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'.