What are the trends in our world pointing to?
What can we do as individuals to move the direction of the world in a better direction?
I find two statements constantly used:
1) “Be the change you seek”. The idea that we must first become fully enlightened saints before any justice or redress of the outrages can be obtained. It is important that we find empathy in our hearts, patience, and non violence, even as those of who scrutinize the outrages occurring daily against the people and the natural systems of the earth, become more and more upset.
I believe the powerful interests who have become stronger and stronger in recent times, are still humans that can be reasoned with. Their points of view may be extremely frustrating to try to reshape, but I am not yet at the point where I have given up at all. Just as the powerful have fragmented and harassed the movements that have sought to confront them, they too are vulnerable to division. The ruling class can be split through mass movements and persuasive argument. The statement be the change you seek has the danger of delaying action until vast amounts of damage are done. I would answer that making change happen in the world transforms the person. That to be a revolutionary in times of great injustice is to be spiritually alive, and that any other choice is collusion with basically, evil.
2) The second statement I hear is “What can I do ?”. The sentiment in the United States is one of total personal powerlessness. I asked my father, a former left leaning history professor what one family member could do, he suggested she donate money to a abused animals fund. From my point of view, this would be the worst possible distraction.
So these 2 questions to me are vital.
The statements I am about to make are not loosely researched opinion, they are indisputable double referenced facts. I have tried very hard to not make any journalistic mistakes, and when I have done so I have updated the notes section to reflect any errors.
We look in horror at the snowballing concentration of power. Must I enumerate them? What are the powerful interests that control our society? Briefly the main stream media is no longer engaged in anything resembling what journalism should be. Fox News and MSNBC while actually having very similar ownership and interests, appear to be different, and in some respects are, but more and more they share a common assumption of what the world is. One openly favors the wealthy supporting massive government – but only in intelligence and defense and police, the guardians of the wealthy classes power. [1] The other advocates a robust state both in military and police powers, but in using a government that is now captive to large interests to solve social problems. Six large companies control the majority of the western worlds wealth, the two largest of which are State Street and Black Rock. The CEO of Black Rock, Larry Fink, was the number 1 person who Timothy Geithner spoke to while he was secretary of the treasury. These companies are seldom mentioned in the media, which they control the majority of the stock in. If these companies sold their holdings it would tank nearly any major companies stock. The regulation of both telecommunications and media has permitted massive and disturbing concentration. The combination of the military industrial complex with certain religious conservatives, certain neo-conservative Manichaean evangelicals, quasi fascism supporters of ultra right policies in the Catholic Church Opus Dei, these forces aligning with a media and financial sector heavily dominated by Jewish Americans who I have no hostility towards, however this intersection of a war vs Israel and the Palestinians has created an alliance where criticism of Israel is politically very dangerous as the public humiliation of Chuck Hegel certainly evidenced – creates a media military industrial complex. And one of the root problem’s appears to be Invasion capitalism, destroying and then rebuilding countries, opening up foreign countries to US business, while an understandable goal becomes extremely vile and sinister, when accompanied by gunboat diplomacy, which I have found calmly and openly called for in respectable magazines.
Our private communications are collected at a rate of at minimum 1.5 billion communications a day. We pay as much for defense and surveillance as all other domestic programs combined at federal level, while simulataneously having a world that is actually by and large peaceful in terms of the specter of a large scale conventional conflict. We spend at least 100 million dollars a year per 9-11 victim, money which in effect actually stops the prevention of 4,000 deaths, in effect killing 4,000 people for each death saved by not having a massive security state. Additionally the massive security state makes us less safe, and leads to a fearful citizenry.
Those of us who report on these things live in fear, fear for acting morally. Because it is immoral to stay silent when you see these things happening. Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and those few people in the government still willing and able to try to expose daylight on these matters. In fact in Dante’s inferno – there is a special level of hell dedicated specifically to those who stand by and do nothing. If I feel the pressure of self censorship, imagine how much more so do those in positions in the public spotlight. Is it not interesting that the one effective critic of unbridaled power in finance, Elliot Spitzer was taken down due to his sexual peccadillos. Sex Crime is how the great champions of liberty are destroyed.
The Obama administration has taken the imperial presidency of Bush to a new level, with Greenwald Taibbi and others calling Obama “Bush on Steroids”
Our country has engaged in war crimes of a horrific nature, in the name of spreading our values. Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Mali, Iraq and Syria are all places where mass death, looting of the countries assets, the most heinous forms of torture, and all could not have happened without us. [2]The petro monarchies Qatar and Saudi Arabia in particular have been collaborating with us in many of these sordid affairs. The Obama administration complains of Qatari arming of Libyan religious extremists and Syrian religious extremists. These cries ring hollow when one considers that the largest arms sales in the history of the world occurred under the Obama administration to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Add to this the national security laws, whose very interpretations are secret, and a public who is denied access to this information through their media who has utterly failed to inform them on the majority of these matters, perpetuating a “thought monoculture” coming from the Washington Bubble. These national security laws run roughshod over the bill of rights, while our constitutional law professor presides over one of the most serious assaults on the Bill of Rights in the history of our republic.
I have witnessed the assault on my childrens minds of a seriously broken public education system, a higher education system that itself has turned to profit and power, betraying its clients, the students, and an electoral system that is a joke. A two party state is little better than a one party state. The computerization of voting machines has been done completely incorrectly, is the subject of major scandal, and thus far is used only to tip elections, that is to steal close races. It is shocking that such a large nation cannot even issue an audit trail for its voting systems. It would be far better to simply have open ballots than secret ballots which are so secret we do not know whether our vote was even counted, or if it was counted against the very person we sought to elect.
The Republican Party has now begun to institute rules that were popular in totalitarian parties such as the Bolsheviks and the Nazi’s. After the embarrassment of Ron Paul, the local leadership will be selected by a national committee. This is an oversimplification but if you research this it is a black mark of shame on the Republican Party.
Our constitution must be amended to have 2 changes made to it:
1) We must add a 3rd legislative body based on national popular vote, wherein fractional candidates are represented. There are very few in congress that vote against the attack on constitutional liberties, the attack on the internet through both DoD NSA CIA type maneuvers and Intellectual Property laws, that vote against war, that would be willing to cut off funding to Israel if she does not allow the Palestinians the right to vote, an unbelievable state of affairs. Those few who do – are targeted for removal. With an unbelievable near 90% re-election rate, those who stand up for these principals are defeated through being targeted. Dennis Kucinich is one. Pete Stark is another.
So it is time ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, to turn our eyes to the solution.
This will be my last broadcast which focuses on the perfidy of the ruling classes of the Western World. I will no longer spend my days tallying their sins and watching them in horror. God willing they will watch us as we build better systems, better institutions and better organizations, to obsolete crony capitalism.
I commit to being the change I seek, and to helping provide an answer to the abdication of personal direct action I hear all around me.
Note: Al Qaeda linked “in Mali”, in “Syria”, in “Phillipines”. If drones have killed 4,000 terrorists, then the word terrorist has lost its meaning. 4,000 people are not terrorists, they are a political opposition, or simply the wrong people.
[1] 44:35 http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in
[2] 56:20 http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in