Power and Control

Please be advised, the following URL will take you to a preexisting site and away from my blog. The information is provided with educational purposes in mind. this is something we all need to understand and we must work toward a society that never allows this sort of activity, any time, any where, these tactics should never be practiced on anyone. They are detrimental to every single person that they are used on and the effects spin off onto others who may not even be part of the original assault. http://www.thehotline.org/2013/08/taking-a-spin-around-the-power-and-control-wheel/

If it helps to think about it, realize that in every culture there is a story about a family wherein the father hits the mother, the mother strikes out at the oldest child, the older children beat the younger ones and finally the youngest one kicks the dog.

The way out is clear. NEVER STAND FOR THESE SORTS OF BEHAVIORS! Never sanction or condone, never ignore or hope things will resolve on their own. The practice of these inhumane actions are more addictive than the worst drugs. Any reward, ever, for these sorts of activities will encourage these behaviors to be practiced again. I offer this information with love to all the people of the world. if you have any questions or fear for your personal safety or the safety of others, do not let a moment pass...contact public safety officers, or me any time day or night. I will help you find your voice and to make the best choices for all involved.

namaste'

Campaign Promise

This is where the rubber meets the road.

Total cost:18 trillion, 564 billion, 500 million

These are the budgetary numbers that Bernie Sanders put up and the numbers I feel comfortable putting forward as a campaign promise. I would work for these things regardless of the challenges put up by my opposition and this post is to clarify why we need to spend money on things our country needs to remove the crushing weight that the oligarchs are putting on individuals, especially children, elders, differently-abled people and women simply to placate the hunger for cash that the aristocracy deems necessary to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed. I am here to say that even their lives would be enhanced by spending this sort of money and the numbers below prove that out. The old saying that you have to spend money to make money holds true, even for government. The biggest hole in these figures is child care, which I estimate would add another 850 billion. The difficulty with pinning down this number is that there are different numbers, depending on who is reporting them about the numbers of mothers and the numbers of children in our country. The best way to understand the people who are most hurt by our current system is to find out who is not worthy of counting. The people who have fallen through the cracks are hardest to count and hundreds of thousands of homeless children, mothers and families are living under the radar as we read/write this.

Now, let us consider the benefits...

Avoided costs (benefits) 36 trillion, 854 billion

It does not take a genius to understand that for those folks who are having a difficult time making it, these expenditures make very little sense because the numbers seem so huge. If it helps, think of it this way. Every billion can be seen as about three dollars for every man, woman and child in America.  We the People are about 333.33 million one third of a billion, so if we each pitched in three dollars, it would make a billion. The fact is that the savings outweigh the costs two to one. When we speak of government, many people ask, "Where does all the money go?" Well, if you really look into the numbers, there is a massive portion that goes to warfare and a substantial part pays interest on outstanding loans that we collectively take out to pay for services and infrastructure that was provided in the past. It makes no sense, but spending in the present often avoids costs. For instance, the prenatal care that women receive before their children are born repays about three to one during the first few years in the life of the child. better outcomes during the birth process and healthier babies save money when compared to sickly children that do not thrive. similarly, the money spent on education and health care provide long term benefits such as security and better health over the course of the lives of those who receive them. Instead of not educating a child, but having to send them to prison for doing something stupid and senseless saves about 60K per year for their incarceration...likewise, preventing minor diseases and getting early preventative care can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, so let's talk more about these numbers.

I know that math is something many people hate and the numbers we are talking about are huge, but when we divided them by the population and look at the savings over time, this approach to transforming society may be the best way to head off total collapse at the hands of the greedy super-rich. The costs of these policies, if spread evenly among the population, would be about 56K per person. The benefits would be more than double the costs. The only reason that the uberwealthy do not want this to happen is that it would temporarily inconvenience them and it would liberate such a large segment of society that they would lose some of their wage slaves. Perhaps the greatest benefit would be non-monetary because the millions of Americans who are now wage slaves would have some breathing room instead of having to forego vacations, borrow to put their children through school and risk bankruptcy if their health fails. all of these benefits would cut into the obscene profitability of banks, insurance and financial sectors.

these are not the folks i am running for congress to represent. I am running for people like myself who have borne the brunt of the recession, been functionally underemployed for the better part of a decade and those who will come up in the future. We need stability and we need it now. Not stability for the ultra-wealthy, but for the average person, the 99.9%. I am committed to these changes in a way that our "opponents"/oppressors, cannot fathom. I am a stand against institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, ageism, bigotry and hatred. to become a strong nation again we need to call out these and other crippling social ills at every opportunity. not jus tto make people aware of the damage being done to individuals and families by continuing the current system, but to work toward a better state of affairs for all.

