Saturday, August 20, 2011

Observe, Be, Grow, Rise, and Believe

Take your time. Move through experience. Observe. Recognize who you are; your elation, your tragedy. Be. Observe circles, cycles, and limitations, and move beyond. Grow. Acknowledge the world's cruel beauty. Rise. Your open wounds are known and those who would exploit them are disempowered. Believe.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Strength

Do not mistake kindness, open-mindedness, or objectivity for weakness; think of it, rather, as humility, with a foundation of resolve; tread thereupon with respect, compassion, and empathy - for such a disposition is shaken only upon the merit of experience that causes a trembling of the will.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Prophecy

The world should be more concerned about Judaic and Christian prophecy than any other ill afflicting mankind at this point in history; the partially mutual belief in end times, and the role Israel plays, combined with the egomaniacal belief of so many in these circles that it must occur within their lifetime, is causing major circles of power to act in ways that are driving ever closer to the brink of disaster.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Social Exoneration

Blame' is a word that typically leads away from, rather than toward solution. Indeed, the statement that '(we) can’t blame all Americans for what’s happening; they don't control things' leads us naturally around to the truth that the form of disengaged 'democracy' in America is actually a form of inverted totalitarianism which begins with the complicity of apathy and ends with the accomplice role of a soldier committing war crimes on behalf of the government by which he/she has been indoctrinated.

Americans are inducted, trained, indoctrinated from the time they are children into a culture of violence. Upon joining the military, and particularly upon deployment, they are required to check their conscience at the door. While many, as the result of coming to age in a culture that removes compassion from an active choice to a distant concept, have long since distanced their actions from the accountability of conscience, there are those who are unable to resist the natural engagement of their conscience when confronted with the immorality of the actions to which they are exposed and in which they inherently become involved.

Such individuals tragically account for the large number of active military and recent veterans who are emotionally disabled and to the number of enlisted and former military suicides, which accounts for more (American and Israeli) casualties of war than combat.

The nature of this violent culture is compounded by a sociological dynamic that is the result of seeing war as something in a video game or from a television screen as opposed to something that occurs in your own street.

Add to this a Christian fundamentalist doctrine that has etched its way deep into the conscience of the political and military structure and you have a methodical process that operates within a(n) (un)holy alliance of social, political, and military framework. This framework is then supported by secular and civilian American society beneath the banner of 'patriotism' and 'nationalism' within a process of disinformation, dishonesty, and lack of transparency that withholds information, publishes lies, and equates to rationale for murder in the guise of 'national security'.

It is not necessarily the 'fault' of the members of the society, but accountability is something that can be too quickly brushed away in a technological climate where it cannot and should not be allowed to exist; it is far too simple to say 'I didn't know' and 'I was just doing my job' when information is available that would keep the conscience in check.

To dissent, to refuse orders, or to stay within the boundaries of a moral compass is something almost impossible to achieve when such 'isolated incidents' are actually the status quo and take place in and are a microcosm of the larger immoral climate within which such actions take place.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Weeping Rage

Sign the death, send the bomb, child crying out
Death leap of faithless mercenary, forceful mercy

Picture paint the truth, fire claim tied down
insurgent armed, innocence burnt

Denail

Reigned down upon ascendent sky of darkness
Born of light, child threat, faceless victim

Shroud

Protect us from ourselves, weeping eyes rage worn today

I've sworn to breathe a sigh of apathetic prideful lust
into the light, victim thrust

With shame upon the predator, shed to hopelessness in vain
we trust no one we believe we disdain

We love

We are compassion

Tyrannical democracy, humanitarian lie

Slumber nightmare
calm chaos sweet despair

Let go of holding onto anything that is right
for what is wrong is there before your eyes

If you simply drink the pain

Know that there is nothing left of all that you've believed
Cast your vote one last time
exercise your freedom spend your dime

Drive your car
Smell the sweet lilacs on the plain
and know that somewhere far away someone is dying in your name

and you might then enjoy the smell of beef
and sweet taste of genetically modified hybrid corn

Tomorrow is the yesterday of someone's just rebellion



Friday, July 29, 2011

Capitalism

The shackles of capitalism, so abusively passive aggressive - subltly confined beneath the guise of 'democracy', a silenced voice - artistically united with divisive self interest - instantly condoning and excusing avarice and apathy; at once dismissing the affinity of human nature ~

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Constitutional Exploitation

Judicial interpretive exploitation of the constitution that transforms democracy to corporatocracy: 1) Unlimited campaign contributions are expressions of a 'people's' free speech 2) Unconditional lobbying (void of financial, access, and organizational regulation) is a simple application of a 'people's right to petition their government'.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Loneliness Thought

There is a value to loneliness, it seems, that has only its truth to equal its emptiness.

Hubris Americana

Americans don't believe it because they can't see it; yawn and move on. Consume, focus on your own selfish existence, piss on the graves of the children from afar, pass a coin to relieve your conscience. You will awaken and find it is too late.

The Call (A Friend's Inspiration)

I was awakened on a night not so long ago, pondering what I must do and for what cause I must stand - there is so much injustice.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual".

We indeed do see injustice abound, and we perhaps find ourselves most readily and competently doing what we can within our own sphere of influence, by the means of our own gifts, toward the end of answering a calling we seem to have heard within that first 'moment of faith'.

That intuition, that silent, still voice, that beautiful whisper, that stirring inside - is the 'voice of calling', perhaps indistinct and confused, yet peaceful - a dissonant harmony - and it is that voice we must answer, for that voice is our conscience. And once answered, we must not slip back into slumber; we must act.

At times I feel weak, unable, too small, too insignificant.

And I recognize then, more than ever, that the greatest success of the smallest minds is the victory of their unified efforts to mobilize and simultaneously silence to complicity the masses, while allocating immense resources, utilizing the vast power of impotent weaponry, empowering machines of disinformation in the implementation of mechanisms of consent management.

The only thing we can do is anything we can do, each within the strength of their own will, within his/her own gifts, talents, skills, and resources.

The greatest deed is perhaps the smallest, for within that moment, enormous conviction has moved the soul.

All we can do is what we must do, and that is to be anything but treasonous, which is where our silence would lead us.

In due time what must become - becomes.

What we can ask of ourselves today is whether our lives serve a purpose - have we stood for what we believed in; or have we silently apologized for who we are in the darkness of our introspection - have we abandoned the will, ignored the calling, and surrendered to the conformity of consumerism.

We can wear the shame of our government; it is the only cloak we are given.

But we can also absorb the wounds and wear the scars of having stood for what we believe in.

It would indeed be our greatest loss to become immersed in guilt for things over which we have no control; our only guilt is if we allow ourselves to be individually and collectively disempowered by the feeling of smallness, and if we then do nothing. Indeed, we then become not just guilty, in actuality, but we become complicit in the most atrocious crimes of the apparatus that has rendered us 'powerless'.

For no person is rendered powerless by anything other than themselves, by hearing the call and doing anything less than voicing dissent, by standing still when stirred from within to move.

When each moment brings its calling, it is then that we know what must be done; and at that point - at that very moment - we must do it.

We Are

We are fragile and we are strong. We are fragmented and we are solid. We are false and we are true. We are broken and we are serene. We are despaired and we are hopeful. We are empty and we are gifted. We are lost and we are destined. We are aching and we are inspired. We are chaos. We are tranquility. We are human.

The Value of Loneliness

There is a value to loneliness, it seems, that has only its truth to equal its emptiness.

Friday, July 22, 2011

The Hypocrisy of 'Pro-Life'

A thought to ponder -

Is it a victory of propaganda, and/or perhaps a(nother) failure (or success) of religion that so many who are pro-life are also pro-war, supporting the mass murder of innocent children in the name of the same God for whom they claim to represent in their 'pro-life' agenda ~

Hope Eternal

Hope is such an eternal flame
and there are times too often that I feel its flickering wane.

I search within and wonder whether the spark is indeed dying.

It is only by reaching out that it is rekindled
and only by the breath of humanity that it stays aflame.

Threads of Thought

Threads of thought, dangling, awaiting our precious time and effort to weave them into the tapestry of life. Considering how visuals of street art, murals, graffiti, and other public images impact our subconscious mind, imagine how we are also impacted by the visualization of mass consumerism - certainly I'm not the first to consider this and there are far more accomplished minds than mind who have written volumes about it - but I find an interesting side note, if you will, as to how some build a sort of intuitive firewall. And the more we become aware of it, allowing it to slip into our subconsious reality, we exand the segue through which the critical messaging - perhaps that with some sort of sociological implication, or that which strikes a harmonic chord with our spirit - is able to land upon our conscious mind so that we might absorb it more completely into our soul, allowing it to process through our innate senses and emerge as a shade of who we are.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

The Weakness of Managed Dissent

If, out of fear, attachment to false security, or addiction to consumerism, we refuse to take our labor away from those who capitalize from it, we have relinquished all rights to the value that derives of our labor.



If we expect to labor, handing the wealth earned from it, to the elite, then we should never expect for it to trickle down, for it is perceived that it is handed down, like a dog that works, hunts, and kills and then waits beneath the table for the scraps to begrudgingly be handed down from the masters.



But we are not dogs and we have earned the wealth of our labor, only to be left with no social programs to serve our poor, no medical care without significant loss of wages, no housing if we fall to injury or illness. And those who would call our savings ‘entitlements’ are those who we have willingly handed the wealth of our labor; they enslave and imprison, they ask of us to sacrifice our children to their wars of profit and greed.



We must withhold our labor. We must withhold the tangible asset that we own by the very right of every breath, every beating of every heart, and we must demand that the wealth earned from it is distributed not upward or downward, but laterally, that we might exemplify the values and morals of a just people – that we might provide education and healthcare, promise and opportunity, for the far reaching diversity of social existence.


We must not allow our educational institutions, law enforcement, militaries, agriculture, healthcare, and other resources to be further privatized, for it is through privatization at the expense of the laborers that we will be told there is no profit in providing social programs and security for the laborer, for children, and for the vulnerable.


It is time to call the bluff of the wealthy elite and to stop the churning of the machine that enslaves humanity. We must force the hand of might and brutality to crack its whip, to engage its military, and to show itself for what it is. We must never allow our dissent to be managed as it currently is.


