The Panamanians Shall Inherit the Earth

Jesus once said that the meek shall inherit the earth. This phrase is often taken as a bit of hyperbole, as his way of saying it’s better to be meek, to be poor and humble, than to be rich and powerful. But I am increasingly convinced that this statement is also to be taken literally, as a prophecy – of what is coming in the near future.

Worldwide destruction, like it or not, is coming, folks, so start getting yourself used to the idea. As the polar ice caps melt thanks to pollution, coastal cities around the globe are in danger of inundation. As the ozone layer dissipates, as clean air and water and food become increasingly scarce, as earthquakes caused by fracking increase in intensity and frequency, as more Gulf of Mexico-like oil spills and Bhopal-like accidents proliferate, as more and more countries plus private militias get their hands on “dirty bombs” and nuclear and chemical weapons, as a large meteor approaches the earth in 2014 – there is going to be cataclysmic destruction.

There are other kinds of destruction looming too. The only thing keeping the United States economy away from disaster is the fact that the U.S. dollar is the medium for international monetary exchange. It is only because of this fact that the U.S. government can stave off its creditors by simply printing more money. However, with the dollar in big trouble, a movement has already begun among the world’s financial leaders to switch from the dollar as the international exchange medium to a consortium of other currencies. When that happens – and it is a matter of “when”, not “if” – the United States will no longer be able to print unlimited amounts of currency to pay off its debts. And that will lead to a colossal financial crash in the United States with global ramifications.

The entire Western capitalist system is based on exploitation. What made Europe and North America the financial powerhouses they are today was what these countries did in the past – exploiting cheap raw materials in Africa and Asia, enslaving Africans and Chinese and Native Americans, and then selling the finished goods to a consumer base with plenty of disposable income. Still today, the big companies buy their raw materials on the cheap, export jobs to where work is cheap, such as India and México and Pakistan, and sell the finished goods at high prices. But this is becoming increasingly difficult; sooner, not later, the European Union, like the United States, is bound to collapse on itself – it will lose the cheap raw materials and labor, and it will lose the consumer base as more and more of its own people lose their jobs.

Capitalism breeds crime. The wealthy use their power to get around the law, and the poor use cunning to get around the wealthy. Government becomes legalized exploitation, enforced by the police and military. Many turn to crime - elderly people stealing food or even selling drugs - out of sheer desperation. And government becomes a form of organized crime, propped up and protected by propagandistic media and the military/police.

Which is why the worldwide Occupy movement is flourishing. What began in Tunisia and Egypt has spread worldwide, including the United States. People around the globe, long subjugated to the greed and arrogation of the ultra-rich, are rising up in determined, but largely peaceful resistance. Sooner or later, either the people will grow frustrated by governmental failure to make major changes and rise up in revolution (as has already happened in North Africa and is happening in Syria), or the plutocrats will send in their police and military to brutally crush the peaceful revolution. One way or the other, there will be massive bloodshed.

As the United States Congress puts forth the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the government (through its police and military puppets) to detain anyone in the world, citizen or not, on U.S. soil or not, to hold them in prison for any amount of time they choose, without trial. This is a clear and egregious violation of the United States Constitution, but these megalomaniacs do not care. This act in itself could finally bring the people to the breaking point.

And therefore I say that Jesus’s words – “The meek shall inherit the earth” – are to the point.

When destruction comes (be it from bombs or riots or natural disasters), it will be globally devastating. As Jesus suggested, if you build your house on sand - in this case, the sand of an economy based on speculative trading and vacillating stocks - that house will fall when the wind and waves beat against it.

Truly, skyscrapers will tumble, bridges will crash, and mass transit will stop running. There will be no gasoline for your car, no electricity in your house. There will be armed gangs roaming about stealing from you and your neighbors so they can survive. There will be no law, and no police to enforce it. The countries that rely on a massive infrastructure (North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan in particular) will be in disaster mode: there will be no food shipped in to feed starving millions in the cities, nor medicine, nor clean water. Nothing. Adding to the madness, the ultra-rich plutocrats are now looking at future disasters as a way to make yet more fortunes: in the United States they are planning to privatize FEMA, the government entity that responds to natural disasters.

When “earthquakes, wind, and fire” (to quote the story about the prophet Elijah) overwhelm the industrialized countries, millions will die when their big houses and office buildings and malls fall down on them. Millions will die when elevated superhighways and subway tunnels are tossed about and crushed. As the prophet Zechariah put it, they will beg the mountains to fall on them, and the living shall envy the dead. As the prophecy of the Nehiyawok (Cree) Nation puts it, in that day the wealthy will finally come to understand that they cannot eat money.

However, ironically, poor countries, Third World countries, with relatively little infrastructure, will fare far better. People who live in simple homes like I see here in rural Panama will be fine; a roof of straw or thin sheets of corrugated tin might fall on them in an earthquake, but they will just laugh and put it to rights again. Citizens in the urban seacoast – in Panamá City, Colón, and Davíd – will starve, because there won’t be any trucks bringing them food, because the pipes bringing them water will be crushed and broken. But up here, surrounded by the abundance of farms and wilderness, flowing rivers and clean mountain air, people will survive the destruction in relative comfort.

In the words of the Magnificat (in the New Testament), “He has thrown down the mighty from their seats,” as in an earthquake!, “and exalted those of low degree.” And, from the same passage, “He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

So, clearly, when the industrialized countries are in ruins, simple places like here where I live will be still all right. “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

While, yes, Panamá uses U.S. dollars as its own legal tender and heavily relies on its gringos to bring in more wealth, I fully expect that, when the U.S. economy collapses, this country will simply declare its financial independence and what used to be dollar bills will continue to flow around Panamá as its medium of exchange.

More than that, here in the Tierras Altas (Highlands) of Panamá – and still in remote villages around the world – there remains the structure of a barter economy. I love how neighbors in my village come by with a bag of onions or potatoes, and we share the same way with them. I love how my dear Panamanian wife sends over to them plates of the same supper she has prepared for me.

Here, people live by genuine Marxian principles – those who have to spare share with those who don’t have enough, because people here realize we survive not as competing individuals, but as a coöperating community. “From each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.” This is the kind of relationship that all religion urges: covenant, as opposed to the greed and cheating that inevitably are fostered by capitalism. As Saint Paul put it in the New Testament, my neighbors here “strive to outdo one another in generosity.” Or, as Jesus put it, quoting the Torah, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He condemned the rich, with their storehouses full of grain while the poor suffered. He urged his followers, if they had a coat to spare to give it to someone who had no coat.

And here in the Tierras Altas people look out for each other; if armed gangs come up here from the cities to try to steal their survival, they will face a choice - either they somehow defeat a united, strong community, or they respectfully join that community and live by its covenantal rules.

You see? “The poor shall inherit the earth.”

In a barter economy, the focus is on building strong relationships with your friends and neighbors and relatives – so one gives as much as possible and accepts as little as possible in return. In a moneyed economy, the focus is on buying as cheaply as possible and selling at as high a price as you can. return.

That’s the problem with money. There’s no end to how much of it you can gain – or lose. In a moneyless society, there isn’t any reason to stock up more food than you can eat, so either it goes to waste or you do the smart thing and give it to someone who doesn’t have enough.

Likewise, you may have nothing, but you can’t possibly have less than nothing, and, when you have nothing, somebody is going to help you out. But in a moneyed society, you can have more money than you can ever spend, and you can fall into having less than nothing, into a debt deeper than you can ever climb out of again. You see, a money economy removes the parameters naturally imposed by “everyone has what he or she needs and shares the excess with those who do not.” In a moneyless society it’s impossible to be a billionaire, and it’s impossible to be seriously indebted. A moneyless, barter society fosters sharing, not hoarding.

In a moneyed society, those who make a lot of money get to make the rules. If you’re rich, you can contribute to the campaigns of politicians you like – politicians who will change the laws so you can make even more money. Therefore, under capitalism, if you’re rich, you will inevitably get richer and more powerful, and, if you’re poor, you will become poorer and more helpless. The facts show it – in the United States and other industrialized countries the gap between rich and poor is widening fast. This is simply the nature of capitalism; it is inevitable in a capitalist economy.

The only way to prevent the tendency of capitalism to develop a rich class and a poor class is through government: that’s why, until recently, the U.S. government had laws to prevent monopolies, laws to prevent industrial pollution and mineral exploitation, and laws to ensure big business and ultra-rich people paid their fair share of taxes. These were instituted after past periods of excess: the railroad and coal barons whose greed brought about the Great Depression. Now these controls on rampant capitalism are being dismantled by the teaparty proxies for the ultra-rich, with the inevitable result of a widening gap between rich and poor, leading to total economic collapse.

Hence, more and more people are losing their jobs – and, what is even scarier is what the statistics don't show. The statistics give how many people have jobs, but it counts the under-employed (those who settle out of desperation for part-time work or very low wages) as employedD, so it doesn’t count them among those looking for work. Moreover, the statistics don't tell us about those people who are just as much overwhelmed with anxiety as the unemployed, filled with constant fear that they are soon going to be fired – those who have jobs, but probably not for very long.

Indeed, employers in most states do not even need to give you a reason; they can fire you at will, anytime. Most if not all states now have pro-employer legislation that allows them to fire employees at any time, with no reason needing to be given. And the first to go are usually the more expensive middle-aged people who need a higher income to support their families, who take more time off for family or health reasons, and who cost more in health insurance. They want to replace a middle-aged head of household with a kid fresh out of high school at a lower wage? They decide they don’t like you because you’re black or Muslim or gay? Doesn’t matter; you’re gone. I was let go as an editor at a certain daily newspaper because I refused to compromise my ethics and experience as regards tribal casinos – the newspaper wanted the advertising revenue from the casinos, and only I was willing to express in print the horrible devastation these casinos wreak. I was let go by a private company for absolutely no specified reason, though it was clear to me that it was because I was middle-aged and more expensive than a kid.