What I am working for is not just to benefit the people here in northeast Wisconsin, but the nation as a whole. The future generations will ask us, "When we faced those issues, what did you do to help?" I refuse to have to say, "Nothing."

New Normal

I have set for myself a no "news" challenge. I'm tuning out that noise. Instead, I will redouble my efforts to bring more comprehensive material on the revolution which will never be televised. See, the same marginal fraction of possibility that exists of getting rich by playing the lottery, meeting your demise at the hands of "terrorists", or expecting the oligarchs to relinquish one red cent over our care and feeding, is nearly as improbable as being hit by an incoming asteroid. There are voices however, and they are extremely well-funded, that want us to hide in fear away from our neighbors at all costs. We live in a situation where the uberwealthy class has cost the rest of us dearly, and they know it, so keeping us ill-informed is their primary purpose.

I am continuing to run for Congress as a write-in candidate from Northeast Wisconsin. My campaign can be reached on facebook at Saladino 4 District 8. Please consider donating to help spread the word that I am an option for voters who want meaningful change to occur. I have been walking the talk for thirty years, cannot be bought and will work for people, not corporations.

 Take the coal region, where I used to live. Since the peak of big coal, thousands of jobs have flown the coop. The chickens that did come home to roost were the pools of poisoned water, the deforestation and desertification of vast swaths of land, the poisoned ground water and breach holes which will forever pose a fall hazard. Heck, the mountain behind one of my boyhood homes is the one that had the vein of coal which put Centralia, PA on the map, then rubbed it out. see, the local dump, which was burned off from time to time was right over a spot where the coal vein underground came very close to the surface. Once ignited by the burning trash, it kept burning right under the town, eventually requiring the entire population to move away. Now, you stand upon the ash heap that used to be the town and see, like phoenix rising, wind spinners, capitalizing on the breeze.

Out of destruction, we can have rebirth, but it requires creativity, sustained action and forming groups of people who can bring to use as many resources as possible to resolve problems that individuals singly would not have a chance of doing.

Case in point, this week, I found a set of fair to good condition truck tires, which I know someone will be able to use, I just have to keep looking for someone who needs them and I could save them hundreds of dollars. It is just a matter of finding those opportunities. When we have problems brought to us as the result of externalities or fallout from the uberwealthy, or their destruction, there are always things we can do to restore or make our environment, and consequently our lives,  better, we may just have to look more critically at the difference between needs and wants, or re-define what is worth keeping in our communities. I recently drove through the coal region and saw the proliferation of drug addiction treatment centers and I can assure you that the main reason that drug addiction is such a plague there is because the young people see that there is so little of value, so little to do and so few prospects for them that they are seeking a medicated way out. In our day, we used alcohol to forget that we were poor, unemployed and that our only chance was to flee, or go into debt to get an education with the ultimate goal of getting out of the coal region.

The more time we spend dosed with the adrenaline than is helpful and in myself, I am diagnosing my own affliction as: Time Spent Watching "News". (TSWN) When a person has, repeatedly throughout the day, a fight or flight response, but can neither flee or fight, I think it is toxic. At least the metabolites of all that adrenaline are) This moon, I will attempt to stop all tee vee, radio and news discussion. The unadulterated pap that we are forced to consume as news-a-hol-ics (stress the ick) compassionate friends urge me to look at good news sites, but I'm wanting less news so that I can make more connections with real people and find out about their hopes, dreams and ideas. Getting to know the neighbors is far better than letting them become strangers.

Working the Summer Festival Season as a stagehand helps somewhat to keep the 24-hour "news" cycle at bay. When you are routinely working ten or more hours away from media at a time, taking the next step seems only logical. I am going to look to what guides me and the billions of other people making small victories possible. We the People now includes the world and no matter what some in government might try to feed us, we are collectively calling BULLSHIT!. with the nations' fists held high, we are standing as one against the tyranny of the oppression. The wealthiest among us have crashed the entire economy, educational system, transportation sector, energy, etc. How many shards will we and our environment be reduced to before the carnage is required to stop?

