Go Team Nationalism!

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other."
Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln included a biblical reference in his famous "House divided" speech that significantly differed from the original statement and took on a new life as a cause for struggle. According to the gospel of Mark, Jesus said "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand." at the time reasoning against his accusers. Lincolns' use of this analogy was political, but it was also moral and sound logic. But is it possible that both Jesus and Lincoln unnecessarily limited the scope of this brilliant analogy, and therefore it's potential impact? In Lincolns' case specifically his goals were purposely limited and short term and the result has been to our long term detriment. All that he desired from this mighty metaphor was to reunite the burgeoning American empire under his leadership, one could assume his motives were pure or perhaps not.

But what is a "Nation" really? It's not real in the way that a person is real, or a tree, an animal, or the planet. Nations don't actually exist but on paper and in the minds of people, they are no more real than a spell of magic cast upon the impressionable collective conscious. For thousands of years maps were commissioned by kings and conquerors to portray a world divided, carved up and claimed by men who sought power over their fellow man. It is only in recent times that we have real images of the Earth from satellites showing us the truth, an undivided world of blues, greens, and of course earth tones. When one contemplates the true image of Earth from space it is difficult not to notice the absence of false lines, endless text, and the pastel patchwork covering most man made maps and globes. Pondering the image of this beautiful planet can eventually break the spell of these old, tired, outdated empires.

Lincolns' divided house was not a house at all, but a collection of territories, not unlike those ruled by the Roman and British empires. Kingdoms and empires have always been about collecting cities, territories, resources under one crown, one emperor, one monopolistic mentality. A city is real, a collection of cities is imagined, temporary, and can only be imposed by force and a constant threat of violence and political penalty. The city state model of ancient Greece is the most real political model yet conceived, because a "city" is a real thing with visible boundaries, not unlike a person. It is the height of reason to suggest that a city can and should be self governed, and it is equally the height of absurdity to suggest that one city should rule over others sometimes hundreds of miles away.

Todays "America" is a territorial Goliath, an empire whose great expanse would make any Roman emperors' ambition feel a sense of inadequacy. Even the smallest state in the nation (Rhode Island) would not be too small to be it's own nation on the European subcontinent, and even that would be a collection of cities ruled by one city. Imagine if (after World War II) the Soviet Union had been in a position to march into every European city and annex them into their already massive territories. This is what would be required for the citizens of Paris, Luxembourg, and Madrid to send their annual tax payments to a city thousands of miles away. But in the united states we do so relatively willingly and without much consideration of fairness. What would be a dismal humiliation to Europeans somehow seems reasonable to Americans.

France may be the primary reason that we have a "united states" model with a powerful centralized governing entity we call the federal government. When our "Forefathers" called upon the French to assist them in their revolt the French leaders would not do so unconditionally, they wanted the colonies to unite under one figure head for the purpose of clear and direct negotiations and strategies. This model was kept in place after the initial victory because the threat of a British invasion remained a constant for the formative years of the fledgling nation and the union was considered the best defense. Surely the various colonies would have preferred to be autonomous especially considering the growing tensions around the slavery issue that later erupted into civil war. The "Union" was forged as a direct result of fear of a people united only by the constant threat of a common enemy.

Sports teams teach us all we need to know about the spell of Nationalism and it's patriots. It is with the same mindless devotion to a local sports franchise that most people love their "country". Within cities high school sports teams create rivalries from one side of town to the next, within counties there are rivalries between towns, states are divided by county rivalries, and of course nationwide it is state versus state. But there are some people who move around the town, the state, or the country and for them a mindless devotion to one team is almost impossible, they simply must consider other factors if they insist on favoring one team over another. With nationalism we are taught to simply love and adore the nation who claims the territory under our feet, and when necessary to adopt the enemy of the day and even give our lives to defeat them.