If we ask the master if we might be allowed to demonstrate, if we might be allowed to speak before the assembly, if we might be allowed to distribute our message, if we might be allowed to protest – then our demonstrations are nothing more than a demonstrable tool of a feigned democracy, our voice is nothing but a silent scream of a dying child amidst the grinding and whining of the death machine, our message is washed away by propaganda before it ever reaches the minds and hearts of those it would benefit, and our protest is in vain.


Dissent managed is dissent silenced. A strike within the constraints of the masters’ structure is a strike that ensures the failure of its cause. A protest within the masters’ permitted constraints is a protest that surrenders its cause.

Defiance that is utilized as a tool to show the masters’ tolerance is not defiance at all. It is these watered

down forms of ‘revolt’ that we accept as the process by which we ‘demand’ change; and it is, indeed, change that we get, for our managed dissent, our token defiance, our whispering voices give way give way to the continued

constriction of the wealthy elite’s hands around the throat of society.


If we continue to allow our dissent to be managed, then we might as well surrender our causes and wait for our Orwellian ‘ten minutes of hate’ as we take our daily break at the consumer trough; we might as well drag the kill of the hunt, the harvest of the crops, back to the masters and continue to cower beneath the masters' feast table and await our scraps.



If we wish to take control of our destiny, however, then we need to relinquish only our fear, our veiled security, our addiction to consumerism, snatch our labor and the value thereof from the wealthy elite and demand in truth that they show the brutality they would use to keep the wheels churning.



It is then that we will rise and recognize the machine of social destruction for what it is and it is then that we will realize our strength in unity and it is then that we will access the resource of that strength and begin the battle for true change.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Semantics

The word 'casualties' is an insult to humanity - how can the murder of an innocent child be called a casualty - the war of semantics is played upon the public by the elite who manage the systematic murder of innocent people - let words not diminish truth - there is no civilian 'casualty' - murder is murder.
Conspiracy, Collusion, and Collaboration -

There is no doubt that Israel and the US have conspired over the past decade (at least) to create instability in the MENA region. Yes, I used the 'c' word, conspiracy. A more pointed word might be collusion, and perhaps a nicer form might be collaboration. All these 'c' words describe very well what has been done and what is done on a very regular basis amongst nations with either just or, in this case, unjust goals.

In the case of Israel and the US, this has been done under the guise of policies such as 'dual containment', 'offshore balance of power', etc., and is now done under the guise of 'the war on terror' and 'spreading democracy'. Regardless of the guise, the end goal is hegemony and the means to that end is murder, generational genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nothing less. These means are facilitated through brute military force, severe economic oppression, and political sabotage. The primary players in the collusion (my final choice word here) are the Israeli and US administrations of the past two decades (or more), the neoconservative Christian and Jewish Zionist movements and, sadly, the compliant leaders in the Arab world who have been willing to sell their people and resources for personal gain.

The political leaders are simply corrupt, dishonest, murderous people who have achieved power by climbing over one another, lying to the public, managing consent through mass propaganda campaigns, and worst. The military leaders are often simply people in the process of climbing over one another, serving the political masters, in an effort to become one of them. The neoconservative civilian players that support, manipulate, influence and, at times control, the political and military regimes are long-term professionals who have clawed their way to the top by the very same process as the political and military leaders, gaining influence as they climb. Now if you throw in the concept of neoliberal economics you get another set of players, the corporations. For the most part, they are individuals who have followed the same dog-eat-dog tactics, and have found themselves able to insert themselves as players into roles involving the political, military, and neoconservative civilian triangle. And for all of the aforementioned parties, influence earns access, which begets increased influence, which earns greater access, and so on.

These churning wheels of abusive power, corruption, and the buying and selling of human souls has resulted in the transition of capitalism to the proliferation of global neoliberal economics. And in our case in point here, the players have been firmly entrenched in Washington and Tel Aviv for some time and their influence has taken such a firm hold of the prosperity, or lack thereof, of the region, that their agenda is beginning to unfold in horrific manners.



Israel's agenda specifically is to dominate the region (or, based on other quotes not included here, the world), establishing 'Israel' in an ever-widening expanse of land granted them by 'divine' proclomation, displacing and murdering the inhabitants, stealing resources, and making the Arab people subject to their whim.

Indeed, by the words of their own leaders:



“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.”

Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat





“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.”
Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces



"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." —Rabbi Yaacov Perrin


It is quite evident by the quotes of Israeli leaders and the trail of blood they've left that they intend to accomplish their goal by absolute brute force.

Over the past twenty years, due largely to the influence of the Israel Lobby and neoconservative forces in the US, the US has drawn itself directly in line with this agenda. This is clearly evidenced in US foreign policy decisions in the region and by reviewing such records as UN resolutions and vetoes, etc., the influence of the Israel lobby in US politics, and again, the trail of blood left in the wake of this (un)holy alliance.

In the past, at this moment and, most likely into the far reaching future, this does not bode well for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iran - and clearly Iraq and Libya - and not to include Afghanistan and Pakistan. All one must do to understand regional sentiment against Israel and the US is to consider the devestation of the people, the country, and the culture in Iraq.

Such consideration cannot leave one questioning why Iran is (and should be) seeking nuclear weapons; it is the only deterrent agains US and Israeli aggression. While this is one of the points where people get divided by the understable conflicting opinions of nuclear proliferation, the bottom line is that the US is not doing one thing to curb its own threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction, and Israel has overtly developed their nuclear program without any oversight whatsoever and in absolute defiance of the IAEA. One must not allow these conflicting opinions to develop into filters of division utilized by the powers that be to distract people from the issue at hand, which is the brutal nature that this alliance has caused in its collusive practices.

Furthermore, the increasing and inevitable support from regional powers for 'terrorist' groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas is and should not be surprising. These groups are no more fundamentalist religious radicals than Blackwater (XE) (a self proclaimed Christian crusade organization) or Zionist Israel. Moreover, these groups are nationalist and/or ethnic groups who are willing to fight and die for their people just as the US and Israel claim to be. Without going into whether these groups are more or perhaps less guilty of war crimes as the US and Israel, it is quite understandable why they exist and their objectives are as clearly understandable and, it seems to me, more rational and just than the sheer Zionist and/or neoliberal quest for hegemony. While Israel commonly uses the term 'self defense' to justify its aggression, it is quite clear that the regional powers that have been attacked by Israel and the US have been and are consistently in a position of needing to defend themselves.

Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (and most other countries in the region) have, at various points and in a number of ways, made significant contributions to regional efforts to quell 'terrorism' (which might be better termed as a type of 'self defense' against terrorist states like the US and Israel) and have attempted repeatedly to engage in diplomacy, only to be put squarely in the crosshairs of the US and Israel. All of these countries have been the victims of military aggression, economic sanctions, and political isolation by the alliance. And the cost has been nothing less than the immediate and generational loss of countless civilian lives.

Ironically, the very aggression of the alliance, resulting from the collusion, the collaboration, and the conspiracy of the US and Israel - the militaristic, political, and economic oppression that the US and Israel believe strengthens them - is quite counterproductive.

If they were hoping to weaken Iran and Iran's regional influence, they have accomplished quite the opposite. The US and Israel refuse to give sincere consideration to legitimate regional concerns about interference and brutal military aggression, the theft of land and resources, the murder of innocent civilians (genocide, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment - all of the above and nothing less).

Anyone with even a sliver of common sense can see that the overt brutal aggression of the US and Israel is backfiring - and any true uprising in the region is one that should and does stand squarely in the face of the US and Israel and says "Get out, leave us to our own resources, that we might at last allocate such resources to the care of our own people - that we might battle as we may, but that we might come to the solutions of a people as one and without undue influence, meddling, occupation, and force."

The US should listen - and Israel should be left to deal with the consequences of the world it creates with its war crimes. There are international solutions and resources that might very well serve the regional powers and people, but these resources and solutions will not be brought to bear at the behest of the US and Israel, for the motives of power, profit, and hegemony - all brought to bear by military, political, and economic force - have shown their ugly heads in the bare light of day. And if humanity is to survive and if the best in human nature is to take the new day, then the US and Israel must take heed, reassess their position(s), disengage, withdraw, and take a bold step forward toward being true leaders of peace in the world of war they've created.

Prey and Reap

Any country that dismisses civilian casualties caused by (manned or unmanned) weapons called 'Predator' and 'Reaper' should not utter the word 'humanitarian'.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Sweet Song

All one must do is silently listen to the mourning cry and they will hear the most precious song of a caged bird singing softly, gently, from behind the gilded bars of the cage of generational genocide.

My Response to an Email Entitled "The 'Arabs' Are Not Happy"

I was accosted this evening with an email from someone who is close enough to hurt me - and there are not that many people in my life who have retained that luxury. Regardless of my choices, however, there is a commonality that will never allow me to remove this person from my immediate circle. And it is times like this that we must recognize the value of receiving a piece of information that tells more about the sender than the content of the message sent. Still, the content was inflammatory enough for me to respond (below) and my response was volleyed back with a monologue of rhetoric that could only have been equaled by mainstream media.

The email was entitled 'The Arabs Are Not Happy'. I will not re-print it in its entirety, as one need only turn on Fox News to get the gist of what it says. The document was titled 'The Arabs Are Not Happy'. Its premise was that 'the Arabs' are not happy and it is their own fault, the fault of 'their' religion, and the fault of 'their' leadership. And since the 'Arabs' are not happy, they come over to "England, France, USA, Germany, (and other countries) where they can "live comfortably, don't have to be productive, can pray in the streets, and exploit social services', etc.

My response, a bit of a rant, is below. Yes, there are many points I could have made, but didn't. There are perhaps some points I made that were unnecessary. I only hope this person takes the time to read the response. The sickness I felt within the pit of my stomach after this exchange is difficult to describe and it leaves me wondering why it's there. I know this world well enough to understand quite clearly and quite personally its cruelty, its institutional hatred, its nationalistic filter that drives the throngs, waving flags of patriotism, to the consumer trough. But the underlying self-righteousness that rules today's world and the lies that are the wind in its sails, create the type of individuals that support a government that wields the weapon of racism - and the ammunition for that weapon is the very people that support or oppose it. And when the machine that controls that weapon determines the time has come, all that is necessary is to turn the people on one another based on the filters through which they've been fed.

