned home from my second tour,
it was more than obvious how different my life was going to be.
First of all, I was badly addicted to drugs, alcohol and violence.
Yes, violence.
There is an addictive quality to extreme forms of subjective violence.
The act of killing someone is not simply traumatic and brutal,
it's also invigorating and powerful.
The drugs and alcohol only staved away my violent urges.
If someone didn't say "thank you" at the supermarket, I thought
about the various ways in which I could torture them.
When someone at the local gas station wouldn't hold the door
open for the next patron, I fantasized about killing them.
Their lack of discipline and manners made me physically ill.
Sometimes, when I drove around town, I'd find myself dreaming
about a confrontation with someone, anyone.
I wanted to show them what war was all about.
I wanted to release my anger through violence, often imagining
the most gruesome scenarios.
Really, I wanted them to feel the same anxiety and anger that
I felt during those days.
My thinking was shallow: Why should they go through life
unscathed by war?
Of course, all of this had a tremendously negative impact
on my life.
I've lost friends, intimate partners and family members due
to my personal battles with PTSD.
Indeed, I still struggle with these ailments.
The nightmares stalk my nightly sleep.
Violent urges shadow my daily activities.
Each day is a struggle.
The more I try and put the war behind me, the more the dog
of war bites at my heels as I run away from the grief.
One day, my mother asked me to stop smoking in her and my
father's garage.
I picked up a garbage can, threw it at the wall and threatened
to kill her.
Two hours later I was sobbing, head in hands, trying to explain
to my friend what happened.
He didn't know what to say.
How could he?
Activism As Therapy
I first became involved with the anti-war movement in 2006.
The first event I attended was at Valparaiso University.
It was a roundtable discussion, with three panelists in favor
of the war in Iraq, and three against the occupation.
After each participant spoke, they opened the event to a
question and answer segment.
Listening to people talk about the war made me uncomfortable,
even the folks promoting an anti-war message.
How could they know?
How did they know?
Finally, I stood up and said, "I'm a combat veteran who was
deployed to Iraq on two separate occasions and I agree with
the three panelists who are against the war."
Heads began to turn.
People started to whisper.
Some in the crowd started to clap their hands.
Even the panelists seemed dumbfounded.
Three years into the war and it was still out of the ordinary for
people on a college campus to hear the opinion of an anti-war
veteran.
Amazing, indeed.
After the event, a Vietnam veteran came up to me and
introduced himself as "Nick."
He continued, "I'm so glad to meet you!
Do you realize how important your testimony is going to
be to the movement?
There's a couple of veterans I'd like you to meet so come
out to our next event."
Nick handed me a flier and we exchanged phone numbers.
I remember driving home and thinking about how significant
this minor event meant to me.
For once, I felt powerful again.
I knew that my story, my emotions, my life, mattered.
For so many years I had viewed my life as worthless,
easily discardable.
Suicide was always an option.
Homicide was always a fantasy.
Now, I had a new commitment: the anti-war movement.
I wanted to turn the tide, roll back the negativity and
participate in something positive.
Eventually, I linked up with Iraq Veterans Against the War.
To me, this was a new beginning.
So far, my anti-war feelings had been relegated to poems,
music and art.
Now I was contributing to an organization that aimed to stop wars,
stand in solidarity with the Iraqi and Afghan people, and assist
returning veterans with their healthcare and educational benefits.
I remember being outlandishly happy about the whole process.
I mean, here I am, a working-class kid who barely graduated high
school, talking with college-educated activists about ending the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was the first time I felt genuine happiness in a long, long time.
Plus, the activists were great.
Many of the veterans I started to work with had similar stories.
They too came from small towns and working-class backgrounds.
Unlike my time in the Marine Corps, I felt comfortable in the
anti-war community.
I cannot properly recall the amount of organizing workshops,
protests, writing workshops, fundraisers, speaking events and
street theatre actions we conducted during my first few years
with IVAW.
But it was a lot of work, both emotionally and physically.
Members came and went.
Some stuck around for several years. Others are still involved.
This work has kept many of us out of jail and alive.
For this, I will always be grateful to the anti-war community.
It would take weeks for me to name all of the veterans whose
lives are better off today due to the work of anti-war activists
and community organizers.
Where politicians and doctors failed, many of these folks
have succeeded.
Turns out, many of us simply needed a new mission, a mission
dedicated to peace and justice, not war and destruction.
Nonetheless, activism isn't enough, as time has illustrated.
Our activist friends are not immune to suicide.
In fact, I would venture to assume activists are more prone
to suicide than their non-activist counterparts.
It's difficult to commit one's self to the world of political activism.
Engaging in lengthy conversations about suicide, genocide, ecocide,
racism, patriarchy, capitalism, poverty, mass incarceration, etc.,
is, at times, overwhelming.
For me, reading history has helped.
I try to remember that I'm a part of a long line of political activists
fighting for revolutionary change.
I try to remember that I'm a part of a long line of veterans enduring
the emotional and physical burdens of war.
Throughout the history of Western Civilization, soldiers have fought
for imperial interests in far-away lands, only to come home to a
farcical society, void of decent values.
Fighting To Live
This year, US citizens have been inundated with stories about
suicide, from Phillip Seymour Hoffman to Robin Williams, the
topic remains on the tip of every American's tongue.
In the veteran community, suicide is often joked about.
The same way that nurses joke about ill patients, or coroners about
corpses.
Often, the only way to engage with death is to obscure the darkness
with a fog of humor.
Indeed, comedy often dovetails the absurd.
It's the only way to deal with extreme levels of violence and death.
Dark humor, as it's often called, helps us deal with the emptiness
of death.
But the jokes only function as a topical ointment.
At home, alone, or with loved ones, we're reminded of this
emptiness.
It's an emptiness that will not go away.
At the same time, our efforts are needed now more than ever.
The casualties of US wars do not have the luxury of VA hospitals
or pro-bono therapy sessions.
Victims of US aggression, unlike US veterans and their families,
are not awarded preferential medical treatment, educational
programs or disability benefits.
They live, like so many around the globe, in a constant war-zone.
While veterans like myself hope to catch a decent night's sleep,
Iraqis and Afghans are lucky to have a bed to sleep in.
This isn't a "race to the bottom"; it's simply a recognition of
the insanity endured by the primary victims of US aggression.
Sure, veterans have it bad.
But those we occupied have it much worse.
This dynamic must be recognized and confronted in a serious
fashion if we ever hope to bridge the gap between justice and
absurdity.
Meanwhile, my friends continue to die—my Iraqi friends, my Afghan
friends, my Syrian friends, my Libyan friends, my Pakistani friends,
my Palestinian friends, my Somalian friends, my veteran friends…
http://www.telesurtv.net/…/All-of-My-Friends-are-Dying-2014…
Monday, November 10, 2014
Political Bunraku
Political Bunraku
By John Chuckman
Dissident Voice
November 10, 2014
For those who are not familiar, Bunraku is an old form of Japanese
puppet theater, its distinctive characteristic being that the
puppeteers are on the stage with their puppets, dressed in black so
that the audience can pretend not to see them.
While many old art forms have conventions that are unrealistic by
modern standards, there is something particularly unsatisfying
about bunraku: you can pretend not to see the puppeteers but you
cannot fail to see them.
Bunraku, as it happens, offers a remarkable metaphor for some
contemporary operations of American foreign policy.
So many times – in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela, Egypt – we see
dimly the actors on stage, yet we are supposed to pretend they are
not there.
We can’t identify them with precision, but we know they are there.
Most oddly, the press in the United States, and to a lesser extent
that of its various allies and dependents, pretends to report what
is happening without ever mentioning the actors.
They report only the movements of the puppets.
One of the consequences of this kind of activity is that many
people, including many of your own, come simply not to believe
you, no matter what newspapers and government spokespersons
keep saying.
Another consequence is that because many knowledgeable people
no longer believe you, when it comes time to enlist the support of
other nations for your activities, you must use behind-the-scenes
pressure and threats, stretching the boundaries of alliance and
friendship.
After all, your major government friends and allies have
sophisticated intelligence services themselves and are
often aware of what you are trying to do.
Still another consequence is that many people start doubting
what you are saying concerning other topics.
In the United States, a fairly large segment of the population does
not believe the official version of a great deal of comparatively-
recent American history, including explanations of John Kennedy’s
assassination, of events around 9/11, of the downing of TWA Flight
800, of what Israel was doing when it attacked an American spy
ship in 1967, and of the CIA’s past heavy connections with cocaine
trafficking – just to name a few outstanding examples.
Government in America feels the need only to go so far in it's
efforts to explain such matters because the doubters and
skeptics, though many, are not a big enough segment of the
population to matter greatly in political terms, and it is
simply brutally true that the great passive mass of people are
never well informed about anything outside their own lives.
America is a place, as relatively few people abroad understand,
where people must work very hard.
It's industrial working class went through a great depression since,
say, 1960, many of them now holding low-paid service jobs.
It's middle-class workers have seen real incomes decline for
decades, something providing part of the incentive for both
parents in a family to work and for them to move into America’s
great suburban sprawl of lower land costs as well as to embrace
stores such as Wal-Mart with their bare-bones costs.
Many Americans work so hard, they have little time to be concerned
or informed about government, satisfying themselves that a few
minutes with corporate television news is adequate, a phenomenon
favoring the government’s interests since on any important and
controversial subject the television networks (and the major
newspapers) do the government’s bidding, mostly without being
asked.
American corporate news, especially in matters of foreign affairs,
resembles nothing so much as nightly coverage of a banraku
performance.
Selling stuff, whether it’s widgets or religion or political ideas, is
at the core of American life, and America’s one unquestionably
original creation in the modern world involves the disciplines of
marketing, advertising, and public relations – all highly artful
aspects of selling stuff.
The success of these methods has long been proved in American
commerce, but they are no less effective when applied to other
areas.
So, it should hardly surprise that the same “arts” are heavily
employed by, and on behalf of, government in propaganda
and opinion-manipulation around its acts and policies.
Indeed, we see America’s entire election system today having been
reduced to little more than a costly, massive application of these
crafty skills, and no department or agency of government is ever
without its professional, full-time spokespeople and creative back-
up staff, making sure that whatever words or numbers are spoken
or printed never slip beyond what those arts have conjured up.
Unacceptable photos, say those of women and children smashed
by bombs or missiles hurled into the Mideast, are made simply to
disappear much as they were in 1984.
Government knows, too, that the American political system is
heavily stacked against people with doubts ever gaining serious
influence.
Ninety-five percent of Senate elections go to incumbents, and
because only one-third of the Senate faces re-election at any
given election, a majority on some new matter is virtually
impossible to build.
The presidential candidates of the only two parties with a hope of
being elected are almost as carefully groomed and selected as the
party chairman of a former communist-bloc country, and generally
about as surprising in their views.
And always, time makes people forget, even with the most
terrible issues.
After a generation or two, there are relatively few people
who are even aware there was an issue.
In the case of the most overwhelming and terrifying event of
my life, the Vietnam War, polls show a huge number of young
Americans today don’t know what it was or when it occurred.
These are the key factors permitting an American government to
commission horrific acts abroad resembling those of the bloodiest
tyrant, all while it smilingly prances across the international stage
as democracy’s self-designated chief representative and advocate.
As for the great mass of people, the 95% of humanity living
outside the United States, no one in America’s government
ever gives them a moment’s thought, unless they step out
of line.
