Life In Japan: Clouds of Pollen in the Spring

Posted on April 25, 2017 by johnrachel

“The awareness is spreading like clouds of pollen in the spring.”

That was a comment I made on a progressive website about the worldwide demonstrations, street protests, and rallies celebrating this year’s Earth Day.

I must confess that until two weeks ago I had a highly prejudiced understanding and appreciation of pollen.  I associated it with red, runny noses, puffy, squinting eyes, an annual epidemic of misery among a sizeable chunk of the population.  This limited and highly negative view was shaped by thousands of ads for over-the-counter remedies which had been embedded in my brain, probably from my first days of watching TV as a child.

Of course, a little basic biology is a powerful corrective.  We find that pollen is the delivery mechanism of male sperm cells for plants.  Pollination is about reproduction.  It’s how vast landscapes are turned into breathtaking fields of flowering plants, a floral explosion that here in Japan transforms the whole country into a beautiful garden stretching sea to sea.

My awakening, however, did not come from a text book.  It came — as is quite common these days — from my lovely and truly brilliant Japanese wife.

Masumi and I were on our way to an outdoor market in a nearby town.  It was at the peak of the cherry blossom season.  Cherry blossoms here are not confined to parks or community malls.  Tens of thousands of cherry blossom trees line roads, rivers, canals, and crisscross fields of rice and other crop plantings.  It’s absolutely spectacular.

However, I mentioned casually to her that is seemed a little hazy that day.  We’re downwind from the China mainland, which hosts many coal-fed power plants, heavy-industry factories, and the like, so I just assumed it was the usual dust and smoke blowing our way from our Chinese neighbor.

“No, that’s pollen,” explained Masumi.  She directed my gaze to the face of a forested mountain we were passing.  There was a huge puff of what appeared to be smoke, but not really the color of smoke, or the way smoke looks rising from burning debris.  No, it was a cloud of pollen, which was being released in that section of the forest, I assume from the floral undergrowth beneath the trees.

Thus began my quick education and new respect for pollen.  That cloud was the promise for the continuing regeneration of the awe-inspiring bouquet we and others across Japan were now enjoying.

Okay.  I believe in balanced reporting.  So let me explore the other side of this story.

Some folks are allergic to pollen.  Those ads for over-the-counter remedies turn their misery into cold, hard cash for the manufacturers of these palliatives.  Point taken.

But there are others who don’t have this excuse.  These are folks who choose to seal themselves up in an artificial cocoon, stare at flat-panel displays, thus have no idea about clouds of pollen, pollination, flowers, or anything that doesn’t conflate with living under artificial light, being captive of a hermetically sealed environment; no concept of a reality which doesn’t adhere to and reify the rules of commerce and commodification of everything.  This is the model embraced by an economy-fixated society, which exclusively views humans as components of monetary mechanisms, consequently only values them as producers and/or consumers. 

I would surmise the notion of beauty for such champions of greed is skyrocketing returns on investments and a bulging portfolio of winning stocks.  I seriously doubt either of those has much of a fragrance though I may have on occasion heard someone say: “That person smells of money.”

For these individuals, flowers are “beautiful” depending on how marketable they are and what sort of profits they produce.  With no sense of irony, they would deem the distress of those allergy sufferers as an opportunity to turn a profit.  The more misery these folks have to endure, the better the prospects for some fat returns on pharmaceutical stocks.

We’re told that this is the new way to look at the world.  Those old valuations — meaning just the basic use of our senses, and gauging the world around us by the joy and delight we feel in our hearts — are passé, and have been replaced by the new tools of capitalism, the free market, and the now dominant neoliberal paradigm.

Yet, the Earth day protests and celebrations convincingly offered a very different message.  That message was loud and unambiguous.  Treating the Earth as a factory for man-made goods, narrowing the contribution of human beings to merely producing and consuming those goods, subjecting everything from happiness and love to the value of a human life, only to the metrics of economic worth, reducing all of the potential for human creativity, ingenuity, compassion, nobility, vision, altruism, excellence, and achievement, to mere numbers on a spread sheet, is suffocating the human race, exterminating the human family, eviscerating the human spirit, and destroying the planet.

I’ve made my choice.  It took me a while to come around.

I’ll take my chances with the clouds of pollen.

Posted in Environment, Science, Social Commentary, Spiritual | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dealing With A Serial Liar

Posted on April 24, 2017 by johnrachel

There's a special place in the world for people who constantly lie to others -- decent folks who trust and rely on them to do the right thing.There is a special place in the world for people who constantly lie to others — who dupe decent but naive folks who trust them, and rely on them to do the right thing.  (See photo to the right.)

You see, career politicians lie and lie.  They eventually have no idea they’re lying, because they have no idea anymore what the truth is.  And they’ve gotten to the point where they don’t care.  Everyone knows politicians lie.  It’s part of the job description. They only stop lying when they take a break to think up new lies.  They say exactly what they need to say.  To get the job done.  They do know what they need to do — what job needs to get done.  But you probably don’t.