 Local groups have sponsored many educational campaigns around a host of issues, that won't be on the map of any news teams, those selfless efforts do not reflect the dog eat dog world they want you to think you live in. I saw on the "news" the other night, a woman was walking something like fifty miles to raise funds for her mom, who needed an operation. (heart-wrenching stuff I know.) There have also been concerned citizens educating people along the proposed Enbridge pipeline expansion route, from Superior to the Illinois line. Not a word on the "media". The deception that is woven for our eyes and ears daily by the endless string of tragedy and mayhem assembled in the name of "news" is tragic. If only we would realize that multiplying the good has a much more profound effect on humanity. I went door-to-door for nearly a decade, speaking to hundreds of thousands of people, learning about their ideas regarding protection of the environment and I can truly say that the numbers of people who want good things to happen dwarfs the number who are praying for Armageddon.

When I looked into the true base of  extremist religions, from around the globe, from Radical Islam to Radical Evangelist, Radical Baptist, Radical Jehova's Witness and other supremacist idealogies, is that they literally use the old "master of the house", theory as justification for subjugate over half the population. Masculinity is taking responsibility for considering the good of all, not just expediences. In my campaign for Congress, representing Northeast Wisconsin, I put honesty, integrity and Principles foremost in the campaign. I will work diligently for the things I campaign on, resolve to tell the truth in all things, never vote for the lesser of two evils and to lead the Congress Repair Team. The cream has been rising for decades, in local not-for-profits, clubs and associations. People bitten by the bug of public service are winning the day in the age of corporate brutalism. These are the peace warriors we need to be helping. I have chosen to walk the talk and concentrate on the good things going on locally. By not wasting time getting upset by reports of heinousness from around the globe, I'm redoubling my efforts to make change happen, wherever I am planted.

Wag Baby, Wag

In this day and age, the tail has been wagging the dog of so long that we have forgotten that the rest of the beast, the body politic, still exists. There are very powerful interests keeping our focus on minutiae. In just one example, the 1.2 billion Muslims that do not believe in jihad (wiping out infidels) are overshadowed in the popular press by the 200 million who do. Less than 1/6 of the Islamic community is interested in justifying the atrocities perpetrated through terror  based on their "religious" beliefs and the vast majority of attacks that are carried out in the name of jihad are on the other 5/6 ths of the Muslim community, not foreigners, not non-believers, not Europeans, certainly not Americans. We often forget that powerful interests are served by the lies, omissions and the absence of fact. It is not unusual that extreme minorities are often painted with the broadest brush or spoken of in the most prejudicial terms, but these practices tell us more about those who feel threatened by them than about reality.

The Shia Muslim community are similar in form and function to the Baptists that we commonly see in the X-tian community. Their beliefs and values are based more on ignorance, fear and hate than any sense of reality. The majority of the sect is complacent and made docile by believing the pronouncements of a very select group of poorly educated, often self selected (or proclaimed) and strident preachers. Rather than reading the scriptures and making up their own minds, they are told that all of the messages and edicts that they are handed have been painstakingly researched and well-considered by those who know more, are closer to "God" than they are, who have been guided by the hand of "God" to "serve" or who have been spoken to directly by "The Lord". In non-religious circles, speaking to those who are not there or hearing voices is a symptom of mental illness. To this tail wagging, we need to become savvy. I do not want to paint with the wide brush, which I spoke of before, because it covers and obscures many subtleties and I am sure that there are both free thinking and compassionate people in the majority of both groups, but their "leaders" seem bent on hastening the end times stories that they have been fed by those who pray for disruption, dislocation and strife.

In our current political state, there are smaller and smaller numbers of people, mostly oligarchs who wield unimaginable power and control over the systems we have developed to provide peace and security for all people. The "trickledown effect" from their power and control has led us to a situation in which 270 blacks are gunned down by police in America for every hundred whites. In fact, much like the disproportionate killing that goes on in the wider world, here in America in 2015, fifty-one police officers have been killed in the line of duty compared to 2105 blacks. Remember, in our system we are all innocent until proven guilty, so in essence, these victims were all innocent, according to our Constitution. In spite of this, there are a tiny minority of whites who feel that they are justified in their hate for the victims. The Calvinistic beliefs that still guid the majority opinion of whites is that the bad choices and immoral behavior of the "lower classes" is proven and that the institutionalized racism that exists is based on facts, not hatred. We have devolved to the point where even holding a copy of the Constitution at a Donald Trump rally can be viewed as reason enough to be kicked out of the place. In fact, if you are the wrong color, or are dressed in certain ways, you are also seem as a threat and removed, often violently from the premises. Freedom to hate seems to trump any semblance of decorum.