John Chuckman lives in Canada and is former chief economist
for a large Canadian oil company.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/11/political-bunraku
By John Chuckman
Dissident Voice
November 10, 2014
For those who are not familiar, Bunraku is an old form of Japanese
puppet theater, its distinctive characteristic being that the
puppeteers are on the stage with their puppets, dressed in black so
that the audience can pretend not to see them.
While many old art forms have conventions that are unrealistic by
modern standards, there is something particularly unsatisfying
about bunraku: you can pretend not to see the puppeteers but you
cannot fail to see them.
Bunraku, as it happens, offers a remarkable metaphor for some
contemporary operations of American foreign policy.
So many times – in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela, Egypt – we see
dimly the actors on stage, yet we are supposed to pretend they are
not there.
We can’t identify them with precision, but we know they are there.
Most oddly, the press in the United States, and to a lesser extent
that of its various allies and dependents, pretends to report what
is happening without ever mentioning the actors.
They report only the movements of the puppets.
One of the consequences of this kind of activity is that many
people, including many of your own, come simply not to believe
you, no matter what newspapers and government spokespersons
keep saying.
Another consequence is that because many knowledgeable people
no longer believe you, when it comes time to enlist the support of
other nations for your activities, you must use behind-the-scenes
pressure and threats, stretching the boundaries of alliance and
friendship.
After all, your major government friends and allies have
sophisticated intelligence services themselves and are
often aware of what you are trying to do.
Still another consequence is that many people start doubting
what you are saying concerning other topics.
In the United States, a fairly large segment of the population does
not believe the official version of a great deal of comparatively-
recent American history, including explanations of John Kennedy’s
assassination, of events around 9/11, of the downing of TWA Flight
800, of what Israel was doing when it attacked an American spy
ship in 1967, and of the CIA’s past heavy connections with cocaine
trafficking – just to name a few outstanding examples.
Government in America feels the need only to go so far in it's
efforts to explain such matters because the doubters and
skeptics, though many, are not a big enough segment of the
population to matter greatly in political terms, and it is
simply brutally true that the great passive mass of people are
never well informed about anything outside their own lives.
America is a place, as relatively few people abroad understand,
where people must work very hard.
It's industrial working class went through a great depression since,
say, 1960, many of them now holding low-paid service jobs.
It's middle-class workers have seen real incomes decline for
decades, something providing part of the incentive for both
parents in a family to work and for them to move into America’s
great suburban sprawl of lower land costs as well as to embrace
stores such as Wal-Mart with their bare-bones costs.
Many Americans work so hard, they have little time to be concerned
or informed about government, satisfying themselves that a few
minutes with corporate television news is adequate, a phenomenon
favoring the government’s interests since on any important and
controversial subject the television networks (and the major
newspapers) do the government’s bidding, mostly without being
asked.
American corporate news, especially in matters of foreign affairs,
resembles nothing so much as nightly coverage of a banraku
performance.
Selling stuff, whether it’s widgets or religion or political ideas, is
at the core of American life, and America’s one unquestionably
original creation in the modern world involves the disciplines of
marketing, advertising, and public relations – all highly artful
aspects of selling stuff.
The success of these methods has long been proved in American
commerce, but they are no less effective when applied to other
areas.
So, it should hardly surprise that the same “arts” are heavily
employed by, and on behalf of, government in propaganda
and opinion-manipulation around its acts and policies.
Indeed, we see America’s entire election system today having been
reduced to little more than a costly, massive application of these
crafty skills, and no department or agency of government is ever
without its professional, full-time spokespeople and creative back-
up staff, making sure that whatever words or numbers are spoken
or printed never slip beyond what those arts have conjured up.
Unacceptable photos, say those of women and children smashed
by bombs or missiles hurled into the Mideast, are made simply to
disappear much as they were in 1984.
Government knows, too, that the American political system is
heavily stacked against people with doubts ever gaining serious
influence.
Ninety-five percent of Senate elections go to incumbents, and
because only one-third of the Senate faces re-election at any
given election, a majority on some new matter is virtually
impossible to build.
The presidential candidates of the only two parties with a hope of
being elected are almost as carefully groomed and selected as the
party chairman of a former communist-bloc country, and generally
about as surprising in their views.
And always, time makes people forget, even with the most
terrible issues.
After a generation or two, there are relatively few people
who are even aware there was an issue.
In the case of the most overwhelming and terrifying event of
my life, the Vietnam War, polls show a huge number of young
Americans today don’t know what it was or when it occurred.
These are the key factors permitting an American government to
commission horrific acts abroad resembling those of the bloodiest
tyrant, all while it smilingly prances across the international stage
as democracy’s self-designated chief representative and advocate.
As for the great mass of people, the 95% of humanity living
outside the United States, no one in America’s government
ever gives them a moment’s thought, unless they step out
of line.
John Chuckman lives in Canada and is former chief economist
for a large Canadian oil company.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/11/political-bunraku
Monday, November 3, 2014
The Secret Covenant Of The Illuminati
The Secret Covenant Of The Illuminati
Via Susan Elridge
November 3, 2014
An illusion it will be, so large, so vast it will escape
their perception.
Those who will see it will be thought of as insane.
We will create separate fronts to prevent them from
seeing the connection between us.
We will behave as if we are not connected to keep
the illusion alive.
Our goal will be accomplished one drop at a time so
as to never bring suspicion upon ourselves.
This will also prevent them from seeing the changes
as they occur.
We will always stand above the relative field of their
experience for we know the secrets of the absolute.
We will work together always and will remain bound by
blood and secrecy.
Death will come to he who speaks.
We will keep their lifespan short and their minds weak
while pretending to do the opposite.
We will use our knowledge of science and technology in
subtle ways so they will never see what is happening.
We will use soft metals, aging accelerators and sedatives
in food and water, also in the air.
They will be blanketed by poisons everywhere they turn.
The soft metals will cause them to lose their minds.
We will promise to find a cure from our many fronts, yet
we will feed them more poison.
The poisons will be absorbed through their skin and mouths,
they will destroy their minds and reproductive systems.
From all this, their children will be born dead, and we will
conceal this information.
The poisons will be hidden in everything that surrounds
them, in what they drink, eat, breathe and wear.
We must be ingenious in dispensing the poisons for they
can see far.
We will teach them that the poisons are good,
with fun images and musical tones.
Those they look up to will help.
We will enlist them to push our poisons.
They will see our products being used in film and will grow
accustomed to them and will never know their true effect.
When they give birth we will inject poisons into the blood
of their children and convince them its for their help.
We will start early on, when their minds are young, we will
target their children with what children love most, sweet
things.
When their teeth decay we will fill them with metals that
will kill their mind and steal their future.
When their ability to learn has been affected, we will create
medicine that will make them sicker and cause other diseases
for which we will create yet more medicine.
We will render them docile and weak before us by our power.
They will grow depressed, slow and obese, and when they
come to us for help, we will give them more poison.
We will focus their attention toward money and material
goods so they may never connect with their inner self.
We will distract them with fornication, external pleasures
and games so they may never be one with the oneness of
it all.
Their minds will belong to us and they will do as we say.
If they refuse we shall find ways to implement
mind-altering technology into their lives.
We will use fear as our weapon.
We will establish their governments and establish
opposites within.
We will own both sides.
We will always hide our objective but carry out our plan.
They will perform the labor for us and we shall prosper
from their toil.
Extract from 'The Secret Covenant Of The Illuminati.'
Via Susan Elridge
November 3, 2014
An illusion it will be, so large, so vast it will escape
their perception.
Those who will see it will be thought of as insane.
We will create separate fronts to prevent them from
seeing the connection between us.
We will behave as if we are not connected to keep
the illusion alive.
Our goal will be accomplished one drop at a time so
as to never bring suspicion upon ourselves.
This will also prevent them from seeing the changes
as they occur.
We will always stand above the relative field of their
experience for we know the secrets of the absolute.
We will work together always and will remain bound by
blood and secrecy.
Death will come to he who speaks.
We will keep their lifespan short and their minds weak
while pretending to do the opposite.
We will use our knowledge of science and technology in
subtle ways so they will never see what is happening.
We will use soft metals, aging accelerators and sedatives
in food and water, also in the air.
They will be blanketed by poisons everywhere they turn.
The soft metals will cause them to lose their minds.
We will promise to find a cure from our many fronts, yet
we will feed them more poison.
The poisons will be absorbed through their skin and mouths,
they will destroy their minds and reproductive systems.
From all this, their children will be born dead, and we will
conceal this information.
The poisons will be hidden in everything that surrounds
them, in what they drink, eat, breathe and wear.
We must be ingenious in dispensing the poisons for they
can see far.
We will teach them that the poisons are good,
with fun images and musical tones.
Those they look up to will help.
We will enlist them to push our poisons.
They will see our products being used in film and will grow
accustomed to them and will never know their true effect.
When they give birth we will inject poisons into the blood
of their children and convince them its for their help.
We will start early on, when their minds are young, we will
target their children with what children love most, sweet
things.
When their teeth decay we will fill them with metals that
will kill their mind and steal their future.
When their ability to learn has been affected, we will create
medicine that will make them sicker and cause other diseases
for which we will create yet more medicine.
We will render them docile and weak before us by our power.
They will grow depressed, slow and obese, and when they
come to us for help, we will give them more poison.
We will focus their attention toward money and material
goods so they may never connect with their inner self.
We will distract them with fornication, external pleasures
and games so they may never be one with the oneness of
it all.
Their minds will belong to us and they will do as we say.
If they refuse we shall find ways to implement
mind-altering technology into their lives.
We will use fear as our weapon.
We will establish their governments and establish
opposites within.
We will own both sides.
We will always hide our objective but carry out our plan.
They will perform the labor for us and we shall prosper
from their toil.
Extract from 'The Secret Covenant Of The Illuminati.'
Friday, October 31, 2014
The Illusion of Democracy
From People’s Rule To A Broken Social Contract
By Gilbert Mercier
News Junkie Post
Oct 31, 2014
It is ironic, considering democracy’s pitiful state worldwide that, in accordance to its etymology, it literally means “common people’s rule” or, more simply, “people’s power.”
The English term democracy and the 14th-century French word democratie come from the Greek demokratia via the Latin democratia.
The Greek radical demos means “common people,” and kratos means “rule, or power.”
How did we manage to pervert such a laudable notion of power to the people and diametrically turn it into a global system of rule at large under the principles of oligarchy and plutocracy?
Everywhere we look, from east to west and north to south, plutocrats and oligarchs are firmly in charge: puppet masters of the political class.
They have transformed democracy into a parody of itself and a toxic form of government.
The social contract implied in a democratic form of governance is broken.
At the start of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, written in 1762 and one of the inspirations for the French revolution 27 years later, the Enlightenment philosopher wrote: “Men are born free, yet everywhere are in chain.”
The key argument of The Social Contract is that only those governments that function with the express “consent of the governed” have a legitimate right to exist.
Further, Rousseau introduced the fundamental and revolutionary notion of sovereignty of the people, as opposed to sovereignty of the state or the rulers.
For Rousseau, the only legitimate form of political authority is the one agreed upon by all the people in a social contract with full respect of everyone’s natural birthrights to equality, freedom and individual liberty.
The electoral process is an essential part of “the consent of the governed” defined by Rousseau.
In almost all of the so-called democratic countries, however, the important act of voting to elect the people’s representatives has become an exercise in futility.