Because they lie about it.

Lies can be spotted.  There are key phrases — red flags — we can watch for.  Here is a list of them.  When you hear a politician say any of these, everything which follows is a lie:

“Trust me when I say . . .”
“I sincerely believe . . .”
“The American people want . . .”
“There is no doubt that . . .”
“I’m proud to announce . . .”
“Thanks for that kind introduction!”
“Good evening!”
“Good afternoon!”
“I’m honored to be here!”
“How are you?”

The Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 declared that crimes against peace are “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” 

I would make a parallel assessment.  Lying is the supreme personal crime, differing from other offensive personal behavior in that it contains within itself the accumulated potential for all other offensive, even criminal, behavior.  When a person lies to you, the gateway for every other possible abuse is flung wide open.  Humiliation, treachery, sexual abuse, theft, embezzlement, libel, slander, even murder.  Would you trust a liar around your children?  Would you trust a liar with your house keys?  Would you even trust a liar to watch your things while you went to the restroom?

My previous blog dealt with how not to deal a with serial killer.

It contains an important lesson.

Understand . . .

Serial killers and career politicians are very similar.

They both have us at their mercy.  They both have the power of life and death over us.

They don’t play by the same rules as you and I.  They are ruthlessly amoral. There may be exceptions to this.  But as anomalies, these only confirm the rule.

They both have value systems which exclusively serve their own needs.  The only value the serial killer places on human life is the kick he gets from terminating the lives of others.  It’s about a brutal hedonism and personal power.

The only value career politicians place on the trust and loyalty of their constituents, is how it serves to secure their prestigious jobs in the national limelight, and positions them best serve their deep-pocketed ruling class patrons.  It’s about job security and personal power.  All else is subordinate and thus entirely irrelevant.

In my previous blog, I described in nauseating detail what the serial killer of my narrative did to his victims.

Then I described the idiotic, completely lame, totally ineffective things a community did to try to stop the gruesome violence.  Maybe the folks meant well, but they were entirely out of touch with reality to think any of it would be effective.

At this point you ask:  What’s your point, John Rachel?  Is this supposed to be funny?  Actually it’s pretty twisted!

Well, it is twisted.  But it’s twisted on a lot of levels.  Not only is the killer clearly twisted, but apparently our cerebral cortex is too, if we actually believe that any of the measures outlined — regardless of how commonly heralded they might be — could possibly work.  Apparently, all too often our minds are gripped by a covert confusion where form and substance are conflated into a toxic brew of false hope and ridiculous expectations.

‘We have to do something!’ subliminally becomes a license to do a lot of stuff which has no hope of succeeding but temporarily satisfies the anxious goading of desperation and guilt.

My point is that all of the chosen methods to stop the killer were obviously a total waste of energy and time.  What incentive is there in any of the tactics for the killer to end his orgy of violence?  He loves killing and mutilating people!  He doesn’t care what others think or how much suffering it causes.  This is how he gets his jollies.  Dead bodies are his reward! 

There’s only one option:  He must be eliminated.  He must be taken out of circulation!

And this is precisely the way we deal with our current coven of elected officials.

I’m not suggesting assassination.  All I’m saying that if we want things to get better, these pay-for-play politicians — serial liars — who are puppets to Wall Street, investment banks, transnational corporations; who’ve let our country be stolen by a wealthy ruling elite; who have demonstrated time and time again they will never truly represent the interests and needs of their constituents . . . MUST BE REMOVED FROM POWER.

. . . THEY MUST BE GIVEN THEIR PINK SLIPS AND SENT PACKING . . .

. . . AND NEVER ALLOWED TO ROAM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS AGAIN!

We’ve had enough abuse.  We’ve been victimized too long.  No more lies.

Regime change in Congress in November 2018!

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Posted in Corporatism, Deconstruction, Democracy, Political Analysis, Political Rant, Revolution | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dealing With A Serial Killer

Posted on April 1, 2017 by johnrachel

There’s a serial killer loose in town.  Eight to ten people a month have been murdered over the past several years.  They’re dropping like flies!

Well, they’re not actually dropping like flies.  Flies usually fall on their backs, their legs do this happy feet dance, they expire with little fanfare or ritual, then dry up and blow away.

On the other hand . . .

This homicidal monster has some strange fetishes. He ends a person’s life immediately by driving an axe in the face, then cuts the dead body into various size chunks.  The entrails he drapes in trees around town, the finely-carved fillets of flesh from the meatier parts of the body — thighs, calves, arms, backs and stomachs if there’s a nice balance between fat and muscle — are fed to stray dogs by tossing them in alleys around town.  More delicate parts — eyes, ears, lips, tongues, genitals — are stuffed into bubble mailers and arrive in mailboxes in the nicer neighborhoods. They’re marked ‘Something Special Just For You’.  Finally the bones are stacked on the hoods of parked police cruisers.

It’s a horrifying, gruesome mess that has pushed the entire community to near insanity.

So . . . what do you do?

I got it!

You put an ad in the local paper:  Stop killing people! We don’t like it!