I have written about it before, but there is a growing tide of mathematically and statistically illiterate folks who are more than happy to carry water for those who would deny us our freedoms. The gun lobby who ignores the fact that more people are killed by gun accidents than terrorists, the people who forget that texting drivers kill more people than mass shooters and those who claim that the decline of religion is leading to the collapse of our culture, when the fact is that we are living through the lowest crime period in thirty years are all conspiring to have us live by a code of lies, not seeking or speaking truth. Ignorance of facts is no reason to claim you know it all. Some of the smartest people actually know that they are ignorant and spend time trying to learn. Fighting for or clinging to ignorance is called stupidity. Forgetting that there is a world outside the media microscope has led us to only see the tiny flea on the tip of the tail and to summarily forget the rest of the dog exists.

Sanders Revolution

Tonight I went to a place that was supposed to have a Sanders Revolution event.  bernie sanders has energized so many people and the momentum of millions of people flocking to a future we can truly believe in has meant that things are going on that have not yet been codified or sorted out. This event seems to be much the same. Apart for the several people I met there, most of my friends had not event heard of the event. In fact, in a town of just over 100K people, there seemed to be several addresses given at which to meet up. My guess is that the one that appeared briefly on my Google search was one of the places where people actually gathered to develop strategy and come to consensus on next steps for organizing and working for positive change.

Between the false leads that I got for where to go and the seduction of thinking that we were actually being given good information when it was perhaps just a web of lies, I ended up thinking that there art agents behind the scenes trying to stop real change from occurring.

Go figure.

There there hundreds, perhaps thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters who are veering toward Jill Stein. Not just because the Green Party platform looks almost identical to what Bernie Sanders has been saying for the last thirty years, but because the De3mocratic Party has exhibited the very anti-democratic behavior that has led us to be a nation ruled by the oligarchy. In essence, the young, idealistic, first time voters have been shown that their voices do not count. along with them, more experienced voters have been told the same thing. The hundreds of old timers, who have been voting for decades have been shown that fact as well, but our cynicism is perhaps much more developed than the new slate of eligible voters who have given up on party politics. Perhaps the worst thing about the Greens is that they use the term "party" in their name.

The two major parties have access to billions of dollars. The Greens are luck if they have a few hundred thousand dollars. luckily this election is not about how much funding people have, but about the future of our nation. In that respect, the Greens and the Honorable bernie sanders are the only ones with a valid plan. Ironically, there have been far too few who were willing to speak truth to power, butr that is rapidly changing. The thousands of people standing up for the right to clean water are a good indicator tha0t the time has come to reject the policies that have threatened our health and well-being for decades.

The time has come to say good bye to all those "representatives" who are just mouthpieces for corporations. we have become enamored with the idea of real change, but now it is time to stand up and fight for it.

Continued "News" Diet

I really feared becoming "out of touch" when I first considered turning off the corporate-owned news sources. In fact, the opposite is proving to be true. I have gotten into a lot of really great conversations and heard many first-hand accounts of things that would undoubtedly not have happened if I had continued to consume the corporate derived swill that passes for news. there have been a few stories that have made me wince, because of the obvious slant applied to them by the storytellers, but by and large, the rew3ards have been well worth the effort. yes, in the world today, it requires effort to avoid what passes for "news".

One of the most important things for me is hearing of the learning curve that friends and family are on. Instead of being led to think that everyone is cold, rude, hateful and intransigent, I have been hearing stories of renewal and growth, even from folks who had seemed to be stifled and in a few cases, virtually petrified in their views and beliefs. Learning more about the great awakening that is taking place has been the singular best thing that has come from my self-imposed news blackout.