Today politicians, who still have the audacity to call themselves public servants, are the obedient executors of the trans-national global corporate elite.
These politicians are actors who are cast to perform in opaque screenplays written by top corporate power brokers and marketed to the public like products.
In this sad state of affairs that passes for democracy, citizens have become blind consumers of products, which are political figureheads working for global corporate interests.
For any organism to remain healthy, it must be able to excrete.
The same applies to our collective social body, but instead of regularly eliminating our political residue and flushing it away, we recycle it.
Neoliberal Corporate Imperialism: A Global One-Party System
Mark Twain wrote: “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
This quote from the gilded age has never been more accurate than it is today. A vote implies real choice, and we have none.
From France to Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, India and of course the United States — all of which pass for great democracies — political choices have become largely reduced to two electable political parties with different names to accommodate the local cultural flavors.
This comforting idea of an option between left and right that spices up democracies’ voting menus is a farce.
For example, in France, the so-called socialist Francois Hollande and his right-wing predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy are both docile servants of neoliberal and imperial policies dictated from elsewhere.
Both, Sarkozy and Hollande, are proponents of austerity measures imposed by financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.), and also imperialist actions such as rejoining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and intervening militarily in Libya (Sarkozy) and Mali (Hollande).
The United Kingdom offers the example of the phony difference between Labor, the party of warmonger in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tony Blair, and Tory, the party of warmonger in Libya, Afghanistan and Syria, David Cameron.
This observation extends, of course, to the fake choice between Democrats and Republicans in the United States: the names change periodically, but the neoliberal imperialist policies remain the same.
In reality, the pseudo two-party system accommodates a one-party power structure that is financed and ruled by the same people everywhere and serves identical interests.
This fake two-party system maintains the appearance of democracy by giving people the impression that voting matters.
If voting makes no difference, then what can be done?
Power To The People: Challenging Unelected Global-Governance Institutions
Although there is rampant dissatisfaction with politicians globally, few people are willing to admit that democracy is broken or take direct action to create a new system.
According to an October 2014 poll, only six percent of US voters think that their Congress is doing a good job, and 65 percent rate its performance as being poor or very poor.
Even more telling of the popular sense of an assumed general political corruption, 63 percent of US voters think that most members of Congress are willing to sell their votes for either cash or campaign contributions.
In France, President Hollande’s approval rating has crashed to 13 percent: the lowest for any president since the early 1960s.
Despite France’s revolutionary history, the country’s constitution gives its president the power to remain in office until the full term of his five-year mandate and, if necessary, to rule by decree.
In our current supra-national world order, however, to focus popular dissatisfaction on interchangeable figureheads such as Francois Hollande, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Narendra Modi, Dilma Rousseff, Angela Merkel, etc., is a largely counterproductive undertaking.
All are expendable.
Instead, the global public opinion should contest the legitimacy of unelected global-governance institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO), and other powerful non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and consortia like the World Economic Forum.
These institutions dictate global policies, draft secret treaties such as the trans-pacific partnership agreement (TPP) concerning billions of people, and largely constitute the global elite.
Such global institutions would have to be elected by the world citizenry for global governance to be viewed as being remotely democratic.
All Revolutions Need Revolution
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it” wrote Howard Zinn.
People worldwide are fed up with their politicians, and they are protesting.
Yet, as if most are suffering from a collective Stockholm syndrome, they are not sufficiently pro-active to rid themselves of their abusers by all means necessary.
Voting was meant to be a sacrosanct civic duty in a democracy, but it has become the unconscious action of sleepwalkers.
In 1789, toppling the monarchy was a tall order in France.
The intellectual inspiration for this revolution came from the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu, who can be viewed as the founding fathers of modern democracy.
If the veneer of the Enlightenment philosophers’ discourse has survived time, the spirit of it has been gutted out.
The elite of corporate global governance have trampled the social contract.
People who had gained their freedom during 200 years are everywhere back in chains.
Although an increasing number of people realize that a drastic systemic change is imperative, few are willing to admit that nothing short of a global revolution can challenge the entrenched plutocratic world order.
In the aftermath of such a revolution, or ideally before it, we must redefine the parameters of what should guarantee representative governance in real democracy with common people’s rule.
Real democracy works best on a small scale.
In ancient Greece, for example, democracy worked because its scale was limited to small communities in which citizens personally knew their politicians.
Today, pushes for autonomy in regions such as Catalonia and Scotland represent the aspirations of people for smaller governance and their reactions against globalization and the threat to their cultural identities.
On the other hand, global problems such as pollution, the squandering of limited resources, climate change and the current mass extinction, must be dealt with globally to have any impact.
Therefore a type of direct democracy is also needed to deal with global issues; this could consist, for example, of global referendums on critical issues.
The current systems of supposed democratic governance are corrupt and decayed; after we demolish them and reconstruct democracy for our times, it might finally, for us, become true to its name.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/10/27/the-illusion-of-democracy
By Gilbert Mercier
News Junkie Post
Oct 31, 2014
It is ironic, considering democracy’s pitiful state worldwide that, in accordance to its etymology, it literally means “common people’s rule” or, more simply, “people’s power.”
The English term democracy and the 14th-century French word democratie come from the Greek demokratia via the Latin democratia.
The Greek radical demos means “common people,” and kratos means “rule, or power.”
How did we manage to pervert such a laudable notion of power to the people and diametrically turn it into a global system of rule at large under the principles of oligarchy and plutocracy?
Everywhere we look, from east to west and north to south, plutocrats and oligarchs are firmly in charge: puppet masters of the political class.
They have transformed democracy into a parody of itself and a toxic form of government.
The social contract implied in a democratic form of governance is broken.
At the start of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, written in 1762 and one of the inspirations for the French revolution 27 years later, the Enlightenment philosopher wrote: “Men are born free, yet everywhere are in chain.”
The key argument of The Social Contract is that only those governments that function with the express “consent of the governed” have a legitimate right to exist.
Further, Rousseau introduced the fundamental and revolutionary notion of sovereignty of the people, as opposed to sovereignty of the state or the rulers.
For Rousseau, the only legitimate form of political authority is the one agreed upon by all the people in a social contract with full respect of everyone’s natural birthrights to equality, freedom and individual liberty.
The electoral process is an essential part of “the consent of the governed” defined by Rousseau.
In almost all of the so-called democratic countries, however, the important act of voting to elect the people’s representatives has become an exercise in futility.
Today politicians, who still have the audacity to call themselves public servants, are the obedient executors of the trans-national global corporate elite.
These politicians are actors who are cast to perform in opaque screenplays written by top corporate power brokers and marketed to the public like products.
In this sad state of affairs that passes for democracy, citizens have become blind consumers of products, which are political figureheads working for global corporate interests.
For any organism to remain healthy, it must be able to excrete.
The same applies to our collective social body, but instead of regularly eliminating our political residue and flushing it away, we recycle it.
Neoliberal Corporate Imperialism: A Global One-Party System
Mark Twain wrote: “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
This quote from the gilded age has never been more accurate than it is today. A vote implies real choice, and we have none.
From France to Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, India and of course the United States — all of which pass for great democracies — political choices have become largely reduced to two electable political parties with different names to accommodate the local cultural flavors.
This comforting idea of an option between left and right that spices up democracies’ voting menus is a farce.
For example, in France, the so-called socialist Francois Hollande and his right-wing predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy are both docile servants of neoliberal and imperial policies dictated from elsewhere.
Both, Sarkozy and Hollande, are proponents of austerity measures imposed by financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.), and also imperialist actions such as rejoining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and intervening militarily in Libya (Sarkozy) and Mali (Hollande).
The United Kingdom offers the example of the phony difference between Labor, the party of warmonger in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tony Blair, and Tory, the party of warmonger in Libya, Afghanistan and Syria, David Cameron.
This observation extends, of course, to the fake choice between Democrats and Republicans in the United States: the names change periodically, but the neoliberal imperialist policies remain the same.
In reality, the pseudo two-party system accommodates a one-party power structure that is financed and ruled by the same people everywhere and serves identical interests.
This fake two-party system maintains the appearance of democracy by giving people the impression that voting matters.
If voting makes no difference, then what can be done?
Power To The People: Challenging Unelected Global-Governance Institutions
Although there is rampant dissatisfaction with politicians globally, few people are willing to admit that democracy is broken or take direct action to create a new system.
According to an October 2014 poll, only six percent of US voters think that their Congress is doing a good job, and 65 percent rate its performance as being poor or very poor.
Even more telling of the popular sense of an assumed general political corruption, 63 percent of US voters think that most members of Congress are willing to sell their votes for either cash or campaign contributions.
In France, President Hollande’s approval rating has crashed to 13 percent: the lowest for any president since the early 1960s.
Despite France’s revolutionary history, the country’s constitution gives its president the power to remain in office until the full term of his five-year mandate and, if necessary, to rule by decree.
In our current supra-national world order, however, to focus popular dissatisfaction on interchangeable figureheads such as Francois Hollande, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Narendra Modi, Dilma Rousseff, Angela Merkel, etc., is a largely counterproductive undertaking.
All are expendable.
Instead, the global public opinion should contest the legitimacy of unelected global-governance institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO), and other powerful non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and consortia like the World Economic Forum.
These institutions dictate global policies, draft secret treaties such as the trans-pacific partnership agreement (TPP) concerning billions of people, and largely constitute the global elite.
Such global institutions would have to be elected by the world citizenry for global governance to be viewed as being remotely democratic.
All Revolutions Need Revolution
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it” wrote Howard Zinn.
People worldwide are fed up with their politicians, and they are protesting.
Yet, as if most are suffering from a collective Stockholm syndrome, they are not sufficiently pro-active to rid themselves of their abusers by all means necessary.
Voting was meant to be a sacrosanct civic duty in a democracy, but it has become the unconscious action of sleepwalkers.
In 1789, toppling the monarchy was a tall order in France.
The intellectual inspiration for this revolution came from the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu, who can be viewed as the founding fathers of modern democracy.
If the veneer of the Enlightenment philosophers’ discourse has survived time, the spirit of it has been gutted out.
The elite of corporate global governance have trampled the social contract.
People who had gained their freedom during 200 years are everywhere back in chains.
Although an increasing number of people realize that a drastic systemic change is imperative, few are willing to admit that nothing short of a global revolution can challenge the entrenched plutocratic world order.
In the aftermath of such a revolution, or ideally before it, we must redefine the parameters of what should guarantee representative governance in real democracy with common people’s rule.
Real democracy works best on a small scale.
In ancient Greece, for example, democracy worked because its scale was limited to small communities in which citizens personally knew their politicians.
Today, pushes for autonomy in regions such as Catalonia and Scotland represent the aspirations of people for smaller governance and their reactions against globalization and the threat to their cultural identities.
On the other hand, global problems such as pollution, the squandering of limited resources, climate change and the current mass extinction, must be dealt with globally to have any impact.
Therefore a type of direct democracy is also needed to deal with global issues; this could consist, for example, of global referendums on critical issues.
The current systems of supposed democratic governance are corrupt and decayed; after we demolish them and reconstruct democracy for our times, it might finally, for us, become true to its name.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/10/27/the-illusion-of-democracy
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Rise Up America, Rise Up!
Rise Up America, Rise Up!
The time has come when America must rapidly transform its values
through a more inclusive and spiritual vision, based upon a just
sharing of the world’s resources.
It is up to you, the youth of America, to lead the way by organizing
a non-stop demonstration in every state, until that nationwide
wave of peaceful protest eventually catches on globally.