You get people together for marches.  They go through the business district during the busiest hour of the day carrying protest signs, chanting anti-serial killing slogans, and singing Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall.

You sell t-shirts that say:  “Serial killing is bad for humans and other living things!”

You get experts on TV talking about how the killing really should stop, how the violence and fear is tearing the community apart, what bad effects this has on the kids growing up in this type of environment.  There’s unanimity on all the panels discussing this.  No one comes out in favor of serial killing.

We mount a campaign to send emails to the serial killer — don’t ask me how but somehow we got hold of his AOL email address — and his In box is flooded to capacity with messages decrying his butchery:  ‘People are really upset. You’re a sick man!’  ‘Burn in Hell, MF!’  ‘What is wrong with you? Don’t you know killing is bad?’

We call his office — again, don’t ask me how we got his phone number but we did, he has an office somewhere in the city — morning, noon, and night.  It’s organized through the Code Blue Mothers Against Murder ad hoc committee, and 800 to 1,000 calls a day pour in to his office.  Every once in a while, we get a live person.  Boy, do we give her an earful!  But usually, we get an automatic answering device with a menu:  If you’re against serial killing, please press #1.  If you’re for serial killing, please press #2.  If you wish to speak personally to a member of our staff, just stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly [ bleep click ] Expected wait time to answer your call 2 hours and 15 minutes.

We set up a Town Hall Meeting.  It’s attended by thousands of angry, concerned citizens and they can’t all fit into the high school gymnasium where it’s being held.  The serial killer appears on a video screen — with his hockey goalie mask on, of course — and people vent and express their outrage.  When things calm down a bit, people ask questions and plead with the serial killer.  He explains he has difficulty controlling his temper, but he says he can see people are upset, so he’ll try harder.

There are no killings for a week.  Then they start up again.

So finally, we pull out the big gun.  Yes . . . a petition!

We circulate a petition both in person on the streets, and online — it’s up on MoveOn.org and Avaaz.  We get tens of thousands of signatures!  In fact everyone — well, everyone who hasn’t been murdered yet — signs it.  Our signature drive is a complete success. 

Yessiree!  We’ve really got this psycho by the balls!

Now we wait.

For some reason the killing hasn’t stopped.  Three more this week.

Where did we go wrong?

Hmm.

Posted in Deconstruction, Democracy, Nihilism, Satire, Social Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gay Whales

Posted on March 27, 2017 by johnrachel

“We’re aware of the situation.  We’ve got the Coast Guard working this.  The best coast guard in the world!  These guys are top notch.  Great men, every one of them!  And we’re looking at an armada of America’s best fighting ships and nuclear submarines to take them out, if they don’t get with the program.  God bless our military!  The greatest military in the world.  I just love them to death!”

This was President Donald Trump’s reply to a Fox News reporter’s question during a visit by local area school children to the White House Rose Gardens, about the latest recent, completely unexpected crisis.

Oceanographers and marine biologists from the Department of Advanced Environmental Studies at Trump University had just yesterday announced some startling findings.

Apparently, starting the day after Trump’s inauguration as president, there has been an enormous spike in the number of gay whales seen swimming off the coastal waters of the continental United States.  Calling it sheer coincidence, these same authorities stated unequivocally that there is absolutely no causal connection that can be attributed to the president himself or his administration for this bizarre phenomenon.

A few hours later in a separate announcement made by White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, media representatives were informed that emergency follow-up studies are set to immediately begin to determine if this surge of whale gayness also afflicts Hawaii and the waters off the coast of Alaska.

Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, has also scheduled a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, to enlist the expertise of local scientists to determine if there have been any similar sightings of whale fudge-packers in the Sea of Japan.  Japan has a veritable army of highly credible whale experts, who undoubtedly will be able to shed some light on this troubling development.

The real concern in this mounting crisis was expressed by an unnamed high-ranking official in the Department of Education, who reputedly received his training, expertise, and sensitivity in the sphere of family values, as a corporate raider with Goldman Sachs:  “Summer is coming, which means time at the beach.  We sure can’t have young children exposed to the kind of thing that these gay whales do — whatever that is — with their wild abandon to hedonistic coupling, showing no regard for common decency.  This is truly offensive in the extreme.  It is shamelessly un-American.”

Now that whale gayness is acknowledged as an attack on American values, it has stirred up quite a few members of Congress.  Calls for a complete investigation are gathering tremendous support, driven by speeches on the floor of the Senate just today by senators John McCain and Marco Rubio.  It will focus on possible Russian involvement in the horrifying shift in sexual preferences among large mammals.  Can we expect to see a corresponding escalation in coming out parades of pink elephants?  Gay hippo same sex mud parties?  Gay gorillas?

Whew!  It just never ends.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another, eh?

I remember back in the 90s seeing a bumper sticker . . .

Nuke the gay whales!

I thought it was pretty funny at the time.

But it’s no longer a joking matter.  It’s now the newest battle cry in President Trump’s noble struggle to make America great again.

