Demolishing the Edifices of Our Oppression

It is one thing to topple a single iconic structure, but our overseers have so completely wrapped us in the chains of servitude, breaking a single link will not be enough to slip free. Sport was initially invented by the Greeks to keep citizens out of politics and they are serving the same function more than six centuries later. Even with the recent growing awareness that repeated head injury leads to life-long disability, self-medication with drugs and alcohol and violent temper tantrums in brain damaged individuals that can lead to suicidal tendencies, many of the fans still want to watch the carnage that takes place on football fields across our country. Bringing reason and sensibility to the masses would be a mammoth task if we were to undertake it and one of the towering lies that are used to control us is that football gives "hope" to many underprivileged individuals who have no other route out of poverty. Other sports are equally hailed as a great thing for minorities and others who would normally be chewed up and spit out by our social order, but the tiny fraction of those who come out ahead in their sporting career is unbelievably minute.

Tackling this issue will take a sea change in our attitude toward our own children, valuing them and their brains appropriately. When I was in school, I had routine contact with football players and others players of a variety of sports. On the whole, they seemed normal enough, although the football players were slightly duller than most. Those who made sport their top priority always seemed delusional to me, especially those who were on the football team. If there are around thirty-five teams and forty-five players per team, that means 315 guys will eventually make some money when they finally make the ranks of professional play. Barring the illegal payments that flow to collegiate athletes, which I do not overlook completely, but which only serve to reward and model rule breaking as ethos, guaranteeing that the players who come out of collegiate sport are schooled in how to break rules and get away with it. In my state alone there are more than 315 high schools preaching to their athletes that if they work hard, hit hard and destroy the team on the other side of the ball, that they could be in for some big money when they make it to the NFL at the very least, if they work hard, play harder break whatever rules they can get away with and vanquish their "foes", that some college will at least give them a full ride scholarship. It is also a well-known fact that many of the colleges make "special payments" that can range into the tens of thousands of dollars per year to select athletes who hold promise as much needed young blood for their programs.

I apologize for going so far down this single path, but the sentiment extends to many areas deeply embedded in our culture. If you speak of these things to many in our culture, they screw up their faces as if you are a nut. Why would any of this matter? Why would the game be any less entertaining? Like the games in the Colosseum, many people wonder, if we eliminate this entertainment, what would we do instead? Many fans are completely happy using these events as an excuse to drink too much, snack for three hours straight and opt out of participation in meaningful discussion of any type. Just for fun, I once watched an NFL game with the VCR (video cassette recorder) set to record. Each time the ball was snapped I allowed the machine to record and each time the whistle blew, I paused the device. once the recording was made, the entire game, resembled rugby but only lasted a matter of minutes. Supposedly, the game is supposed to be an hour long and fans always argue this point, but what they neglect to realize is that the clock ticks away at several times that the players are not playing. The fact remains that it only takes a microsecond to permanently damage a brain.

In addition to the sporting world, we have agents that do nothing but police the population, looking for trouble skews their perspective radically. Imagine having to deal with criminals and criminality all day long every day. I know that I would be turned into a grumpy, self-righteous and aggressive bully if I were to go into this profession. Imagine the reality that exists in a sub-culture that can do no wrong, is always supported by the brotherhood of fellow officers and that "knows" where to look for illegal behavior. Much has been written about the fact that three times as many black men are incarcerated for drug crimes as white men, even though the use characteristic for the two groups is nearly identical. Boatloads of ink have been spilled documenting the fact that white collar criminals often get off scot-free while their blue collar cohorts pay the full price of their indiscretions. In my state we have an attorney general who condones illegal behavior as long as it takes place in the halls of power, is perpetrated by campaign donors and whose victims are the general public, so that everyone pays the price while his buddies come out ahead. Ultimately policing the masses and prosecuting them falls to those who feel that they are better suited to make decisions about the lives of others than they are themselves.