By Mohammed Mesbahi
Common Dreams
October 30, 2014
What has caused the United States of America, such a great nation,
to sink to the depths of turmoil and confusion that it finds itself in
today?
A country that was founded upon the ideals of freedom, justice and
democracy, but that has increasingly lost its way and degraded
these noble concepts – to the extent that the Statue of Liberty
should really bow her head and reassemble her broken shackles,
and let go her flaming torch.
Those shackles should represent the ugly and imprisoning idea of
the American Dream as it manifests in a highly commercialized and
divided society, with such dire repercussions for the rest of the
world.
An idea that breeds more and more division, fear and injustice,
and that has led successive American governments to arrogantly
domineer other nations.
An idea that continues to debase the goodwill of ordinary
Americans and push the entire country towards catastrophe,
unless it dramatically changes course with all humility and
a sense of urgency.
"In love there is freedom in the truest sense – a freedom from
the old, from injustice, from the grand theft and corruption
that has blighted America’s profounder greatness for so many
years."
Why don’t most of us perceive the dangers inherent in pursuing
the American Dream?
Everyone understands its meaning in a general sense, in terms
of the desire to be successful, rich and happy.
But few of us reflect on how this dream has progressively misled
the people of America from sustaining the true values of their
nation - indeed a dream that was originally built on theft from
the indigenous peoples that rightfully inhabited the continent.
For underlying the American Dream is the drive for profit through
an ever intensifying path of commercialization, which is the
necessary basis for fulfilling America’s desire to have a wealthy
and superior way of life.
The American Dream was not abducted by commercialization,
but freely given to it ever since its inception.
And in that process the Land of Liberty has become the chief
proponent of a market forces ideology that it ruthlessly exported
throughout the world, leading to social upheaval in almost every
country and escalating international tension.
From an inner or psychological perspective the American Dream
should really be perceived as a self-centered and harmful concept,
in that it leads so many people to seek wealth and success as a
means to finding an ever elusive happiness, regardless of the
consequences for others.
It is a big lie that millions of young people continue to fall for, one
that poses a very effective tool for the forces of commercialization
to manipulate and misguide us.
Because in our desire to become a ‘somebody’, to become ever
more wealthy and perhaps even famous and powerful, it is not long
before our personalities are influenced by greed and indifference
which inevitably causes a dysfunction of our emotional intelligence.
When perceived inwardly it is greed per se that separates us from
the reality of the heart and its attributes, and directly influences
us to become indifferent to the suffering or well-being of others.
Even if we do not yearn to become rich and successful by dint of
our fame or achievements, the social conditioning of the American
Dream still causes us to distort our life purpose through the narrow,
materialistic and selfish pursuit of our individual happiness.
Rarely does the question then occur to us: what about the others
who didn’t make it? Does the American Dream mean that we have
to cancel them from America?
The Reality of One Humanity
The one who is heavily conditioned by the American Dream is
subject to a form of mental blindness in which they see only
themselves, and not the spiritual reality of our interconnected
lives among seven billion people.
Their love is often crushed in such a way that they are proud to
call themselves a patriotic American, even in the midst of other
people living in loneliness and misery all around them.
This pernicious conditioning also encourages children to grow up
with the idea that America is the most important country in the
world (if not the only continent that exists), leading them to enter
into adulthood with little awareness of the extreme poverty and
hardship that is experienced by the people of other nations.
It is not uncommon for those who live in the United States to have
absolutely no idea where Africa is situated on a world map, for
example, let alone any notion of how devastating American foreign
policy is for countless innocent people in far-away regions.
The very phrase ‘American Dream’ is divisive and divorced from
spiritual reality, a phrase that is sustained by a wrong devotional
attachment to an aspirational idea.
And that idea has always been nurtured by an emotional sense of
pride that has misguided generations of ordinary Americans from
perceiving the reality of One Humanity.
No matter how the American Dream is defined in a dictionary, from
an spiritual point of view that idea will always be associated with
division and injustice as we have seen in evidence throughout the
twentieth century, and still continue to see.
It is in fact a peculiarly self-centered idea in that is only
unconsciously tinted with spiritual aspiration, for if it was
inspired by a truly spiritual vision then it would have been
the One Humanity Dream, and nothing else besides.
As a consequence the American Dream has always separated itself
from the highest ideal of the commons; that is, the common good
of One Humanity.
It’s natural for the people of America to love their country and
their way of life, if they find they can fit into that way of life
and close their minds to the world’s problems.
But the American Dream of individual prosperity and happiness is
not connected to reality anymore, not in light of all the crises and
mass injustices that plague the Earth today.
To carry on repeating the Pledge of Allegiance every morning is a
narrow-minded and meaningless gesture in this respect, so long as
America fails to open her arms to the rest of the world.
Can you imagine pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America with your hand on heart, while your other hand holds a
copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which declares
that everyone in the world has the right to liberty and justice, and
not only Americans?
Would that make any sense, and how would that feel knowing that
millions of people are needlessly dying from hunger and poverty
each year, while so much of the world’s resources are hoarded and
wasted in affluent countries, particularly within the United States?
Notwithstanding the dire poverty that is quietly experienced by
millions of people within America itself, who are mostly unheard
of and hidden as if they didn’t exist.
The true American Dream – a dream that represents the soul of the
nation as a whole – is to help and uplift the world in cooperation
with other countries.
But that is very different from the old idea of the American Dream
that has crystallized over many generations, and exists with its
polar opposite in the form of socialism and communism.
A true and noble concept should be inclusive and not exclusive, and
yet both the capitalist and communist nations have failed to live up
to their respective visions of equality and justice, and have instead
violated human rights on a colossal scale and instigated widespread
global conflict.
Despite all the pain and suffering these ideologies have caused
both before and after the two World Wars, none of the major
powers have learned the necessary lesson of sacrifice or adopted
a true path of multilateral cooperation and economic sharing.
And in the unique case of America, whose presidents still espouse
their role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity, it has
continually chosen to go the opposite way by pursuing an aggressive
self-interest that is thinly disguised as national security.
A Deceiving World Philanthropist
We may argue that the United States has given so much in overseas
aid, but it really assumes the role of a deceiving world
philanthropist by first exploiting other countries through unjust
trade and illegal wars, thereafter donating a tiny proportion of its
ill-gotten gains to help alleviate the suffering that it also caused.
And that aid represents utter hypocrisy when billions of dollars are
given to help poor or distressed foreign countries, while millions of
citizens within the United States are sadly ignored by their government.
Why has America recently given a billion dollars of aid to Ukraine
in Eastern Europe, for example, while it abandons the poor and
marginalized people of its own in Detroit?
As any activist knows, it is because the federal government
primarily serves its strategic self-interest and opportunities
for profit, which is the game of commercialization that has
gradually fused with the old idea of the American Dream until
both are now virtually synonymous.
For too long has America been guided by this harmful concept that
is sustained by the pursuit of profit and power, thereby damaging
the lives of other nations with scant regard for its self-professed
values of democracy, freedom and justice.
If nothing else, the sorry state of America today shows that political
and business leaders need a total re-education along more spiritual
lines, based on the principle of right human relationship.
America has to drastically change its priorities, towards itself and
towards the world, so that common sense, humility and compassion
become the shining hallmarks of its government and society.
Yet even to state this unavoidable truth sounds like a fantasy
when most of those in a position of power are held sway by the
forces of commercialization, in which context the basic spiritual
values of humanity almost appear to be utopian.
Unless America radically changes its ways it is about to go down
a dark and dangerous alley for some time to come, one in which
riots, violence and all kinds of social upheaval could increasingly
take place.
Such is the by-product of continuing to follow an individualistic
and divisive idea of progress, as evidenced in all the neuroses,
hatred and crime that has long been rampant across the nation.
The political process in the United States has become so corrupt
and profit-oriented, together with a national debt that is clearly
unpayable, that a prolonged period of financial turmoil will
undoubtedly worsen in the years ahead.
And the prospects are dire for a nation that still trains its citizens
to believe in, with pride, their right to achieve an extravagant level
of personal wealth and material comfort, no matter what the cost
in terms of environmental ruin and the exploitation of poorer
countries.
Now that the prospect of indefinitely sustaining the American way
of life has become a palpable absurdity, many citizens across the
nation are beginning to question with a sense of deep foreboding:
‘where is the hope that our leaders vainly promised, and what is
the fate that will soon befall us?’
There is no question that the people of goodwill throughout
America must rise up in unison together, and peaceably resist
against the government’s polices as it profits from wars and
defends corporate interests, instead of helping ordinary people
in their approaching time of greatest need.
Who is going to help Detroit now that it is bankrupt, for example
will it be the Pentagon or the CIA, who usurp so much of the
nation’s income and resources?
America has become like a dysfunctional family in which,
by analogy, the children are being abused and neglected
until they are eventually forced to leave home and look
after themselves.
In a similar way, the government in Washington is like the parent
who is failing to look after all her children – namely the fifty states,
many of whom like Detroit may soon fall into crisis as the economy
melts.
Is it not inevitable that many of these states will ultimately
abandon Washington completely?
Because it is the people of Detroit who made Detroit, the people
of New Orleans who made New Orleans, and not Washington.
The popular demonstrations that spread across the United States in
2011 revealed how many intelligent young people have had enough
of the American Dream and all it represents, even if that awareness
is felt unconsciously.
And that act of demonstrating as one in peaceful protest is actually
an expression of love and maturity, as well as intelligence.
Because in love there is freedom in the truest sense – a freedom
from the old, from injustice, from the grand theft and corruption
that has blighted America’s profounder greatness for so many years.
Those who stand in the streets and uphold the real meaning of
liberty and justice are the ones who Americans should be duly
proud of, instead of clinging onto a false pride in the so-called
American way of life.
The Real Heroes of America
Many of the Occupy protesters perceived with common sense how
the American Dream has misled and divided an entire nation, and
given America a vulgar reputation on the global stage.
They are the real heroes of the nation, the ones who should be
standing on top of the Statue of Liberty and lighting her torch.
They are the ones who want to live with maturity and
responsibility, rather than allowing their free will to
be constantly manipulated by big corporations and self-
serving politicians.
They are the ones who are denouncing the forces of
commercialization that hide behind the American Dream,
and that incessantly try to misdirect our attention by
telling us what to think and what to do, instead of
allowing us to live freely in the moment of now with
honesty and detachment.
Of course there are many others who still strongly believe in
the American Dream with a misplaced sense of pride, and who
therefore looked at the tents in Zuccotti Park with bewilderment
and misunderstanding, and even felt that the protesters were
betraying the American way of life.
But the hour is coming when all the people of America will have to
ask themselves: what is the meaning of this way of life, and where
is it leading us?
The government and police may believe that they have eliminated
those tents from public areas, but they do not realize that they
cannot eliminate all the tents that remain in the hearts of
America’s youth.
The politicians are gravely mistaken if they believe those tents
will not return, because they are already multiplying more and
more, silently and gradually from heart to heart.
It may seem as if nothing is happening right now, but it is
foreseeable that sooner or later there will not be just one
encampment of tents in a city park, but an entire nation of
tents that cannot be dismantled by even the national guard.
Thus perhaps the hour is also coming when the police must ask
themselves what justice really means, and what is the meaning
of law and order.
Perhaps they should set up a special body within the Department of
Justice to study the political causes of social unrest, and then tell
the government to stop causing that unrest through their harmful
policies and wrong priorities.