So whatever you do, folks . . . don’t laugh.

It’s not funny.  Not at all.  Not one bit.

God bless America!

Posted in Democracy, Environment, Fox News, Satire, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia: Scary Bear or Barely Scary?

Posted on March 23, 2017 by johnrachel

The U.S. needs to get its story straight.

We have been fed over the past few years entirely contradictory views of Russia.

Lately, of course, we’ve seen a preponderance of “scare bear” propaganda and commentary.

Could this have something to do with it being appropriations time, the annual fight over who gets what in next years federal budget?  Considering the U.S. can’t pile up debt fast enough to suit its enlightened leaders, this also means lubricating the public mind for increasing the already humongous pile of money which goes into military spending, that being the major component of discretionary spending.

Of course, military spending, besides being intrinsically good regardless of how much it distorts our national values and bankrupts our economy, is about making American safe from the entire panoply of threats.  It seems everyone is at our throats, ready to chop off our benevolent heads.  Besides terrorists, rogue nations explicitly dedicated to destroying us like Venezuela and Cuba, and major nations like China — which lent us over a trillion dollars to buy military hardware to prevent them from attacking us — there is always the little discussed potential for an invasion from outer space.

Having said that, it’s Russia that seems to get all the headlines.  We have former VP Joe Biden concurring with current FBI Director James Comey that, without a doubt, even without any corroborating evidence, Russia is out to get us!

Yet, it wasn’t that long ago that Russia was being dismissed as a second-rate power.  Obama mockingly announced it’s economy was in tatters.  Sure, it might have some leverage regionally but certainly wasn’t a player on the big stage of world geopolitics.

So what is the truth?  Is Russia a wild and woolly beast?  Or an affable and tame dancing bear?

Maybe we need some veterinarian advice to sort all of this out.  Can bears get rabies?

Because while over the past several years Russia has consistently been getting folks from all across the globe to the peace tables, trying to resolve diplomatically the crises created by the West in Ukraine, Syria, the Middle East in general, we are now told that under the spell of their crazed leader Vladimir Putin, the country is foaming at the mouth, haunted and possessed with diabolical visions of world conquest.  Did Russia get bitten by a rabid ground squirrel?

To add to the confusion is this recently announcement, a highly thought-provoking one at that, which should — but won’t — result in some serious soul-searching in the U.S.:  Russia has just recently announced it is dramatically cutting its defense budget for 2017!  As this excellent piece of analysis points out, you are very hard pressed to find mention of it any where in the Western media.

Try to make sense of it.

Russia is 24/7 vilified as a rogue nation, an out-of-control empire-hungry aggressor, with a madman at the helm who longs for the glory days of the Soviet Union’s dominion over vast stretches of the Euro-Asian continent, but in fact only has 15 military bases in 9 foreign countries, AND is cutting its military budget by 25% next year.

The U.S. breathlessly peddles itself as the purveyor of peace, the spreader of democracy, the guardian of justice and a harmonious world, yet it has about 800 bases in at least 63 countries in the world — depending on your definition of ‘base’, some put this figure at over 160 — AND is increasing its military expenditures by almost 10% in 2018.

What are we to think?

Is Russia a scary bear . . . or barely scary?

And what about America?

Much of the world seems to think we’re the truly frightening ones!

Posted in Deconstruction, Journalism, Political Analysis, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on March 19, 2017 by johnrachel

As they say . . . don’t get me started.

Because I could go on and on about this.

Instead I’m going to make this mercifully short and just cite a few incontrovertible facts.

The UN has reported that we are facing a massive famine of 20,000,000 people across Africa and Yemen, and it would only take $4.4 billion to mitigate this horrible disaster.

The United Nations has also reported that all it would require is $30 billion annually, to permanently end world hunger.

Trump and our warmongering Congress is increasing the already bloated defense budget next year by $54 billion, to prosecute more wars and create more enemies for America.

Let me play Devil’s advocate now.  Let me be brutally insensitive and amoral.

Since apparently we as a people don’t truly care if others in the world suffer and starve to death, let’s say for argument’s sake we shouldn’t care.  Hey!  Life has winners and losers.  Some people have it good.  Others starve to death.  It is what it is.

Having said that, having declared our own welfare to be eminently more important than that of anyone else on the planet, let me explain why we’re incredibly stupid — make that completely insane — if we don’t take the money out of the defense budget, halt the famine, and end world hunger immediately.

Actually, let Lee Camp — a truly enlightened activist and my all-time favorite comedian — tell you why.  As Lee says it so perfectly:

“We as a country could do that easily and have more national security than ever, because no one’s attacking the country that ended world hunger. . . . They attack the country that bombs the shit out of the Middle East and bans refugees, and says stupid crap like: ‘We’re #1!’ . . . . If we ended world hunger we’d be safe again.”

Does it really take a stand-up comic to get our national priorities right?

Or maybe we’re trying a different approach to getting laughs:  A comedy of errors.

Posted in Economics, Food, Political Analysis, Political Rant, Social Commentary, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No Negotiating With Terrorists

Posted on March 10, 2017 by johnrachel

“No negotiating with terrorists!”