Many of these same complexes are at work amongst our doctors. After all, we would not be coming to them for help if we could manage our lives appropriately on out own. Several of my relatives have worked in the hospital and they all have mentioned  that no one dies on the operating table. If there is a cadaver that is in that particular room, they are quickly wheeled into the recovery room before being pronounced dead. This assures that the doctor keeps his record clean. Likewise, in the maternity wards, every intervention possible is made as quickly as possible, even though the fact is that a single procedure increases the likelihood of an array of further obstacles and impediments to the natural outcome. In court, if it ever gets to court, the doctors can say, "We did everything possible." In one of my former lives, I was a childbirth educator. The heap of lies that the whole medical establishment uses to exert power over us is understandable, but certainly not warranted. Tuning in to natural processes, or ultimately understanding them requires the opposite of what most scientific endeavors are seeking to do. Science slices and dices things into their component parts, examining each in turn, trying to understand the whole through close inspection of dislocated parts. In the realm of biology, we can plainly see that sliced and diced life cannot be reconstituted.

A very telling result of medical intervention is the almost instant visceral reaction that doctors have against what they call anecdotal studies. Anyone encouraging a different approach that has been successful can be written off completely and instantly by the use of this powerful word. However, if a patient of theirs takes a medication for their heart and by chance their acne clears up after starting treatment, they will often take that as proof that the drug works for acne. If they see a relationship, it has to be true, but if someone else has had luck using a specific treatment for a specific malady for years, it is still considered anecdotal.

We have similar issues in the ivory towers of our educational institutions, the social service agencies and the news media. Taking them on one at a time cannot wrest power from those who limit our freedoms or micromanage the laws which govern us. All of them must be taken down simultaneously. Luckily, there are young people coming up, who know more than the old farts who grew up on a steady diet of hatred and misunderstanding. We must educate one another on these points or we run the risk of losing even more freedoms to those who seek to oppress us. Giving more and more of our autonomy away in the hopes of becoming safer can only lead to constraint of options that are necessary to adapt to changing conditions.

I would like to know what people from around the world think about these issues, please comment.

Since discovering how to make my own char, I am now liberated from buying charcoal. I built a retort in which to bake wood without oxygen. My superior product to what is sold in most markets also yields a soil enhancement for the garden at extremely low cost. Biochar provides fourteen acres (5.66 ha) of surface area for each handful added to the soil.

Looks Good From Far, But Far From Good

Who are the people who wield the cameras? Are they all mindless schmucks? It seems that the folks who are recording the images and soundscapes that inform our collective attention are either completely devoid of morals/ethics or are entirely motivated by greed. If it isn't vitriolic, invasive or prurient, it certainly isn't chosen by the editors to see the light of day, much less the overly produced shock imagery of the media as it exists today. With a tiny sliver of humanity, those on the ground floor of media-making, the camera people alone, could wield substantial power over the media's unethical twisting of imagery that i contend is equivalent to domestic terrorism. We all know the adage, X% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The lower number you substitute for X, the more you want the listener to consider your "truthiness" in a positive light, often making the point that you would never do the making up of numbers on the fly. The higher number you substitute for X, the less viable you want your listeners to think the numbers are. My problem is that I often use existing figures from reputable sources, but the hostile, hyper-mediated culture that we exist within makes my calculations seem impossible.

For instance, who has not seen relatives scarred for life in a foreign conflict that was ill-conceived and useless, except for corporate welfare for dubious corporations? One third of families have at least one member in the military. most people who speak plainly on their return from war explain that there are no good ones and that if you are not a mental case before you go (and it helps) you will be one when you get home. Why then do we continue to hear stories that somehow our "freedom" depends on doing that to them? My own family bears several scars of war and I can tell you plainly, we are perpetrating crimes against humanity each and every time that we glorify aggression. Every single dollar that we spend on defense is perpetrating destruction, of property, of lives, of our own economic interests around the globe. Power and control issues need to be taken on wherever we find them. This is 100% about giving massive government help to economic structures that, on their own, would collapse. We are funding the powerful at the expense of the weak.