I would like to share something that one of my friends and spiritual advisors shared that may have snuck by under my radar, had I been preoccupied by the media war that rages against common sense. Thank-you in advance to all of you for taking the time to read and understand this post. Wade, of Deeply Rooted has my utmost respect and honor, in sharing his writing, I bestow upon him the status of cohort in the revolution that has never been televised. I also love and respect the brutal honesty that follows, so if you feel hurt or out of balance after reading it, perhaps you need the information even more than I. Humbly, and with deep respect I share it for we all need to hear these truths at this important moment in time. please, after reading it and reflecting upon his writing, take stock of all the things you want to be different and act accordingly.

An End to Hope

There are few things more demoralizing and disempowering in our culture than the idea of “hope”. When you hope, you do nothing to fix or help the situation, it is an invitation and justification for apathy and inaction. If a man is standing outside a burning building listening to his family screaming in pain and watching his possessions falling to ash doing nothing but hoping the fire will go out would be called insane. A person living in a place with an oppressive government doing nothing but hoping things will get better would be called a coward, at best. Sadly that is exactly the mentality that is promoted by the doctrine of hope. The entire premise is based on the idea that there is some outside force in control that you are not part of or have any real influence over and that said force is benevolent and kind and has your best interest at heart. When you look to our movies and books you see this theme repeated nearly endlessly; something bad happens from an attack by savage Indians and/or alien overlords, a natural disaster, a horrible crime, an evil political force taking over, a plague and endless other bad things coming down the pike. For a while things are dire and most of the time the protagonists scrape by and run around barely surviving, hoping against hope. And then…. The cavalry arrives and saves the day, a miracle drug to cure the disease, the government trucks or helicopters arrive, the rebel alliance or secret society rise up and smite the evil government, the vigilante steps from the dark and delivers justice, and on and on. All in the nick of time, at no cost to the ones getting rescued who didn’t have the ability or power to save themselves. What has been told to us is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about, its above our pay grade, the experts or ‘somebody’ is going to take care of whatever the problem is. Hope that someone will save you, hope that somebody knows what’s going on and will swoop in at the last minute to save the day, hope that the inherent justice of the world will kick in and the good guys will win, hope that it can’t be so bad and that it’s all part of some god’s plan that has your best interests in mind. And it isn’t true.
Not only is it a lie, it’s a contrived lie that serves a larger purpose of keeping people exactly as they are, never really stepping into their own power, never believing they can accomplish great things. It is a mentality that creates and maintains a mass of frightened and cowed children who will never strive to better themselves or the world around them. Personally I don’t think it’s a conscious conspiracy(they always take too much work and are more implausible the larger they need to be) but merely a useful psychological tool that a small minority in any society in history can, and have, used to keep people down and docile. Religion, politics, and now consumerism have all found the hope model endlessly useful. You create a need (original sin/salvation, comfort services/government , lack of self- esteem/product based salvation), then you make it important even vital to the average person and then present them with the HOPE.
In the monotheistic religions the premise is that you are bad, really bad, so much so that the one true God hates you and is eternally disappointed at how unworthy you are. But, at the same time he loves you and wants you to be with him, so there is a way out, a great hope of salvation and of all sins being washed clean and forgotten about. You are taught to have faith in the hope that God Has A Plan, that Jesus Died For You and such. All things you as an individual have no power over and thus, no responsibility, it’s out of your hands and in God’s. This is the basis of the modern world’s assumption of a benevolent universe in which individuals are taught they have value and worth but only as part of the exterior “god” and his plan for all of reality. This has the neat and tidy effect of putting the responsibility of absolutely everything on a force outside of the individual’s ability to control, influence or have any affect upon what so ever. When something happens, for good or ill, the individual is able to step away and not engage because its ‘in god’s hands’ and if it’s a negative thing the person has the option to hope that it’s for the best and, if they are really invested, they can pray. Praying is active hoping, you are telling an assumedly omnipotent force something (which by definition is impossible) and asking it to change or alter what’s going on. Nonsensical in every sense of the word, but this is the reflexive action taken by billions of people when confronted with a situation they have been told is beyond their control. And after they have prayed/hoped what do they do? Nothing, they have done ‘everything they could’ and are therefore no longer responsible for what happens to them or the world around them. When you say, “at least we can pray” or “if nothing else we can hope” then you are saying you are willing and/or able to do nothing of worth but still want to be considered part of the solution even though you are contributing nothing of any value or worth.