Now that’s something I can get behind.

A terrorist not only doesn’t share the same goals as you and I, they also don’t play by the same rules.  Terrorists are the ultimate bullies.  They will lie, cheat, steal, even murder, in order to get their way.  The ends justify the means.  They’re right, we’re wrong.  Terrorists can’t fathom compromise, so what is the point of negotiating?

We face terrorism on many fronts and at many levels because sociopathy and barbarism are not subtle or selective.  Perhaps they represent bad wiring in some small but wickedly destructive sub-class of humans, or maybe we all carry the defect, but it only rises up to preempt the better instincts among a minority of us.

In either case, if we don’t want to be “terrorized” into submission, we must decisively stand our ground and entertain no compromise.

“No negotiating with terrorists!”

The United States has become a terrorist nation.

Not you and I as such . . . because regular folks like us are generally peaceful and sane.

Unfortunately, we no longer have any say in the decisions and direction of the country.

But there is a national agenda, driven on many fronts at many different levels, promoted in our names as citizens of the country, which has transformed the U.S. into the greatest scourge in the history of the planet.  We have unbridled power coupled with no coherent political philosophy, fueled by unchecked imperial ambition and delusions of world rule, unimpeded by considerations of morality or sensitivity to the value of human life.

U.S. terrorism expresses itself internationally as wars, regime changes, special operations missions, economic manipulation and interference, cyber and propaganda warfare, and is implemented with the forward-basing of troops, NGOs, embedded intelligence agents, foreign mercenaries, and often outright military occupation of over 140 countries.

All of this is conceived, planned, and coordinated from within our own borders.  Often it reflects official, if not always publicly-known, foreign policy.  Sometimes it grows out of legacy policies and practices, the product of a group-think world view which has a life of its own established over decades, one which embraces the unquestioned, and until recently, unchallenged role of the U.S. as the world’s policeman and sole superpower.

While we can find fault in the workings of the loose collective of institutions which make up what is now called the Deep State, much direct blame for our terrorism can be assigned to the CIA.  This 70-year-old agency has become the main engine for projecting U.S power, providing the foot soldiers, technology and weaponry, for a vast majority of catastrophes we have precipitated over the past sixty years.  The list of sovereign nations the U.S. has illegally meddled and decisively interfered with — compiled by the brilliant and highly-acclaimed historian and geopolitical analyst William Blum — is as formidable as it is disgraceful (please note: *indicates the successful overthrow of a government):

  • China 1949 to early 1960s
  • Albania 1949-53
  • East Germany 1950s
  • Iran 1953 *
  • Guatemala 1954 *
  • Costa Rica mid-1950s
  • Syria 1956-7
  • Egypt 1957
  • Indonesia 1957-8
  • British Guiana 1953-64 *
  • Iraq 1963 *
  • North Vietnam 1945-73
  • Cambodia 1955-70 *
  • Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
  • Ecuador 1960-63 *
  • Congo 1960 *
  • France 1965
  • Brazil 1962-64 *
  • Dominican Republic 1963 *
  • Cuba 1959 to present
  • Bolivia 1964 *
  • Indonesia 1965 *
  • Ghana 1966 *
  • Chile 1964-73 *
  • Greece 1967 *
  • Costa Rica 1970-71
  • Bolivia 1971 *
  • Australia 1973-75 *
  • Angola 1975, 1980s
  • Zaire 1975
  • Portugal 1974-76 *
  • Jamaica 1976-80 *
  • Seychelles 1979-81
  • Chad 1981-82 *
  • Grenada 1983 *
  • South Yemen 1982-84
  • Suriname 1982-84
  • Fiji 1987 *
  • Libya 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1981-90 *
  • Panama 1989 *
  • Bulgaria 1990 *
  • Albania 1991 *
  • Iraq 1991
  • Afghanistan 1980s *
  • Somalia 1993
  • Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
  • Ecuador 2000 *
  • Afghanistan 2001 *
  • Venezuela 2002 *
  • Iraq 2003 *
  • Haiti 2004 *
  • Somalia 2007 to present
  • Honduras 2009
  • Libya 2011 *
  • Syria 2012
  • Ukraine 2014 *

Among these, at the urging and with the active partnering of the CIA, are 35 countries ruled by horrifyingly oppressive dictators, fascist regimes, drug lords, and jihadists.

This has not just dramatically, malignantly, affected the international order.  It has also created enormous resentment, and generated enemies where there were none before.  In that sense, it is a self-perpetuating reign of mayhem and chaos, keeping the world in flux and disarray, constantly producing even more threats to our country which then, in the adversarial and combative mindset of the CIA, requires further meddling and mayhem.

We have to be honest with ourselves and judiciously apply the same standards across the board when judging such anti-democratic, autocratic abusers of power.  If we’ve been able thus far to rationalize distressing signs that the CIA was slowly becoming a rogue security agency — dismissing sordid leaks and disturbing discoveries as isolated rare instances of individual acts of overzealousness and insubordination — the recent revelations provided by Wikileaks with the publication of their Vault 7 documents provide concrete proof that the CIA has been completely out-of-control for a very long time, and what should truly disturb us is that such behavior is not the exception but the rule.