Religion is made to divide. Politics are devised along the same lines, with the same defined goals; divide and conquer. When religious and political idealism take the place of common sense, when propaganda and interpretive prophecy become the rationale utilized to guide the moral compass, when truth is never even sought, let alone identified for what it is as it stands right before our eyes, then we recognize that we can no more replace darkness for light than we can replace light for darkness. People take a stand and there is no reasoning, no reconciling - only a reckoning that unwinds in a time that seems often not to be our own.

What we are called to do now is to not allow our own position to be watered down or influenced by those by whom we are overpowered or outnumbered. This makes me think of the Goldstone Report and how he caved after being isolated and ostracized. And I know the feeling. There are people who have read what I've written in the past few months and have walked away from me. I've drawn inward and reflected on my own statements, essays, and narratives and have returned at all times to my original position; educate and inform yourself from as much a position of objectivity as possible, establish a position, keep an open mind and heart, and yet be resolute and stand firm, hearing the inner voice that transcends propaganda and hyperbole - the inner voice that tells you quite simply that right is right and wrong is wrong - and it's rarely as complex as people try to make it.


Here is my response:

I don’t know who sent you this, but it’s pure Islamaphobic racism.

The idea that anyone lumps ‘Arabs’ into a group is, in and of itself, a racist concept. The idea that one can ignore the stark reality of (true) history that shows that ‘Arabs’, when left to their own existence, have experienced periods of relative peace, especially compared to the warmongering, bloodlusting Anglo Saxon trek across the globe. ‘Arab’
countries have also been subject to probably more colonization (exploitation) projects than any other people on the planet. The first four places mentioned in the list of your email are all included in the fourth (Israel), which incidentally is a country that is nothing more than an illegal occupation on ‘Arab’ land.

‘Arabs’ are not happy because white Christian Europeans, Americans, and Zionist Jews (no, this is not an anti-Semitic term, rather a term that identifies a racist group that literally has a racist apartheid state that is based on a prophetic belief that they are God’s chosen people). Indeed, Palestinians are spread throughout many of the countries in the list as a result of genocidal practices by ‘Israelis’, also known as Zionists, also known as racists and murderers. The only group that has murdered more ‘Arabs’ under the guise of prophecy and religion and simple plain racist nationalistic hatred, always the cover for the ulterior motive of power and profit, is Christian Zionists. Erik Prince, the leader of Blackwater, now called XE and operating under several other names, is a self proclaimed ‘Christian Crusader’. The US claims this is not a ‘holy war’, a claim that is coupled with a claim that these wars on Islam are to spread democracy and that these wars are humanitarian efforts to ‘free’ the people. Indeed, the US ‘freed’ over one million innocent Iraqis by murdering them over the past ten years. This does not include the first Gulf War and the 8 years of sanctions that starved the innocent civilian population.

The ‘Arabs’ are tired of looking around them at their diseased and dying children, as they suffer from generational genocide. They are tired of attempting to stop the burn of white phosphorous as it drips through the flesh of their children, eating bone and anything else until absolutely deprived of oxygen or until the limb is severed from the body. They are tired of waking to bombs that say ‘USA’. No, the ‘Arabs’ are not happy. They are not happy with the US and others paying off the leaches of their own people in efforts to divide and conquer; paying off (and creating) a wealthy elite class that will sell them out to Western powers, who will rule over them and commit their resources to the slave masters in the West.

The ‘Arabs’ are not happy – nor should they be. They tire of neoliberal economic oppression designed to destabilize economies toward the goal of creating slave labor markets, while feeding the ‘middle class’ enough to create ‘developing economies’ (which is, by the way, just another form of slavery, the type of slavery commonly known in the US as consumerism). The ‘Arabs’ are not happy. They run from us to us. Perhaps we should leave them alone, stop murdering them, stop raping their people and their land, and let them work out their own issues. Perhaps we should stop importing weapons and supporting terrorism. Perhaps we should stop committing war crimes against them.



Imagine any of their children as your own. Love that child as you do your own. Dream for him. Hope for him. Cry for him. Weep for him. For he is killed each and every day by drone attacks or by occupying forces. His dreams are dashed. He is starved. His limbs are severed. His future is seen through the lens of “why us, why us ‘Arabs’”.


The fact that we, as Americans, can witness the horrific war crimes that have been committed by our government in our own lifetime, while we live in relative peace with no internal warfare, and still pass judgment on a group of people we term ‘Arabs’, is a sad reality – but it is the reality we live. It only speaks toward our complacent apathetic racist nationalism. We are sold on the lie that if we weren’t trampling innocent people across the globe that they would be here trampling us. It is a lie. Since World War II the US has been on a quest for hegemony. The propaganda that is spewed by mainstream television tightens the shackles of consumer slavery while feeding us the hate we wish to ingest so that we can spew it out against other people.


God help us. God help the ‘Arabs’.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The Wrong of Right

After reading through a dialogue wherein pro-zionist rhetoric was regurgitated by elitist Americans (claiming to be 'progressive') who believe everything they're told while at the tourist consumer trough, I engaged in a somewhat defensive rant. It was a 'work' far from 'clean' writing, but it did make an effort to express the awful feeling that I get in the pit of my stomach when I hear yet another complicit apathetic complacent American justify and rationalize the generational genocide of the racist apartheid state, Israel.

I have cleaned up the writing a bit, but much more is yet to be done. Consider it a work in progress and, please feel free to comment, adding to what points have been made and casting light upon those that lay still, yet restless, in the shadows.

To start with, here are a few quotes that provide an appropriate backdrop to the generational genocide committed by Israel over the past sixty-plus years:

1."When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle." – Rafael Eitan, former Israeli general, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and later a politician, a Knesset member government minister.
2."One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." —Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994
3."We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own..." —Ari Shavat. Reproduced in the New York Times, May 27th, 1999.

And a single quote shared by many Jews throughout the world:
1.“I remain faithful to the horrendous suffering of my late parents, yet – the Nazi holocaust has long ceased to be a source of moral or historical enlightenment; it has become a straight out extortion racket; a handful of American Jews have effectively hijacked the Nazi holocaust to blackmail Europe.” The Holocaust Industry, Norman Finklestein

Me:

Israel is a murderous racist apartheid state and must be humbled - to the point where it exists as an ancillary portion of Palestine - as the world tears down walls and builds alliances, Israel victimizes Palestinians and Jews alike, creating a torn nation of victims.

Akiva Eldar, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, and so many, many more Jews that speak out against 'Israel' - and, as Chomsky so accurately paraphrases the official position of the Israeli power-mongers; 'if you speak out against Israel you must be either anti-semitic or a 'self-hating Jew''.

Yes, anything the Palestinians do or have done to seek their own freedom is, in my mind, justified; we can argue all day long over which crime is more horrendous than the next.

Here are some basic humane questions that are deflected by common politically bent idolatrous citizens of the consumer world and questions that are ignored and/or dismissed by all bureaucratic, corporate world politicians:
1.What would you do when someone rapes your wife, your children, beats you, steals your land, and confiscates your property, causing you to live in a refugee (concentration) camp?
2.Who would you be if this were the environment in which you had lived your entire life? How 'just' will you be, if justice is a concept you can grasp beyond the hypocrisy with which you've seen it applied throughout your life?
3.How peaceful will you become after making concessions for sixty years, watching your country shrink and cower beneath an illegal occupation mandated by powers that exert their will by force?


Israel is a rogue state whose time is limited, whose power will ultimately be proven impotent, and who will, if she has her way, drag the US with her into the abyss. Never in history have two nations collaborated more more consistently and more overtly toward the destruction of humanity. FREE PALESTINE.

And this is not rhetorical.

Stop. Think.

Truly have in your mind someone you love, if you know such a person at such a depth - someone for whom you would actually give your life without so much as a fraction of a second thought. Then imagine that person butchered before your eyes, your hands tied defenseless while the cries of the victim are met with laughter, their begging met with rape, beating, and chastisement. If you feel an ounce of rage, if you feel horrified, if you feel so deeply sad that you cannot imagine your life beyond that moment, then you are human. Then you are Palestine.

Now tell me how you would react to someone touting their safety, their 'freedom', their 'choice', their prideful arrogant defense, as they handed the raping murderous butchers more weapons to further denegrate you, your family, your loved ones. If you cannot consider what it would be like to have these people taking your prideful defense from you - if you cannot understand the concept of universalism - that which applies to them applies to me as well - then you stand with the majority of Americans who have no true point of reference other than blatant nationalism, 'patriotism', and bloodlust. The US arms the world and watches it writhe in its warfare.

Hamas, Palestine, and all the regional lands that have been butchered and/or prostituted by Israel SHOULD resist, should not 'compromise', should stand and defend themselves against the systematic genocide that has been inflicted by this Zionist nation that claims its right based on religious prophecy - they should claim their right to their homes, to their freedom, to all that has been not just stolen from them, but that has been taken from them as generations of hope have been spit upon, pissed upon, and raped right before their very eyes. They have been compromised by other nations, other political forces, and by their own leaders who would sell them out to Israel for over sixty years; they have been sold out by everyone, the US, Israel, and THEIR OWN.

A question denied all indigenous peoples of the earth:

What right has anyone else to your resources, your minerals, your labor, your youth - your humanity?!

Unify. Stand, once and for all, and demand the peace that you deserve. Demand, indeed, to settle your own affairs, your own differences, the right to self determination and self defense. And do not for another moment allow some imperialist empire benefit from the bloodlust of division into which you have been cast.

Since the US is so content with providing Israel with BILLIONS of dollars in economic aid in addition to the BILLIONS of dollars in weapons, planes, ships, helicopters, in addition to the MASSIVE diplomatic support, then the least the US could do is level the playing field - it's what the US does in so much of the world - spread out the arms, pit everyone against one another, and capitalize on the instability.

The US should arm Palestine - the GREATER Palestine, which includes the lands that have carried the burden of the refugees and that are the GREATER Palestinian homeland.

If the US didn't make whores of the nations in the region - Egypt, Jordan, Syria - then Israel would not be able to continue its racist apartheid genocidal practices - they would be forced into the position of diplomacy rather than rhetoric, of peace rather than war.

Actually research this issue and you will quickly recognize the disparity between traditional history and reality. Those who have the weapons and the wealth write history. Reality is lived by those who bear the burden.