For if the government is creating disorder and injustice, does it
make any sense that it calls on the police to bring back order and
stand for justice?
When the many people on the streets are compassionate
and intelligent, and out of love they leave their homes to
demonstrate for justice in accordance with its true meaning?
Should the police continue to arrest and bully their fellow citizens
who valiantly march with such goodwill, or should they turn their
attention towards the government and say: enough is enough!
We are human beings and not machines, and we will no longer
follow your corrupt orders to stand against our own people!
For the time being, the predominant laws of commercialization
have swept away those tents and protests from our towns and
city squares.
But if we look carefully within ourselves, we can see that
a planetary tent has begun to vibrate in our consciousness.
Now is the time for us to begin constructing this planetary tent in
a collaborative endeavor, and to build it in such a way that finally,
when we look up into its dome, we can see the reflection of all the
faces of every human being around the world.
Now is the time for the youth of America to show us the way, and
to call upon the youth of other nations to help build this planetary
tent together.
Let the youth of America seize upon the old idea of the American
Dream, and transform it by aligning their hearts and minds with a
more inclusive and spiritual vision.
Let them take it to the river of freedom and justice, and like
a child that places a paper boat on a running stream, let them
release the American Dream onto its destined course.
It can be done, it should be done, and it must be done with
urgency! For the world is changing now with rapid speed, and
a new hope for humanity is emerging.
It is up to you, the youth of America, to show us the way by
organizing a non-stop demonstration in every state, until that
nationwide wave of nonviolent protest eventually catches on
globally.
All those groups who seek a just and sustainable society based on
right human relationship should quickly come together, mindful
of the fact that it will take time to structure a common vision of
change.
Do not be discouraged by the pundits in ties and suits who speak
on television about your marches and sit-ins, saying that you have
no leadership or clear demands.
Most of those complacent critics have no idea what is taking
place in the hearts and minds of America’s youth today.
And it is to be expected that an inclusive call for justice and freedom cannot be structured to begin with, because the forces of commercialization are like a powerful magnet that constantly overwhelms and pulls us in different directions.
So do not worry about how to structure your call through formal demands or institutional arrangements, but instead continue untiringly with your creative demonstrations, and in this way try to inspire the rest of the world to join you.
Perhaps this is the surest way to structure love in the minds of all of us, where common sense and goodwill will be the norm in our relationship to each other and to the world.
Sharing Is The Master Key
Through the unification of our efforts we may quickly realize that the principle of sharing is the master key for structuring our expression of love in society.
One of the foremost attributes of this mistaken and neglected principle is to bring people together in freedom and joy, which was beautifully if transiently realized in the spontaneous protest movements of recent years within many cities worldwide.
Compared to many violent revolutions witnessed throughout modern history, we can feel that something new has arisen in the expression of these huge demonstrations in their togetherness and joyful celebration, away from all the ‘isms’ of the past and the divisive poison of commercialization.
And that new factor is the releasing of the heart en masse among many thousands of people, by simply allowing the heart to speak and express itself into the world.
If we empty our minds of intellectual content and look at the world through the perception of the heart, the first thing we see is not injustice but solely a lack of love.
Indeed it is the non-expression of love in a body politic that brings about the expression of injustice per se, which can only be remedied through human processes and governmental policies that are predicated upon the principle of sharing.
The youth of America must know that freedom has never, and will never exist without love and sharing.
Today we live in such complex and commercialized societies that even love has become a wounded, sorrowful and meaningless word.
And yet our lives together could be so joyful, liberated and creative if only we shared the world’s resources more equitably among us all.
Therefore it is imperative that we set aside some time to reflect upon the meaning of sharing in relation to the political economy and our everyday lives, for sharing is our trustiest guide to the expression of a healthy, sustainable life with justice.
We are not talking about socialism, or communism, or any other political ism; we are talking about the universal principle that, when implemented into social and economic policies by our governments, can finally heal our ailing societies and solve so many of the world’s problems.
Why are we demonstrating after all, if not for the love and joy that has been taken away from all of us?
Why are we demonstrating, if not for the extremes of poverty and wealth that has divided us from one another in a world of plenty, where millions starve while only the few live in excessive luxury?
Why are we demonstrating, if not for the ideologies and isms that are constantly thrown at us in such a polarized and demoralized society, where each day feels the same as every other day in its soullessness and anxiety?
Surely the occupy protests were not only initiated to change politics and reform the economy, but also to regain our joy of living and spiritually re-occupy our hearts.
Are we only fighting for the sake of our children and future generations, or also because we yearn for something better for ourselves – to live each day afresh and new with a sense of connectedness and purpose, free from the constant stress and money-making that suppresses who we truly are?
Even from a strictly rational perspective it is strategically advantageous to be among masses who call for the principle of sharing to be implemented by our governments, rather than to engage in an endless fight against capitalism or the system.
The youth should also know that when we assume a position of anti-capitalism, we immediately fall into the mouth of the wolf that is commercialization.
The system wants us to adopt the mind-set of ‘anti’ and ‘isms’, because capitalism itself is a very clever and sophisticated ism that voraciously feeds off our opposition and antagonism.
While we have the right to express anger and oppose the systemic causes of injustice, it is futile to fight against the system because the forces mobilized to defend it are so formidable and apparently within the law.
The moment we oppose those forces they will immediately bring us down and humiliate us, and cunningly push us towards violence.
And that violence will beget further violence, which is exactly what the system wants in order to defend and perpetuate itself.
We should therefore be very cognizant of falling into this trap, and should not even entertain a thought in our minds of being ‘against’ or ‘anti’ the inequities of our society.
We should rather work with our heart, because this is where the forces of commercialization cannot get in.
It is the heart and not the idea itself that unites us, for within the wisdom of one human heart lies the wisdom of all humanity.
A revolution that is instigated via ideology invariably leads
to further social division and violence, but a revolution that
originates via the engagement of the heart will naturally lead
to common sense, togetherness, sharing, and of course love.
Could it be that through millions of people coming together and
calling for sharing as the means to achieving justice, even the
establishment pundits and the police will eventually come and
join us?
Sharing, Freedom and Justice For All
So let’s permanently gather in the streets and wisely articulate
the yearning of our hearts, away from all the isms and our wrong
education of the past.
Let’s not demand that our government restructures itself and the
economy in the name of socialism, capitalism or any other ism,
but rather in the name of who we are – that is, in the name of we
the people who are born with an equal right to evolve in freedom,
dignity and peace.
This is the shift in consciousness that is necessary to change
America and the world, which can only arise in the absence
of any thought of ideology or personal self-interest.
We know that all the problems in society are escalating day by day,
and it is impossible to go on living as we did before: we are tired
of those selfish and materialistic ways, we don’t want to return to
that bygone era, and besides we can no longer afford to.
So let’s demand a just sharing of resources and not be concerned
when the pundits call us naïve, knowing that the call for sharing
comes from the heart when fused with common sense and reason.
Let’s refuse to conform any longer to the maleficent game of
commercialization, and instead let’s demonstrate for a new
way of life, a new world and a new dispensation.
We don’t need to stand against this or that, but only for sharing,
freedom and justice.
This should be the triangle of our demands, in that same order:
for the sharing of wealth and power, freedom in every meaningful
sense - political, economic and civil, and thence social justice for
one and all.
A new era for America will never begin with a complicated list
of policy demands, however, but only through a concerted and
continuous call for everyone in the country to be fed, sheltered,
educated and protected with universal access to the basic
necessities of life, including healthcare and social security.
Such is the straightforward nature of the demands that we can ask
our governments to meet on a nationwide level: to prioritize the
daily concerns of ordinary people, and to stop acting like private
accountants who preside in office merely to negotiate contracts
for big corporations.
Which means, at the very least, that our elected leaders must stop
pouring billions of dollars into the machinery of war, and instead
redirect the nation’s resources towards securing peoples’ essential
needs and creating useful employment.
What demand can be more simple: to serve the populace in its
entirety, or to immediately get out and make way for those who
will!
At the same time let’s be aware that there is no such thing
as an American justice, but only justice per se.
And the concept of freedom does not represent or belong
to America alone – it represents life, wherever you are, and
belongs to love itself.
Such has it always been, and always will be.
In this way our demands should not be confined to American
national interests, which was a crucial mistake of the Occupy
movement in its first manifestation.
Why don’t we also uphold a vision of sharing, freedom and justice
for our brothers and sisters in other countries?
Why say we are the 99% of all the people in America, and not the
99% of all the 7 billion people throughout the world?
We have already focused on our national priorities for as long as
we can remember, but now is the time for our shared concerns to
embrace the needs of the world as a whole.
It’s time to ennoble ourselves with dignity when we go out in
peaceful protest, and to expand our consciousness to the global
level on the basis of our morality, empathy and compassion for
those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
Clearly the problems that are happening in America are also
happening across the world, as reflected in the mass protests
that are now periodically erupting in diverse countries on an
unprecedented scale.
By hailing our common demands from a truly international
perspective of justice and equality, we will therefore be more
encouraged to see other groups doing the same in other cities
overseas, and vice versa.
Together we will galvanize each other to carry on participating in
around-the-clock demonstrations, which is why we must protest
with an urgent sense of global priorities in order to gain more and
more support.
This is how the youth of America can inspire the rest of the world
to join them, and how the call for sharing can rapidly grow on a
worldwide scale: by upholding the concerns not of the 99% of 300
million people in America, but of the 99% of 7 billion people with
whom we share our planetary home.
Resurrecting Article 25
From this understanding we should adopt as our slogan Article 25
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will naturally
structure our uprisings at home and light the way for
demonstrations in other countries.
As the venerable Article states:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and
the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.”
Nowhere in the world are these basic rights fulfilled for everyone,
and for the evident reasons we have acknowledged above such as
the laws that protect the interests of elite privilege and
commercialization, and the politics of international competition
that effectively renounces the founding vision of the United
Nations.
The covert manoeuvrings of American foreign policy is, in itself,
the denial of Article 25 for many millions of the world’s people,
in conjunction with the self-interested and divisive economic
strategies of all the other major powers.
Yet still the United States government shamelessly professes that
it stands for global justice and human rights, in the midst of 40,000
people dying every day from preventable diseases and poverty.
Do they take us for fools, or shall we continue to remain silent
while this daily massacre endures?
If we identify ourselves with the common good of One Humanity,
it is thus appropriate that we uphold Article 25 as a slogan that
represents the hearts and minds of everyone in the world.
We all want peace, we all want justice, we all want a clean and
safe environment; but before we ask for that peace and justice for
ourselves, we want to see an irrevocable end to the blasphemy of
hunger and penury in a bountiful world.
It is not only a question of morality and justice, but of strategy
and common sense in relation to our awareness and intelligence.
We’ve been fighting capitalism and the system for hundreds of
years, and yet the situation is getting worse and worse for the
majority poor and excluded: hence now is the time to change
our tactics by advocating for Article 25 as a universal approach
for transformative world change.
With millions upon millions of people in every country calling for
this Article to be guaranteed by our respective governments, we
cannot underestimate the uplifting effect it will have on our
societies and our collective consciousness.
Never before have we witnessed vast numbers of people in the
street calling for the abolition of extreme poverty, as expressed
in ceaseless worldwide actions of solidarity and massed goodwill.
Can we envision what may happen if American activists lead the
way in advocating, by this means, for international governmental
policies based on the principle of sharing?