In politics everything is always really bad and disaster is just around the corner, usually caused by the other political party/entity or ‘the economy’ or other impersonal forces that no one can really control but none the less can be fixed by voting the right one in and getting others to embrace the right and true political philosophy. We then hope they are telling the truth and will remain true to their word and hope that the better way of doing things will magically overpower all the things in it way and that the world will become a better place. The fascinating part of this is that in the political arena there is virtually no one that actual says they believe this and will in fact state the obvious(and more accurate) point of view that nearly all politicians are deceitful and have neither the power nor the inclination to do what’s needed. And yet the political system stays the same and the same people get voted in, why? Because even when we say we understand something is not true, even impossible, we maintain hope we are wrong and somehow, somewhere it will all be put right. This is not an accident. When a rational mind recognizes the horrible state of a political system they are faced with a few options; decide it’s the only way things are going to be and seek to take personal advantage of it, trick themselves into thinking it’s really not that bad (or even believe it’s the best system ever in the history of the world), dedicate themselves to selflessly do the grinding and unforgiving work necessary to change the system, or hope that someone somewhere will fix it and make everything all better. Guess which one most folks go with?
Those who have learned from the previous two realms of politics and religion have refined and essentially mastered the craft are those that are in the consumerism and corporate world. They have successfully created the idea that nothing about you is good enough. Look at the base ideas put forth in every form of modern advertising; you smell wrong, you dress wrong, people think you are stupid because of your choice in hairstyle, members of the opposite sex find you unattractive, you are unworthy of attention and success, you are a disappointment to everyone that matters. But then we discover that all of these manifold shortcomings can be fixed, and fixed so easily, just buy the right product and suddenly you are sexy and smart and affluent and the envy of all your peers. So what is being sold? The hope that this next product you buy will make you feel good about yourself, this next product will hopefully give you a place in the world where you are wanted and loved. When that fails to occur very few people will then question the premise of the situation and will instead assume that they are still doing it wrong. They didn’t buy the right thing or enough of it and therefore it’s still their own fault they are miserable. The addictive and predictable cycle will repeat itself endlessly until death with few ever stopping and saying simply, ‘no, this is stupid, I’m not going to play along any more’. Advertisement sells the same thing regardless of product, perceive personal lack. To look inward and actually figure out which of your levers are being pulled by commercials is really hard work and most folks are more terrified of self-knowledge then they ever will be of anything else coming down the pike. Some people will avoid looking inward at all costs, which is yet another lever used to sell things and why people are attempting to be distracted and/or ‘entertained’ every moment of the day. Think how rare it is to have silence and stillness promoted in our culture, reality is that those things are feared because in the stillness and quite there is no escaping yourself and if more people knew themselves down to their cores there would be far less hope/fear to sell.
Hope is about giving away your personal power, sense of perspective and your rational mind, along with all of your self-interest. When you say ‘hope things work out’ or ‘hope you feel better’ you have actually said, ‘you are on your own and there is nothing I can or will do to actually help’. When someone is sick we don’t hope them well, we get them to a doctor or healer or get them some medicine. Faith healers hope people well, and are rightfully mocked for their failures. When someone we care about is sick don’t hope they get better, help them get better and when you leave you don’t say ‘hope you feel better’ you say ‘anything else I can do to help?’ or ‘see you when you are up and about’. When you are feeling depressed and down about yourself and your place in the universe don’t buy something with the hope it will take the pain away, instead do the hard work of looking inward to discover why you are depressed or unfocused or lazy and then change it. Hoping is easy, it’s for children who don’t know better. Self-knowledge, personal change and hard work is for adults who wish to actually live a life worth living. Let us chose wisely.