America, America, if you are ever to be something other than an impotent empire of brute force, you will awaken and demand what is not necessarily your right, but that which has, as a result of the position at which you have arrived by brute force, become your responsibility and your only hope of arriving at a point beyond the impotence of force; a power that could rule the earth with peace, with a force that would be reckoned with only for the betterment of humanity - not as it is, which is a force that lusts for power, that wallows in greed and avarice, and that prostitutes nations and enslaves the poor.

The pendulum on which all things are gauged is swinging evermore, and America is but a complicit society of cattle at the consumer trough, believing it is so much better than others, while it is the detriment, the darkness, of all that is light.

Its people are apathetic, drugged, consumer tourists who believe the world's purpose is to hand over their resources and serve them.

To believe the US supports democracy - moreover to believe that the US and/or Israel is a democracy, is to regurgitate the lies you've been fed through the filters by which you are managed.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Bring Me Home

If you see a shadow, cold, pass across an open window, spare the thought, this captured moment, for spring has come and gone.


Heroes stand statuesque along paths where I run, through all seasons, for all time. In the halls of the institution, ancient and contemporary minds hold up walls with rhetorical tongues of mindless men. And my heroes, I might add, might just as soon tear those very walls to the ground.


Men, we are, and women – children, just the same, so astute in our unforgiven pantheon of idolatry.


Ah yes, but Hope does rise in chambers where lesser men think greater things

where children reign and music sings

and distant doth the death knell ring.


On holiday are the guns – in our minds – in our shallow prosperity, until from distant lands the tears of sons and daughters pour out to be reflected in the tears flowing from the eyes of my own child;


Was it indeed a harmony in his voice, an echoed chamber from another realm of truth, a realm where the heroes reign and greater minds whisper in the rooms through which the souls of children travel.


“Look!” my son cried out, “I am the son of another, an indigenous child whose blood soaks the distant land; Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Sudan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Palestine, South, Central, and North America, Europe and beyond. Bring me home, Father, bring me home. Let the tears of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, little friends on empty shell blown streets be dried and shed no more. Bring me home. For I am no less, but I am no greater and the hero called my name in a dream you held in slumber! Bring me home.”

One blade of grass, chopped short for a dog.


One, two, three, yes four, signs for ‘Quiet Respect Please’ for this tribute to a King.

Yet I say NO! No more quiet, no more silence. No more rhetorical respect.

No more theft of words of glory to be spilled from the mouths of bloodlusting hypocrites.


Let the words be screamed from the streets, from the people who must hear lest they become deaf, dumb, and mute in their complacent apathy.


Let the words be screamed from the streets, that the children of shallow prosperity might be claimed for the glory and hope of righteousness and whisper the echoes they have heard in the rooms through which the souls of heroes travel.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Hitting the Reset Button, or ‘American Global Gladiator – the Thirst for Blood, the Lust for Power, and the Gore of Greed’

The fine, upstanding, trustworthy, noble US government has given its population another bite of sound, another euphemism to assist in calming the weary heart, the wondering and wandering mind, and to quell the conscious conscience of the average citizen.

The US has the desire to ‘hit the reset button’ in Pakistan and the Middle East in general. So what does this mean?



Does it mean that the US is going to assert itself diplomatically and withdraw its troops from the various countries it now occupies?



Does it mean that the word humanitarian will return to its original meaning and that the US will convert its military missions into actual humanitarian missions?



Does it mean that the US will actually support democracy rather than undermine it?



Or, does it mean that it wishes for the countries it is terrorizing to bend and bow to the mighty American forces and acquiesce as they have in the past to the corruption of their governments, the murder and rape of their civilians, and the theft of their resources?



Let us explore current events to determine whether this is rhetoric or sincerity. First, let’s visit the ‘constructive’ statements made by Senator John Kerry upon his visit to Pakistan:



■He said it is “important to hit the reset button” and that it is “important to use this ‘opportunity’ to put the relationship back on track” so that the two countries can ‘jointly’ combat terrorism.
■If this is sincerity, as opposed to disingenuous rhetoric, then Senator Kerry must mean that the two countries will begin to work together to implement the withdrawal of all US forces, including both private and standard military personnel as well as ‘intelligence’ personnel.
■It must mean that drone attacks will cease immediately.
■It must mean that the US will issue apologies immediately for the murder of Pakistan civilians and military personnel and will issue reparations.
■It must mean that the US will agree to not invade Pakistan unless it is proven that Pakistan has, as a country, declared war upon the United States and carried our military operations on US soil – in short, that Pakistan is proven to have done precisely what the US is doing in Pakistan at this moment.
■Anyone with a discerning ear must recognize this as continued posturing by the US. Any acquiescence by the Pakistani government might be perceived as an effort to move forward diplomatically toward the effort of peacefully removing the parasitic US from its soil.


■Senator Kerry further asserted that Pakistan must agree not to provide sanctuary for ‘terrorists’ who might wish to engage in ‘terrorism’ against the US.
■Given the definition of the term ‘terrorism’ (the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes’, one can deduce that Mr. Kerry is stating that the US will abandon all military bases, as military bases would act as a point from which US state terrorism can be carried out.
■My interpretation of this statement is that it is indeed a form of terrorism, as it is a threat to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.


Meanwhile, to track just a handful of events that might give us a better view into the actions from which we might deduce the intent of a nation, in this case, the US:



■Two twelve-year-old girls and a fourteen-year-old boy were killed in Afghanistan in attacks by US or NATO (US) forces.
■Continual war in Libya in what started out as a(nother) peacekeeping, humanitarian mission to promote democracy and to win the hearts and minds of the people through the delivery of mass quantities of arms and bombs.
■Unlimited support of every kind, but primarily military and economic, of the racist apartheid Israeli government.
■Political and military support of the Middle East’s most oppressive nation, Saudi Arabia.
■Continued payoff of Egyptian military officials and other post-Mubarak cronies, as Egypt convicts thousands of dissidents in military trials.
■Continued provocation to force war in Pakistan, murdering civilians with drone attacks, attacking military bases, and threatening repeatedly.


Based on all of the information reviewed here, not to mention the information that remains hidden behind the US government’s ‘national security’ intelligence firewall, it is quite clear that the mission of the US is to continue to build US military bases throughout the world to support the quest for hegemony, the final thrust of power in the imperial conquest, in the impotent butchery of a failed state.



In the interim, Americans, exercise your freedom. Get lost in the political battle over the next corporate election. Believe that your voice is heard and that the cry of Americans is more than a complicit consumer mass wallowing at the trough. Sink into the apathy of baseball season and turn on Fox News for the latest episode of ‘American Global Gladiator – the Thirst for Blood, the Lust for Power, and the Gore of Greed.’

Friday, May 6, 2011

Education

If you believe that elitism of institutional education differs in any way from elitism related to wealth, status, religion, or any other filter through which you are managed, your belief speaks well to the inherent ignorance of your institutional education.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

April 2011

This is the month of April and early days of a cool spring in Colorado. There are days spent mountain biking, running, sharing with friends and family. There are reflections and vivid moments that shape memories. There is warmth in the eyes of my sons that carries me through the days and there is an acknowledgement that we grow together. I may lead and I may follow and together we are able to learn. Colorado holds spaces and places that I have known since childhood and yet I cannot go a year without discovering a place right here that I've not yet seen. The world is my back yard. It holds my hopes and dreams, my success and my failure, my ambition and humility, my mistakes and my love. The world is ours and we each see it through a sphere which we can only attempt to share. When we are gone, one can only hold the photos and perhaps see a shadow of what we saw. I sometimes hold a photo taken by a loved one and I peer into it as though trying to see a reflection of them. There is something of them in the photo, something in what they saw that held more than the images before me. A place was more than a place, perhaps more or less than home, truth, trust, or betrayal; perhaps a space that represented a moment of happiness, sadness, togetherness, or loneliness - perhaps any and all in singular and collective moments - perhaps finite or eternal. Perhaps there is a piece of us in all that we leave behind - and perhaps we leave behind and take with us more than we might ever know.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Raven Siren

I found a truth buried deep within denial
something hidden in the distant trials
that from which so long now I have run
a portent of the sirens and the sun
upon horizon bare the darkest day
a raven casting shadow on the way
so near and far I find myself in you
a choice that holds the voice and what to do
it is hope that finds me closer to my youth
and I return my heart now to the truth

Perpetrator Victim

The perpetrator had victim written all over him. The rage in his eyes reflected a distant wounded child. The wanton abandonment of his fury might have been the passionate beauty of a better man; yes, passionate beauty, never beheld within the facade of impotent masculinity and only revealed for this man in the discourse of his truth; perhaps not what he'd become, rather a lingering fragment of his hope.

Princess Disgrace (Homeless Man in Park)

Homeless man sleeping in the park. Wealthy white woman strips him of what dignity he has left; not because he poses a danger or does her any harm, but because his very presence causes her to question the validity of her identity and the sincerity of her environment. Everything is nothing more than a reflection of her superiority- her car, her home, her children, her husband. And everything must validate her facade.

Parody on American Response to bin Laden Murder

Guilty cuz W said he is, goddammit, and cuz we spent one helluva lotta muny and kild a whole lotta people too. dumped his carcass in the sea, no questions asked, and sure as hell none answered. just turn on the news, they'll tell ya what ya need ta know. don't need no stinkin' inturnashunal crimnal court, we're Amerikun.

American Hysteria ad nauseam

One Way Church Street America Pouring Beer Draped in Flags Sieg Heil Peace is War Ignorance is History Minus Education with Degree Sold Out Bought Paid For Head Down to the Consumer Trough and Get Me Some of That Million Dollar Sports Hero ...Super No One Failed State Blood Oil Bloodlust War Machine Caterpillar Boeing XE Haliburton Prison State Institutional Racism Child Murder Assassination Pride Nationalism Drunk War Two Day Synagogue Alley Pakistan Spilled Blood Fallen out Medal Praise Who War is Peace Knowledge isn't Education Plus Ignorance without Papers Bought In Zero Pataca Gladiator Yes None Succeed One Adult Love Diplomacy Humanity Sober Resource Indigenous Hope Help Hurt Lost Found Given Lost Taken Bring it Back Never Was Should Have Been Might Not Be Never Been Will Go Inside Out Eternity Finite God Atheistic Holy War Regurgitate Parrot Speak Silence Cry Out Knees Bent Fallen Up Stare Sky Pour Reign Royal Death Wedding Divorce Widowed Bride Bloody Groom Dark Side Deaf Moon Soil Genetic Demon Seed Plant Uproot Despotic Peasant Field Disgraced Child Bring Back Truth From the Sacred Burial Ground

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Or Forever Hold Your Peace

If you have a mind, use it.
If you have a heart, open it.
If you have a voice, let it be heard.