And, again adding to the madness, the ultra-rich are finding ways to make a profit off your joblessness. Consider the big financial company JP Morgan. It has contracted in a majority of U.S. states to provide food stamp debit cards. The company is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans who go on food stamps, the more profit JP Morgan makes. In an ABC News interview, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admitted that this is “a very important business to JP Morgan,” and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine the soaring profits JP Morgan makes in this part of its business. In the interview Paton said that 40% of food stamp recipients are currently working, and he said he expects continued “growth” in this “product”. JP Morgan, which is already one of the primary financial institutions implicated in the “robo-signing” forclosure scandal, has admitted to wrongly foreclosing on more than a dozen military families and overcharging thousands of other military families on their mortgages. What is more, if you seek help from a JP Morgan call center for your food stamps or child support debit card, and you will be talking to a Morgan employee in India.

We who oppose the evil schemes of the ultra-rich plutocrats are just as guilty. For we, too, are obsessed with money.

The ultra-rich are always thinking how to make their next fortune, and how to avoid paying taxes. For them it’s just a game, a job to do, since they certainly don't need more money. And the rest of us, constantly worrying about how we’re going to pay our bills and our taxes, tend to obsess about how to come up with more income. We fall for the schemes of the rich to make us covet the latest electronic gewgaw, to buy the brand-name instead of the generic brand, – such that the rich make another fortune, but we are left with nothing to pay the necessaries. Yes, the rich manipulate and mesmerize us into doing this, and that is part of their evil, but it is still ultimately our choice.

So let us not single out others when we, in a different way, are to blame too. We could, if we were wise, emancipate ourselves from their controlling influence.

We could join the ranks of the poor – and build strong local barter economies based on sharing, not on taking – and, when the cataclysms come, as inevitably we too will inherit the earth.

NOTE: The most recent chapter, "Village Economics", in my other blog, "A Writer in Panama", is on the same theme. Go to - panamawriter.blogspot.com

The Larger Ninety-Nine Percent

Supporters of the Occupy movement in the United States are fond of pointing out their federal government’s hypocrisy for supporting the citizens’ peaceful uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, and then coördinating a police effort to literally beat down the uprisings in the United States.

But these Occupy supporters are themselves often guilty of the same kind of hypocrisy.

Even though those who started the United States version on Wall Street, New York City, drew their inspiration from Egypt and Tunisia, and even though the Egyptian movement has sent advisors to Wall Street, some of the U.S. Occupy people have become culturocentric: they claim, erroneously, that the movement was born on Wall Street, and that it spread worldwide from that beginning. No, it began in Egypt and Tunisia, and spread worldwide, including the United States, from there.

I've had it put to me that the Occupy movement is against the ultra-rich on Wall Street, and not against the government, but the signs and voices I hear in the United States and in the entire world are saying the same thing: that complacent, bribed governments of puppets to the rich are enabling the plutocrats to get ever wealthier at the expense of the 99%.

It’s all very nice being loyal to your own country. But it’s not so nice when it not only ignores the facts, but becomes an implicit racism. So let us accept the truth that the U.S. Occupy movement did not begin in the United States, and to say otherwise denigrates the wisdom and efforts of the peaceful citizen uprisings that preceded it - and continue to this day.

I say this because there’s another way in which American Occupy supporters hurt their own movement outside their country:

They forget the global perspective, in which the entire United States (and Western Europe and Japan) are the ultra-rich 1%.

They forget that other countries don't have strong environmental controls, and are being polluted with carcinogens and particulates that kill. They forget that other countries don't have strong labor laws, and children are forced to work to survive, that people work incredibly long hours under inhuman conditions - and count themselves lucky to have a job at all!

They forget that the 99% in the United States – even when they’ve lost their jobs and their pensions – are far better off than most people in the world. Yes, there’s a gulf between the 1% and the 99% in the United States – but that gulf is far wider between the billionaires and the world’s poor.

They forget that the poorest American, the American with the least access to health care and decent food, is still considerably better off than most people in the world. In the United States there are social services, food stamps, and other support systems. In much of the world, there are no support systems.

They forget that many countries don't have the constitutional freedom to assemble and speak in order to seek redress from the government - and, even if the Republican Party apparatchiks are seeking to take away this right, for now Americans still have it where many other peoples do not, and that therefore it is the responsibility of all Americans to speak out in behalf of those who cannot!

When the U.S. Occupy movement ignores the desperate plight of the poor in most of the world it is actually helping the evil plutocrats, the ultra-rich monster billionaires to continue their rape of our planet for the sake of profit. Shame on those who ignore and overlook this overwhelming global horror!

Here in Panama, some folks I know count themselves fortunate to earn $6-$8 a day. In parts of Africa, people earn that amount in a month. Others here, and in Africa, do not have any employment, any source of income, and are reduced to relying on family or friends, or, if they have none, the desperation of begging or petty thieving.

Strangers in my little mountain village stop me to ask, simply because I'm a gringo, if I can hire them. When I explain that I'm very poor, they ask if I know of any other gringos who are hiring. They are polite, but they are clearly desperate.

I live in a land where many people would be thrilled to earn a U.S. minimum wage – that rate would earn them in about 45 minutes what it takes them a day or more to earn, if they have a job.

We who support the Occupy movement must of course be concerned for the poor in our own countries, but we must never lose sight of the fact that the abyss between rich and poor is a global issue.

The same ultra-rich who are responsible for these problems in the United States have so raped the world that there are even greater problems elsewhere. There could never be a Bhopal in the United States, thanks to labor laws. There could never be maquiladoras, or child slavery. There are at least some resources available for those who are unemployed.

Here in Panama, for instance, if you’re unemployed, there is nothing, and you're desperate to find a way to feed your family, along with many other equally desperate poor people.

A family of Native Americans in my community with whom I am friends live in a shack made of corrugated tin and castoff boards. The floor is dirt. The stove is a wood fire. Their water comes in buckets from the river. Their shower is one of those buckets. They have no electricity.

The conditions in which they live would not be allowed in the United States.

These friends don't even know what a television is. They've never seen one in their lives. They are amazed by my little three-dollar camera, when I take pictures of them. One of the children found a broken camera in the road, no doubt tossed away by a wealthy expatriate American, and – even though it doesn’t work – she loves to aim it at me and pretend to take my picture. The children play outdoors, rain or shine, in the same threadbare (but always clean!) clothes and bare feet. I have watched them turn a stray plastic grocery bag into a kite and a tree branch into a swing, and remembered my own children whining, despite all their electronic toys, that there was “nothing to do!” This family of a hardworking mother and father and six children are desperately poor – yet they are happier than a lot of whining Americans.

Several studies have shown the world is capable of supporting its human population - the problem is one of distribution, not availability. Yes, birth control is needed worldwide. But it’s not for the United States, which consumes about 60% of the world’s nonrenewable resources, to preach to the rest of the world about conserving resources.

We need to think triage – help most immediately where the worst problems are – and that would be large regions of Africa and Asia, and even Central and South America, and the Native American reservations of North America.

We need to think long-term strategies for getting the overabundance in countries like the United States, where farmers are paid not to grow crops, to countries like Eritrea and Sudan.

We need to help U.S. citizens overcome the propaganda that has them believing that the Occupy people should take a bath and get a job. That, moreover, nobody should be helping those dark-skinned people who worship cows or whatever Faux Noise says, and realize that, as Jesus said, we are ALL G-d's Children!

We need also to insist that the United States government stop its campaigns against the world’s poor: sending its own poor children to kill the poor children in foreign lands. Sending low-flying military planes in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply to keep the local populations in a state of anxiety, so they will lose the ability to act decisively.

It is written in the Acts of the Apostles (in the Christian Scriptures):

“The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’

“Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey G-d rather than human beings!’”

This tells me that we are required by Scripture to obey one Law only, and that is the Law of G-d, and obey human laws only to the degree that they conform to that Law – and, when they do not conform, and when the forces that decree these human laws don't obey the Sacred Law – it is our sacred responsibility to SPEAK OUT!

* * *

IN MEMORIAM Eleanor May Vock Audlin, 10 September 1926 - 25 November 2011, who was the author's mother and his first teacher of spirituality and honor and goodness.

Dear President Obama:

Dear President Obama:

Nobody was happier than I when you were elected president. I wept tears of joy in the moment when you had secured the election, and once again watching your inauguration. I couldn’t help but think of all the tragic history in the United States that was brightened by the glorious light of your election.

And I thought about how the federal government – the same government that now you head – did a great deal to make your election possible. Your predecessor Abraham Lincoln fought a war to make possible the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves stolen from the Africa of which you are a proud son. Your predecessors John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson strove hard to break down the horrible walls of racial segregation. I took part in the Civil Rights movement, and it was the preaching of Dr. Martin Luther King that spurred me to enter the ordained pastoral ministry.

Remember, Mr. President, that it was the federal government that intervened in a “municipal decision” in Alabama, forcing local authorities to admit Black students to their schools. If it hadn’t been for that action, your excellent education, including a degree from Harvard University, might never have been possible.

So why, Mr. President, do you say as regards the horrible brutality of local police forces toward peaceful citizens engaged in the Occupy movement in New York City, Oakland, Atlanta, on the campus of the University of California at Davis, among other places, that “every municipality has to make its own decision about how to handle” these situations?