This sharing that Wade did with me and the facebook community was based on the fact that I made a post this morning about how when Pandora opened her box, all the evil burst forth into the world, but last to emerge was hope, it cowered in the corner and had to be coaxed from the box, but it is no less terrible than the others. a friend frequently says "Let's wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first", he could easily replace the word wish for hope and the meaning would be the same.

No News Is Good News

I thought it would be difficult to live without corporate owned news sources reverberating in my consciousness. There was a part of my self-image that thought it was a good idea to keep "up to date" on the events and occurrences that were deemed important by major media outlets. Only one week into this moon of "no news" I am finding almost the diametric opposite is true. If an event rises to the level of national news coverage, or it is given the status of a global news story, the chances of either being able to do anything to change it or stop things like it from happenning in the future are likely zero. Additionally, the ability of the news to destabilize our own perceptual system will probably be off the charts.

A friend recently told me that we no longer think of violence in the way we were taught as children. "Your freedom ends where the other person's nose begins." was a nearly constant refrain in our house. however, we have allowed the corporate media to assure us that violence against the "right" people is not only justified, but is necessary and called for. Killing innocents, whether by drone, vigilante or cop can be "good for us" as a nation, a city or a community. I cry, "FOUL!" This is perhaps the biggest load of crap the American public, indeed the world community has been told over the centuries. I speak and write often about the fact that every life matters, right down to microbes and their predators. The intricate web of life exists even in our guts, providing as much as 60% of our immunity to disease, as some researchers have calculated. If a bacteria can matter, so too must all people. Demonizing anyone cannot fly in a world of peace and justice.

Another friend recently told me that in the area I want to retire to, on the shores of Lake Superior, to make it into the 1%, I would only need to make about $100,000 per year. Trying to get a handle on what life might be like, just five hours by car from here, Is as mind bending as E=MC2. Trying to paint the world with an ever larger brush, telling the public a bunch of gloom and doom claptrap has stifled real growth, change and adaptations that have been known to exist for generations. Instead, we continue our subsidization of fossil energy use, allowing the oligarchy to own Congress and the administration, and the educational system has become a give-away to corporations bent on dumbing down our students for money.

I have been able to spend an entire week not listening to talking heads spouting the corporate line. I know they are out there, trying to woo the faint of heart, but this revolution that I often speak about, the one that will never be televised needs us now, more than ever. I utilize solar energy and LOVE it! I grow a large percentage of my own food and I LOVE that! I routinely spend time with my neighbors sharing ideas and inspiration, working together on projects or appreciating the gifts which we receive and give away. How could you not love that? I have begun to think about developing an entire curriculum around and based on biochar. this, perhaps more than the lack of news has been picking up the slack in my mental and emotional life. As I am getting more clkear on who I am and what I have to offer, teaching others to become charmasters only makes sense.

The classes I teach will be designed to enlighten and train the next generation of folks who know that it is important to sequester carbon, before we kill off all life through climate change; who know that desertification has been the rule for decades already and that to rehabilitate and build soil means that we insulate ourselves from both deluge and drought. People who recognize that feeding the global population when it doubles will require land to be twice as fruitful, and who understand that char will solve all these issues and more. Add to that the fact that sitting around a campfire, sharing stories is fun, relatively cheap and is one of the activities our ancestors have done since the beginning of human time.

The "news" we get from media outlets is most often terrible, frightening, maddening, or some other assaultive version designed to make us get angry, sad, mad, hostile, fearful, hateful, and or isolated. Real life, with real people is the opposite. The real messages we get from friends and neighbors mean more than the tee vee ever will, because their aims are to keep us sequestered in front of their glowing light, fueled by fossil energy, believing what we are told. Perhaps the most important thing for anyone alive on earth to know is that there is hope and benefit to making peace, both with Mother Nature, humanity itself and with the many creatures we share this planet with.

I continue to run a write-in campaign for Congress with virtually no money, because it is the right thing to do. Someone who knows this stuff needs to be speaking for the rights of the people of Northeast Wisconsin to breathe clean air, drink pure water and to be guaranteed that our foods are not contaminated with unhealthy industrial pesticides, herbicides, therapeutic drugs or industrial wastes. The way to assure a more sustainable approach to decision-making is to be pragmatic about the costs associated with continuing to do the wrong thing. Making the 1% pay their fair share means change. Without making them pay their fair share toward government and the social good (rather than our demise) we assure anarchy. A political operative who is a hold-over from the Tea Party Revolution reminded me that unregulated industries, or those regulated by rules they in fact wrote is like the Wild, Wild West. It all depends on who you want living under anarchy, the 1% only, or all of us? Like the degrees of violence each of us are willing to tolerate, we act as if there is a sliding scale, that deems "other" life expendable, especially in far off lands, but even at home, we allow the public to be poisoned, or killed. Here in Wisconsin, we have increased the speed limit and killed many more people in traffic accidents. To what benefit? A few more moments? The bells toll for them...