Suffer the Children

Your child or mine, wrong knows no time, days never end, once the suffering begins.

Vestige

Once taken now we are, upon light stripped away
To mourning, distant, pleading, dark surrendered day

Fine, yet finite prism, is rape of choice bereaved
In anguish there to languish upon shores of the deceived

There an empty fading which death cannot attend
Beyond the shelter twilight is hope around the bend

A road never travelled in this our mortal creed
A vestige crumbling world’s birth I do not need

Friday, April 22, 2011

From the Death Throes Hope

From the death throes of pacifism and hope, the instinctive resource of violent revolution is born; for the very concept of pacifism is but an elevated opinion, an activated thought, a collective practice to which we ascend through the conduit of life to the zenith of existence.

Pacifism is, perhaps, that which ascends from the nature of survival, while on the other side of the same sphere, extant eternal, is the natural descent to collective violence.

Too often it seems that we in the US live by the axiom 'Divided, we Stand'. Our consumerism is driven by avarice, with the only goals being profit and status.

It seems not so long ago that I was swimming in an ocean of strife, trying to achieve that which I had been taught held value and worth. I owned a business that capitalized on the struggle of others. I abandoned that quest many years ago and have since struggled to financially survive. My financial survival, however, has become secondary to living with purpose and passion.

Now I find that the passion that lives deep within finds its way to strain for the gathering of humanity, for a consensus of compassion, for a time that is for all times, a time that brings with it a deeper acknowledgement that life without greed, life with hope, is a strand of humanity that has always been.

Time has always held both planes of human existence; greed, avarice, and war on the one side, and belief, faith, and hope on the other.

Perhaps the strands of politics and religion are the ropes between these planes of existence, serving as the mechanisms that drive us further from one and nearer the other.

As with most matters of truth, therein lies a paradox. For the very hope and faith that so often draw one to religion and politics are the very same hope and faith that so often turn one away from religion and politics.

Much as there is an existence that is separate, a cocoon (Salman's metaphor) of superficial values, if you will, there is a cocoon that is woven of the fabric of connected humanity - and perhaps we fall from one into the other from time to time, realizing that what we need the most is to be united and to stand for values that reject profit and status; that the common ground of human needs are greater than the common grounds of profit and status.

If we hold then to these values, perhaps we will find the unified strength to stand en masse against the greed, avarice, and status of the wealthy militaristic elite.

Too often such vision is met with laughter, chided as utopian and delusional; and too often is the case that those laughing would be better to either jump in and swim within the warmth of such a delusional, hopeful utopia or simply walk away into their lives of cynicism and greed.

For upon the other side of the illusion is the mass of humanity that would hope and strive for better things. When such hope is stripped from them - when they are chastised and scorned, pulled, ripped, and torn, abused, raped, starved, and murdered - another side of their humanity surfaces.

It is from this other side that revolution is born. And from that which has been denied, namely the desire for peaceful resistance against might for the betterment and common good of humanity, is born a mass of humanity that strikes out from the heart of a dying breed.

From the death throes of pacifism and hope, the instinctive resource of violent revolution is born.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Israel Grants Settlers Gun Licensing; a Conversation

Tel Aviv - PNN - Israel's Public Security Ministry, after weeks of crafting a new policy on the issue, has decided to give preference to settlers in gun licensing. The justification of the move is that any citizen living in a "danger zone" must receive preference from ther state in request of security measures.

‎'Tis the continued process of the legalization, nay, the encouragement and subsequent reward, for the genocide of the Palestinian people: Creating a completely complicit society, turning childrens' eyes to darkness, creating the prospect o...f profit as the only form of hope, fanatical 'prophecy' morphed into a policy of murderous 'promise', bloodlust to patriotism, pillage to pioneering, while politically patronizing the population of the wold with the rhetorical propaganda of peace.

FB Reply:

Nicholas: Weren't those also the goals of the Nazis? Because I see chilling and very twisted parallels there...just makes me shudder.

My Reply:

It truly is terrifying, and Thomas, I absolutely agree. And what is even more frightening to me is the global political consensus of the wealthy elite, the empowered fraction of the population that holds within its grasp this moment in time where it seems almost poised, with its vast military superiority, to capture the world's population through its neoliberal economic system.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Light and Reflection

Sometimes it's more about shadow than light, more about reflection than the experience, more about the thought than the spoken word. There's an imprint upon the water of the wings that soar above, a print left upon the concrete, an impression upon the world. It fades into light, the very last breath of life, and I will exhale without apology for who I've been.

A Week of Transition

It was a week of transition; from sunshine to snow and back again, from visions of light to foreboding darkness, returning to light - a portent of change, travel, and a shifting inside - a disposition of confinement exchanged for a predilection of liberation, the single motion of faith, and the subsequent abdication, abandon, relinquishing control for the freedom of hope.

Peace

Peace is an impossible prospect where war is so greatly rewarded.

God

Isn't it odd how immense everyone claims God to be, and yet they all claim 'him' too small to contain any 'religion' other than their own

Laughing at Others

What is it you will find so humorous today - the loneliness, the pain, the memories, the shame - the hiding in vain - - it's all the same; I'm glad I could help you smile.

Destiny of Nations - Work in Progress

It is only by a core belief in human nature that one is even able to hope that the better part of us will ever drive the destiny of nations.

Embrace the Rain

Try to hear just one drop of rain, as it lands with a whisper of truth, trickling down the window pane, a tear that has fallen to share this moment alone with only you.

There are times when actual pain, deep and physical, finds its way through the conduit of experience, past the gateway of emotion, and floods the mind, the body, and the spirit.

The pain is so true, so absolutely overpowering, that it seems to reach the very depth of your soul, tearing through your physical being, eradicating all promise and vanquishing all hope.

You subconsciously attempt to confine it as it wells inside to the point where it may no longer be contained.

As the clouds gather, the sky darkens, and the pain swirls in a conundrum of anguish, anger, sorrow, and bereavement, threatening to break past the confining walls of reason until it bursts through your constricted throat like whitewater through a weakened dam.

Tears are inconsequential, this pain is so real; there would be something within them that would denote belief, something of faith that you cannot find and for which you can no longer maintain the desire to search.

The choice of standing upon the mountain of veiled truth fades, the vulnerability that long lay beneath the surface is exposed, the conscious mind abandons its false strength, and the hollow ground beneath you collapses.

The unique components of self, the deceitful defense mechanisms that have developed over time, no longer concealed in expectation of survival, cast your eyes to the ground.

Broken wings give way to trembling, your mind breaks free of the shackles of feigned security, and you tumble downward through the chasm of perceived loss.

Shattered upon the floor of the valley of your soul, it seems you find yourself encased in one final wish; that you have at last found a resting place from which there will be no return.

Within this wish, from before it, beyond it, and yet through it, your senses are drawn to a portal, across the valley of despair, toward the world outside yourself.

This is but a fraction of a moment, and it delivers a sound, so soft that it is barely audible, so faint that it calls upon your memory like an echo from an ancient, almost forgotten, past.

A reflection, a hue of gentle, indirect, blue light strains the eyes as though commanding from both within and without to be beheld.

These fragments of sound and light have drawn their way through the darkness and landed upon a shaded pane of inner glass, a window upon which your deepest inner self is reflected and through which you find the acceptance of your pain.

Through the harmony of your senses a single drop of truth trickles down your inner window pane, calling to itself the tears from deep within that you have for so very long contained.

The sky swells, the clouds burst, and purge the ocean of your soul; the dam within you breaks, the walls crumble, and you are forever and yet never more alone, as you embrace the rain.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Thoughts on a Resourse-Based Economy

While involved in an interesting dialogue about anonymity and accountability in everything from fundraising to campaign ads and basic political messaging, the conversation turned to economy. One of the participants mentioned Zeitgeist and The Venus Project, which inevitably led to resource-based economy as an alternative economic structure, which then caused me to think about the social structure that might support such a concept, absent of an absolute transition into a utopian society that would so capably provide for all of humanity while preserving our planet. I watched a couple of the videos, continuing to dialogue off-and-on with Anwar and Ryan. It was very encouraging just to engage in open-minded discussion about concepts that are based on the idea that there are enough resources to provide for humanity, that our monetary system is inherently corrupt, and that we ultimatley must stand for the former and against the latter. This conversation led to these thoughts, which will hopefully encourage more people to engage in the dialogue - all true change is born of such seeds; thought, dialogue, and synergy.

I agree that western societies, particularly the US, are so materialistic and so immune to common problems, so weak in so many ways, that there are far more problems than there are solutions. One of the core beliefs that I have is that we should keep ourselves physically and mentally prepared for all challenges.

Here in a major city, for example, I see men waiting at a bus stop with a bicycle to go five miles. He puts the bicycle on the bus, rides the bus to two blocks before his destination, gets off and rides the two blocks to where he is going. I run or ride the entire way.

Another concept is that the physical and (perhaps more importantly) psychological impact of a society that has not had a major war on its own soil within the last five or six generations has generated a population that is spoiled and that believes it is superior to all others.

The reason the US has not had a war has nothing to do with how much it loves peace, but rather the fear it has generated throughout the world and the fear it generates in its own people. It is the only country ever to use a weapon of mass destruction, and yet tells the world who can and cannot develop nuclear weapons. A survey of many large western and eastern countries, many of them US allies, shows that the US is the most feared country on the planet. It is also the most murderous.

These points being made, brings me to the subject of your message, which is what would happen in the case of shutting anything down for a transitional period into such a society as is presented in The Venus Project and Zeitgeist. I haven’t looked far enough into either project either, but from the general logic and common sense with which they’ve factored in various considerations, I would imagine that there are at least some very basic plans and/or contingencies drafted for such a transition and I would further venture that the transition would be over a significant period of time. I believe they still desire to get a model city off the ground (?). I plan on looking further into it, if for no other reason than to engage more in the thought process of resource based economy, which is a phenomenal concept. Just based on that, it probably wouldn’t take too much to get me on board at least from a conceptual disposition.