Why are you passively avoiding taking responsibility for the fact that your Department of Homeland Security, your Federal Bureau of Investigation, and others of your federal agencies coordinated these vicious crackdowns on your nonviolent citizens?

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” if their decision is to ignore the United States Constitution, which you, sir, are sworn to uphold and protect!

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when police forget their pledge to serve and protect the people, and attack your citizens.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when police officers wearing more protective equipment than your soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq attack your defenseless citizens with truncheon, tear gas, and sound cannon.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when an honorable retired captain of the Philadelphia Police Department, in uniform, is arrested and handcuffed.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when elderly women in their 80s, your citizens, sir, are tear-gassed.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when honorable veterans of your armed forces, the armed forces of which you are commander-in-chief, volunteer to serve and protect your citizens from those police officers who have forgotten their pledge.

No, sir, it is not “up to the municipalities to make their own decisions” when those honorable veterans of your Marines and Army - veterans of the wars you sent them to fight in - are so brutally attacked by thugs in uniform that they must be taken to the emergency room in danger of losing their lives!

When the municipalities fail in their responsibility to protect the rights of your citizens, it is your job to do so, sir!

You, sir, by failing to do the right thing, are guilty by omission or commission of allowing – indeed, approving and supporting – these outrages!

There are statesmen and stateswomen, who do the right thing, no matter what the cost to their political careers. And there are politicians, who dance away from the issues, who mouth platitudes like “it is up to the municipalities to make their own decisions”, in order to protect their political backsides.

Remember the Emancipation Proclamation. Remember the Atlanta Schools intervention. Some of your predecessors in office had the spine to do the right thing. Some of your predecessors in office were statesmen.

And bear in mind that your loyal citizens are calling on you – not the municipalities, but you and your government – to heed their voices!

They are begging you, sir, to establish a single-payer universal health care citizens for all of your citizens!

They are begging you, sir, to do a complete overhaul of the election system to get rid of the electoral college, to put a serious cap on lobbyists and PACs and gerrymandering!

They are begging you, sir, to end these endless oil wars, in which the children of our poor families are sent to kill the children of poor families in Iraq and Afghanistan - and, so it seems, soon Iran.

They are begging you, sir, to negotiate a serious peace deal between Israel and Palestine, and to tell the Chinese to get their genocidal hands off Tibet!

They are begging you, sir, to restructure the tax code so the ultra-wealthy 1% pays its appropriate share of taxes!

They are begging you, sir, to declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech!

I speak with some emotion, because I am one of your citizens, moreover one of those who joyfully voted for you – and yet I cannot afford to live any longer in the United States. I was working six jobs and still could not keep up with my financial obligations. My health was being ruined. I had to make the choice to live in a Third World country, where I can still afford – barely – to eat and put a roof over my head. My small, unassuming house in the United States I have had to abandon. My family, including my precious children and my very elderly parents, I will probably never see again.

And my story is nowhere near as tragic as some I have heard as a (now retired) pastor.

Mr. President, do you remember saying this, on 28 January of this year?

"I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere."

This is your word, Mr. President. But apparently the United States will stand up for these universal rights everywhere except in the United States.

You, sir, are failing your people, the people who put their trust in you by electing you, in two ways – you are ignoring their desperate pleas to correct the horrible wrongs in your federal government, and their desperate pleas to stop these police forces from using brutal force to deny the rights of assembly and free speech enshrined in the very Constitution that you are sworn to uphold and protect.

Do so, Mr. President. Do so quickly, because I fear there will soon be a bloodbath from coast to coast as these thugs in uniform beat down on a peaceful movement striving to get your attention - or, I fear, a revolution aimed at bringing about these changes by less peaceful means. I shudder at both of these horrifying possibilities, but they grow more possible every day, sir.

It can be done peacefully and lawfully – or not. It is your choice.

For the love of God, Mr. President, be a statesman, not a politician.

Respectfully submitted,

The Rev. JAMES DAVID AUDLIN

Iran? No, the Next Dictatorship to Topple is...

If you believe the pundits, soon the United States will be invading Iran, or, minimally, conducting air strikes aimed at destroying alleged nuclear facilities.

Would another Middle East war be advisable? I think not.

First, the United States military is already spread thin in the world. Despite the vast amount of money poured into the Pentagon, soldiers are often fighting with less than adequate equipment as it is. The larger view is that an entire generation of young people is being devastated by these several wars; if they’re not coming home dead, they’re coming home with not just physical injuries but serious emotional disturbances as well. And yet medical support for the injuries is being cut by a Congress bent on relieving anything that resembles social responsibility on the part of its ultra-rich friends. And yet there is virtually nothing by way of psychological support for emotionally disturbed veterans, and few seem even aware of the growing rate of veteran suicides.

Second, if history is any teacher, then invading Iran will solve nothing – indeed, it’s far more likely to create problems down the road. Any credibility the United States once had as a force of integrity standing in defense of goodness is shot. Its European allies have largely abandoned it. In the Middle East it is hated. In much of the world it is despised as a bastion of hypocrisy. If the United States invades Iran, it is likely to learn that the allegations of nuclear capacity were at best exaggerated by intelligence experts, or utterly unfounded (as with Iraq and its nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” that were the pretext for invading). Further, the United States will be bound to suffer greater damage to what little credibility it has left in the world.

If history is any teacher, the lies will soon be unmasked. Too many recent U.S.-led wars have pretended to be in defense of “liberty and justice”, but are too clearly about economics and political power (especially oil), and very likely a large dose of anti-Muslim bigotry. Certainly, if history is any teacher, the United States government pays no attention to the lessons of history and is doomed, as the wise man said, to repeat them. Having ignored the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ devastating experience in Afghanistan, the United States is now deeply bemired in that muck. A war in Iran would be another such mistake.

Third, the United States military is already a hugely bloated part of the federal budget. The lunatics in Congress are massively shifting taxes off the pampered shoulders of the ultra-rich and their corporations and ever more heavily onto the backs of the middle and lower classes. Further military expenses will drag the latter even more deeply into economic slavery and economic devastation. What is ironic is that the colossal Pentagon budget does not benefit the ordinary men and women in uniform – who come from those same ravaged middle and lower classes; you never see a rich man’s kid doing military service on the front lines – but rather the fat cat top brass and their ultra-rich buddies. Private contractors make a great deal of money from war; Halliburton, which is blithely escaping its responsibility for torturing and killing civilians in the Middle East and providing tainted water to soldiers, has made handsome profits for its principals, like former Vice President Dick Cheney. A war in Iraq would exacerbate this issue, with an inevitable further round of cuts in social services, education, and infrastructure, continuing to destroy those middle and lower classes.

Fourth, I am an absolute pacifist. I don’t believe war is ever a wise option, except possibly extremely rarely as a very last resort, as an emergency measure. I believe instead in earnest negotiation. However here is the United States hinting at war with Iran when there has never been any serious negotiation with Iran on the part of the United States. Until such negotiation is sincerely undertaken, war should not be a serious option.

Fifth, I believe in consistency. If the United States declares it has the right to force its opinions, its culture, its mercantile economics, its religious views, its political views down the throats of another sovereign country – then other sovereign countries have the same right to do the same to the United States. The government of the United States is sorely misguided if it thinks that it is “special” somehow. Might does not make right; being the strongest military power in the world does not provide the inevitable result that whatever is done with that power is a good thing.

Moreover, violence begets violence. As Jesus put it, “Those who take up the sword die by the sword.” I abhor war, but, if the United States continues to invade other sovereign countries, then it is only creating a world in which sovereignty means nothing – and any country with a mind to do so will invade any other country, including the United States.

Consistency is ignored in another way. The United States has often claimed it must invade this or that country in order to topple a malevolent dictator. But, if dictator-toppling is the goal, then citing this pretext leaves the United States bound to topple every dictator in the world. Yet there is no talk of the United States invading (for instance) North Korea or China. Likewise, the United States has often claimed that it must attack this or that country that is in the process of forcefully annexing a smaller neighbor; for instance, Iraq invading Kuwait or Argentina invading the Falkland Islands. But, again, if protecting smaller neighbors is the goal, then the law of consistency requires the United States to protect every such compromised little country in the world: yet there is no talk of the United States taking on Russia for its brutalities in Chechnya, or China for its devastating genocidal activities in Tibet.

Oh, but no, say the experts, we cannot possibly take on Russia or China! They’re our friends! They’re our economic partners! They have “Most Favored Nation” status with us! – So the truth is that the United States only attacks the little bullies and plays nice with the big bullies? In my view, that makes the United States itself a big bully! The truth is that the ultra-wealthy plutocrats who are the real powers in the United States hope to reap ever bigger profits in the economic orchard of China and Russia. And those plutocrats fear China, which could destroy the U.S. economy overnight if ever China cashed in all at once on its vast holdings of U.S. capital and government-issued bonds.

Besides, if it is truly the responsibility of the United States to invade the bully countries, the countries that invade other countries, the countries that have strong malevolent leaders – then the United States should invade itself! It is the preëminent example of a bully country invading other countries, while crushing its own people under a powerful plutocracy that has turned the country’s government into a sham, into a marionette show dancing on strings controlled by the ultra-wealthy plutocrats.

Hence the Occupy movement. Born in Tunisia and Egypt, it has spread across the United States and much of the world. The people realize the truth of what I am saying: that they are no longer governed by a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but malevolent oligarchs unseen behind the puppets in Washington.

And military veterans realize the truth, that they were sent into war on false pretexts and made to kill innocent civilians, all for the sake of the plutocrats’ mad desire for more profit - that's why veterans, in increasing numbers especially after two of their brothers were extremely seriously injured by police brutality in Oakland, California, are joining the Occupy movement. They are sworn to serve and protect the people, not the ultra-wealthy plutocrats. They don't want to invade Iran; they widely recognize the insanity of such a notion.