In my personal experience, the first strike close to my heart, was the loss of a neighbor's son. I saw him outside, playing basketball and hanging out, riding his bike and playing board games. He never came back from Vietnam and his parents got a flag, the one that draped his coffin. In that war, we fought against people who had brought education, sanitation and health care to the impoverished people of the region. We poisoned vast acreages, forever, sterilized fields, firebombed whole villages, etc. We also snuffed out a vibrant life and forever handicapped a family, pruning off an entire family tree. When my mother married a vet, she did not know that he was addicted to the pain meds that he associated with his deliverance from the front lines. Let me tell you, the worst thing you can do with a pedophile is to send them to a place where conscience is a liability. Closer still to home, my brother has described his whole life "like living in boot camp." My eldest daughter has married a military man as well. Since the suspension of the draft, there is less corruption down at the draft board, but the bite that the military has taken out of society continues to be disproportionately out of the fabric of the poorest classes. The more dismal you make a person's life and the less vibrant their options, the more desperate for security people become. Even playing the lottery of death or dismemberment seems worth it when you look at the imagery that we are fed on a daily basis.

To appreciate the desperation fully, you need to imagine that there is a world out here that is full to overflowing. We have so much abundance that we throw away about 40% of our food supply in these United States of America, yet people go to bed hungry every night. We spend more on health care, than any other country (18% of GDP. the next closest spends 12%) and have worse outcomes than any other developed nation. Yet, we are told by our illustrious media that health care reform will cost "more". We are asked to turn our heads and cough while insurance companies are emptying our pocketbooks. That's not scarier than Obamacare? The mileage that the right has gotten out of the threat of "death panels" is only sickening when you realize that right now, today, there are rooms where non-doctors are deciding reimbursement rates for every kind and type of procedure and what they will and will not allow people to "have". People are dying each and every day because they have been denied coverage or have gotten the wrong treatments, simply because insurance would not pay for what people really needed.

The real world America has nearly 100,000 public schools. The average school year is 180 days. Even if we had one school shooting per year, there would be a one in eight million chance that your child's school would be the site of the attack. Within that statistic lies another, if twenty out of several hundred children got killed, the chances would increase exponentially. One chance, perhaps, in one hundred million. Now, there are companies selling "bulletproof backpacks". Only three hundred dollars or so can allow parents to rest easier when they send their children into harm's way. Please, people, let's try for one moment to get our collective head out of the sand. The facts will not lie, let's try to look at them! Let's try to get a grasp of the situation. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is lobbying the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to classify motorcycle use as an epidemic, because of avoidable costs that are posed to our health care system by motorcyclists. Several hundred thousand people die in car crashes each year. Less than one percent of those deaths are people who were on two wheels, yet the motorcyclists are the problem. It seems that we are again having a hard time understanding the reality of our situation.

Interpreting data can be tricky, but for one minute consider the consequences of a myth, so firmly held by many motorcyclists as to be considered dogma. they even make bumper stickers and t-shirts that say: "Loud Pipes Save Lives". Many, most noteworthy, Harley owners subscribe to the belief that the roar of un-muffled explosions within the motor, somehow makes them more noticeable on the highway, or in traffic. In the jurisdiction I live, if you can hear music coming from a car more than fifty feet away, it is considered a ticket-able offense. I have heard Harleys from well over five hundred feet away, but no "crime" has taken place. Add to this the flinch factor when the same idiot blows by a blue haired old woman on the highway at eighty and you have potential for disaster. The damage done to both the rider's hearing and that of those around them in traffic costs society billions per year in lost hearing alone, yet the "liberty" of the idiot dishing out the damage is considered sacrosanct. I once again call Bullshit!

When we look from afar, like Disneyland, there is definitely a complete picture being created for us to sit back and watch. However, unlike an audience who has cued up and waited in line for entry, expecting a show, we think what we see is real. We often forget that the bill of goods that we are being sold as consumers of media, has been massaged to show us only what the producers, and ultimately the shareholders of media conglomerates want us to see. Clearchannel has helped put our local theater on the ropes and continues to pummel them into submission which in turn requires that I drive hundreds of miles each week to work in a distant market, plying a craft that my family has participated in for three generations. The wealth continues to concentrate in the highest echelons of our economic system, but somehow, because I'm a member of a union, I am vilified in the media. When we come in close and get a long look deep into the eyes of the beast who controls our very discussion points and vocabulary on these and other subjects, seeing the fires stoked by greed and fed with our children's future, it is both mesmerizing and stupefying that we continue to be taken in by their lie factory. I'm sorry to those of you who tire of me saying it, but lies need to be constantly propped up, but truth stands alone. When we start to see behind the mask of media, no amount of made up statistics can take away the scars and depravity that we see underneath. Whether of not demons can be tamed remains to be seen, but their time has got to come to a swift end if we are to reclaim any part of the American dream that was worth saving.