With terrorist organizations like the ISIS, al Nusra, al Qaeda, and now our own CIA, it is impossible to integrate them into more tempered and balanced institutions, especially in what is portrayed as the institutional framework of a democracy.  These elements violate national and international law and treaties, arrogantly scoff at diplomatic protocol, are adverse to power-sharing, spurn the time-honored boundaries of common sense and decency, and are ruthlessly callous and amoral.

It’s the way unchecked power evolves, how a parasite will ultimately kill its host.

We now have little choice.  The CIA and all traces of it must be eradicated, except for an archival installation in the Smithsonian Institute as a warning to future generations.

This is now a matter of survival for the U.S. and perhaps the human race.

We have inadvertently created a monster and lost control.  The CIA is incompatible with the survival of a free, open, just, democratic society.  It may prove incompatible with the survival of the human race if left unchecked.

Understandably, the CIA will plead the case for its own institutional survival.

But the case is closed.  There is nothing more to discuss.

“No negotiating with terrorists!”

Posted in Deconstruction, Democracy, Political Analysis, Political Rant, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Peace Dividend: Some Perspective

Posted on March 3, 2017 by johnrachel

I’m addressing this article to the “professional left” and to the typically white middle-class point-and-click political activists who are at the insular core of today’s peace movement.  They do keep trying — we give them all the much-deserved credit for that — yet keep doing the same things over and over — wash, rinse, repeat — never pausing to look objectively at how ineffective they’re being.

[ Insert Einstein’s definition of insanity here. ]

Despite a slight surge of street protests since Trump ascended the throne — largely not specific to peace — the peace movement is essentially going backwards.  Missives vital for the survival of the human race are not being heard because the folks currently advocating peace: 1) are drowned out by a militarized war-hungry media; 2) are mumbling worn out messages, rehashing stale slogans, pushing boring clichés, reciting sound bites that should have been retired when disco stopped being the rage; and 3) are lacking necessary focus, mojo and momentum.

It’s a veritable cacophonous roar out there these days.  If what’s being trumpeted is not pitch perfect and outrageously spectacular, it’s just more white noise in the din.

To get people to pay attention, you need to get their attention.  That means fresh, exciting new ideas; galvanizing calls to action; relevant, achievable payoffs.  The peace movement can’t survive anymore on high fives, or peace sign t-shirts and bumper stickers.  People just aren’t buying the old tropes.

Mind you, when I talk about ‘people’, I’m talking about tens of millions of people.  I am talking about creating a true ‘people’s movement’ of ‘people power’, not just a marginal slice of the population which happens to have a lot of time on its hands.  This unified bloc can change everything, especially if it is fashioned into a voting bloc.

I’m talking about the ‘people power’ of the bottom 160 million Americans who are hurting much more than you and I, much more than anyone who has the time and luxury of participating in marches and bake sales for peace, sit-ins, teach-ins, or online petitions.  These folks are struggling and are those whose lives are most devastated by our war economy and pursuit of empire.

THESE FOLKS ARE FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, BEGGING FOR A COHERENT SOLUTION TO THEIR MISERY.  They live paycheck-to-paycheck, day-to-day, just trying to survive.  Am I imagining all of this?  I direct you to the orange imbecile sitting in the Oval Office.  The folks I’m talking about put him there.  You don’t think they can make a difference in the political direction of the country?  You don’t think they can be mobilized?  You better guess again.

This is the principal reason why my Peace Dividend initiative targets Trump voters, the very same folks who are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the orange demagogue, as he blithely now jettisons the campaign promises he made to get their votes.  With the unfolding Mad Hatter military confrontations in the Middle East and North Korea, the risky intimidation of Russia and China, the increasing likelihood of WWIII, and growing potential for nuclear annihilation, the urgency is obvious: We need EVERYONE on board!

The Trump supporters are, as they say, low hanging fruit.  And there’s a lot of fruit.

By design the Peace Dividend strategy is about reaching HUGE NUMBERS of politically marginalized, dispossessed, previously ignored — until Trump came along — voters.  The Peace Dividend talks their language, their needs, addresses their immediate concerns and growing rage with the system.  And it does it honestly!  Everything in my proposal is based on available data, most of it directly from government sources and speeches by our elected officials.  I’ve taken the official data and the promises, just reconfigured it, reinterpreted it, refashioned it, turned it into a weapon to take apart the military machine.  It’s completely legal, it’s in the best traditions of our alleged democracy, it’s completely consistent with the Constitution, in fact, it even reinforces much of what our leadership has stated in the past — Google ‘peace dividend 1992’ — at a time they found that particular version of reality politically expedient.