So let the taking down of evil dictators continue – but not in Iran. In the United States.

Memo to the Police: We Are Not Your Enemy!

Are you participating in the Occupy movement in your community? I hope so!

If you are, and the police come, you may feel the wish, or pressure from others, to criticize and condemn the police. I have a word of advice for you:

DON'T.

Yes, the police in many cities in the United States and the world are to blame for opposing the peaceful, unarmed Occupy movement, for opposing honest citizens exercising their constitutional right to express their conscience in the form of free speech.

Yes, the police in many cities are appearing in full riot gear, wearing more protective and attack equipment than the U.S. military do in Iraq and Afghanistan - clearly in order to intimidate and frighten and humiliate peaceful, unarmed citizens exercising their right to free speech.

Yes, the police in many cities, including Atlanta, Georgia, New York City, and especially Oakland, California, are culpable for using extreme measures against peaceful, unarmed Occupy participants.

Yes, at least one serious injury must be attributed to the police - that of Scott Olsen, 24, who as a Marine served two tours of duty in Iraq, but in Oakland was shot in the head by police with either a tear gas canister or a "bean bag" (a bag filled with lead shot), and at this writing his condition in hospital has been upgraded to fair, with a fractured skull and swollen brain. (Please keep Scott Olsen, and others injured, in your prayers.)

Yes, Oakland police further aggravated the situation by throwing a flash bomb in the midst of Occupy participants who had rushed to Olsen's aid.

Police officers who are responsible for these actions - and others, like tear gassing citizens, pulling them by the hair, and bludgeoning them with their billy clubs - should be charged as criminals and tried in court. So, too, should their superiors who ordered these attacks.

Maybe there'll be a sweep-it-under-the-rug investigation. At best, some sergeant or even the Oakland chief of police will be turned into the fall guy, put on leave or retired early, and that'll be that. Poof, problem solved. But anyone with sense knows the real orders came from high up. That's why we're seeing coordinated attacks in several cities in the last few days. That's why, when the Albany, N.Y. police refused to follow their mayor's orders to attack Occupy in that city, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo himself ordered them to attack - and yet they still refused. If Cuomo did so publicly, you can be sure that other governors are ordering these attacks, but don't expect them to be implicated! And, in any case, the order is coming from even higher than governors. It's coming from the plutocrats themselves - the ultra-wealthy men on Wall Street who have turned the U.S. government into their obedient lapdog.

Therefore, we, the Occupy movement and its supporters, must not make the serious mistake of condemning the police as a group. Instead, we must appeal to them to join our cause.

It's easy for us to say these officers had a choice, and should have chosen not to use such extreme, violent measures.

I've known plenty of cops, including as my parishioners when I was a pastor, and most of them are decent human beings who want to do the right thing. I'll bet they feel terrible about what they are being ordered to do by their superiors. But I'm sure that, deep down, they're scared - just as scared as you and I - and, overwhelmed by fear, they stick to the familiar, the safety of familiarity, and do what they're told. They're as afraid as you or I of losing their livelihoods and, as a result, being unable to feed, clothe, and house their families.

It's easy to say they have a choice, but so do you. You know perfectly well that your taxes are rising to cover the gap in revenue that grows as the ultra-rich and their corporations find legal maneuvers to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

You know perfectly well that your taxes are being used to pay off crooked politicians, to fight attempts to repeal DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), to pay for the riot gear that police are wearing as they attack innocent, unarmed civilians - and worst of all to wage unjust insane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But you still pay your taxes, don't you? Even though you know how your taxes are going to be used?

In the same way, I'll bet a lot of these cops know what they're being ordered to do is wrong, but they don't feel they have any choice. If they refuse, they are out of the force, and helpless.

Sure, it's easy for us here to say we'd refuse, but we don't know what pressures are being exerted on them. So, definitely cops who go overboard need to be charged and tried and, if found guilty, sentenced.

But we must not lose sight of the REAL villains!

The real villains want us to hate the cops. That's because as long as we, the citizens, are divided against each other, we will never unite, and become strong enough to take on the real villains.

So, whenever you talk hate about police - or hate about fellow citizens who, in good conscience, think the Occupy movement is a bad thing - or hate people who disagree with you as regards abortion, gun control, and so on - you are doing the bidding of the REAL villains. You are falling right into their hands.

And bear in mind that some police departments are refusing to obey orders to attack peaceful Occupy demonstrators - including, notably, the police department in Albany, N.Y., and, earlier, the police department in Madison, Wisconsin. This goes to show that police have a conscience and, with good superiors, do the right thing.

Bear too in mind that many brave honorable members of the United States Marines - of whom Scott Olsen is a brother - have volunteered to stand side-by-side with Occupy participants to protect them and their civil rights! If the Marines can do this, so too can the police.

So what can we do? What should we do?

When you're at your local Occupy gathering, and the cops arrive in full riot gear, waving billy clubs and flash bombs and guns with rubber bullets, they want you to be intimidated, and to back down, disperse, give up, and go home.

Don't give up.

Stand there, peacefully. Stand your ground. If they attack you, don't attack back. If they arrest you, stay calm; many of us have spent a night behind bars in defense of our civil rights. It's not the end of the world!

When the police come in their riot gear, tell them, in a loud, firm, loving voice -

"YOU ARE OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS. WE'RE HERE NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, BUT FOR YOU TOO, AND YOUR FAMILIES! THE REAL ENEMY ONLY WANTS YOU TO DO THEIR DIRTY WORK. THE REAL ENEMY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOU. AS SOON AS YOU'VE DONE YOUR WORK, YOU'RE AS EXPENDABLE AS ALL OF US. SO WE APPEAL TO YOU TO TURN AROUND AND JOIN US, AND HELP US PEACEFULLY TAKE ON THE *REAL* ENEMY! JOIN US, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

Are you a police officer yourself? Or an active or former member of the armed forces? My message to you is the same! You are sworn to protect and serve the PEOPLE from the ENEMY. You are not sworn to protect and serve the ENEMY from the PEOPLE. Please remember which is which! The enemy is taking away our right to free speech. Our access to affordable health care. Our children's right to a decent education. Our opportunity to buy property without being killed by the rates. Our right to a clean environment. Think about those brave Marines, and the courageous Police Department in Albany! And choose carefully - to protect and serve the PEOPLE.

If the cops join with Occupy, we are much closer to victory. If we keep saying we hate the cops, we are doing the will of the enemy, and pushing victory farther away.

How the Occupy Movement Will Succeed - or Won't

Most people want not only food and water and shelter and air, but security – the confidence that these other essentials won’t suddenly be taken away from them by forces beyond their control. Most people don’t want to go back to the kind of life led by the mythical prehistoric caveman, cowering in his cave, hungry and wet and cold, looking out on the raging thunderstorm, fearful that a sabertooth tiger or enemy caveman was going to attack if he drifted off to sleep. In those early times it was natural for humans to band together in groups centered around strong and decisive leaders, assured that these leaders had the power and will to protect them.

That need for a protector is deeply and indelibly rooted in the human psyche; it is why to this day people largely support their leaders, democratically elected or in power by military coup, benevolent or malevolent – because they think that allying themselves with powerful men, even though the methods and goals of these individuals may be horrific, will serve to put a mantle of protection over the people.

It is often a surprise to Western Europeans and North Americans that people in other countries don’t rise up to overthrow their dictators. The main reason is that human beings tend to be defensive of their Weltansicht (the mental “lenses” through which they interpret and construct reality) because it serves as the axiomatic foundation for their entire lives. They know factually that their dictator is evil, that his spies are everywhere and that any of them, any at all, could be in any moment unexpectedly detained and imprisoned or executed without even the pretense of due process. But they refuse to think about this fact because it is simply too frightening, too threatening of the security they crave. So they outdo one another in singing praise to their dictator, hoping that loud voices of support will keep them safe in the dictator’s smile.

This is why it is a miracle, the worldwide “Occupy” movement that began in Tunisia – not just that it has so widely spread, but that it has, on occasion, been so successful in toppling dictators. It is a miracle that, despite this natural tendency to feign support for a feared dictator, the people in many countries fear their dictators’ excesses so much that they are rising up against them.

This is also why many people in many countries, including in North America and Western Europe, oppose the Occupy movement, expressing ridicule, calling them unpatriotic fomenters of chaos. Such persons still believe that the best choice is to cozy up to the dictator (whoever he, or whatever it, may be) rather than arouse his ire and risk losing that precious security. It’s not that they’re stupid or obtuse, as some Occupy supporters have alleged; it’s not that they can't get it, it’s that they don't want to get it. As Daniel J. Boorstin eloquently put it in his brilliantly prophetic 1967 work The Image, they prefer the comfortable, comforting lie to the frightening truth.

Just as people in a totalitarian state loudly proclaim the glories of their leader to protect themselves from his wrath and avail themselves of his strength to protect the country, so even in a democracy many people prefer to believe that the status quo may not be ideal, but it’s better than the chaos potentially unleashed by the Occupy movement. These little lies hold their lives together, and they will do everything they can to prevent purveyors of the truth from pulling down those false idols.

The Occupy movement needs to remember that everybody wants security, including those who question or oppose the Occupy movement. So the movement needs to help those others understand that these powermongers – particularly in North America and Western Europe that means the ultra-rich plutocrats who control the government (including the legislatures, courts, military, and police), the economy, the media – are, down the road, not going to protect them.

That these ultra-rich care not a whit for the common man and woman, except to use them for what pecuniary value can be extracted from them and, once the latter are deemed expendable, there will be no further security for them.