Bless Us Every One

Now, I'm not the only one who has noticed the utter break down of society. We have had two major news "events this last week or so that point out the utter failure of the media to mediate our experience of events that take place daily in our world. Initially, I had hoped that it was just an isolated incident, but it has proven to be systemic. First, we heard of the "Tucson Tragedy", the senseless shooting of innocent people in a parking lot in Arizona. One frustrating thing about the coverage was that the rarity of the event was ignored completely. Over three hundred million of us were not threatened in any way that day. Our chance of getting shot was less than one in fifty million. The salient point was not that hundreds of newscasters/cameramen/producers and their equipment were employed to bring us photos of blood stained concrete, but that half a dozen people died that day. We barely remembered to mention that one of the dead was a vibrant nine year old. In the coverage since, we have focused on the "target" of the attack, the woman who still doesn't know what went on that day. This is not like the "Four dead in Ohio" that reflected the government's war on it's own people, but a fluke caused by an insane person having access to a gun with a clip that allowed him to keep firing without reloading. My heart goes out to those whose lives have been changed forever. I'm glad that Gabby will recover, but I'm sick at the ignorance that is reflected in the coverage of her plight at the expense of the families of the dead.

Similarly, the raid at the Philly clinic that was the site of so many tragic incidents, and apparently many more deaths, ignored the real story in favor of what they wanted us to hear. Instead of telling us that this type of facility can only exist when there are so many without access to health care, says to me that the people covering the news don't have a clue. Worse, they have an agenda that they want to push down our throats. The a-word (abortion) was in the headline and once people had been stirred into vehement hatred, the facts mattered little. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people who obviously needed care enough to seek out this clinic that was dangerous because it was poorly staffed and un-funded. There was an opportunity to tell the story from a different perspective, but the powers that be dictated the rhetoric. I agree that vile and reprehensible things take place every day in our country, but the coverage of events that we see every day rank up there with the events themselves.

Like a magician producing a rabbit from his hat, the news producers tell us where to look, when and for how long. Too often, it is away from what really matters in our lives. The "Tragedy in Tucson", boiled down to three words cannot possibly convey the dramatic outcome of failed gun laws, nor can the "Clinic of Death" story explain the tragic state of health care in our nation. I am one of the millions of Americans who has to choose between being homeless and having health care. Having been homeless in the past, I don't want to devolve into that state again. Having seen insane people wielding guns as well, I recognize the threat that they pose to the rest of us. Neither of these stories had much bearing on reality. Instead, they have soft pedaled fiction over substance, presented us the happy face while finger pointing at paper tigers rather than the real challenges that we are facing in these troubled times. Millions of us face challenges daily that are never mentioned by the media. When they are covered, the distorting light of the media comes and goes so quickly that nothing substantial can be seen.

In my work as a spotlight operator, my living is made by showing people what to look at. The myopic lens of the news camera is thousands of times more effective than my light. God help us if we cannot learn how to use it's awesome power for good. now, more than ever, we need to look critically at our world and figure out how to improve the lives of us all. Our humanity depends on recognizing that old maxim, a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic. Each of us is a reflection of God/ess, perhaps it is expecting too much to want our media to reflect reality. Is it too much to expect these "entertainment" sources to at least try to reflect reality?

Fake Terror Real Consequences

Concerning recent events, we can plainly see the real and present danger of fake explosives, fake detonators and fake operatives in the course of human events. Sadly, there is a real possibility that if our own government agents had not aided and abetted the fake bomber, some other "bad guys" might have materialized to fill their shoes, but as we have seen from several other terror related arrests, most of these "cells" lack the know-how and or wherewithal to become serious threats. Believe me, I know the complicated results that underlie the old saying, once bitten twice shy, so I do have some empathy for our Federal Bureau of Investigation. They say that 911 changed the world, but as many have seen and few have reported, the changes we have made have played into the hands of the terrorists, much more than having any beneficial effect on our safety and security. Our over the top response to terror has cost us billions, led to the repeated inconveniencing millions and eroded our rights. We have taken the very real posture of fear that cripples democracy, staunches the flow of free ideas and limits our freedoms that we often claim so many have died for.