We can be sure that New York City will be full of tents and non-stop
protest activity, because the poor will also join in and strengthen
the call for their basic rights to be fulfilled.
And above all, billions of people will heed the call in other
continents, from Africa and Asia to South America, because
then we are talking about their lives too.
So let this be our resounding call: not to instigate a revolution
‘against’ this rotten system we live in, which becomes a nonsense
when our voices get lost in the interminable fighting of ideologies
and isms.
The system is here to stay, in one form or another, so we should
rather transform it through a wholly inclusive, indefatigable
demand for what is most urgent and important: which is to
immediately guarantee the human rights in Article 25 for every
man, woman and child in every nation.
Just imagine how easily this could be achieved if our governments
were impelled by overwhelming public pressure to completely
reorder their priorities, and to work in genuine cooperation with
other nations to share the resources of the world.
As history has often revealed, even a handful of people can create
unbelievable changes on this Earth if they are in the right place at
the right time with an idea whose time has come.
And now is the time for us to breathe life once again into The
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, until she drops her
torch in protest and holds up a giant banner that reads:
“Article 25: The True American Dream!”
RISE UP, AMERICA, RISE UP!
I miss those tents and those occupiers who lifted my hopes upwards
into the light.
Where are you people?
I can still feel your pain and your aspirations.
I can still hear your voices in the heat of the night.
I miss your faces, your joy, your call for a new life. I miss you all.
Where are you people?
For you are the hope of all the world, if only you knew.
Mohammed Mesbahi is founder and chair of Share the World's
Resources, a London-based independent civil society organization
campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources
within and between nations.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/30/rise-america-
rise
The time has come when America must rapidly transform its values
through a more inclusive and spiritual vision, based upon a just
sharing of the world’s resources.
It is up to you, the youth of America, to lead the way by organizing
a non-stop demonstration in every state, until that nationwide
wave of peaceful protest eventually catches on globally.
By Mohammed Mesbahi
Common Dreams
October 30, 2014
What has caused the United States of America, such a great nation,
to sink to the depths of turmoil and confusion that it finds itself in
today?
A country that was founded upon the ideals of freedom, justice and
democracy, but that has increasingly lost its way and degraded
these noble concepts – to the extent that the Statue of Liberty
should really bow her head and reassemble her broken shackles,
and let go her flaming torch.
Those shackles should represent the ugly and imprisoning idea of
the American Dream as it manifests in a highly commercialized and
divided society, with such dire repercussions for the rest of the
world.
An idea that breeds more and more division, fear and injustice,
and that has led successive American governments to arrogantly
domineer other nations.
An idea that continues to debase the goodwill of ordinary
Americans and push the entire country towards catastrophe,
unless it dramatically changes course with all humility and
a sense of urgency.
"In love there is freedom in the truest sense – a freedom from
the old, from injustice, from the grand theft and corruption
that has blighted America’s profounder greatness for so many
years."
Why don’t most of us perceive the dangers inherent in pursuing
the American Dream?
Everyone understands its meaning in a general sense, in terms
of the desire to be successful, rich and happy.
But few of us reflect on how this dream has progressively misled
the people of America from sustaining the true values of their
nation - indeed a dream that was originally built on theft from
the indigenous peoples that rightfully inhabited the continent.
For underlying the American Dream is the drive for profit through
an ever intensifying path of commercialization, which is the
necessary basis for fulfilling America’s desire to have a wealthy
and superior way of life.
The American Dream was not abducted by commercialization,
but freely given to it ever since its inception.
And in that process the Land of Liberty has become the chief
proponent of a market forces ideology that it ruthlessly exported
throughout the world, leading to social upheaval in almost every
country and escalating international tension.
From an inner or psychological perspective the American Dream
should really be perceived as a self-centered and harmful concept,
in that it leads so many people to seek wealth and success as a
means to finding an ever elusive happiness, regardless of the
consequences for others.
It is a big lie that millions of young people continue to fall for, one
that poses a very effective tool for the forces of commercialization
to manipulate and misguide us.
Because in our desire to become a ‘somebody’, to become ever
more wealthy and perhaps even famous and powerful, it is not long
before our personalities are influenced by greed and indifference
which inevitably causes a dysfunction of our emotional intelligence.
When perceived inwardly it is greed per se that separates us from
the reality of the heart and its attributes, and directly influences
us to become indifferent to the suffering or well-being of others.
Even if we do not yearn to become rich and successful by dint of
our fame or achievements, the social conditioning of the American
Dream still causes us to distort our life purpose through the narrow,
materialistic and selfish pursuit of our individual happiness.
Rarely does the question then occur to us: what about the others
who didn’t make it? Does the American Dream mean that we have
to cancel them from America?
The Reality of One Humanity
The one who is heavily conditioned by the American Dream is
subject to a form of mental blindness in which they see only
themselves, and not the spiritual reality of our interconnected
lives among seven billion people.
Their love is often crushed in such a way that they are proud to
call themselves a patriotic American, even in the midst of other
people living in loneliness and misery all around them.
This pernicious conditioning also encourages children to grow up
with the idea that America is the most important country in the
world (if not the only continent that exists), leading them to enter
into adulthood with little awareness of the extreme poverty and
hardship that is experienced by the people of other nations.
It is not uncommon for those who live in the United States to have
absolutely no idea where Africa is situated on a world map, for
example, let alone any notion of how devastating American foreign
policy is for countless innocent people in far-away regions.
The very phrase ‘American Dream’ is divisive and divorced from
spiritual reality, a phrase that is sustained by a wrong devotional
attachment to an aspirational idea.
And that idea has always been nurtured by an emotional sense of
pride that has misguided generations of ordinary Americans from
perceiving the reality of One Humanity.
No matter how the American Dream is defined in a dictionary, from
an spiritual point of view that idea will always be associated with
division and injustice as we have seen in evidence throughout the
twentieth century, and still continue to see.
It is in fact a peculiarly self-centered idea in that is only
unconsciously tinted with spiritual aspiration, for if it was
inspired by a truly spiritual vision then it would have been
the One Humanity Dream, and nothing else besides.
As a consequence the American Dream has always separated itself
from the highest ideal of the commons; that is, the common good
of One Humanity.
It’s natural for the people of America to love their country and
their way of life, if they find they can fit into that way of life
and close their minds to the world’s problems.
But the American Dream of individual prosperity and happiness is
not connected to reality anymore, not in light of all the crises and
mass injustices that plague the Earth today.
To carry on repeating the Pledge of Allegiance every morning is a
narrow-minded and meaningless gesture in this respect, so long as
America fails to open her arms to the rest of the world.
Can you imagine pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America with your hand on heart, while your other hand holds a
copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which declares
that everyone in the world has the right to liberty and justice, and
not only Americans?
Would that make any sense, and how would that feel knowing that
millions of people are needlessly dying from hunger and poverty
each year, while so much of the world’s resources are hoarded and
wasted in affluent countries, particularly within the United States?
Notwithstanding the dire poverty that is quietly experienced by
millions of people within America itself, who are mostly unheard
of and hidden as if they didn’t exist.
The true American Dream – a dream that represents the soul of the
nation as a whole – is to help and uplift the world in cooperation
with other countries.
But that is very different from the old idea of the American Dream
that has crystallized over many generations, and exists with its
polar opposite in the form of socialism and communism.
A true and noble concept should be inclusive and not exclusive, and
yet both the capitalist and communist nations have failed to live up
to their respective visions of equality and justice, and have instead
violated human rights on a colossal scale and instigated widespread
global conflict.
Despite all the pain and suffering these ideologies have caused
both before and after the two World Wars, none of the major
powers have learned the necessary lesson of sacrifice or adopted
a true path of multilateral cooperation and economic sharing.
And in the unique case of America, whose presidents still espouse
their role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity, it has
continually chosen to go the opposite way by pursuing an aggressive
self-interest that is thinly disguised as national security.
A Deceiving World Philanthropist
We may argue that the United States has given so much in overseas
aid, but it really assumes the role of a deceiving world
philanthropist by first exploiting other countries through unjust
trade and illegal wars, thereafter donating a tiny proportion of its
ill-gotten gains to help alleviate the suffering that it also caused.
And that aid represents utter hypocrisy when billions of dollars are
given to help poor or distressed foreign countries, while millions of
citizens within the United States are sadly ignored by their government.
Why has America recently given a billion dollars of aid to Ukraine
in Eastern Europe, for example, while it abandons the poor and
marginalized people of its own in Detroit?
As any activist knows, it is because the federal government
primarily serves its strategic self-interest and opportunities
for profit, which is the game of commercialization that has
gradually fused with the old idea of the American Dream until
both are now virtually synonymous.
For too long has America been guided by this harmful concept that
is sustained by the pursuit of profit and power, thereby damaging
the lives of other nations with scant regard for its self-professed
values of democracy, freedom and justice.
If nothing else, the sorry state of America today shows that political
and business leaders need a total re-education along more spiritual
lines, based on the principle of right human relationship.
America has to drastically change its priorities, towards itself and
towards the world, so that common sense, humility and compassion
become the shining hallmarks of its government and society.
Yet even to state this unavoidable truth sounds like a fantasy
when most of those in a position of power are held sway by the
forces of commercialization, in which context the basic spiritual
values of humanity almost appear to be utopian.
Unless America radically changes its ways it is about to go down
a dark and dangerous alley for some time to come, one in which
riots, violence and all kinds of social upheaval could increasingly
take place.
Such is the by-product of continuing to follow an individualistic
and divisive idea of progress, as evidenced in all the neuroses,
hatred and crime that has long been rampant across the nation.
The political process in the United States has become so corrupt
and profit-oriented, together with a national debt that is clearly
unpayable, that a prolonged period of financial turmoil will
undoubtedly worsen in the years ahead.
And the prospects are dire for a nation that still trains its citizens
to believe in, with pride, their right to achieve an extravagant level
of personal wealth and material comfort, no matter what the cost
in terms of environmental ruin and the exploitation of poorer
countries.
Now that the prospect of indefinitely sustaining the American way
of life has become a palpable absurdity, many citizens across the
nation are beginning to question with a sense of deep foreboding:
‘where is the hope that our leaders vainly promised, and what is
the fate that will soon befall us?’
There is no question that the people of goodwill throughout
America must rise up in unison together, and peaceably resist
against the government’s polices as it profits from wars and
defends corporate interests, instead of helping ordinary people
in their approaching time of greatest need.
Who is going to help Detroit now that it is bankrupt, for example
will it be the Pentagon or the CIA, who usurp so much of the
nation’s income and resources?
America has become like a dysfunctional family in which,
by analogy, the children are being abused and neglected
until they are eventually forced to leave home and look
after themselves.
In a similar way, the government in Washington is like the parent
who is failing to look after all her children – namely the fifty states,
many of whom like Detroit may soon fall into crisis as the economy
melts.
Is it not inevitable that many of these states will ultimately
abandon Washington completely?
Because it is the people of Detroit who made Detroit, the people
of New Orleans who made New Orleans, and not Washington.
The popular demonstrations that spread across the United States in
2011 revealed how many intelligent young people have had enough
of the American Dream and all it represents, even if that awareness
is felt unconsciously.
And that act of demonstrating as one in peaceful protest is actually
an expression of love and maturity, as well as intelligence.
Because in love there is freedom in the truest sense – a freedom
from the old, from injustice, from the grand theft and corruption
that has blighted America’s profounder greatness for so many years.