That adhering to these plutocrats inevitably will, in time, leave them bereft of protection, and destroy their well-being.

The Occupy movement needs to state repeatedly that the current privatized system of medical care, designed to make a profit, not to protect health, will leave them without access to decent medical care should they get seriously ill.

That the removal of pollution controls will destroy their environment and leave them, and their offspring, deathly sick.

That privatizing their schools will, like their universities, put the cost of a decent education out of reach of all but the rich, and/or turn schools into mere training centers for lifelong drudge-work.

That state laws allowing employers to fire employees at will, to ignore fair hiring practices, to get around minimum wage requirements inevitably will lead to mass unemployment and destitute poverty among minorities and single mothers, and eventually the white males as well.

That high fees on loans and credit cars from profit-making financial enterprises will destroy their future security.

That they no longer have any reason to trust these plutocrats will protect them and provide them security – that their very security is at stake. That, therefore, their best bet is to go with Occupy.

We have to persuade everyone of the truth of these statements.

But, to do so, we must remember that Occupy opponents want security just as do Occupy supporters. We must not call those opponents enemies, or stupid - we must appeal to their intelligence, so they see that the ultra-rich oligarchs are going to provide the people with security no longer.

The Occupy movement must be on guard. The usual procedure for governments or businesses found out to be corrupt is for those at the top to make some minimum changes – window dressing – so they can quickly “get things back to normal” – with those responsible for the corruption still in charge, and the sheep quiet in their pens. That means blaming a few token middle-management fall-guys, calling them aberrations or loose cannons, kicking them out as a sacrifice to “restore domestic tranquility”, and then pronouncing the system healthy, instituting a few meaningless, ineffective window-dressing reforms which they can promptly ignore – and then get back to the business of making more fortunes at your and my expense.

Some three and a half decades ago, after the Watergate scandal and the Storm King environmental furore, there were real changes. But ever since the “smart boys”, the legally shifty bureaucrats, have been paid good salaries to find tacitly legal circumlocutions around the good financial and environmental and social reforms enacted back then.

To name but one example among many I could cite, the New York state constitution clearly stipulates in Article I Section 10 that there shall be no casinos in the state. Period. It’s one of the strongest-worded such impediments in United States law. But there are several casinos operating in the state, and more are contemplated – why? Because greed in state government was allied with greed in the New York city financial institutions (often virtually the same thing), and so those “smart boys” were set to find legal tricks to get around their own constitution. How, I ask, can a government survive when it shoves aside its own foundation?

I could go on forever... let me just mention two prominent political prisoners, Bradley Manning and Leonard Peltier; the lies by the George W. Bush administration to get us into Iraq and Afghanistan; the criminal acts by the CIA and others in sovereign foreign countries....

We must constantly bear in mind how the ultra-rich plutarchs in this world are not ethical but pragmatic. They will “change sides” as easily as they change their expensive suits if it means more money. They are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan - but in Libya they sided with the revolutionaries, who were and are largely associated with al Qaeda.

Yes, a dictator was toppled, and perhaps now the people of Libya will now enjoy peace and freedom under a real democracy. But let's not kid ourselves that the Western support for the Libyan uprising (without which it would have failed, squashed by Qadaffi!) was really about toppling a dictator. If it were, then why does the United States cozy up to dictators in China, Russia, and half of Africa? Oh yes, profits. Oil in particular.

I still have some vanishing hope that President Obama will lead - that (to quote African American friends of mine) he will “go black on their sorry white asses, that he will take out a big ole can of whupazz and beat them with it.” As president, he has access to a powerful bully pulpit – HE SHOULD USE IT! As did Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in the same office before him, as did Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King and Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi and John Lennon, for that matter. As long as he plays the game, negotiating with their sorry white asses, we the people lose. He's got to start a new game.

Moreover, the Occupy movement and Obama must keep in mind that this is a worldwide problem. If the United States “solves” the current economic crisis in a way that ignores the rest of the world, that is at the expense of the rest of the world, the problem is not solved, and it will just come back eventually – today’s economy is global, not national.

Bhopal and the Gulf of Mexico, the sweatshops of Asia, the maquiladoras of Latin America, my neighbors here in Panama who are lucky to earn $6-$8 a day, my friends in Africa who earn that much in a month – their problems are those of the United States too. “Buying American” and saying “the rest of the world can go to hell” is not the answer. Thinking globally and acting locally is. Otherwise, the problem is just exported out of the United States.

Gautama Buddha taught: “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”

Get over it, people. We are all one. The malevolent plutocrats, the ultra-rich who control our media and our schools – and therefore our minds – would have us believe that “we” must hate “you”. Americans are taught to hate North African Muslims, and North African Muslims are taught to hate Americans. Palestinians are taught to hate Israelis and Israelis to hate Palestinians.

The evil rulers (including the ultra-rich plutocrats in the United States, who manipulate the government and media) thrive on such division, since as long as we are divided amongst ourselves, everyone hating and fearing everybody else, we will never band together to overthrow those evil rulers – and we will continue to look to them to protect us from those people we’ve been taught to hate.

So we have Christian vs. Jew vs. Muslim, Black vs. White vs. Brown vs. Red vs. Yellow, Liberal vs. Conservative, West vs. East, North vs. South, one generation vs. another, male vs. female, straight vs. gay/lesbian/bi/trans....

And, if we are fatally foolish, we have Occupy vs. anti-Occupy. The Occupy movement will make a mortal error if it keeps speaking harshly to those who oppose it. The real enemy, the ultra-rich plutocrats, are delighted to see us fight amongst ourselves, because that way we'll never be united against them.

There are those who prefer to say that this “Occupy” movement began on Wall Street. It's very nice that they're so supportive of their own country, but I'm aghast when my fellow liberal friends adopt such a position, since it's one step away from the false but prevalent culturocentric notion that “anything good in the world” came from the U.S.A., a notion that we want to avoid not only because it isn't true, but because it is promoted by the hate-spewing "news" media and their ultra-rich masters, because it helps them sell American products and further rape the world economy - and it's only two steps away from ethnocentrism, and three steps from bigotry - the racist dogma that “anything good in the world” has come only from people of white northern European ancestry.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and this “occupy” movement is an example of that. It began, folks, in Tunisia, and it is from Tunisia that it has spread worldwide. When I challenged this notion recently, a friend of mine replied that the Wall Street version isn't against government but against Big Money. That is clearly not the case. I've been observing carefully the signs and statements of participants, and the reflections of informed analysts, and this is clearly directed, too, against a U.S. government that large swathes of the citizenry feel has so pandered to Big Money that it has failed in its responsibility to that ignored 99%.

So - as Tunisia celebrates its first democratic election - I shout hurrah! to that wonderful little country and thank them for showing the world how effective peaceful revolution can be!

This battle against the ultra-rich plutarchs is a worldwide battle with a worldwide solution and we must approach it on a worldwide basis. We must join hands with citizens in every country in solidarity against the real "Evil Empire". Let the plutarchs spray their propaganda that "America is Better", since that sells more Levis and Cokes. But let us be equal and united with our brothers and sisters the world over!

We must emphasize and bear in mind that all attempts to divide us (by race, by faith, by sex, by sexual orientation, by politics) ARE WELCOMED, EVEN INSTIGATED BY THE ULTRA-RICH ENEMY such that we defeat ourselves.

All these divisions are but an illusion. Race? There is only ONE race, the HUMAN RACE. All the rest are artificial, human-made distinctions. Pry deeply enough into your DNA and you realize what an illusion it all is. The farther back I go in my ancestry, the more I realize my ancestry isn’t this or that but a mélange of many. And I am sure that the same is true of you. So forget those foolish artificial distinctions.

We must unite against these ultra-rich potentates! We must unite and take on the Evil One... whether he goes by the name of Mubarak or Pol Pot or Noriega or Koch or Goldman Sachs. We must take him on wherever he lives – nonviolently, peacefully, but as persistently as water. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tse taught, “Water is the weakest thing in the world, but it can wear away a continent.”

And that, right there, is the strength of the Occupy movement that began in Tunisia - it has the power of water. The evil rulers cannot arrest it away or shoot it away, for when the people arise they keep coming and coming and coming until the evil is gone.

As individuals, all any of us can do is to look to ourselves and make sure we are doing, saying, thinking, and being the right thing.

Being a human being is not doing the expedient thing, the thing that helps you and yours be better off, but doing the right thing. Even at the expense of everything you hold dear.

Therefore, what we must do do is pray, stand up to evil, and support and encourage those around us to do the right thing. And – as did those mythical cavemen in the earliest age – we must band together to stand united against the evil forces.

If every individual (especially those of faith, whatever their particular faith-path) does this, the world will become a far better place.

How to Conduct the Revolution

The most famous image of the Dada movement was of a smoking pipe, above which were the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (“This is not a pipe.”) This image tells us strongly how to this day we are being carefully programmed to think the way the Powers That Be want us to think. They tell us that their demands to be released from paying taxes and from having to adhere to environmental regulations and employment fairness laws will be good for us. And, sadly, many people have believed them.

The current “Occupy” movement, which began in Egypt and Tunisia, moved on to Europe and Israel, Chile and Gabon, wound up in Wall Street, and now has spread worldwide. I’m overjoyed – people seem at last to be awakening from the lethargic hypnotic spell under which the ultra-rich oligarchs have put them. I, for one, despair at any shreds I still have of hope that the “system” can yet correct itself. It will more likely do some window-dressing, fire a few individuals while the real perpetrators go free, and then get on to business as usual – making money. I hope that revolution, far preferably bloodless, is in the offing.