I hate to climb on the conspiracy bandwagon, but the utter failings of 9-11 shout for complete revision of whatever policies were in place back then. To allow so many people who were on "terrorist watch lists" to simultaneously board the three planes that were used on that day could have easily been an "oversight". If it were just that, it might seem like pure incompetence. Failure to require cockpit doors be lockable might have been an oversight as well, but as we have learned, the government had been made aware that a plot to use commercial jets as projectiles against soft targets existed for years prior to 9-11. Maybe the FAA had better things to do, more likely, they were never told of the threat. Coincidentally, on the day of the "attack" there were military "games" up and down the East Coast, requiring F-16s to be scrambled. It is most chilling to listen to the dispatcher, who awaits just this sort of event, question, "Is this part of the exercise?" When you know with hindsight that it most assuredly was not. Had the scenario been played out as part of a movie or book, no one would have believed that so many could do so little for so long and that such a long series of mistakes could be strung together to create such a plot. Whether it was pure incompetence or an actual conspiracy is moot, the damage we have done to our own country since is blatantly obvious. The shadow government has ratcheted back freedoms and instituted fear tactics against all Americans in virtually every arena of our lives.

I do understand the very real threat posed by terrorists, but encouraging them to create mayhem to stop them is like trying to stop rabbits from reproducing through the use of tiny condoms. I am struck by the amount of time that was spent on the most recent FBI recruit. Instead of focusing on someone who was willing, but unable to carry out an attack, would not the cause of freedom and security be better served by concentrating on those who have the conviction and means to perpetrate mass destruction? I felt the need, after 9-11, to do a little figuring. Anyone who has been to New York understands that the whole rock of Manhattan is like an anthill. Throngs of people swarm up and down it's length. I wondered, what would happen if there was such a "strike" against an anthill. The answer I came to was absolutely nothing. Even if the World Trade Center had been the heart of the brood chamber, the ants would have carried off anything salvageable, creating a new chamber within hours. Within a week, or possibly as long as a month, the damage would be both inconsequential and undetectable. In our "developed" state, we have plans for a memorial. we are treating it like our own holocaust. We daily multiply the damage and danger by coining the term 9-11, repeating the story, highlighting the "threat" and refusing to ask the simple question, "Why are these crazy folks so dead set on trying to hurt our people?" It is becoming clear to some that we are a much bigger threat to ourselves than terrorists have ever been.

The America that I learned about in social studies and civics class has been eviscerated. No one is free if we are all to become suspect. The right to vote has even been undermined by fear mongering weasels with more money than we can fathom and, it seems, less concern for our country than their own wealth and dominion. The idea of an educated electorate has more or less fallen by the wayside. Like in the Harry Potter series what we fear the most cannot be named. Sadly, the difference between our early twenty-first century America and the magical world of Mr. Potter is that in the books, everyone knows who "he who can't be named" is. We, on the other hand, are led like hogs with rings through our noses from one "devil" to another. This election taxes were trotted out as the enemy. Driven by fear, like we are, it is easier to forget that the Republican juggernaut brought us a collapse of the world economy than question their motives. We seem to refuse to analyze any of the data that comes at us from whatever sources we trust, often choosing the "news" sources that most agree with our opinions. The oft repeated lies do not become true by their repetition, but it seems that we have not learned that yet.

We are a country of over three hundred million. Life is inherently dangerous. We kill more people each year by driving badly than terrorists have ever killed. Doctor prescribed medication kills more people every year than terrorists killed on 9-11. Although I am in favor of vigilance with regard a diverse set of threats, we need to keep a bit of perspective here. The same principles that apply to individuals guide the development of states. No one can be expected to thrive when basic needs are not met. Having our needs met include good nutritious food,which we know is under threat from all sides, receiving love and compassion from others, which is less and less likely in our increasingly angry land and security. True security depends on knowing we are safe, not being constantly told that we are in danger. Just as no one person can thrive under unhealthy or hostile conditions, neither can our nation thrive in an atmosphere of fear, fed only pablam and cheesecake. Searching for the nuggets of truth in the lies we are told by the mainstream press is a difficult challenge, but the value of facing the challenge is worth far more than I can put into words.