Here’s the biggest obstacle; money. We are living in a time when there is a very militarized and powerful movement by the global wealthy elite to solidify and finalize the stranglehold of the neoliberal economic principles of class warfare. This small fraction of the world’s economically powerful are showing on a daily basis that they are almost as addicted to war and blood as they are to avarice and greed. This group of people will not even permit the peaceful establishment of a true social democracy, let alone a movement of any substantial impact that intends to shift the economic principles from monetary to resource.

If right prevails, as the very best part of me wants to believe that it always will, then we will see this type of a shift eventually, or we will see the end of the world – perhaps neither within our lifetime. But if we intend to ever get to a social system that is anything other than gluttonous, economically oppressive, racist, and sexist, then we are going to have to have a concept in our minds that is based on precisely the fundamental tenets of the Zeitgeist and Venus projects. I do not believe that this will be accomplished without significant time and a horrific amount of bloodshed. But these things will come to pass regardless; my only question is when will the time come when people unite around a consensus of compassion, when will such a consensus recognize that the movement may not survive if it is pacifist, and how will such a movement structure itself so that it is not based on power, but rather a transition toward a social democracy that is based on a resource-based economy. If such a movement and such a transition can develop, I would think that the goal would be a hybrid of a social democracy and a resource-based economy.

There are many people who will purport (possibly quite correctly) that my position is fundamentally flawed in the assertion that seeing an ultimate global revolution or armed conflict can be a true path to a peaceful society. I find myself torn at that very point. I want to believe that we can ultimately reach peace through peace, but history shows us that we have been able to reach peace neither through war or peace. And I believe the reason for this is money. When the goal of humanity is profit, we cannot find a way around the profit of war.

Is it possible then to foresee a future where we are not led peacefully to the slaughterhouse like cattle, where we unite, organize, and provide an alternative to the current political and economic structures, and where we ultimately seek revolution on a peaceful ground? This is always how it should begin. But to look around us, literally and historically, and see that our peaceful world leaders are murdered quite regularly, that peaceful movements become as corrupt as any other political machine, that the disease of capitalism and neoliberal economics are spreading rampantly, is to see that any true mechanism of change must be prepared for a lengthy battle on many different levels.

In the meantime I try to objectively seek input from others, to consider new ideas and perspectives, and to engage in dialogue with others who do the same.

Our voices can only matter if we cause them to be heard.

Anonymity and Accountability

The new AA - Anonymity and Accountability - this could be the corporate politician's AA support group - they demand the former and refuse the latter.

The most convenient thing is that it doesn't matter that there isn't any accountability, that they are misleading, and that the positions they take turn out to be false. The reason it doesn't matter is that unaccountable, misleading, false representation reflects the very values by which they are supported.

Greed and avarice do not go well with accountability, truth, and transparency.

And it isn't necessarily a matter of left or right, democrat or republican; it is a matter of a corrupt system that promotes and rewards dishonesty and corruption. Our motive as a nation is profit. The number one profitable product is the result of a corrupt political system that is driven by profit and the quest for hegemony; and that product is war.

It should be no surprise to anyone to see our social infrastructure dismantled and our civil liberties abandoned as we revert back to a society of institutional economic oppression, sexism, and racism. These are very real and serious circumstances, but we did not arrive here overnight. We were brought here by being divisive and by allowing our government to pit us against each other, while they engaged in neoliberal economic movements, depleting our labor product, exporting our jobs, and opening up international markets through 'free trade' agreements and war.

We are now in the final stages of the process, which is evident as the polarized public is drawn into the battle between left and right. In the interim, our domestic problems distract us from our blatant war crimes and vice versa.

It should be evident to everyone that our government 'representatives', our 'servants', are impotent at best and are corporate puppets at worst. Elections are stolen, lies regarding our domestic and foreign policies are laid out by our mass media in a manner that guides us willingly to our corresponding ‘side’, causing us to fall in line behind our corrupt government, believing that we can change the system from within.

It is apparent that the past one hundred years have taught the wealthy elite some very valuable lessons. We are controlled by fear and division. And while we are now in the throes of division, we should be prepared to be plagued by fear; financial 'crisis' and 'emergency' on the domestic front, and 'national security' on the foreign policy side.

Our value, our labor product, is no longer needed. Enough slave markets have been created beyond our borders that our unions can be stripped bare, our social treasure trove can be given to the wealthy elite, and we are rendered defenseless.

We find ourselves in a position where we must gauge our social strength not relative to our political strength, but by the degree to which we, as a public, see through the veil of government hypocrisy.

The progressive movement wants change, sees social values and the social infrastructure as primary, while the conservative movements still believe in the capitalistic values driven by profit. The progressives desire honesty, transparency, and peace while the conservatives thrive on the concept of strength over weakness, profit over loss, and war over peace.

The most frightening absolute fact is that the money and power is on the conservative side, and the window for true revolution, for true change, is closing. When this window closes - when we find ourselves on the other side of crisis and emergency, with election upon election being stolen, with representatives that do not represent the majority consensus, it will be too late. When at last we are able to unite rather than divide, the emergency and crisis to which we have acquiesced will have left us in the stranglehold of a corporatocracy that shows all too well that social wellbeing holds no relative value.

If we are to be able to change our system from within, we must first recognize the ill nature of our predicament and we must be prepared to call our politicians to account; we must be prepared to demand service from our servants and true representation from our representatives. We must be willing to call a thief a thief, a murderer a murderer, and we must demand justice. We must be willing to apply these principles to our domestic and foreign policies. We must vacate the corrupt houses of the wealthy elite corporate politicians, we must disengage militarily, and we must reassess as a nation where we wish to place our values for the future.

Continued lust for profit, a completely divided progressive movement, and a balance of the remaining population steeped in complacent apathy will leave us lamenting this moment of necessity, this pivotal moment of opportunity.

At the very top, within the circles of the wealthy elite, the left and the right are united, they are working together. They are profiting on our division and they are literally and figuratively banking on our ignorance. They have managed our consent and have played on our division like attorneys in a heated divorce where there are significant assets at stake. At the end of the day, the family is torn to shreds and the attorneys are at a local establishment tipping glasses in congratulations to one another for their corresponding roles in the perverse charade.

Even as I write this, I hear the acknowledgement of the truth mixed with the retreat of the powerless. I hear the indignant rage of the right and the hopeful marching of the left. It is likely that we will continue down the path of division and that the legacy will pass to the next generation. I only hope they are wiser than we have been and that we have at least prepared them well.

‎'Should members of Congress be paid if the government shuts down?' was the question - My Reply:

They should not be paid period.

They are to be public servants, accountable to the public whom they are to serve.

Compensation should be determined proportionate to availability within the budget after providing for the social welfare of the country.

The standards to which they are held should be higher, not lower, ...and the standard by which they are to subsist should be a standard that is proportionate to the median income, not the elite.

They should be stripped of all corporate ties and of all private wealth. Then they should be allowed to serve, with transparency and accountability.

They should be governed as they govern.

They should be imprisoned for their crimes.

They should be made to live with the poor and walk in the streets of the destitute.

They should be made to dress in common clothing and to eat common food.

They should have to walk rather than drive.

They should be given no special treatment whatsoever.

Their travel should be dictated as necessary by the people, with personal and professional expenses published in a standardized format available for all to scrutinize.

They should be made to answer to a citizen panel for their actions on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

They should live paycheck to paycheck and their children should attend public schools.

They should have to serve the country by showing their willingness to put themselves and their loved ones on the front line of any conflict or war into which they are willing to sign away the lives of their countrymen.

They should be willing to partake firsthand in the bloodlust and murder that they agree to each and every time they sign the death warrants of hundreds of thousands of innocent people throughout the world.

They should be stripped of the pride and arrogance that they carry when they look down their noses at their fellow men and women and they should be addressed only as servants, with respect and dignity equal to that which they give.

To serve is not such a bad thing at all; it is an honor, but only when it is done honorably.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

On Faith and Religion

As we step away from the consumer trough we are left beyond the filters through which we, along with our individual and collective consent, are managed.

We live in a time that is as all times are for those who are called with a convicting voice from within; a time when we must recognize the growth that has taken place since humanity was upon the distant horizon; and a voice that tells us that there is a common bond, there is a moral standard, there is a consensus of compassion, and all are one.

These ‘utopian’ principles are at the core of every faith – that is every true faith – non-objectified faith – faith from which religion is born.

When we allow ourselves trapped within the battle of 'religion', we immediately lose faith - and that is the art of politics and religion - to separate and divide, thus allowing the hold of avarice, greed, and pride to take us at the very core, as we flail upon the surface, gasping for small breaths of humanity. All the while our true purpose in life is drawn ever so slowly from our individual and collective soul, and we find ourselves following men, rather than faith.

This is not to say that we should not have faith, that we should not have religion; for our faith and our religion many times represent the very best of all that we are, and are so often the last shred of hope to which so many hold in such desperate times as these.

Rather, we should have faith that is the impetus of hope and that is seen for the false shell of religion upon its request for us to be less than we would otherwise be, when it asks of us to hate and to divide and to war and to profit. We must look to the common ground on which all true faith and religion are based and look away from the manmade structure, the empty monolithic oligarchical behemoth that it becomes when it is subjected to the prideful idolatry of mankind.

We must have faith as reflected through a child's eyes, and if we are called to ‘religion’, we must hold that religion accountable to maintain a religious vision that that is rooted far beneath the surface in our heart of hearts.

Our belief must be so strong that it convicts us and demands our voices ring out; it must be so true that it stands against all odds and demands that the power of the politic and the power of the religion are brought to their knees to serve their purpose, which is to serve the greater good.

Our faith must be so strong that accountability is a byword and that those who rise above, those who lead, perceive and project themselves with a servant’s humility.

Our faith must stand in the face of laughter as it is perceived as weakness, all the while gathering the strength by which it is born and with which it is ever present in each and every one. And it is the strength of our belief and faith that will become manifest in actions that will serve the cause to which we are called.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Goldstone Report - A Work In Progress

http://mondoweiss.net/

This is not easy to watch, but it is the truth from which we turn our eyes daily that allows us to betray our own conscience.

The Goldstone Report chronicles the UN investigation into one event that... took place over one winter; it does not include the beginning of the genocide in 1948 and the literally hundreds of thousands of deaths that have taken place at the hands of Israel, with the consent of the US and with US weapons and finance.

Look upon the poverty, look upon the bodies of dead children, bullet holes through the chest, through the head. Understand just how hollow empathy and compassion look and feel through the veiled distance of photos and videography. What is the active process of faith when the overwhelming sense of powerlessness takes hold; where does the path begin from there to a better tomorrow.