All my life, as a pastor, I’ve urged forgiveness and forbearance, but the puppets in public office have been so well-programmed by the soulless ultrarich monsters who are our overlords that they take advantage of the forgiveness and forbearance of people like us in order to further their evil. On their slanted anything-but-objective news media they laugh at the “Occupy” movement, calling it diffuse, calling it leaderless, calling it unclear in message. For being peaceful in their demonstrating, these Powers That Be call them fools and dismiss them. But, on the other hand, if the demonstrators fail to “turn the other cheek”, then the latter can be blamed and arrested. Either way, the oligarchs are confident that they will win – that the crowds will eventually get bored and go home, or else lose their cool and get arrested. They believe that, no matter what the occupiers do, they, the ultra-rich, are going to win. Still, we all must hold to the truth, speak firmly but forgivingly to these wolves in sheep’s clothing, and pray.

The ultra-rich own, or control, pretty much everything – the halls of commerce, the news media, the educational institutions, the legislatures, the courts, the medical arena. Including, all too often, our minds and hearts. They have made us believe that obedience to them is “patriotism”, and daring to speak out in opposition is “un-American”. They use “country” as a way to stir our emotions, and xenophobia, fear of foreigners, as a way to manipulate us emotionally. It is all a form of brainwashing, of hypnosis.

This is why, of late, they have been spreading the message that anyone with intelligence, anyone with more than, say, a community college education, anyone who asks questions, anyone who challenges assumptions, is not to be trusted. Dumb is in. Stupid is cachet.

They repeat their advertisements over and over – and I don’t just mean television commercials or “product placement” in movies, but the “messages” about obedience and patriotism and do your job and don’t ask questions – and people just sit there unthinkingly watching them when the vapid entertainment program takes a “break” - such that, in the supermarket, they will hear those “jingles” when they see the brand name on the shelf, and be unable to keep from buying the products – and, in the voting booth, they will hear the vapid “sound bytes” incessantly delivered by tea party candidates. Back in the States, when someone had the television on, I would look away from it when the advertisements came on, and even “mute” them – and yet, to my chagrin, people would get angry at me because they “wanted to see them” - which told me that they were literally hooked on them, that this brainwashing was like a drug that they needed – which is indeed part of the brainwashing process, to love your jailer and torturer.

And the movies and television programs themselves are vapid, mindless bits of twaddle, with incredibly stupid “humor” that is clearly intended to dull our brains so we won’t question what these oligarchs are doing to us, and action movies (to say nothing of video games) that train the young people to answer the call when the bell of jingoistic patriotism is struck, so they can be killed in whatever senseless war is being waged this time.

Just before I left the United States forever, I was working five jobs, not including trying to sell signed copies of my books for a little extra cash, and yet I was still struggling to put food on the table, keep up with the bills, and pay the mortgage. It was literally killing me, it was literally killing my health. My house was “underwater”, worth less on the market than I still owed on it. The mortgage holder refused to let me refinance. I tried putting a young single mother in it, taking not a penny from her, but I could not keep up with the mortgage. Eventually she couldn’t afford even the little I asked of her and moved out, and I had no choice but to abandon the house; it has since been partially destroyed in a hurricane, and it was robbed of what worldly goods I still had in it, including precious family heirlooms.

All my life I’ve said we should, as Jesus said, give away all that we have and follow him. Before I left the States, I gave away my car to a poor black woman who lives in an inner city. I gave my entire collection of more than 100,000 books away. I cannot afford to return to the States to see my children who are dearer to me than anything, or my parents, who are in the final chapter of their lives. And I am living here in rural Panama in poverty, on a scant few hundred dollars a month, with only a suitcaseful of things I can call my own, doing my best to help poor indigenous people in this little village. That’s my choice, to do what Jesus said. I wish others would do similar.

Nor is it just government that is a “pipe”, despite what our overlords tell us. Every institution seeks above all to perpetuate its own existence, to expand its client (parishioner) base, to gain more money and power. Including, yes, religious organizations. It isn’t just the secular institutions, Wall Street, etc., that have stuck their hands in our pockets. We need to tell Rome, Salt Lake City, Jerusalem, Makkah, and all of them, the same thing – no more will they take our monetary and effort gifts until and unless they de-institutionalize in favor of really helping the needy. I’ve seen the riches of the Vatican with my own eyes, to name just one of many examples, and wonder how these people can call themselves servants of G-d when they control such wealth and power while millions are dying of chronic malnutrition, polluted drinking water, diarrhea, dysentery, AIDS, and, above all, war.

Sure these institutions are old and venerable, but the Word of the Lord is older, and, while they do not stand forever, “the Word of the Lord stands forever”, and that Word is to go, give away all that you have, and come, follow Him. Yes, the Pope holds an “ancient lineage”, yes, he represents a venerable institution. There are other venerable religious institutions even more ancient than the Pope’s. But more ancient than the Pope’s institution is the Word of the Lord. Jesus clearly said, “Go, give away all that you have [that's ALL that you have, not just what you can easily spare], and come, follow me.” Given a choice between venerating ancient lineages and following the Word of the Lord, I will choose the latter.

What can we do? A woman recently asked me for a website where she can make a difference. How trained we are by the oligarchs, to think the answer is somewhere on the internet. I don't see how any link can help. Rather, it’s an inward decision to bow to no human being or human institution, but only to G-d, to Allah, to Wakantanka, whatever term you use. It’s an inward decision to give these humans and institutions no power over you. It’s an inward decision to treat all humanity (and other species) with respect, giving to others freely, but yet speaking out and acting when others fail to treat people (and other species) with respect.

Here’s the answer: Buy from local farms. Buy direct from poor people in the Third World through various intermediary nonprofit organizations and coops. Buy generic, not brand name. Save your money at local independent banks. Frequent local independent shops, not big chain stores. Read books (bought at independent bookstores). Walk or use your bicycle. Pay cash as much as you can, or at least keep your credit card balance low; better yet, destroy it. Don’t invest in big business and take your money out of big banks.

Keep in mind the multiplier effect, which states that money that stays in a community increases in value, even if it doesn't increase in the number of dollars: the butcher buys from the baker, who buys from the candlestick maker, etc., in a web of relationships in which no new cash is ever introduced, but yet everyone gains plenty of value. However, when a Wal-Mart (or whatever) comes to that town, the amount of value in the town decreases – it’s sucked off to the ultra-rich slobs in Fayetteville, Arkansas, or wherever the slobs are who earn multiple millions a year. And worse, when one of these mega-companies goes belly-up, millions lose their jobs, their pensions, their health plans, and everything – but those slobs still have their mansions and their millions.

And, above all, don't let them control your mind. The oligarchs fuel our hatred for each other – liberals versus conservatives, whites versus blacks, citizens versus foreigners, Easterners and Middle-Americans and Westerners and Southerners each versus the other three, Yankee fans versus Red Sox fans – and, as long as we remain divided, they win. Right now, those in charge of us are stoking the hatred of “Occupiers” for “Tea Partiers” and vice-versa – because it serves their purposes well to keep us divided amongst ourselves.

I count among my dear friends many individuals whose politics and ethical views are diametrically opposed to mine. We have had many wonderful friendly arguments, not trying to bludgeon each other into agreement, but just exploring the profound depths of important issues. And, you know something? These people are wonderful people. They are truly good, truly moral, and want nothing but the best for this world. We simply differ on exactly what that "best" is and how to achieve it. I love them and trust them completely.

The people who disagree with you on these issues aren't the real enemy; if you think that, you're mistaken; that's what you've been trained by the real enemy to think.

Divided we fall, united we prevail. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves. We should be joined together against the real enemy, which isn’t pro-choicers or pro-lifers, pro-gunners, or gun-controllers, but the ultra-rich oligarchs who control all the institutions from the schools to the news media to the legislatures. Only in unity against the real enemy, the ultrarich oligarchs who, through their multinational corporation-persons, can we win back control of this world and our destiny before they succeed in destroying it.

The French Revolution was sparked by the intelligentsia, but the mob, long crushed under the royal heel, came tearing through the floodgates the intelligentsia opened, and a bloodbath of anarchy was the result. France (and I have lived there) is still suffering the pain of that anarchy.

The United States Revolution remained in the hands of the intelligentsia, with the result that the governmental institution enshrines the monied interests to this day (witness the insane Supreme Court decision that corporations are persons under the law).

I pray for a third way – a peaceful revolution that is neither controlled by the oligarchs to their advantage nor drowned in a sea of angry madness. So far, happily, these “Occupy” efforts are peaceful and surprisingly effective, despite the oligarchs-ordered media mockery.

May Creator guide us and protect us as we lead this revolution and create a New Heaven and a New Earth, free from bigotry and greed, in which all love their neighbors as themselves.

The Efficiency of Evil

Living as an expatriate, first in France and now in Panama, gives me a better perspective on current events in the United States. It’s hard to see a city clearly when you’re standing on a streetcorner in the midst of traffic and hurrying pedestrians. But, looking down from the mountaintop, and remembering the details from that streetcorner, you can see far more clearly the overall condition and future of that city.

Furthermore, I have the ability to contrast how things are in the United States to Panama. Sometimes I’m not sure which is better – incompetent poops who barely manage to hold their country together or evil monsters who are all too coldly efficient in raping the world for their personal aggrandizement. Yes, it’s amazing Panama keeps stumbling and bumbling forward without falling flat on its face; just yesterday, merely in crossing the border into Costa Rica and back, I experienced several examples of blithering boneheadedness that could easily have been averted if officials had stopped to think for just a few moments, instead of just shuffling things along or insisting out of macho bravado on their rectitude when they’re clearly mistaken.

Still, the more I think about it, the more I’ll take the incompetent poops.