Nationalism is a false model that divides the true house we all share called Earth. The unquestioning impulse of Nations to collect more territories, cities, resources, and influence is contradictory to the collective desire for democracy, equality, and justice. Someday perhaps we can wake up from this powerful spell called nationalism and begin to localize our democracy and globalize our equality. But a step in the right direction would be to break up the "unions" of states and territories under centralized governments like the United States, China, India, Brasil, and now the European Union. Not in the largely symbolic way in which the Soviet Union dissolved, but with full autonomy in each state. The people of the world would welcome smaller, more manageable nations, though the nations themselves, false as they may be, would rather torch the world than lose any ill-gotten power over the people.

It is time for the people to take back the power from the imaginary realm of nations, no man (or woman) is fit to rule over their fellow man, it is an affront to democracy, equality, and justice.

Justice just is.

Liberty is always free, just reach out and take it.

You'll know if it's a real law if you just can't seem to break it.

Justice just is, we don't need to force or fake it.

The wheel invented us, long before we could make it.

What is justice? Ask a hundred different people and you will surely get a hundred different answers. This doesn't mean that justice is an illusion though it may be somewhat elusive. The same could be said for love yet no one is cynical enough to consider this proof that love doesn't exist, in fact love may be the only thing that is real. But these absolute abstractions are not for man to define and no living man can represent them universally to all. Yet we live in a worldly construct of men who claim to be authorities in the realm of justice, man imposing his justice on his fellow man. The practice of law is an arrogant game when it should be at best a humble service equal to the preparation and serving of meals. A judge is no more qualified to speak for justice than a janitor.

Men (and women) of self proclaimed importance seek to guide the hand of justice, but justice does not bend for man, man must let justice guide their hands. Any man who seeks to be an authority of justice on Earth is himself guilty of subverting justice and therefore unjust. For all of the legal design to protect the rights of those who come before the judge, justice is never truly served. From the police man to the judge to the jailer to the executioner, justice is further and further from it's home. The obedience to precedent in court decisions seems to suggest that callous consistency is more important than correcting the mistakes of man made justice. We are told there is an "Arch of justice" and that gradually (over thousands of lifetimes perhaps) we will someday reach "Justice." I do believe that justice is our final destination, but so is it our past, present, and future, it is our here and now.

If we wish to understand justice we should instead call it "Balance", this is a far more accurate and unambiguous term. Not that the same mistakes cannot be made, but that each entity can truly be their own authority, or at least humble observer. Many may be convinced that justice requires years of study at an expensive law school to grasp. But we are all students of balance and as we stand and walk without falling we feel we have a good grasp of this practical phenomena no matter how abstract. Our so-called justice system is often the perpetrator of greater crimes than any one man can achieve, and in many cases actually reverses justice where it exists.

Our correctional facilities are fundamentally incorrect in their design and have a negative effect on the natural order, the natural balance. The duration of time that many people spend incarcerated becomes a crime against that person as their time goes on and on well beyond any notion of correction. If we can see the injustice of the system for what it is then one begins to see uniformed men kidnapping (not arresting) people, robed men condemning (not judging) them, and more uniformed men holding them against their will like slaves, slaves to a corrupt and ultimately flawed institution. Withdrawing any validity from these men and their false institution one begins to see that they are criminals in their word and deed, nothing more than common thieves, kidnappers, and murderers.

The unfortunate reality of man made justice is that it is anything but fair, it is the poor, the minority, the demonized in our culture who suffer the wrath of this institutional weapon. Minorities are arrested in far greater numbers, given far harsher sentences, and fail far more parole hearings than their white counterparts. Even if you believe that man is capable of guiding the hand of justice on Earth, it is hard to disagree that the american justice system is and always has been an overwhelmingly racist apparatus serving the white mans fear and hatred of his darker skinned brothers. Man made justice is out of balance with nature and can never achieve it's stated goals. Instead of removing the volatile elements from our society it gives many of them uniforms and weapons and robes and iron bars, and essentially a license to kill, kidnap, rob and steal. It is somehow better for wild dogs to be leashed and trained to commit crimes on command as the attack dogs of the state.

Justice is far better served when men do nothing, then when men relinquish their power to so-called "authorities."

Representative Demockery

We are told that we have a Democracy and our will is being done through our representatives in Congress. We are told that our votes matter, that we make a difference when we go to the polls. As long as you are happy with the extremely subtle options you have from one candidate to the next, you can make some difference. But if you are considered "left of center" or "far right" you may be forever politically banished from participating in real change. The ruling political factions are constantly pulling the wheel in both directions so that no person is heading in the direction they favor and no one will ever be able to turn this ship of state around should we be heading in the wrong direction completely.

Where ever you are in America you have a representative in Congress, WOW! There's someone in Washington DC right now who is willing to go to bat for you, to bring your concerns to the table, to reconcile your interests with the interests of others. What? You've never met your Congress person? You haven't given them your list of things you need done? What are you waiting for? They're there to serve you. That's why they're called representatives, right? Does anyone believe this? Does anyone out there actually think that they have a hot line to the government in their Congress person? Of course not, except,... unless... you're a corporation. Corporations have lobbyists, they make campaign contributions, they know they're represented.

So, average American, ha ha, the joke is on you: your representative is not representing you to the government, they are representing those corporations who give them money, oh yes, and themselves. Look at our Democracy from the standpoint of Corporations and industry representatives and it begins to make perfect sense. There are over 300 million Americans with interests and concerns that are opposed to your interests and concerns, oh no, how do we get what we want? Don't worry about them, because they have relinquished their power to a handful of career politicians, less than 600! As a corporation you can't vote for these people, but you can finance their elections, and you can inundate them with lobbyists, sometimes as many as six lobbyists for each representative!

Of course you can do a lot more as a corporation, you can give politicians gifts, discounts, favors, perks, and sometimes drugs and prostitutes, why not? Sure there are laws against these things but, ha ha ha ha, seriously, as if you can jail a corporation. You're perfectly safe from prosecution, theoretically you can get in serious trouble but come on, you own this country. And the more politicians you buy the more of this country you own, and that country over there too. So don't worry about "We the people" just keep the people content enough, they have too much to lose to take back Democracy from your greedy clutches. Most of the people are apathetic and have lost faith in Democracy long ago, isn't that great?! They had some hope with Obama and now they know that it's completely hopeless because you own Obama now too, success!

We will not have true Democracy until we have direct Democracy. No more representatives, they have never represented my interests and they never will. If we can have such low voter turn outs for electing people, then why don't we just vote on each issue ourselves? If you don't care about an issue don't vote, but don't trust anyone to vote in your interest, that's just plain stupid. There should not be parties lumping votes together in a Democracy, the whole purpose of block voting is to sabotage Democracy. Instant runoff voting would be far better than our current system as it would eventually break the duopoly imposed by the Democrats and Republicans, who represent the same interests. But I prefer to make my own decisions and I am not dumb enough to trust any politician, especially when they are selling hope and change.

An Inconvenient Revolution

"You say you want a revolution, we better get it on right away"

John Lennon

The fore fathers of America were "revolutionaries" but they merely succeeded in creating a new empire to take the place of the old one. At any given time in every country around the world there are a number of people who would join a rebellion against that country. Not for the thrill or glory of an impossible battle, but for the crimes they have witnessed by those in power. Modern forms of government are not perfect to put it lightly, but from their foundation perfection is unattainable. Only from fear of an evil chaotic anarchy do we hold fast to these systems that are failing us and destroying the lands we cherish and every form of life that inhabits it.

The lines between country and corporation have blurred so completely they have all but vanished, so that politicians only decide how the planet will be raped for short term gain. And war, the biggest business of all, will continue to be a booming industry as long as there's anything left in the universe to blow up. Workers will forever teeter between being worked to death and starved to death all for the promise of a brighter day. The possibility (however improbable) of the average worker becoming wealthy in their lifetime is the carrot, and the prison in every town and city is the stick.

Our corporate models are designed to squeeze every resource more tightly every quarter to bring back bigger and bigger profits to the shareholders. This is a machine designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer at an exponential rate. Their wealth buys them every material possession they could imagine, but wealth is also power, and the wealthy enjoy more rights than those of the poor. Justice and democracy do not exist in the realm of capitalism because wealth buys elections and wins court cases. Health is even for sale and many people simply cannot afford to pay medical bills, to make people poorer is to take from them their health.

Those who sit in the executive positions of states and corporations also enjoy the security of almost complete insulation from those who suffer from their decision making. The wealthiest 5% do not just get bumped into on the streets, they have their own worlds and rarely do they leave them. They can go from their massive estate to their country club, and then off to the VIP section of the local airport to have their private jet take them to their private island in the Bahamas. The rich and powerful spend much of their money on security to keep us away from them so they never have to listen to our cries for justice. All one has to do to experience this is demonstrate at the meetings of the WTO, the G8 or G20, or any other conspiring of these entities.

For some people there is nothing left to lose, the police are at the door with the eviction notice from the bank and there's no place else in the world for them to go. Maybe they have unpaid medical bills and just lost their job, or they have been looking but there is no job and unemployment cut them off. Isolated and afraid some people take desperate actions like the man who flew his small plane into an IRS building, some just suffer in silence. For most people in America revolution would be a major inconvenience, they still have something left to lose and they think they can keep it and still have more. It has always been important for the wealthy to keep a balance between the desperate and the content, but this equilibrium has ended.

What is revolution? Well it can be a lot of things, it can be a violent upheaval or it can be a grassroots campaign gone global. I do not condone the use of violence but for those in power violence is the solution to every problem, and when they engage people in violent ways they are spinning their own fate. I believe we can have a peaceful revolution world wide with the majority of the 10 billion souls willing to lay everything on the line for a new lateral world without corporations creating modern day aristocrats to rule over the peasants. Money is the contract by which we sell our souls to our governments and relinquish our power to the wealthy. You can be a revolutionary with a wallet, a ballot, or a bullet, but it's not revolutionary if it doesn't change the world.

Lies are the holes that the truth leaks through.

"We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security." National Security Adviser Jim Jones

A massive leak of internal documents revealing the truth behind White House and Pentagon propaganda has been released exposing a truly horrific view of the long ongoing war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg gave the public the information necessary to determine the true worth of the war in Vietnam and led to the ultimate conclusion of that conflict, now WikiLeaks is the best hope the anti-war movement has to put the final nail in the Bush administrations war on terror. But is it the Bush administrations war anymore? The anti-war movement is largely responsible for putting Obama in office even though he painted Afghanistan as somehow worth billions of tax payer dollars and the lives of American and Nato soldiers.

So here comes the token rhetoric from the war mongers in the White House and the Pentagon, it doesn't have to be written because it's simply in the play book. The classic counter leak strategy is to tell us that WikiLeaks and it's founder Julian Assange are putting the lives of soldiers and other personnel at great risk. The fact is exactly the opposite, the Afghan war is putting the lives of soldiers and other personnel at great risk and for no reason whatsoever. If we could go back as a nation and make decisions about Vietnam with all of the information we have now, we never would have allowed Kennedy to send "military advisors" in the first place. The mission was flawed because the logic was flawed and the catastrophic results are incalculable. Without the Pentagon papers throwing a monkey wrench in the war machine Vietnam could have gone on to destroy millions more lives.

Now the man hunt is on for the responsible parties in leaking this information and we are to believe that whistle blowers are the offenders of justice. As if the ones who tell you lies are the good guys and the ones who tell you the truth are evil, is our sense of right and wrong so easy to manipulate that this sounds reasonable to us now? When a witness of a violent crime takes the stand to point out the offender do we then put the witness in jail? Do we discuss just how the witness telling the truth for the record has put the criminals mission in jeopardy? Should we then feel sorry for the criminal and attack the witness for bravely telling the truth? This is the reason there is a witness protection program, and it's the same reason there used to be protections for whistle blowers.

When I voted in the last election I was not voting for a new and improved war on terror, I was voting for reason, rationality, and truth. Obama has been nothing but a disappointment to those who hired him and what's worse his behavior as president somehow validates everything Bush and Cheney did in office. He has abused the powers of the presidency in the wake of the Bush administrations chaotic restructuring of that office. Republicans may prefer an imperial presidency with all the powers of a king (at least when that king is their boy) but Obama is supposed to be an expert on constitutional law. The way his term in office has been going it's apparent that he did not disagree with Bush's abuses of power in theory, but only how they went about them. He seems to think that we wanted a new mask on the same old empire that could continue to devour the worlds resources with a kind hello and a bright smile.