In our name, for what? Get lost in the political, religious, ethical values and find yourself diving to the surface for a tree beneath which you might evade the glaring heat of scorching reality. There is only a voice - one - that is yours, it is mine - it is theirs. If we believe that this can be done in our name and that there is no spiritual retribution, then let us bury our shame in that belief and cry out in indignant rage that we carry forth the lie of the generations before us and burden the spirit of our children with the very same lie.

No. Let us swallow hard and speak the truth to those who might hear. Let us bear the fleeting glances of those who will not engage in even the conversation as to how our collective soul has lost its courage to stand. Let us cast our votes in the process of a lying democracy, because we must, albeit for the lesser of two evils. But let us not give in to the corporatocracy that feeds this warmongering machine of hateful profit.

Let us actively seek to change the system from within the system as we may, but understand that we must harden the spirit in preparation to stand one day with those who fall beneath the crushing weight of our silence today.

Faith does not, in any name, equate to Capitalism or Neoliberal Economics

The purpose of this post is not to challenge Christian belief, disbelief, agreement, etc. The primary purpose is to establish that ANYONE who CLAIMS to be a Christian and adheres to capatilist or neoliberal economic principles is a hypocrite. If the vast majority of Christians in the US would stand on the principle of social provision with common goods, we would have the majority necessary to bring about a necessary fundamental shift in the priorities, goals, actions, and results of our country. If we were a true democracy, if we were a true nation of humanitarians, we would not have capitalism or neoliberal economics as fundamental economic systems.

While this post started out as a way of using a Christian verse to illustrate a point regarding the priorities of the country, it has moved into a broader scope. To start with, however, Mathew 14:13-21 is a great way to illustrate the simple point that Jesus was not a capitalist.

This just happens to be a fun verse with which to make this point.

A secondary purpose of this post is to just open up the minds of objective, compassionate-minded people to consider the radical murderous campaigns of Zionist movements, both Christian and Judaic. Please don't get the concept of compassion in my case confused with pacifism, because not all progressive thinkers are pacifist and I apply this first and foremost to myself. I do not state this with pride, I state it with shame. I wish I could be innocent enough to set aside the defensive nature that rises with the indignation and rage that are associated with the fact that the US government murders without conscience in the name of democracy and humanitarianism. I wish I could turn the other proverbial cheek. I can not, and I believe that the world over sees that peace is the only answer, but war has been the overriding truth. But, as Michael Moore says "I'm not a chihuahua."

So, here we go:

Matthew 14:13-21 (English Standard Version)

Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

13Now when Jesus heard this,(A) he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore he(B) saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. 15Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a desolate place, and the day is now over;(C) send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 16But Jesus said, "They need not go away;(D) you give them something to eat." 17They said to him, "We have only five loaves here and two fish." 18And he said, "Bring them here to me."

19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish,(E) he looked up to heaven and(F) said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children


Imagine Jesus, at verse 19 (above) inserting the capitalist concept of supply and demand! "O.k., we have five thousand people and we have five loaves of bread and five fish. Dude, we can make some serious dough here! Let's start the bidding mid-range and see how much we can get for them! We'll be rich!"

Or - let's go neoliberal. "We have a corporation that can come in, establish the market, manage the process, and we'll give the profits to the stockholders. The rest of the people can go out and fish, bring us their catch, while we give them just enough to eat to keep them alive, and sell the fish at a higher profit margin so that we'll make more money. If they won't work for the lowest possible wage, we'll build a processing plant across the Jordan where people are even more hungry than these; that way, we export our labor. Then, when we ship the processed fish back over, we'll tax the sales, thus paying for the factory with the people's money and we'll make even more profit! Socialize the costs, privatize the profits - they'll make me king! Once I'm king we'll send our army throughout the world, creating more markets, more slave labor processing plants (factories) and the stockholders will all get huge bonuses! If the countries throughout the world don't comply with our demands, we'll stage revolutions, kill innocent people, institute states of 'crisis' and 'emergency', call the people who fight against us 'terrorists' and 'insurgents', rape their women, imprison their children - what a plan - no wonder they call me God!"



Only America could create such a hypocrisy, sell the world that it stands on Christian values, convince the stupid (I intentionally use the word 'stupid' over the word ignorant, because ignorance denotes innocence and everyone knows that the hypocrisy of which I speak is absolute truth and they buy into it anyway with dollar signs for pupils in their greedy eyes) people of the country to pledge allegiance to their own slavery, while voting for the murder of people throughout the world if they won't do the same.

As a country we pray by day, murder by night - in our sleep (impressive!), export our labor, import the goods, increase the price, pay the dividends to the stockholders, create new markets on speculation of 'new market economies' that we create throughout the world, and call it 'democracy' and 'humanitarianism'. And here's what's even better - we've taken the concept of separation of church and state, freedom of religion, etc., and used it to divide ourselves, thereby creating the environment wherein we can point fingers at one another while all buying into and contributing to the same murderous hypocrisy. Hallelujah!!!

Meanwhile folks, our Christian and Judaic Zionist facist principles spread throughout the world, waging absolute war on Islam and any other nation that even thinks about implementing true democracy or utilizing their own resources to serve their own people. Our least favorite humans amongst all are the indigenous peoples of the world. We are assisting the Israelis in doing to the Palestinians what we have done to the Native American Indians - but Israel is even more overt and outspoken in their intentions - in the words of Moshe Dayan in the early 1970's - "You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads." – Moshe Dayan

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."
– Rafael Eitan (1929-2004) served as Chief of Staff of the IDF, and later as Knesset member and government minister.

Read the Goldstone Report and find out how these statements have come to fruition through the policies and procedures of the generationally genocidal government of Israel, which is empowered in spirit and in fact by the United States of America.

You see, the belief is that whether the coming of Christ is the first or the second time, it is prophecy. And the warmongering people of the world justify and rationalize genocide based on this prophecy. Read 'Gaza in Crisis', Illan Pappe and Noam Chomsky for excellent information on the process that has taken place over the past century to accomplish these goals.

Read 'Lords of the Land' by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar for the history of the illegal and murderous settlement process.

Here are the arguments - and they are base, at best.

1) If you don't like it, you can leave. This is America, son. If you don't support our government you're just not patriotic. You just need to Shut Up!

Imagine my response:

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" Thomas Jefferson

“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2) Other countries are more oppressive and religion has a history of genocide.

Imagine my response:

I don't care. This is my country as well as anyone's and I am not of any religion - better yet, faith - that is beneath consience and compassion. I believe in peaceful dissent and, if necessary, peaceful revolt. When our government stands, as it will, in its murderous stance against its own people - better even, consider this already accomplished as our government states within its proclomation of hypocrisy that the people of the world are the people of America - then we must stand for ourselves. We can no longer be a nation that stands because it is divided. Indeed, we must become a nation that stands because it is united. We must lay aside labels, filters, partisanship, religion, and most of all CONSUMERISM, and we must stand on the principle of human value.

A Smile on Dying

Nicholas Sterner (100):

A flower saw a woman cry
perhaps an angel, loneliness
who for a gesture of pure good will
returned a tear of sweet caress
If this is all that we might give
a moment's smile of tenderness
a vessel empty we might fill
a restless heart may soon well rest

Indigenous

It is wonderful to... (100):

It is wonderful to see people defend their land,
as troubled as it may be, with such passion
and to speak of its beauty even when it has been portrayed in darkness
And isn't it common that the beauty of a country is most often reflected most purely in the eyes of its most humble citizens?

Mourning Lullaby

The city awakens,... (100):

The city awakens as the sun goes down,
urban America on the horizon
The echo of the machine
The soundtrack of humanity
against the backdrop of sacrifice bereft of conviction
Sleep, America, fall
The cries of the dying world
are the lullaby of the mourning

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

US-Israeli Goals

http://www.aipac.org/index.asp

The upcoming American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in May promises to be the largest, most opulent, well attended (over 60% of congress will attend) political conference in history. At this conference, where congressmen and women meet with the parties who are often their most prominent benefactors, more long-term domestic and foreign policy deals are cemented than on the hill itself.

The following quote from Ilan Pappe in 'Gaza in Crisis' demonstrates the sheer power of this lobbying force, and provides a secondary resource of scholarly opinion - "A thought-provoking article was published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (stating that) based on extended research .. AIPAC .. directs American (foreign) policy in a way that undermines the US national interest"-'Not since the '60's could one have come across such a harsh criticism of either Zionism or US policy from within the heart of American academia or the media'. Pappe also refers to a Newsweek article dated as far back as 1963, in which it was written that ‘AIPAC (is) one of the most effective networks of foreign influence’. It is quite evident that another forty-seven years has entrenched AIPAC ever more deeply into the pockets of congress, wielding its corrosive influence in foreign and domestic policy.

Regarding the American Israeli Policy Conference – (http://www.aipac.org/pc) Pappe states that ‘each such (conference) expresses unconditional (US) support for Israel's policy toward the Palestinians and anyone opposing this policy is immediately considered by AIPAC to be its enemy.’

‘Gaza in Crisis’ provides phenomenal research and detailed sources of how AIPAC has developed over the years to be the most influential bi-partisan (although I consider this term moot due to my belief that our corporatocracy is only packaged as a democracy) lobbying group in the history of the nation. While many see clearly the validity of this claim, its well chronicled history is invaluable in terms of validating and supporting the indignation one reaches as a result of witnessing the continued generational genocide of the Palestinian people.

Now, as the 2011 AIPAC '(US) Policy Conference' approaches, Obamabush has clearly demonstrated the position of his administration through his veto of the internationally supported UN resolution to stall the Israeli settlement process (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/obamas-veto-on-israeli-se_b_838060.html) (for history on the settlement process, see Lords of the Land - Idith Zertal/Akiva Eldar). This action, which flies in the face of his supporters, defies the wishes of the international community, and goes against the grain of everything on which he campaigned, surely solidified (in his mind and perhaps in the minds of his corporate handlers) the support of the most powerful foreign lobbyists in the world.