Those who stand in the streets and uphold the real meaning of
liberty and justice are the ones who Americans should be duly
proud of, instead of clinging onto a false pride in the so-called
American way of life.
The Real Heroes of America
Many of the Occupy protesters perceived with common sense how
the American Dream has misled and divided an entire nation, and
given America a vulgar reputation on the global stage.
They are the real heroes of the nation, the ones who should be
standing on top of the Statue of Liberty and lighting her torch.
They are the ones who want to live with maturity and
responsibility, rather than allowing their free will to
be constantly manipulated by big corporations and self-
serving politicians.
They are the ones who are denouncing the forces of
commercialization that hide behind the American Dream,
and that incessantly try to misdirect our attention by
telling us what to think and what to do, instead of
allowing us to live freely in the moment of now with
honesty and detachment.
Of course there are many others who still strongly believe in
the American Dream with a misplaced sense of pride, and who
therefore looked at the tents in Zuccotti Park with bewilderment
and misunderstanding, and even felt that the protesters were
betraying the American way of life.
But the hour is coming when all the people of America will have to
ask themselves: what is the meaning of this way of life, and where
is it leading us?
The government and police may believe that they have eliminated
those tents from public areas, but they do not realize that they
cannot eliminate all the tents that remain in the hearts of
America’s youth.
The politicians are gravely mistaken if they believe those tents
will not return, because they are already multiplying more and
more, silently and gradually from heart to heart.
It may seem as if nothing is happening right now, but it is
foreseeable that sooner or later there will not be just one
encampment of tents in a city park, but an entire nation of
tents that cannot be dismantled by even the national guard.
Thus perhaps the hour is also coming when the police must ask
themselves what justice really means, and what is the meaning
of law and order.
Perhaps they should set up a special body within the Department of
Justice to study the political causes of social unrest, and then tell
the government to stop causing that unrest through their harmful
policies and wrong priorities.
For if the government is creating disorder and injustice, does it
make any sense that it calls on the police to bring back order and
stand for justice?
When the many people on the streets are compassionate
and intelligent, and out of love they leave their homes to
demonstrate for justice in accordance with its true meaning?
Should the police continue to arrest and bully their fellow citizens
who valiantly march with such goodwill, or should they turn their
attention towards the government and say: enough is enough!
We are human beings and not machines, and we will no longer
follow your corrupt orders to stand against our own people!
For the time being, the predominant laws of commercialization
have swept away those tents and protests from our towns and
city squares.
But if we look carefully within ourselves, we can see that
a planetary tent has begun to vibrate in our consciousness.
Now is the time for us to begin constructing this planetary tent in
a collaborative endeavor, and to build it in such a way that finally,
when we look up into its dome, we can see the reflection of all the
faces of every human being around the world.
Now is the time for the youth of America to show us the way, and
to call upon the youth of other nations to help build this planetary
tent together.
Let the youth of America seize upon the old idea of the American
Dream, and transform it by aligning their hearts and minds with a
more inclusive and spiritual vision.
Let them take it to the river of freedom and justice, and like
a child that places a paper boat on a running stream, let them
release the American Dream onto its destined course.
It can be done, it should be done, and it must be done with
urgency! For the world is changing now with rapid speed, and
a new hope for humanity is emerging.
It is up to you, the youth of America, to show us the way by
organizing a non-stop demonstration in every state, until that
nationwide wave of nonviolent protest eventually catches on
globally.
All those groups who seek a just and sustainable society based on
right human relationship should quickly come together, mindful
of the fact that it will take time to structure a common vision of
change.
Do not be discouraged by the pundits in ties and suits who speak
on television about your marches and sit-ins, saying that you have
no leadership or clear demands.
Most of those complacent critics have no idea what is taking
place in the hearts and minds of America’s youth today.
And it is to be expected that an inclusive call for justice and freedom cannot be structured to begin with, because the forces of commercialization are like a powerful magnet that constantly overwhelms and pulls us in different directions.
So do not worry about how to structure your call through formal demands or institutional arrangements, but instead continue untiringly with your creative demonstrations, and in this way try to inspire the rest of the world to join you.
Perhaps this is the surest way to structure love in the minds of all of us, where common sense and goodwill will be the norm in our relationship to each other and to the world.
Sharing Is The Master Key
Through the unification of our efforts we may quickly realize that the principle of sharing is the master key for structuring our expression of love in society.
One of the foremost attributes of this mistaken and neglected principle is to bring people together in freedom and joy, which was beautifully if transiently realized in the spontaneous protest movements of recent years within many cities worldwide.
Compared to many violent revolutions witnessed throughout modern history, we can feel that something new has arisen in the expression of these huge demonstrations in their togetherness and joyful celebration, away from all the ‘isms’ of the past and the divisive poison of commercialization.
And that new factor is the releasing of the heart en masse among many thousands of people, by simply allowing the heart to speak and express itself into the world.
If we empty our minds of intellectual content and look at the world through the perception of the heart, the first thing we see is not injustice but solely a lack of love.
Indeed it is the non-expression of love in a body politic that brings about the expression of injustice per se, which can only be remedied through human processes and governmental policies that are predicated upon the principle of sharing.
The youth of America must know that freedom has never, and will never exist without love and sharing.
Today we live in such complex and commercialized societies that even love has become a wounded, sorrowful and meaningless word.
And yet our lives together could be so joyful, liberated and creative if only we shared the world’s resources more equitably among us all.
Therefore it is imperative that we set aside some time to reflect upon the meaning of sharing in relation to the political economy and our everyday lives, for sharing is our trustiest guide to the expression of a healthy, sustainable life with justice.
We are not talking about socialism, or communism, or any other political ism; we are talking about the universal principle that, when implemented into social and economic policies by our governments, can finally heal our ailing societies and solve so many of the world’s problems.
Why are we demonstrating after all, if not for the love and joy that has been taken away from all of us?
Why are we demonstrating, if not for the extremes of poverty and wealth that has divided us from one another in a world of plenty, where millions starve while only the few live in excessive luxury?
Why are we demonstrating, if not for the ideologies and isms that are constantly thrown at us in such a polarized and demoralized society, where each day feels the same as every other day in its soullessness and anxiety?
Surely the occupy protests were not only initiated to change politics and reform the economy, but also to regain our joy of living and spiritually re-occupy our hearts.
Are we only fighting for the sake of our children and future generations, or also because we yearn for something better for ourselves – to live each day afresh and new with a sense of connectedness and purpose, free from the constant stress and money-making that suppresses who we truly are?
Even from a strictly rational perspective it is strategically advantageous to be among masses who call for the principle of sharing to be implemented by our governments, rather than to engage in an endless fight against capitalism or the system.
The youth should also know that when we assume a position of anti-capitalism, we immediately fall into the mouth of the wolf that is commercialization.
The system wants us to adopt the mind-set of ‘anti’ and ‘isms’, because capitalism itself is a very clever and sophisticated ism that voraciously feeds off our opposition and antagonism.
While we have the right to express anger and oppose the systemic causes of injustice, it is futile to fight against the system because the forces mobilized to defend it are so formidable and apparently within the law.
The moment we oppose those forces they will immediately bring us down and humiliate us, and cunningly push us towards violence.
And that violence will beget further violence, which is exactly what the system wants in order to defend and perpetuate itself.
We should therefore be very cognizant of falling into this trap, and should not even entertain a thought in our minds of being ‘against’ or ‘anti’ the inequities of our society.
We should rather work with our heart, because this is where the forces of commercialization cannot get in.
It is the heart and not the idea itself that unites us, for within the wisdom of one human heart lies the wisdom of all humanity.
A revolution that is instigated via ideology invariably leads
to further social division and violence, but a revolution that
originates via the engagement of the heart will naturally lead
to common sense, togetherness, sharing, and of course love.
Could it be that through millions of people coming together and
calling for sharing as the means to achieving justice, even the
establishment pundits and the police will eventually come and
join us?
Sharing, Freedom and Justice For All
So let’s permanently gather in the streets and wisely articulate
the yearning of our hearts, away from all the isms and our wrong
education of the past.
Let’s not demand that our government restructures itself and the
economy in the name of socialism, capitalism or any other ism,
but rather in the name of who we are – that is, in the name of we
the people who are born with an equal right to evolve in freedom,
dignity and peace.
This is the shift in consciousness that is necessary to change
America and the world, which can only arise in the absence
of any thought of ideology or personal self-interest.
We know that all the problems in society are escalating day by day,
and it is impossible to go on living as we did before: we are tired
of those selfish and materialistic ways, we don’t want to return to
that bygone era, and besides we can no longer afford to.
So let’s demand a just sharing of resources and not be concerned
when the pundits call us naïve, knowing that the call for sharing
comes from the heart when fused with common sense and reason.
Let’s refuse to conform any longer to the maleficent game of
commercialization, and instead let’s demonstrate for a new
way of life, a new world and a new dispensation.
We don’t need to stand against this or that, but only for sharing,
freedom and justice.
This should be the triangle of our demands, in that same order:
for the sharing of wealth and power, freedom in every meaningful
sense - political, economic and civil, and thence social justice for
one and all.
A new era for America will never begin with a complicated list
of policy demands, however, but only through a concerted and
continuous call for everyone in the country to be fed, sheltered,
educated and protected with universal access to the basic
necessities of life, including healthcare and social security.
Such is the straightforward nature of the demands that we can ask
our governments to meet on a nationwide level: to prioritize the
daily concerns of ordinary people, and to stop acting like private
accountants who preside in office merely to negotiate contracts
for big corporations.
Which means, at the very least, that our elected leaders must stop
pouring billions of dollars into the machinery of war, and instead
redirect the nation’s resources towards securing peoples’ essential
needs and creating useful employment.
What demand can be more simple: to serve the populace in its
entirety, or to immediately get out and make way for those who
will!
At the same time let’s be aware that there is no such thing
as an American justice, but only justice per se.
And the concept of freedom does not represent or belong
to America alone – it represents life, wherever you are, and
belongs to love itself.
Such has it always been, and always will be.
In this way our demands should not be confined to American
national interests, which was a crucial mistake of the Occupy
movement in its first manifestation.
Why don’t we also uphold a vision of sharing, freedom and justice
for our brothers and sisters in other countries?
Why say we are the 99% of all the people in America, and not the
99% of all the 7 billion people throughout the world?
We have already focused on our national priorities for as long as
we can remember, but now is the time for our shared concerns to
embrace the needs of the world as a whole.
It’s time to ennoble ourselves with dignity when we go out in
peaceful protest, and to expand our consciousness to the global
level on the basis of our morality, empathy and compassion for
those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
Clearly the problems that are happening in America are also
happening across the world, as reflected in the mass protests
that are now periodically erupting in diverse countries on an
unprecedented scale.
By hailing our common demands from a truly international
perspective of justice and equality, we will therefore be more
encouraged to see other groups doing the same in other cities
overseas, and vice versa.
Together we will galvanize each other to carry on participating in
around-the-clock demonstrations, which is why we must protest
with an urgent sense of global priorities in order to gain more and
more support.
This is how the youth of America can inspire the rest of the world
to join them, and how the call for sharing can rapidly grow on a
worldwide scale: by upholding the concerns not of the 99% of 300
million people in America, but of the 99% of 7 billion people with
whom we share our planetary home.
Resurrecting Article 25
From this understanding we should adopt as our slogan Article 25
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will naturally
structure our uprisings at home and light the way for
demonstrations in other countries.