Afghanistan is now truly hell on earth but with multiple devils creating woe in every corner of the land and into the territory of Pakistan. Pakistan has always been aligned with the Taliban and this is nothing new to US military intelligence, they have helped to set it up that way over the last few decades. Warlords and drug lords rule the land and now they have US death squads combing every village for targets of their terror campaign American style. Surging US and allied troops into Afghanistan has accomplished absolutely nothing but to put those troops in harms way with no real achievable goals. Civilians have suffered the greatest losses and are not even given the resolve of culpability by the US commanders who carelessly signed their death warrants. And what's it all for again? Osama? Womans rights?

How many lies? How many lives? The answers should not have to be "leaked".

President Betray-us

"We’ve shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."
General Stanley McChrystal

Today President Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal for what he called "poor judgement" in his candid remarks recorded in a Rolling Stone article criticizing several senior level officials. McChrystals' staff members also joined in with comments about Joe Biden in which he is nick named "Bite me" and Richard Holbrooke is called a "wounded animal". One of the generals' staff members discussed an oval office meeting between Obama and McChrystal in which they worked out the surge of troops into Afghanistan last year, a strategy that McChrystal lobbied heavily to implement. The staff member interviewed described Obama as "not very engaged" and added that his boss General McChrystal "was pretty disappointed." I wonder if Obama were to speak candidly if he might be "disappointed" in McChrystals failed strategy, and the overall failure in Afghanistan.

But here is the most interesting part of the puzzle, the previous US ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry was also targeted by McChrystals comments. Leaked internal discussions last November revealed Eikenberrys' opposition to McChrystals' surge of 40,000 additional troops based on the corruption of Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his brother who heads one of the largest opium poppy trades in the country. This came not long after a demonstrably rigged election in which Karzai retained his presidential seat and his unofficial title of "The mayor of Kabul". Obama threw in his lot with this US puppet by endorsing the elections despite the overwhelming evidence of vote rigging.

Not surprisingly, McChrystal said he felt "Betrayed" by Eikenberrys' comments. I could understand why a senior commander in the context of a war would not want internal disagreements to be aired to the public, but is it really a matter of betrayal to simply disagree? Or was it only a problem because this was someone who had all of the necessary facts to come to his conclusions instead of someone from the outside who can state the obvious again and again and simply be dismissed by the top brass as not knowing the details of the situation on the ground? Whatever happened behind the scenes, Eikenberry headed to Washington a few short weeks later to tell congress that he fully supported McChrystals planned surge, even though nothing had changed to address his previously stated concerns.

So the buzz in the media and the word from Obama himself is that these comments from McChrystal and his staff showed "poor judgment". But Obama decided to hold firm to the surge policy still in effect in Afghanistan. If McChrystal showed signs of poor judgement, and it was his poor judgement that persuaded Obama to adopt the surge in opposition to the dire warnings of the US ambassador to Afghanistan, why then can we not question the ongoing policy there? The answer is simple, Obama does not want to appear weak, a sure sign that he actually is weak and that the current policy is the real "wounded animal". Obamas' strongest virtue is his critical thinking intellectual skills, if he is unwilling to use these skills for fear of attack from the right, he is bound and gagged and utterly powerless.

To make matters worse Obama is replacing Stanley McChrystal with general David Petreus, currently head of CentCom and previously commander in Iraq under George W. Bush. Petraeus was the architect of Iraqs counter-insurgency strategy of surging the country with tens of thousands of additional troops. We heard over and over again that this "surge was working" as Republicans squeezed it for more and more political capital in the elections taking place around the US at that time. But later we learned that it wasn't the surge of troops that was having the largest effect on the insurgency, but the surge of cash that those soldiers were given to hand out to people who simply promised not to shoot at them.