Most of the folks in the bottom half of the economy are not going to have PhDs in Political Science.  We will confront some big differences of opinion, demeanor, vocabulary, basic courtesy, open-mindedness, instincts, mutual respect.  It’s a rough crowd.  Many will be racist, homophobic, superstitious, ultra-religious, misinformed, and just plain ignorant.

Granted, it would be nice to try to work out our differences in world view, our political philosophies, our sense of where the nation should be headed.  But with the crisis we face right now, we don’t have that luxury. We must act immediately to stop the military madness, the march to war, the complete takeover of the country and its political and economic institutions by the menacing and deranged neocon/neoliberal junta.  The Peace Dividend is a battle cry, it is a call to action to 200 million Americans to DO SOMETHING, TO ACT NOW, before it’s too late — if it isn’t already.  It gives concerned citizens something specific they can do, starting today.

Moreover, as facts on the ground now alarmingly demonstrate, there is no longer much room for conversation.  Effective, unbiased reporting has been abolished, public dissent increasingly is being squashed.  More devastatingly, talk has become so cheapened, most of the people we need to reach, don’t want any more talk.  THEY WANT ACTION!

It’s easy to blame Trump for the deterioration of the national conversation, relegating it to empty nonsensical utterances and abrupt Tweets.  But let’s be honest.  This degradation has been in the works for a long time and had a good head start long before he took office.

That’s neither here nor there.  Here’s what we need to keep in focus.

As Trump’s neoliberal/neocon assault troops continue to wreak havoc — picture coming military conflicts and the inevitable crash of the economy this year or next — the masses will be singularly outraged, hungry for REAL ACTION.  They will be crying both for heads to roll and for something to be done.  All of the necessary incentives will be there to get them on board with constructive activism.

The Peace Dividend offers a simple, direct, decisive plan of action.  It’s as simple as voting.

You’ve seen how it forces a total transformation of the federal budget.

You’ve seen how it can engineer a complete changing of the guard.

This is our chance for a non-violent coup d’état.  We need to be prepared.  We can’t squander this opportunity by being safe or boring.  We must be bold and decisive, yet affable and receptive, sensitive and sensible.  We need to listen, then talk to others in their language, on their terms.  We must play down differences, seek understanding, unite in a common purpose.  Most of all, we need to welcome everyone who shows the slightest interest.  We need everyone on board to defeat a determined and ruthless enemy . . .

A bloodthirsty military and their ruling class puppet masters.

Posted in Deconstruction, Democracy, Peace Dividend, Political Analysis, Political Rant, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Peace Dividend Candidates

Posted on February 25, 2017 by johnrachel

We need to get every candidate running for federal office in 2018 on board.

The Peace Dividend Refund is long overdue.

It’s time the government paid up!

As I mentioned in my previous blog . . .

“All the Peace Dividend strategy requires is that people look at it, then stand strong and united — stick up for themselves and other good decent American citizens who have been getting the shaft — then go into the voting booth and only vote for candidates who give us a legally-binding guarantee that they will go to Washington DC and do what needs to be done.”

Okay, that’s simple enough.  We know who to vote for and who not to vote for.

But what’s a “legally-binding guarantee”?

This is the legally-binding candidate contract for the Peace Dividend Refund:

It’s very straightforward.

If we really want our money back; if we want the endless wars to stop; if we want to see our country become strong, safe, solvent; if we want to reverse the barbarous, self-destructive militarization of our country and the world; if we want to end the slaughter of thousands of innocent people across the globe and be respected again as a country that promotes peace and harmony, then . . .

We only vote for candidates who sign the above contract.

No compromise.  No equivocation.  No negotiation.  No fear.

If a candidate for federal office — President, Senate, House of Representatives — will not sign on the dotted line, he does not deserve, nor will he or she get our vote.

If we stand strong, remain united, refuse to back down, we can do this.

Our children and our children’s children will thank us.

 

Posted in Democracy, Political Analysis, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

The Peace Dividend: Could It Really Happen?

Posted on February 20, 2017 by johnrachel

I came up with the Peace Dividend strategy over two years ago.  At the time, recognizing that the plan was — to say the least — very radical, completely unprecedented, totally outside-the-box, I thought that if it had even the slimmest chance of getting any traction, it was going to be a long and winding road to successfully “sell” and implement it.

To get the plan underway requires that we package peace in an entirely different way, that instead of only appealing to pity and conscience, we focus on personal self-interest.

This is not meant to be cynical.  It’s not that people don’t care about suffering.  It’s that most individuals care first about the suffering of those immediately around them, not those in far flung nations they can barely find on a map.

The Peace Dividend strategy is a bottoms-up, grass-roots approach especially targeting folks on the bottom of our economy — the 160+ million who are hovering around or are below the poverty line — because they are most devastated by the economic impact of America’s military aggression and full-throttle pursuit of world empire.

The Peace Dividend strategy is about letting citizens know what’s really going on with the military waste and the endless wars, and making them very angry!  Angry enough to do something about it, certainly for their country, but most of all for themselves and their families — those whose suffering they see every single day in the struggle for survival.