In recent days alone, we’ve seen several horror shows in the United States:

1) The Wall Street occupation (also bravely manifesting itself in several cities). The news media tried ignoring it until it got too big to ignore, at which time they started criticizing it as a “circus”; they hope in this way to denigrate it such that it will fizzle out. The New York Police Department has been breaking all sorts of laws by dragging peaceful participants by their hair, tear-gassing them, beating them with billy clubs, arresting them as much as seven hundred at a time, and yet the movement is still growing. Wall Street, built and maintained by our tax dollars (certainly not the tax-shirking rich folks!), has been blocked off by police paid with our taxes, who are only letting through people with big Wall Street firm identifications. In other cities, citizens are being denied their right to withdraw their money from their banks. Clearly, the orders have come down from the country’s ultra-rich masters that this movement is to be broken up at all costs, including the cost of trashing the Bill of Rights. It is just as clear to the protesters that this is their only chance; the movement caught those ultra-rich oligarchs flatfooted with surprise, but you can be sure that that will not happen again. And you can be sure that, sooner or later, the tanks will roll down the streets as they did in Prague and Beijing and Berlin, forcing these people to flee for their lives.

2) The State of Georgia executed a clearly innocent man, Troy Davis. Officials blithely ignored worldwide appeals for mercy, and marches demanding his release. The United States Supreme Court failed in its responsibilities in refusing to stop or even delay the – not execution, but murder of Troy Davis. Barack Obama failed in his responsibility to issue a pardon or other presidential decree releasing Troy Davis. Clearly this was to satisfy their ultra-rich masters and continue to frighten the masses into obedience. My friend Whiskey Jack, a homespun philosopher and former merchant marine whose wisdom I cherish, insists that government officials who put an innocent man to death should be tried for murder; I agree, and add that, if that were the law, you’d see those very same politicians falling over each other in their stampede to abolish the death penalty.

3) I’ve heard talk from these same these political lapdogs about building a gigantic wall between the United States and Canada, similar to the one constructed on the Mexico border. Clearly this is about a) lining the pockets of the ultra-rich when taxpayers (who are increasingly the poor and middle classes, as the political lapdogs lift all tax burdens from the shoulders of the ultra-rich) are forced to pay the private contractors; b) “proving”to the citizens who have been brainwashed by the likes of Faux News and Retch Limburger that “something is being done” about all those dang dark people sneaking into the country; and c) this wall proposal might serve to distract the citizenry from things like that pesky little problem down on Wall Street. I cannot help but compare these walls to the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall, both of which were built at colossal expense in terms of both finance and labor, and which both utterly failed to keep the “barbarians” out; and the Berlin Wall, designed to keep the citizenry in. The Mexico Wall has clearly failed; drugs and refugées continue to pour into the United States, wall or no wall, prompted respectively by opportunity to feed on the wealth and drug-desire north of the border and by desperation. But I suspect that there may be something of the Berlin Wall in these Canada and Mexico walls – soon U.S. citizens will not be allowed to go abroad (unless they’re ultra-rich, of course), but kept instead chained to their grindstones in the "dark Satanic mills" envisioned by William Blake.

4) It was revealed that President Obama authorized the killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, on the pretext that he was more than a polemicist for alleged terrorists, but operationally involved. The known evidence for the latter, at this writing, is at best extremely flimsy – but that pales into insignificance in view of this setting aside of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the central documents to the entire rule of law in the country, by the president ordering the killing of one of his fellow citizens without due process – without a trial. Awlaki had been previously given the label “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control, with the result that it was illegal for any legal person or entity (including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, which tried) to represent that individual, unless a rarely-if-ever special permission is granted – even though by the Constitution, U.S. citizens have a right to legal representation, and are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Moreover, Reuters has since revealed the existence of a “secret panel” of U.S. officials who decide which vaunted enemies will be killed, citizens and non-citizens alike, and have the power to go ahead and order such killing, though the president apparently has the right to eliminate anyone on that list; again, there is no presumption of innocence or right of appeal. Why, then, Obama chose to allow this entirely unconstitutional murder of a U.S. citizen is, logically, way beyond me. If Awlaki did something illegal – fine; detain him and prove it in court. If he did not, leave him alone. But, if his constitutional rights are set aside, then the same can be done to anyone, including you and me.

I am extremely disappointed in President Obama. He has shamefully failed in his opportunity to lead the country into a new age of peace and prosperity for all people. He has catered far too often to his political opponents, the lapdogs of the ultra-rich. Two friends of mine, Buffy and Bonita, both African-American women, said to me, respectively, independently of each other: “Obama needs to go Black on their asses!” “He needs to go seriously Ghetto on these folk and open up a gigantic can of whup-azz.” Obama strikes me as a good man, an intellectually brilliant man, but one whose extreme care and lengthy consideration of alternatives eventually enervate him I still have hope that he will awaken to this imperative, but my hope is slowly sinking into despair. He needs to remember the ethical standards on which he sought this office. He needs to show emotion, to get angry, to lecture these people, and not to keep backing down. He needs to bring unity, not further division, to his fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, the ultra-rich oligarchs in control of this plutocracy – with no longer any pretense of true democracy – are absolutely thrilled to see us poor and middle-class folks divided asunder. They’re overjoyed to witness the political and cultural wars of “right”versus “left”, pro-choice versus pro-life, “family values” versus gay/lesbian rights, etc. This is why we see them sitting on their penthouse balconies high above Wall Street, sipping champagne and watching the “circus” being put on by the plebs down there on the street below. This is why we see their sign in the high window of the Chicago Board of Trade that says, “We are the 1%.” The ultra- rich intend to manipulate citizens into continuing to exhibit antipathetic rhetoric and behavior each toward the other, because, as long as the citizens fight each other, they will never unite – and thus will never build sufficient strength to “throw down the mighty from their seats” (as it is put in the Magnificat).

Given that choice between the efficient evil in the one country and the frustrating incompetence in the other, I’ll gladly take the latter. Here in Panama, at least, there’s still hope.

The End of the World Will Not Be Televised

Inspired by the several revolutions in recent months in North Africa, citizen occupations are presently continuing, and building, in the American financial capital, Wall Street, in New York City, as well as other cities in support of that one. Hundreds of people are taking part, including some unions, and at least two well known figures, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore. Police have been using excessive force, including at least one incident of tear-gassing people whose behavior was perfectly peaceful. Meanwhile, rich slobs sit on their penthouse balconies overlooking Wall Street sipping champagne and mocking those in that mundane world below them who foolishly protest the means by which these slobs became rich.

It is interesting to me is that this event has gotten hardly any mention on the mainstream news media in the United States. Even outlets like the usually reliable National Public Radio have refused to cover it - in the case of NPR, no doubt scared of the growing number of members of Congress (which provides its funding) who are marionettes dancing on financial strings jerked by the ultra-rich. If one wants to know what is going on, one must pull in various alternative news sources through the internet, or turn to the foreign press.

It doesn’t take much to figure out why this would be – the mainstream news media are owned by the very ultra-wealthy whom these demonstrators are protesting against. And the ultra-wealthy don’t want this kind of protest to spread, and the voices calling for a change in the current policy of relieving the ultra-rich of any tax burden and any impediment, economic or environmental, on their quest to accrue even more wealth.

And it is clear what the alleged reasoning behind this crackdown is: The widely held view is that "it's not real, it's not significant, unless it's on television". Reality (that, if you don't remember, is the context of events that cannot be accessed by electronic media) be damned, what matters is hype. These people believe reality can be controlled, that facts can be manipulated into twisted distortions that serve their end-game. These people believe that, if this demonstration is ignored by the electronic media, it is doomed through insignificance to eventual failure.

And it is clear to me that the police have been told to help bring about that eventual failure more quickly, to break up this demonstration by any means necessary. Clearly these techniques of dragging people by their hair, of insulting them, of tear-gassing them, are meant to incite violence on the part of the peaceful protesters. Once someone loses her or his cool, the police can arrest and detain that individual.

I am reminded vividly of what the prophet John Lennon said:

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor.”

What Lennon said exactly coheres with the pacifist philosophies of Lao-tse, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

What is sad about Lennon's point, in this context, is that the very moment some number of these peaceful protesters do lose their cool - when the police "pull their beard, flick their face", or, in actuality, as the police are doing right now, pull them off by their hair and tear gas them - THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE HEADLINE NEWS.

I support this kind of peaceful citizen protest; indeed, I think there are times when it becomes our civic duty. When government forgets its prime responsibility to be of the people, for the people, and by the people – when government becomes against the people – it is the civic duty of the people to protest, to speak out, and to resist.

The right-wing ultra-wealthy control the news media, and have for years so successfully that a vast proportion of Americans have been duped into believing that the rich shouldn't pay taxes, that homosexuals and dark-skinned foreigners are out to get us, that our essential civil rights and health insurance and social services should be eliminated, that nonsensical neverending wars should be fought and our young people killed in them. I see efforts like this one on Wall Street as part of a last-ditch effort to awaken citizens to the serious danger this right-wing movement poses.

I say to these protesters what I tell myself: My hope and prayer is constantly that if just one person is awakened by my efforts, then my efforts, my life, were not in vain. For one person can go on and awaken one more, and that person one more, and so on. And, yes, the cynics are right; perhaps in the long run it won't make any difference, that the lunatics will destroy this world anyway. But, as Ezekiel was told by Creator, even if they don’t listen, you still have to blow the trumpet to awaken and motivate them. And I say, as did Martin Luther, if I knew for a fact that the world was going to be destroyed tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today.