It has been widely established that the financial contribution by AIPAC to congressional aides and presidential candidates (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-to-Look-at-AIPAC-Cont-by-Ralph-Lopez-100603-774.html and http://www.wrmea.com/html/aipac.htm and http://www.wrmea.com/html/aipac.htm) over the past sixty years is only paled by the vast amount of financial and military support from the US to Israel in the reciprocal process (http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/245-2008-november/3845-congress-watch-a-conservative-estimate-of-total-direct-us-aid-to-israel-almost-114-billion.html).

With the aforementioned unconditional US support of Israel embroiling the US in deeper and more severe conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, one wonders what the US/Israeli ‘end game’ might be for the parties in the MENA region. One can only speculate, making as much of an educated and informed assessment as possible based on circumstances as they are, the economic, political, and military maneuvers of the past that can be used to identify patterns, and the self-proclaimed projected goals of the parties involved.

It is my assertion here that the short-term goal for the US and Israel is for Israel to maintain ‘public’ disengagement, dedicating its forces to the continued oppression of the Palestinians, while establishing expansion through ‘facts on the ground’ via the settlement process; meanwhile, in the short term, the US can continue its engagement in the region through its established and new wars and conflicts, developing a more defined regional disposition from which to maneuver in what appears to be a preparation for the mid-term goal, which I believe is to establish absolute US/Israeli and Saudi dominance in the region through an intensified conflict or war with Iran, which will then position all parties to achieve the ultimate long-term goal is nothing less than absolute global dominance – hegemony – which will be established over time through the continued process of neoliberal privatization of the globe, resulting in three classes; the wealthy elite, consumer markets, and those who serve the markets.

In the short-term, it is apparent that Israel will continue the settlement process while continuing to intimidate and harass Lebanon (daily flights over Lebanese airspace, border crossings to provoke confrontation, etc.), proliferate settlement throughout the greater Golan Heights area and continue to militarily threaten Syria and Jordan, while allowing both countries to destabilize, as this will serve Israel well to the end of achieving Israeli resettlement on both sides of the Jordan, as they believe it is their prophecy to reclaim and inhabit the entire region.

The primary phase of the underlying mid-term goal of US/Israeli policy is to undermine Iran's influence in the Middle East. This accomplished, will give way to a secondary phase of this goal, which is to give Israel, by using brute military force against its neighbors, the unchallenged dominating presence in the Middle East. This position is supported by the posturing and positioning of US incumbents, candidates, and alumni from both sides (and even the middle) of the fictitious US political aisle.

These goals are supported by Israel’s own declarations (see the links below) regarding their issues, the policy goals they expect to be achieved by the US, and by what they overtly state that the US must do to earn the wealth that has been spread by corrupt Israeli financial influence throughout the US government. Review the US/Israeli agenda for the upcoming years. Follow policy as it develops and watch how clearly it mirrors the agenda set forth by Israel and followed by the US.

(http://www.aipac.org/Legislation_and_Policy/default.asp)
(http://www.aipac.org/The_Issues/index.asp)

The US and Israel have been for some time engaging in rhetoric concerning Iran’s desire to attain nuclear weapons with literal and metaphorical far reaching accusations; from Senator Joe Lieberman ‘highlighting the (nuclear) threat from Iran’ and US Ambassador and ‘Permanent Representative of the US’ to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Glyn Davies touting the ‘increasingly apparent military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program’ to the former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley threatening international economic sanctions against Zimbabwe for ‘suggesting’ that they might support Iran ‘in ways that violate UN Security Council Resolutions’. Meanwhile, Iran has opened its nuclear facilities to anyone at anytime for any type of inspection. One hears the sabers rattling in the same wind that blows in the cold chills of the hundreds of thousands of dead and dying Iraqi civilians that were murdered after the same saber rattled some years ago. If I were Iran, or any other country in the sites of the US and Israel, I would want to have nuclear weapons as well. Jonathan Schell points out in ‘The Seventh Decade’ that possessing ‘the bomb’ has apparently kept the US from invading anyone who has one for quite some time, while the very notion of an ‘enemy’ obtaining ‘the bomb’ has solidified the foreign policy of preemptive invasion .

These facts - the incredible influence of Israel in the US transnational neoliberal corporate global structure - parallel to the mid-term goal of undermining the regional influence of Iran, identify two things to any clear-minded objective observer:

1) The purpose of US actions in Libya (especially if you consider the tenuous position of US/Israel relations with the yet-to-be-established leadership in Egypt) and in other areas throughout the region serve to solidify the US position in the region to assist with the final thrust of power towards Iran; without going into too much detail, consider these points:

a. In Bahrain the US has scolded publically, while officially allowing US jets, tanks, and troops to ‘intervene’ under the Saudi Arabian flag. Remember that the Fifth Naval Fleet is already sitting in the Persian Gulf, so that small area can be kept fairly quiet while maintaining the capability to strike Iran at a moment’s notice from the gulf. The assertion that the US Fifth Naval Fleet is doing nothing while the world burns around them is nothing less than ludicrous.

b. It is verified that permanent US military bases have been established in Iraq.

c. The crumbling of Pakistan’s resistance in the Raymond Davis fiasco, its inability to effectively stop the US from murdering its citizens with drone attacks, and the fact that there is a military base located in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, adjacent to the Pakistan border, fairly well establishes that there is significant long-term US military strength represented to the south of Iran.

d. Afghanistan has recently been subject to a steady build-up of US troops and bases.

e. The US has almost completed the transfer of a 60bn arms package, the largest in history, with Saudi Arabia. In July the US will begin training Saudi Arabian pilots in US fighter jets at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

f. The US is only intervening in areas that are strategic for military and/or (neoliberal) economic purposes (i.e., Egypt, which represents a vast market economy; hence, the US backed dictatorship, which could now translate to a neoliberal consumer ‘democracy’ unless the people hold their ground and are able to overcome the corrupt influence that has already worked its way into the revolutionary circle).

2) A US/Israeli armed conflict or war with (invasion of) Iran is imminent and it will need to be justified by some overt act of aggression.

a. While the US population is evidently unable to call its government to account, it is highly unlikely that the same population will consider that the logical cause of the impending conflict will be the immense aggression, the absolute terrorism, the generational genocide, the decimation of the population, the destruction of the infrastructure, that the US and Israel have exerted in the region over the last sixty years.

b. It is not unlikely that the US and Israel, now completing the achievement of surrounding Iran with troops, bases, naval fleets, and aircraft carriers, will engage in ‘military exercises’ in an attempt to draw Iran into a conflict; indeed, that is most likely what is happening behind the scenes in at least one or two of the regional conflicts.

i. If Iran does not react, which it most likely will not (having demonstrated recently by stepping far beyond necessary diplomatic measures that it chooses to remain disengaged from regional crisis), it would not be unlikely that there have already been contingent plans drawn for false flag operations such as the ones that took place in the Gulf of Tonkin and those that were drafted, albeit never carried out, in the Northwoods CIA plans. I know that false flag operations are considered fringe, and I avoid the fringe whenever possible, so please exercise due diligence and research the declassified documents that support both of these references.

Conclusion:

Consider the economic destabilization of the public in the US and the UK over the last few years; the collapse and subsequent bailout of the financial markets, the unwillingness of the corporate market to reinvest in the economy, and now the destructive legislation that is being passed throughout the nation with the underlying ‘emergency’ and ‘crisis’ legislation that will grant state and municipal power to corporations. This process is accomplishing several things:

1) It is disempowering what semblance of democratic powers were left; the state and municipal authorities.

2) It is destroying the social infrastructure on which the poor and rapidly diminishing middle class would rely upon in the case of catastrophic economic collapse.

3) It is stripping the last vestige of powers in the form of unions that were earned through literal blood and sweat over more than one hundred years.

4) It is establishing the framework to remove the thin veil of what people believed was a democracy that has mutated over time into a plutocracy and now is in the final stages of becoming an absolute neoliberal corporatocracy. The finalization of this process, which will occur through the declaration of ‘emergency’ and ‘crisis’, be it economic or military, will complete the privatization of everything - including public education, social programs (which will be all but nonexistent as there is no profit in them), military, and government.

While this process is in place – with the vast majority of the people in the US and the UK embroiled in the fight to hold onto what rights they thought they had, grasping at apparitions of ‘democracy’, attempting to reconcile in their minds the truth of their new reality with the ideology on which they have staked their entire sociopolitical belief system – a ‘final war’ is being arranged; a war that will theoretically ‘end all wars. This war will finalize Zionism, with Israel realizing its prophetic return to its homeland http://www.aipac.org/25937.asp s being devised through the partnership of the global wealthy elite, and will be exercised through the corporate powers that they are putting in place as we speak.
At the end of the ‘war’, there will be a three tiered structure:

1) Wealthy Elite

2) Consumer (slave) markets – and this is where Neoliberalism fails – it establishes the elite, expecting the wealth to trickle down, while it destroys the infrastructure. When the wealth does not trickle down, the middle consumer market collapses and there is no social infrastructure to support it.

3) Economically oppressed servants of the consumer slave markets

The struggle in this plan is ours. The wealthy elite, the corporate oppressors, the bought and packaged politicians, the military industrial complex, the future municipal managers, are able already to slaughter millions across the globe without so much as a second thought. As the young men and women of our country, the vast majority of them from the ever diminishing middle class and the lower economically oppressed urban environments, are lured into war, they are forced to abandon their conscience and commit atrocious acts on behalf of this plan. If and when they return to their moral conscience, they are never the same. You and I are actors on the stage of the consumer slaves, sold into the daily onslaught of financial struggle while hoping to achieve the American dream; all the while, our government is acting in our name and exemplifying to the world that we are a country without a conscience. As we move toward the further destabilization of our economy, while the social infrastructure on which we have relied – which we have taken for granted – deteriorates under the systematic dismantling process that is in place, we move closer to playing out our final role in this plan. You see, this plan is going to take years, generations, to unfold. And as it does, we live and die in the struggle. It is our children and our grandchildren who will be called to die for the fight we did not fight. When the ultimate corporatocracy takes over, we will all be its subjects; and if we are not willing, we will be the insurgents, the terrorists. We will be the hunted, by drones, by the ‘most powerful killing machine in history’ (Dan Rather); and when I say we, I only hope that there is time that it might be us who fight the fight, that there might be time to fight the system from within the system; that we might return to our own morality, to our own conscience, and that we might understand that it is our responsibility to hold our government accountable, that it is our responsibility to stop the murder that takes place in our name, that it is the hope of a decent life for our future generations that rests upon the generations of those whom we do not stand for today.