As the venerable Article states:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and
the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.”
Nowhere in the world are these basic rights fulfilled for everyone,
and for the evident reasons we have acknowledged above such as
the laws that protect the interests of elite privilege and
commercialization, and the politics of international competition
that effectively renounces the founding vision of the United
Nations.
The covert manoeuvrings of American foreign policy is, in itself,
the denial of Article 25 for many millions of the world’s people,
in conjunction with the self-interested and divisive economic
strategies of all the other major powers.
Yet still the United States government shamelessly professes that
it stands for global justice and human rights, in the midst of 40,000
people dying every day from preventable diseases and poverty.
Do they take us for fools, or shall we continue to remain silent
while this daily massacre endures?
If we identify ourselves with the common good of One Humanity,
it is thus appropriate that we uphold Article 25 as a slogan that
represents the hearts and minds of everyone in the world.
We all want peace, we all want justice, we all want a clean and
safe environment; but before we ask for that peace and justice for
ourselves, we want to see an irrevocable end to the blasphemy of
hunger and penury in a bountiful world.
It is not only a question of morality and justice, but of strategy
and common sense in relation to our awareness and intelligence.
We’ve been fighting capitalism and the system for hundreds of
years, and yet the situation is getting worse and worse for the
majority poor and excluded: hence now is the time to change
our tactics by advocating for Article 25 as a universal approach
for transformative world change.
With millions upon millions of people in every country calling for
this Article to be guaranteed by our respective governments, we
cannot underestimate the uplifting effect it will have on our
societies and our collective consciousness.
Never before have we witnessed vast numbers of people in the
street calling for the abolition of extreme poverty, as expressed
in ceaseless worldwide actions of solidarity and massed goodwill.
Can we envision what may happen if American activists lead the
way in advocating, by this means, for international governmental
policies based on the principle of sharing?
We can be sure that New York City will be full of tents and non-stop
protest activity, because the poor will also join in and strengthen
the call for their basic rights to be fulfilled.
And above all, billions of people will heed the call in other
continents, from Africa and Asia to South America, because
then we are talking about their lives too.
So let this be our resounding call: not to instigate a revolution
‘against’ this rotten system we live in, which becomes a nonsense
when our voices get lost in the interminable fighting of ideologies
and isms.
The system is here to stay, in one form or another, so we should
rather transform it through a wholly inclusive, indefatigable
demand for what is most urgent and important: which is to
immediately guarantee the human rights in Article 25 for every
man, woman and child in every nation.
Just imagine how easily this could be achieved if our governments
were impelled by overwhelming public pressure to completely
reorder their priorities, and to work in genuine cooperation with
other nations to share the resources of the world.
As history has often revealed, even a handful of people can create
unbelievable changes on this Earth if they are in the right place at
the right time with an idea whose time has come.
And now is the time for us to breathe life once again into The
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, until she drops her
torch in protest and holds up a giant banner that reads:
“Article 25: The True American Dream!”
RISE UP, AMERICA, RISE UP!
I miss those tents and those occupiers who lifted my hopes upwards
into the light.
Where are you people?
I can still feel your pain and your aspirations.
I can still hear your voices in the heat of the night.
I miss your faces, your joy, your call for a new life. I miss you all.
Where are you people?
For you are the hope of all the world, if only you knew.
Mohammed Mesbahi is founder and chair of Share the World's
Resources, a London-based independent civil society organization
campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources
within and between nations.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/30/rise-america-
rise
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
In The Shadow of Repression, We Fear No Evil
In The Shadow of Repression, We Fear No Evil
By Mateo Pimentel
Dissident Voice
October 28, 2014
There exists the undying fear that a social, economic, and political
revolution would fetch us Americans more harm than good.
Still, some would ask to whom the word “us” even refers.
A keen, and important query, the fear in question nonetheless
persists, and it is important to entertain.
What might actually become of us if we abandon ourselves to
radical change, casting our nets about a sea of anarchy and
socialist endeavors?
Might the benefits yet outweigh the costs? Revolution will have its
doubters…
For centuries, thinkers and the disillusioned alike have doubted
even their own existence; they have punished themselves with
(perhaps) unknowingly privileged quandaries, and philosophical
pursuits.
But what of those desperate and afflicted individuals today, such
as the ones who experience homelessness?
Does the woman who fishes from the dumpster doubt her existence?
Might revolution seem better than the status quo to her?
Were we even considering her when we invoke the word “us”—or
“American”—in the foregoing prose?
Regardless of what the marginalized, such as the homeless, might
want for themselves as free, or would-be free social agents (if not
as human beings), the popular rebuttal often goes that “people
choose to be poor because they are lazy.”
Two things.
First, a single person divided into a denominator of three-hundred-
plus million cannot be judged by her actions alone; there is far too
much to also consider before condemnation becomes marginally
approachable.
Second, if all Americans (excluding the rich) committed to
a general strike and stopped laboring—the chimera that the
super rich sustain the economy would putrefy instantaneously.
It would die a thousand deaths in a very loud, public instant.
The majority of Americans who victim-blame when it comes
to assessing the misery of those around them are not, in fact,
members of the plutocracy; they themselves count-in with the
repressed.
The wealthiest, on the other hand, understand that the nuclear
essence of freedom itself can be purchased with capital (which
takes many forms) once they reach that apex in the social
dimension.
Of course, for the bulk of society, the state does as little
as possible to keep life easy enough to be a trap.
The poor, and the ever-shrinking middle class, simply seem
the unluckiest sort.
After centuries of toil, disenfranchisement, and even the
enslavement of certain groups, what have the second-class
citizens, the immigrants, and all the oppressed to gain from
clinging to the emperor’s robe, hoping for something else?
Many are active, and already agitate. They blow whistles and
they fight for freedom deep within the belly of the beast.
That should not be discounted, as it already builds momentum
for what is to come.
The honest truth—the one that scares our political overseers
with night terrors—is that we have a chance.
We are the closest to the floor, the closest to pulling out the
rug from underneath the table from which we are excluded.
We have a chance to harness our capacity for production,
community, and solidarity.
A sound revolution of unparalleled political magnitude can,
and must, take place.
It may not seem fair for some to have to relinquish whatever
suspends them above the rest; but at least our revolution, which
the whole world needs to hear us declare soon, will be for
everyone.
Everyone’s freedom is at stake.
Just as the alienated within our boarders terrify the powers that
be, the outside aggressors—the main opponents in the people’s
mind—loom on the horizon of our borders, waiting like god-awful
harbingers of death who want to “kill us for what we stand for…”
Or so the rhetoric commonly goes.
But if Americans stood in unison, looked the fascist, totalitarian,
and domestic embedded power in the face and said, “No more,”
then would not the whole world have our true measure in an
instant?
Could we not count on them after this?
Even if a threat should emerge, who could possibly stand to oppose
our revolution, or our newfound sorority with other peoples, and
expect to emerge victorious?
The answer is “none.”
There are millions of American hands that grip, tear, sew, slice,
pound, lock, drill, hammer, write, harvest, weed-eat, teach and
pray—every single day.
There are callouses and sores, and sometimes a finger or two go
missing.
But these silent makers of wealth, these adroit builders of
technology, movers of capital—how quickly they may join together
to halt the repression that drowns the majority with a slow death
of shrinking rights and economic woe.
How quickly, it should be noted, they may tightly clench and make
themselves into hard fists.
Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border, writing for many
alternative political newsletters and Web sites.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/in-the-shadow-of-repression-
we-fear-no-evil
By Mateo Pimentel
Dissident Voice
October 28, 2014
There exists the undying fear that a social, economic, and political
revolution would fetch us Americans more harm than good.
Still, some would ask to whom the word “us” even refers.
A keen, and important query, the fear in question nonetheless
persists, and it is important to entertain.
What might actually become of us if we abandon ourselves to
radical change, casting our nets about a sea of anarchy and
socialist endeavors?
Might the benefits yet outweigh the costs? Revolution will have its
doubters…
For centuries, thinkers and the disillusioned alike have doubted
even their own existence; they have punished themselves with
(perhaps) unknowingly privileged quandaries, and philosophical
pursuits.
But what of those desperate and afflicted individuals today, such
as the ones who experience homelessness?
Does the woman who fishes from the dumpster doubt her existence?
Might revolution seem better than the status quo to her?
Were we even considering her when we invoke the word “us”—or
“American”—in the foregoing prose?
Regardless of what the marginalized, such as the homeless, might
want for themselves as free, or would-be free social agents (if not
as human beings), the popular rebuttal often goes that “people
choose to be poor because they are lazy.”
Two things.
First, a single person divided into a denominator of three-hundred-
plus million cannot be judged by her actions alone; there is far too
much to also consider before condemnation becomes marginally
approachable.
Second, if all Americans (excluding the rich) committed to
a general strike and stopped laboring—the chimera that the
super rich sustain the economy would putrefy instantaneously.
It would die a thousand deaths in a very loud, public instant.
The majority of Americans who victim-blame when it comes
to assessing the misery of those around them are not, in fact,
members of the plutocracy; they themselves count-in with the
repressed.
The wealthiest, on the other hand, understand that the nuclear
essence of freedom itself can be purchased with capital (which
takes many forms) once they reach that apex in the social
dimension.
Of course, for the bulk of society, the state does as little
as possible to keep life easy enough to be a trap.
The poor, and the ever-shrinking middle class, simply seem
the unluckiest sort.
After centuries of toil, disenfranchisement, and even the
enslavement of certain groups, what have the second-class
citizens, the immigrants, and all the oppressed to gain from
clinging to the emperor’s robe, hoping for something else?
Many are active, and already agitate. They blow whistles and
they fight for freedom deep within the belly of the beast.
That should not be discounted, as it already builds momentum
for what is to come.
The honest truth—the one that scares our political overseers
with night terrors—is that we have a chance.
We are the closest to the floor, the closest to pulling out the
rug from underneath the table from which we are excluded.
We have a chance to harness our capacity for production,
community, and solidarity.
A sound revolution of unparalleled political magnitude can,
and must, take place.
It may not seem fair for some to have to relinquish whatever
suspends them above the rest; but at least our revolution, which
the whole world needs to hear us declare soon, will be for
everyone.
Everyone’s freedom is at stake.
Just as the alienated within our boarders terrify the powers that
be, the outside aggressors—the main opponents in the people’s
mind—loom on the horizon of our borders, waiting like god-awful
harbingers of death who want to “kill us for what we stand for…”
Or so the rhetoric commonly goes.
But if Americans stood in unison, looked the fascist, totalitarian,
and domestic embedded power in the face and said, “No more,”
then would not the whole world have our true measure in an
instant?
Could we not count on them after this?
Even if a threat should emerge, who could possibly stand to oppose
our revolution, or our newfound sorority with other peoples, and
expect to emerge victorious?
The answer is “none.”
There are millions of American hands that grip, tear, sew, slice,
pound, lock, drill, hammer, write, harvest, weed-eat, teach and
pray—every single day.
There are callouses and sores, and sometimes a finger or two go
missing.
But these silent makers of wealth, these adroit builders of
technology, movers of capital—how quickly they may join together
to halt the repression that drowns the majority with a slow death
of shrinking rights and economic woe.
How quickly, it should be noted, they may tightly clench and make
themselves into hard fists.
Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border, writing for many
alternative political newsletters and Web sites.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/in-the-shadow-of-repression-
we-fear-no-evil
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