The apparent success of Petraeus' surge was purchased by the American tax payers so that the strategy would lend legitimacy to the Republican party and the Bush administrations' war of terror. We never had enough troops for a real counter-insurgency occupation of Iraq so Petraeus decided that the Iraqi forces would be quadrupled to pick up the slack. With this single decision Petraeus showed his poor judgement by trusting that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be loyal to their chain of command and not simply turn around and take their new weapons and training and join the insurgency against the armies occupying their homeland. To this day Iraq is a broken country having cost billions of US taxpayer dollars, tens of thousands of dead and wounded soldiers, and millions of dead and displaced Iraqi civilians.

It's no wonder John McCain is happy Petraeus will be taking over, he wanted an endless war and now he knows he'll get what he wants.

Opt out revolution!

The time has come for the vast majority of the people of earth to deal once and for all with our oppressors and those responsible for the destruction of our environments. I am not calling for a violent revolt against the governments of the world, that is the only scenario they are prepared for. Instead the governments should be dismissed, ignored, demoralized, and gutted of their former glory and romantic sentiments. Nations and their various apparatus should be boycotted and the most effective way to achieve this is boycotting government currency. Alternative currencies are functioning in many communities around the world and they (and their model) are ready to take over at any moment if/when a global cataclysm occurs.

In cities like Ithaca, New York and Madison, Wisconsin there are alternative currencies based on the "Hours" system. These currencies are widely accepted around their respective communities and have for years been gaining more and more credibility. The concept of "Hours" is an alternative to "Dollars" or "Euros" or any other government backed units of currency. To understand "hours" first one must ask themselves what "dollars" represent? Gold? No, dollars have not represented gold for almost 40 years, and even when they did, who decided how much gold? Dollars and other government currencies represent absolutely nothing, they are nothing more than paper and ink, and now magnetic strips and computer chips. Dollars only have power if we all agree that they do, like tinkerbell, if we just believe.

Hours, however, are based on something very real, one "hour" equals one hour of human labor. Though these hours look like regular paper money, or notes, they are forever pegged to an unwavering standard. It may not seem fair to some that an hour of hard labor, such as building roads, is somehow equal to an hour of light office work, especially for an executive who has secretaries doing most of their work for them. But consider how the dollar works: as it is now the road builder can work full time with no vacation and make less than $50,000 a year while the corporate executive spends little time in the office and receives a $5,000,000 bonus on top of a $600,000 annual salary. Even if we don't soon feel the need to buck off our corporate overlords, wouldn't it be nice if they could make no more than minimum wage? And receive no more bonuses?

With Hours instead of Dollars the current class system could not exist, no person could accumulate wealth greater than the hours they could work in their lifetime. Hours are essentially immune to interest and inflation and the exportation of wealth, and prices and wages rarely need adjustment. The manipulation of government currencies through interest, inflation, and excessive printing have turned our markets into a cruel game in which the winners constantly tinker with the rules so that the game is less and less fair. The ability for one person to accumulate limitless dollars means that for every millionaire their are thousands more people who cannot afford their next meal, for every billionaire their are thousands of people who cannot afford their rent or mortgage payment. The cost of privately held wealth is the destitution of the greater population, a cost too great and a collective burden too heavy to bear.

The truth is that government currency is worthless, it is like an insolvent corporation whose stock went belly up long ago. In fact, governments are really nothing more than corporations and their currencies are the stocks we trade. Our acceptance of government currencies validates not only the currency but the entity, the government, the ultimate limited liability corporation. No matter what you buy with your US dollar you are simultaneously buying the United States federal government, you are not only validating it's existence but in a way you are entering into a contractual agreement completely on it's terms. Essentially every legal entanglement we have with our governments begin to fade as we terminate this contractual relationship, they cannot, even if they wanted to, tax you for any alternative currency you hold because they don't own it.

Once you realize that government is just another greedy corporation destroying our planet a simple solution emerges: Boycott! If you are lucky enough to have an hours based community currency in your area, participate in it as much as possible. If you do not, begin to study these examples and lay the groundwork for this alternative in your community. The day when the almighty dollar is only as valuable as the paper it's printed on is right around the corner, if it's not already worthless. So remeber what you're buying with your US Dollars: The class system, the casino economy, war, global hegemony, torture, etc. If however, you believe that you too will someday be fabulously wealthy, think about all of the people who will have less so you can have more, people just like you.