The lunacy is setting in on all fronts. It isn’t enough that Republicans are crowding the field in their efforts to bring shame upon themselves; President Obama, a Democrat, has horrified me by ordering the killing of a United States citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki had become a key figure in al-Qaeda and a very influential communicator in both English and Arabic. I do not doubt that his efforts are detrimental to the well-being of American citizens, even though he was never connected in any material way to any terrorist attacks on anybody.

However, the United States Constitution, which President Obama swore to uphold, requires him to maintain procedures of due process.

When Awlaki’s father sought a court order to bar Obama from authorizing the murder of his son, the United States Department of Justice argued that such decisions were “state secrets” and therefore beyond the scrutiny of the courts. Awlaki has not been tied to any material support for terrorist attacks. As a result, he was killed for his ideas, for his words, rather than his actions. Which means his Constitutional right to the freedom of speech, no matter how widely repugnant his words may or may not be, was summarily ignored.

But, more importantly, the United States Constitution, which Mr. Obama swore to uphold, requires individuals accused of crimes to be guaranteed the right to due process – they are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If Awlaki was guilty of a crime – and that remains even to be alleged, let alone proven – he was not found guilty in fair trial. And yet he was killed. At most, he may have been guilty of – not treason, but of sedition: action, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or the Constitution, or calculated to elicit contempt for these, or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection against these. Sedition does not amount to treason, and therefore it is not a capital offense. It is not punishable by death.

Which brings us back to the peaceful protesters on Wall Street. They are protesting, among other things, government, for its sanctioning of, its legalizing of, the elimination of taxes for the ultra-rich, the elimination of civil rights, the elimination of social services. Are they, then, guilty of sedition? By the vaunted “logic” by which the killing of Awlaki was authorized, could police or military be sent in to kill them, too? It has happened before – and several times, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the unionist marches in the Great Depression to the forcible putdown of peaceful civil rights and anti-Vietnam marches, most egregiously the killings at Kent State.

A government against the people sees its own citizens as enemies. If all it takes to justify killing citizens is an executive decree of guilt (rather than a decision of guilt in a court of law), then we are now living in a police state, in which any of us, at any time, including me for writing these words could be justifiably murdered by our own government.

The same day I heard about the murder of Awlaki, I had an agent of the government accuse me, on the telephone, of lying to him. I am supposed to receive a refund of overpaid taxes. I have called several times to ask the tax officials to send my money to me here, where I live in Panama. They continue to mail it to a defunct address in the United States, and apparently ignore the sticker put on by the United States Postal Service, when the check is mailed back to them, which provides my present address.

Despite all this, the agent on the telephone accused me of lying when I assured him that I have repeatedly called to provide my current address. I was forced to explain to him in very clear language that my taxes help pay his salary, that he is an employee of the citizens, including me, and that he has no right to adopt an accusatorial tone and state, without fact or proof, that I lied to him. I cannot help but wonder, now, if my statements to him could justify an executive order to kill me.

It seems to me that the world is drowning in a sea of rhetoric. Nobody seems to care about truth any more, just about shouting louder than everybody else - hence they get more and more outrageous in their wild statements simply to gain more attention; as a result, they wander ever farther from the truth.

The truth is: If citizens can be legally killed because “they look or sound like a terrorist”, there will be bloodshed in the streets at the hands of police and military. We must hold to the rule of law.

If that is the way things are, then may G-d have mercy on our souls.

The Trashing of the World

The other day, talking about how the ultra-wealthy have the rest of us ever more and more in their absolute control, I quoted the Yiddish proverb, “If rich people could hire others to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.”

My friend Glenda replied, “They already do. This is their recruitment of rural kids from the poor regions of the United States, who cannot afford to attend universities, who cannot find jobs, so they are going to war in place of the rich kids who are attending universities or are put by their rich daddies into the family business. However, the poor don’t make a wonderful living, they actually make less than minimum wage if you add it all up with the hours they put in.”

Glenda is right. I am more and more convinced that there is a cabal of ultra-wealthy individuals. Their names are not particularly well-known. They work from the shadows, through their proxies and puppets and puppydogs. They are reinstituting a worldwide slave society, in which all but they have to work constantly for pitiful wages to cover the ever-rising cost of living. Onto these slaves, chained by bills and taxes to their workbenches, the ultra-wealthy have put so much burden that people are crushed thereunder. More than that, wars are engineered as ways to make money (munitions industries, prison industries, construction industries, and so on), as well as to kill off excess populations, and keep people living in fear.

North Americans and Western Europeans are kept in a miasma of fear and anxiety by the overwhelming flood of information coming at them. They are made to feel guilty unless they watch the news and catch up on Facebook. But there is too much information to digest, and it leaves us confused and disorganized, and yet always craving more, and feeling guilty if we fail to review all of the information. Moreover, the information is largely propaganda, and carefully calibrated so people think and behave exactly as this cabal of ultra-rich want.

As I write this essay, there is a peaceful occupation of Wall Street, the financial center of the United States and, effectively, the world. While there was plenty of coverage of similar events in North Africa, this is getting hardly even a brief mention on the mainstream news media - which are owned by the ultra-wealthy who stand to lose a bit of their fortunes if this occupation reaches any meaningful outcome. I have just learned that journalists with the only news outlet providing video feeds - a small alternative outfit that broadcasts through the internet - have just been arrested. Hm. I wonder why.

Shortly before I wrote this essay, I watched in horror the video of a crowd cheering a Republican candidate for the United States presidency when he bragged about executing more than two hundred (mostly minority) people in his state of Texas. And the video of a crowd calling for the death of a man in hospital who had no health insurance. And the video of another crowd screaming imprecations at a man in the United States military, serving in the front line of one of these nonsensical wars, who happens to be gay.

Most people in North America and Western Europe don’t know that nearly one million people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the United States invasions, according to the lowest credible estimates. Americans are trained to be chronically incapable of thinking about anybody but themselves. They rarely realize that the Afghanistan/Iraq wars have no credible raison-d’être – there is no relationship between these countries and the September 11 attacks. They have no clue that, on the pretext of those attacks, the United States government has caused the death of thousands of people for every one individual who died in those attacks. These wars are entirely about oil and power, and ego on the part of the Bush/Cheney/Rove collective.

Most Americans are chronically unable to see how the arrogation and bigotry of their government, and its insistence that it has the unilateral might-makes-right to invade other countries and dictate to them how to run their own affairs made such an attack almost inevitable. The September 11 attacks were utterly abhorrent to any pacifist like me. But far more abhorrent, to me, are all the many, and worse, ways in which the ultra-wealthy, through the United States government-military-corporate establishment, have profiteered on their egregious exploiting of bloodshed in the world. Millions of innocent people have died in wars engineered by the United States. Millions more suffer thanks to United States corporatocracy (e.g., Bhopal, the Gulf of Mexico, the Exxon Valdez).

Americans are chronically blind to how their country, which was once upon a time loved and respected, is now broadly hated in the world. The United States has squandered and trashed the good will of the world by betraying its vaunted dedication to good. It now is clearly out to exploit the entire world, through commerce and war. And what is bound soon to happen as a result the United States can only blame itself for.

Descartes famously said, Cogito ergo sum. “I think, therefore I exist.” It is one of the greatest misfortunes of this age that very few people are capable of truly thinking any more, and one wonders if, then, they truly exist. Oh, yes, they think they think, but it is what they have been trained and programmed to think by the mills the public schools have been turned into, by the propaganda news media, by the politicians and the clergy. “Education”, in schools and the media (both news and entertainment) and houses of worship, is no longer about opening minds to the ability to think creatively and critically and to make decisions thoughtfully and to communicate eloquently, but to prepare them for their lifelong enslavement to the system of producing more riches for the rich.

Indeed, speaking as a retired clergyperson, I blame religion (all religions) as a social institution. Just like countries, just like the medical or insurance or legal or what-have-you social institutions, the short-sighted dimwits who “run” the religious social institutions, wear the sheep's clothing of vaunted spirituality to hide their lupine nature (the analogy is borrowed from Jesus of Nazareth) as they rape the people.

But religion is, as an institution, simply another pool of power, on the part of the ultra-wealthy, to control and harvest the people of the world. It is the Roman Empire, which never died; it simply became the Roman Catholic Church and its similar organizational hierarchies.

Spirituality is not religion. Spirituality, the sui generis yearning of the soul for the infinite, is decidedly not a social institution. Jesus, Mohammed, Lao-tse, Gautama Buddha, Black Elk, etc., on whom all be peace, were not religious leaders, not presidents of some social institution. They were spiritual people. As such, they were antinomian. As such, they condemned the social institutions – they condemned the “pharisees”, the establishment, as hypocrites (as, said Jesus, “whited sepulchres all white without and full of corruption within”).

We need more people like them. We need more John Lennons, Sojourner Truths, Martin Luther Kings, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhis, Dalai Lamas. We need more prophets, provocateurs, revolutionaries, poets, visionaries – people who have a vision of humanity as it should be, and have the courage like those I’ve named to stand in front of the military tanks in Tiananmen Square, to stand up to the well-entrenched powers, to outrage the people, to challenge common assumptions, to inspire and lead the way to a new world.

It is indeed always a battle of sorts between the visionaries and those who would convert the Sacred into the merely mundane. For every Jesus, every visionary, there is an organizer, a corporatocracist, a Paul, a Constantine, to set up the bureaucracy and turn the wild sacred power of spirituality into the mundane and malleable religion. Mircea Eliade and Emile Durckheim both pointed out this sad fact. coming from different scholarly directions.

But does that mean we should give up? As a spiritualist and an artist, I vehemently reject that notion. If through my writings I inspire only one person or maybe a few, and they go on to inspire others – then my life has not been an entire waste.