Such a citizen’s “uprising” would be premised on generating a widespread, critical mass understanding that in terms of America’s prosecution of wars, aggressive foreign policy, promoting militarism both overseas and here at home, we as citizens are “being lied to”, we are victims of a huge scam, that the “system is rigged”, that a bunch of “Washington insiders” are running the show, despots who couldn’t care less what the general public regards as important, what we as regular citizens want done.

Do “being lied to”, “system is rigged”, “Washington insiders” sound familiar?

They should.

Trump’s election as president, leaves little doubt that a large segment of the population — viewing our government establishment as a whole — do indeed see things that way.  It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that everyday citizens are being taken advantage of, that we have been and continue to be had by a ruling elite, that they will suck every last drop of blood out of the American economy and us individually if we let them.  And with each mounting disaster, every day even more people are waking up to the tyranny being imposed on us.  There has never been before a period in my lifetime when I’ve seen so much frustration and outrage with the nation’s failing, cold-blooded leadership.

Therefore, I’m now convinced that if we as peace advocates make the case for the Peace Dividend with boldness and clarity, success is inevitable.  Yes!  It could really happen.

As rigorously documented in The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World, the military-industrial-security complex allied with a deranged inner circle inside our foreign policy institutions, have perpetrated over the past two-and-a-half decades the most odious fraud in history.  This conservatively amounts to stealing $5.97 trillion of taxpayer money.  We have every right to, thus should demand not only that the deception and theft immediately stop, but that as victims of this swindle, we as citizens be compensated.  We deserve and demand full reimbursement:  The Peace Dividend Refund.

The beauty of my approach to voicing our outrage, and asserting our rights as citizens, is that it is entirely legal, based completely on the official facts published by our government, assiduously aligned with the Constitution — therefore not able to be labeled insurrectionist or traitorous — wholly consistent with a democracy based on government of the people, by the people, for the people.

I’m not going to condense a mercifully short but still 86-page-long book for this article. What I will do is give you the “big picture” so that you don’t casually dismiss the idea.

RECOGNIZE:  No current elected official will go along with the Peace Dividend proposal. They and their ruling class puppeteers will oppose it with every dirty trick in the book.

CONSIDER:  When everyday people understand that they’ve been ripped off, defrauded, bilked out of at least $5.97 trillion, there might be a bit of anger out there — in fact a lot.

ACKNOWLEDGE:  When everyday people realize they have the power to demand this fraudulently collected tax payer money back in the form of a $18,276 refund to each and every living citizen, they might just get a little excited.  In fact, if the word gets around, I predict they will immediately, forcefully, uncompromisingly demand their money back — every last dollar!

Let’s put this together.  The VOTING public demands their Peace Dividend Refund.  The incumbents cannot, will not even fake interest in giving in to such an outrageous demand. They will dodge and lie and rail against it.  The VOTING public sees this as more evidence that the “system is rigged”, that “they are getting shafted”, that they are again being had by the establishment blowhards who never do anything for everyday citizens.  Here we have the seeds, the tinder for a MASSIVE VOTER REVOLT.  We unite these angry, frustrated voters into a VOTING BLOC, rejecting business as usual — fraud as usual! — behind the demand of justice and fair compensation in the form of the Peace Dividend Refund. As a result, the vast majority of corporate lapdog incumbents are defeated and replaced by OUTSIDERS who agree to go to Washington DC and put into law . . .

The Peace Dividend Refund Act of 2019!

Sound at all familiar?  Sort of the way an OUTSIDER got elected to president, via a voter revolt that basically said:  “Fuck you! We’re sick of it. The hell with politics as usual.”

Is this mere fantasy?  In these outlandish, ridiculous times?  Where truth is stranger than fiction?  Really?

I think it’s all pretty clear.  And it will be even clearer after Trump and the current pack of bloodthirsty, Wall Street/ruling class puppets in Congress totally muck everything up.

People are going to be ripe for revenge!  Heads are going to roll.

They’ll want their damn money back, I guarantee you!

By the way, please take a few minutes and look at the way the Peace Dividend is funded.  You will note that it drives a lot of the very items on any sensible progressive reform wish list.  Meaning, the Peace Dividend is a watershed for revamping the way our government does business.  I would think that alone would make it worth the time to carefully study, with an open and alert mind, and some thoughtful engagement.

I know that marching in the streets, getting clubbed, pepper-sprayed, manhandled and arrested, are good times and all.  But a lot of people are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, and can’t join in on the fun.  All the Peace Dividend strategy requires is that people look at it, then stand strong and united — stick up for themselves and other good decent American citizens who have been getting the shaft — then go into the voting booth and only vote for candidates who give us a legally-binding guarantee that they will go to Washington DC and do what needs to be done.  (More on that binding guarantee in the next blog.)

I look at it this way:  Even if a lot of folks have extremely demanding schedules — thus are too busy to fly to Washington DC to attend a peace rally — I’m confident most will find the time to deposit $18,276 in their bank account.  

How about you?

Posted in Books, Deconstruction, Democracy, Political Analysis, Revolution, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment