WAKE UP WORLD

[michelle]

WAKE UP WORLD

I woke up one morning and nothing seemed right.
I knew something was wrong
Something you couldn't see.
If only people would turn off the TV and see what is happening
To us.
What is happening to the planet?
Our planet, our planet earth!
If you would just look around
You would see
The destruction
The hate
The sadness of our God.
Was this God's Plan
Was this God's big happy world?
You must see what is happening
Not to the planet
Not to the Creator
But to ourselves.
I wait for a world
A world where everything is right
A world where people get along
A world where people have the right to speak their mind
A world where people have the right to protest
A world without war
A world at peace.
Peace is what solves problems.
So if you could just get off the phone or the TV
You would also see the government that runs the world
Is in a battle
Between light and darkness.
Dark relies on fear of the people
The dark clutch power and hold it tight
Not letting go.
In spite of what the government has done
I feel compassion for them.
As I search for life in the dark
I wait for a day
Where everything is OK
I wait trying not to hate.
I have hope that it will be good
Even though it is not yet.
But soon the day will come
The day of light not darkness.

By: Addam 4/21/2005

The poem above was written by my 12 year old son [11 years old at the time]. In our pitiful, wretched world it seems I have been limited to reading nothing but bad news on a daily basis. We've created a world in which we adults have left our children with an uncertain and frightening future, as a friend pointed out in response to Addam's poem:

That is very good. The saddest part of the whole picture is that an eleven year old has to even be concerned with such matters. The last thing on the mind of an 11 year old should be the state of the nation, of our economy, our environment. No Child Left Behind is utter bull****. The greatest thing a generation can do is make things better for the next generation which has suddenly ended. It would appear that our world will only get worse for generations to come. Some children are prodigies at music, or athletics. It would appear that young Addam is a philosophical prodigy. I’m sure he gets that from his mother.

At this post, can we all share stories from around the globe that show hope and promise for a better tomorrow. It can be about any subject: the environment,
social issues, even government. You can post news clippings, community events, or your own vision for a brighter future, anything which shows that mankind is making progress in spite of the world at large.

Yours in the Light,
Michelle

[DT1]

Allow me to start with some good news-This forum.
Although the road has been a little bumpy,I feel like it's turning out just fine.
We get what we put into it(lots of hard work) repaid to us tenfold.
The computer is an incredible tool-for sharing ideas,building stronger communities,
and making friends of complete strangers.The fact that I can begin a dialouge
with a man on the other side of the planet,from a completely different culture,
background and life experience,and come to call him my brother,
is nothing short of a miracle.
With love in our hearts,and open eyes and ears,
infinate possibilities unfold before us all.

Have you seen the movie,"what the bleep do we know?"
If everyone saw that movie ,with an open mind,so much anguish,pain and strife would simply fade out of existence.You cannot come away from that movie without learning something that you have needed to
know all your life...I can't recomend it highly enough.
It's not a cult thing:It is a meeting of some of the most brillant minds on Earth explaining Quantum Theory,
and removing outmoded,incorrect assumptions about the nature of reality itself,which are causing these(seemingly)insurmountable problems.
Peace and Love;
Chris

[Anwaar]

What a poignant poem by your son Michelle. he speaks for us all when he says;

I wait for a world
A world where everything is right
A world where people get along
A world where people have the right to speak their mind
A world where people have the right to protest
A world without war
A world at peace.

This is what this forum is all about.

We too wait for that world.

[michelle]

The Human Forum of Puerto Rico
December 8 -11 , 2005

Historic Forum to Bring Together People from across the Globe for World Change

Spiritual leaders, Nobel Prize winners, scientists, villagers to heal humanity

The seeds of a new humanity will be planted firmly in the ground of Puerto Rico this December 8 -11 , 2005 when groups from all over the world join in the human forum, “The Power of Oneness; Connecting the Seeds of a New Humanity.”.

This global network of individuals and organizations is coming together to determine actions we to take to create a world where hope, justice, peace and a sense of the sacredness of life prevails.

“The Alliance for a New Humanity is an open forum to facilitate an exchange amongst those who care for their fellow beings, and who understand that there is only one human family,” says Alliance President, Deepak Chopra.

Nobel Peace Prize winners, authors, scientists, and extraordinary people from all walks of life, including Mayan women from an impoverished community in Guatemala dedicated to regaining their dignity, will we come to “Connect, Create and Celebrate” during the intense four-day human forum.

The forum will open with a video message from Larry King and presenters include Marianne Williamson, Jeffrey Sachs, James Twyman, Deepak Chopra and many more. Participants will attend panel discussions, group discussions, presentations and exhibitors in a Convergence Plaza at the Hotel Westin Rio Mar on the island of Puerto Rico.

This global network of individuals and organizations is dedicated to bringing together like- minded individuals who share in the vision of creating a global network of NGO’s, corporations, governments and individuals dedicated to protecting the environment, securing human rights, consoling the suffering and improving the world through knowledge.

Supporters of the ANH Puerto Rico Forum include The Mythic Imagination Institute, CARE, Synergos, Global Youth Action Network, Taking IT Global, Hands on Network, Hearts in Action, Sheri’ah Foundation, and the KL Felicitas Foundation.

For more information visit www.anhglobal.org.

“Open the eyes of your heart and solve your problems in a new way. You believe it will take years or lifetimes to solve things like hunger, disease and violence. Is it possible that it is simple, and that your need to see it as complicated has been the very thing that has kept you from the answer?” – Marco, Bulgaria, age 10

A dream that I dream alone is but only a dream. But a dream that we dream together is reality.
- Raul Seixas

[michelle]

Maybe it's time to trade Guns for Guitars!

In a message dated 10/22/05 1:07:47 PM, [e-mail] writes:

Michael Franti (lead singer/songwriter of Spearhead [well known hip-hop
gp]) went to Iraq, Palestine and Israel. He started off wanting to go to
Iraq to see what it is like living under recent occupation. Then he
thought it would be equally interesting to see how 3 generations of people
lived under occupation and went on to Palestine. While in Palestine he and
his mgmt did some filming of Israel.
He put his travels all together in a very recently released documentary
called "I Know I'm Not Alone"
www.iknowimnotalone.com/
I have seen the documentary and it is very good. It is a side you will
never see on any TV screen.
Michael Franti is a man who took only his guitar, and the songs in his
heart as his weapons of choice into lands unfamiliar to him, to connect
with the people. This documentary shows us just how universal Rhythm and
music are and how they connect humankind no matter where on the planet.
Maybe it's time to trade Guns for Guitars!. And we sit side-by-side to
learn each others' music.
You can get a copy of the documentary (about 1 hr 15 -30 minutes) from the
web site
www.iknowimnotalone.com/. At the web site you'll also see the
awards it has won.
angie hougas
Amnesty International

Catch Michael Franti and his film "I Know I'm Not Alone" LIVE at a theater near YOU!!!
Upcoming Screenings at various cities/countries

[michelle]

This life is about finding YOUR SELF

All in Love, and with Love.

If only all Humans could perceive the Love of the Universe, they

would not live in lack, but live in abundance.

Even though uncertainty may exist, we feel this creates a potential

for advancement. This is the planet of free choice, and Humans

seem to make the best of situations through self-expression.

Boldness and trust are the keys. Let not the worries of others

press you down into fear. Follow your own hearts, Dear Ones,

for you are truly connected, and if you take time, you will sense

the correct answers.

In Love, Always Love, Only Love.

~The Master of Love as Channelled by Rory Park-Ross~

[michelle]

SPECIAL OLYMPICS

Some people understand life better, and they call some of these people "retarded"...

At the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash.
At the gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win. All, that is, except one little boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. Then they all turned around and went back......every one of them.
One girl with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, "This will make it better." Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line. Everyone in the stadium stood, the cheering went on for several minutes.

People who were there are still telling the story... Why?

Because deep down we know this one thing: What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What matters in this life is helping others win, even if it means slowing down and changing our course. If you pass this on, we may be able to change our hearts as well as someone else's.

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, it only makes the light brighter"

[michelle]

REPORT ON INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE
by David Swanson

Steve Cobble and I participated in an historic international peace conference in London on December 10 and in various related events the same week. We met with several Members of Parliament and will be working to facilitate teamwork and future events with them and members of the US Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The conference, hosted by the Stop the War Coalition, was a great success. About 1,500 people packed into a large hall, including delegates from all around the UK, and from Iraq, the US, Iran, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Canada, Poland, Greece, Italy, Spain and many other European countries.

The conference passed a statement calling for an international weekend of action on March 18/19, 2006, to mark the third anniversary of the war.

The week of events included a reception with the Mayor of London, who is strongly opposed to the war and willing to say so in no uncertain terms. See report and photos:
www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5482

For one whole day, Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Burgin (the organizer of the conference) and I went to Scotland and met with Members of Parliament and with anti-war activists. This was quite an encouraging series of meetings. I spoke with Alex Salmond, a Member of Parliament working hard for the impeachment of Prime Minister Tony Blair. See report and photos:
www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5489

I spoke on a panel titled "Bringing Bush and Blair to Account." I discussed the work of the After Downing Street Coalition, the ways in which activists in the US and Britain have been able to work together to drive stories into the media, and the ways in which we can work together to impeach Blair and President George Bush. See my speech:
www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5520

On Sunday, the day following the conference, Steve took part in a strategy meeting at the Stop the War Coalition offices, while I joined Cindy Sheehan and many others in paying a visit to Blair's residence at 10 Downing Street. See report and photos:
www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5535

In the course of this trip, we made many connections, helping to build solidarity in an international movement. Our task now is to make March 18, 2006, bigger and even more successful than was February 15, 2003.

Click for the full report and photos:
www.pdamerica.org/articles/events/london-peace-conf.php

[michelle]

12/20-21/05
Happy Holidays Friends!

I sit here writing on the eve and into the dawn of the Winter Solstice; the shortest day of our year. How significant today was for me. I went out after a long hiding, into the world. I was drawn to buy some books. While at the book store, I ran into some women friends of mine. One, two, three, four, five, including me, none of us with jobs. These women friends of mine, most highly educated, privileged even, all have lost their bread. They all, except for one, her work was dependent on another's, worked for a high profile environmental foundation for which I also give time to. This year, they chose a theme most relevant to our world and to the future of our species and our children. But their salaries depended on funding by corporations. Care of the environment and corporate interests, we are told, conflict with one another. So, these brave women, who took a chance, are all out of a job; no funds available for paying their way. What a day; no education, no privileges could help them. Truly,"The chickens have come home to roost." This was not a sad day for us; we were proud to be who and what we are. To most, our futures might look bleak. But we smiled in knowing that we posses what these corporate thugs do not, a vision of a better world. We looked towards our future, glad to be free from limitations and censorship, feeling more empowered than ever before!

One of the books I bought was W.E.B. Du Bois' Darkwater: Voices From Within The Veil , published in 1920. I was particularly struck by the message conveyed in this piece and offer it to ALL as my hope and vision for next year:
Michelle

A Hymn to the Peoples

O Truce of God!
And primal meeting of the Sons Of Man,
Foreshadowing the union of the World!
From all the ends of the earth we come!
Old Night, the elder sister of the Day,
Mother of the Dawn in the golden East,
Meets in the misty twilight with her brood,
Pale and black, tawny, red and brown,
The mighty human rainbow of the world,
Spanning its wilderness of storm.

Softly in sympathy the sunlight falls,
Rare is the radiance of the moon;
And on the darkest midnight blaze the stars--
The far-flung shadows of whose brilliance
Drop like a dream on the dim shores of Time,
Forecasting days that are to these
As day to night.

So we sit all as one.
So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves,
The Buddha walks with Christ!
And Al-Koran and Bible both be holy!

Almighty Word!
In this Thine awful sanctuary,
First and flame-haunted City of the Widened World,
Assoil us, Lord of Lands and Seas!

We are but weak and wayward men,
Distraught alike with hatred and vainglory;
Prone to despise the Soul that breaths within---
High visioned hordes that lie and steal and kill,
Sinning the sin each separate heart disclaims,
Clambering upon our riven, writhing selves,
Besieging Heaven by trampling men to Hell!

We be blood-guilty! Lo, our hands be red!
Not one may blame the other in his sin!
But here---here in the white Silence of Dawn,
Before the Womb of Time,
With bowed hearts all flame and shame,
We face the birth pangs of a world:
We hear the stifled cry of Nations all but born---
The wail of women ravished of their stunted brood!
We see the nakedness of Toil, the poverty of Wealth,
We know the Anarchy of Empire, and doleful Death of Life!
And hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry:

Save us World-Spirit, from our lesser selves!
Grant us that war and hatred cease,
Reveal our souls in every race and hue!
Help us, O Human God, in this Thy Truce,
To make Humanity divine!

[michelle]

On December 8th, nationally syndicated columnist Robert C. Koehler wrote a very supportive column about the Department of Peace entitled: "Flickering Dreams of Peace: All you have to do is wake up ..." It ran in papers around the country. You can read it below.

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
Thomas Paine regarding the American Revolution.

Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King saw the coherence of "ends and means" as the first principle of nonviolent philosophy; that who we are is as important as what we do. How we go about change determines what ultimately will be changed and the process is as important as the goal. Currently in our world, the ends never justify the means. To change this, the goal must be inherent in the means. In the words of Dr. King, "The means must be as pure as the end, for in the long run of history, immoral destructive means cannot bring about moral and constructive ends."

Please support the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Peace. Go to The Peace Alliance at:
www.ThePeaceAlliance.org

Love and Deep Peace,
Michelle


Flickering Dreams of Peace
All you have to do is wake up...

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

December 8 , 2005

Ever try to shift a paradigm? I salute the brave souls scattered around the continent — some of them are in Congress — who are doing just that, who are daring, right now, to challenge the conventional wisdom of war and peace at the highest levels at which the game of geopolitics is played, and are calling for the establishment of a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.

When long-time correspondent Bill Bhaneja, a senior research fellow at the University of Ottawa and retired Canadian diplomat, recently e-mailed me the proposal he co-authored with Saul Arbess for such an addition to Canada’s government — inspired by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s H.R. 3760 — I confess to a queasy skepticism that such a project was just too darn idealistic.

Then I thought about bird flu — and George Bush’s wild musings two months ago about combating it with National Guard troops, that is, by implementing martial law to enforce quarantines. This from the man who has “degraded” (in the words of one high-level health official) the nation’s public health system and underfunded and politicized every branch of government created to deal with national emergencies.

And it hit me with a jolt: The level of public awareness is deteriorating. We’re now whelping leaders who haven’t got a clue how to deal with complex social issues except to start shooting at them. And there’s no adequate challenge to this in the media or from the opposition party, and apparently no public context big enough even to allow for debate.

For instance, there was Hillary Clinton the other day telling potential supporters of her run for the presidency, who I’d wager are against the war by a large margin, that the United States must “finish what it started” in Iraq, as though there’s a consensus what, exactly, we started and what “finishing” it would mean, and how many more dead Iraqis and U.S. servicemen we might expect before we attain our unarticulated goal.

It was sheer politician-speak, in other words, betraying no courageous intelligence, no insight that our brutal occupation might be fueling the insurgency and creating the terrorists we’re obliged to keeping fighting. But the media have already pegged Hillary a frontrunner, which means they’re condemning America’s anti-war majority, once again, to a campaign season without a presidential candidate who represents their ardent hopes.

This is intolerable. This is why I support and heartily endorse what is, in fact, a global movement to raise awareness by challenging the blood-myths of the nation-state and the inevitability of war, and the geopolitical canard extraordinaire that high-tech, high-kill, earth-poisoning modern wars have any chance of achieving controllable ends and do not spew incalculable suffering and future wars in their wake.

“What we seek,” write Bhaneja and Arbess, “is a world in which peaceful relations between states are a systematically pursued norm and that the numerous non-aggression pacts between states become treaties of mutual support and collaboration. We envision a world in which a positive peace prevails as projected most recently in the U.N. International Decade for a Culture of Peace (2001-2010) Programme of Action.”

The establishment of a peace academy, the training of peace workers, the promotion of nonviolent conflict resolution at every level of human interaction — there’s no reason why such projects should be nothing more than the flickering dreams of protestors at candlelight vigils. There’s no reason why they should not be the business of government. I have no doubt whatsoever that the public is ready to move beyond the barbarism history has bequeathed us, and would do so in an eye blink if enough respected voices said, “Now is the time.”

And respected voices are saying this, if only we could hear them.

“What is quite clear — and would become clear as you go along with this campaign — is that you are trying, and I consider myself with you on this in every way . . . (to create) not only a massive but a basic change in our culture, in our entire approach to our relationships with other human beings. . . . It’s not a matter of simply getting another department of government. You’re speaking of an entire philosophical revolution.”

This is Walter Cronkite, in conversation with Kucinich last September at a Department of Peace conference in Washington, D.C. Kucinich, the hero of this movement, first introduced Department of Peace legislation in 2001. The bill now has some 60 sponsors in the House and, in September, was introduced in the Senate (S. 1756) by Mark Dayton of Minnesota.

The architects of the war on terror have minds stuck in old paradigms of domination and conquest. Their enemy is always the same: Evil Incarnate. Today’s jihadist was yesterday’s Communist, playing the same game of dominos.

This war is doomed to create nothing but losers, and more and more people — including many who are in or close to the military, such as Jack Murtha — are grasping this. As they wake up, the Department of Peace will be waiting for them.

commonwonders.com/archives/col323.htm


"Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." — Albert Einstein

[michelle]

JUST A TEST TO SEE WHO'S OUT THERE:
A new year is ahead of us;
Full of possibilities and potential.
Addam and I are listening to music;
Dancing on the kitchen counters.
They say all our visionaries
Have been silenced,
Or killed.
NOT SO!
THEY LIVE!
In our Music,
In our Literature,
In our Art,
In our Voices,
In our HEARTS.

HEAVEN'S HERE ON EARTH
You can look to the stars in search of answers. Look for God and life on distant planets. Have your faith in the ever after. While each of us holds inside the MAP to the labyrinth. And heaven's here on earth. WE ARE THE SPIRIT OF THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE. We create the pain and the suffering and the beauty in this world. HEAVEN'S HERE ON EARTH. In our faith in humankind. In our respect for what is earthly. In our unfaltering BELIEF IN PEACE and love and understanding. I've seen and met ANGELS wearing the disguise of ORDINARY PEOPLE leading ordinary lives. Filled with love compassion and sacrifice. HEAVEN'S IN OUR HEARTS. In our faith in humankind. In our respect for what is earthly. In our unfaltering BELIEF OF PEACE AND LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING. Look around. Believe in what you see. The kingdom is at hand. The promised land is at your feet.
We can and will become what we aspire to be. If heaven's here on earth. If WE HAVE FAITH in humankind. And respect for what is earthly. And an unfaltering belief that truth is divinity. And heaven's here on earth. I've seen spirits. I've met angels. I've touched creations beautiful and wondrous. I've been places where I question all I think I know. But I BELIEVE I believe I believe this could be heaven. We are born inside the gates with the power to create life. And to take it away. The world is our temple. The world is our church. HEAVEN'S HERE ON EARTH. If we have faith in humankind. And respect for what is earthly. And an unfaltering BELIEF IN PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING. This could be heaven here on EARTH.

NEW BEGINNINGS
The whole world's broke and it ain't worth fixing. It's time to start all over make a NEW beginning. There's too much pain too much suffering. Let's resolve to START ALL OVER make a new beginning. Now don't get me wrong I LOVE LIFE AND LIVING. But when you wake up and look around at everything that's going down all wrong you see we need to CHANGE it now this world with too few happy endings. We can resolve to start all over MAKE A NEW BEGINNING. START ALL OVER start all over start all over start all over. The world is broke into fragments and pieces that were once joined together in a unified WHOLE. But now too many stand alone. There's too much separation. We can resolve to come together in the new beginning. Start all over. Start all over. Start all over. Start all over. We can break the cycle. We can break the CHAIN. We can start all over. In the NEW BEGINNING. We can learn. We can teach. We can share the myths and dream the PRAYER. The notion that we can do better. Change our lives and paths. CREATE A NEW WORLD. AND START ALL OVER. Start all over. Start all over. Start all over. Make a NEW BEGINNING. Start all over. Start all over. Start all over. START ALL OVER. We need to make new symbols. Make new signs. Make a new language. With these we'll REDEFINE THE WORLD. And start all over. Start all over. Start all over. START ALL OVER.

I'M READY
I want to wake up and know where I'm going. Say I'M READY. Say I'm ready. I WANT TO GO WHERE THE RIVERS ARE OVERFLOWING. And I'll be ready. I'll be READY. I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me. I'm ready to let the RIVERS WASH OVER ME. If it's LOVE flowing freely. I'm ready. I'm ready. If the waters can REDEEM ME I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready to LET THE WATERS WASH OVER ME. I want to wake up. I want to know where I am going. I want to go where the RIVERS ARE OVERFLOWING. I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me. I'M READY. I'm ready.

Music and lyrics by Tracy Chapman
From the album: NEW BEGINNINGS, 1994

Anyone out there? Got a vision for the future? I'm sure Anwaar won't care what you write or have to say, as long as it is positive......Michelle

[michelle]

The World Social Forum was created as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, which is a gathering of economic and political elites that happens annually in Davos, Switzerland. The World Social Forum is meant to be a place where activists from around the globe can envision a better world -- one where people's basic human needs are met, where international cooperation replaces war and militarism, and where governments and corporations respect the earth and its inhabitants - and share ideas about how to create it. Past World Social Forums have spawned important global collaborations, including the largest public mobilizations in human history - the February 15, 2003 demonstrations against the Iraq war.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM:
US Activists Study Bolivarian Revolution
Katherine Stapp
Snip:
NEW YORK, Jan 12 (IPS) - U.S. activists are heading to the Sixth World Social Forum (WSF) with a renewed sense of optimism and international solidarity, despite Washington's animosity toward the hemisphere's growing slate of leftist governments.

Up to 100,000 visitors are expected in Caracas, Venezuela from Jan. 24-29, while parallel forums will take place in Bamako, Mali from Jan. 19-23, and Karachi, Pakistan in March.

The WSF was founded in 2001 to counter the unabashedly neo-liberal agenda promoted at gatherings like the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. It has grown larger every year since, drawing thousands of trade unionists, anti-debt campaigners, environmental and fair trade activists, peasants' groups and others representing economic and social justice movements around the world.

Although the WSF has a relatively low profile in the United States, groups that attended in the past are sending more people this time around, and others are planning their maiden voyage to the conference.

Global Exchange, an international human rights group headquartered in San Francisco, California, is sending 200 people -- nearly four times the number it sent to the WSF gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year.

"The main purpose of the trip is to educate people to look deeper into the realities of Venezuela, so they can come back and fight the media blitz and put pressure on the government," said Zach Hurwitz, the "South America Reality Tours" coordinator for Global Exchange.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31751

[michelle]

The May You Be Blessed Movie

Created by Kate NowakDesigned to be a meditative experience for the viewer, the May You Be Blessed Movie is yours to use. It is my gift to you, from one heart to another, and I not only encourage you to view the movie frequently as a reminder of all the good in your own life, but to pass it along to others, so they, too, may be blessed.

It has been said that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Every time you remind yourself that you are, indeed, blessed — even in those times when you do not see or feel the blessings — you are figuratively lighting a candle in your world. By being reminded that you are blessed and that you are a blessing to others, you succeed in raising your own energy vibration. You feel lighter, freer and happier. And the better you feel, the better those around you feel. In essence, by raising your own vibration, you raise the vibration of others, blessing those around you by your presence and improving world conditions far more than you realize.

A gift to ALL : www.mayyoubeblessedmovie.com/

"Have you ever given much thought to what a blessing really is and how it works? Although there are numerous definitions, most of them fringed with religious connotation, a blessing is basically an expression of Good. It is a way of conferring happiness and prosperity upon another, a sign of unconditional approval, and a conduit between souls. A blessing acknowledges the Good that is inherent in our world. Burdens, pain, suffering and lack flee from a blessing the way darkness flees from light. It is impossible to bless someone else without being blessed in return because when our minds are focused on offering good to another, there is no room for thoughts of our own troubles and woes. And in that moment when our thoughts are removed from that which bothers us, it loses its power over us. A blessing is the most divine expression of unconditional love we are capable of expressing. The soul connection between ourselves and those we bless demonstrates our relationship with a Higher Power and allows us to recognize evidence of the Divine in others. By embracing the true essence of a blessing, we keep love circulating. We become One with those we bless. That is what a blessing is. Have you blessed anyone today?"

Yours in the Light,
Michelle

[michelle]

Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown . . .
Now Shut Up and Buy Something
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 9, 2006

Take away America’s Wal-Mart junk and cheap electronics and what you have left is a mindless primitive tribe and a gaggle of bullshit artists pretending to lead them.

-- James “Mad Dog” Howard

When I was a boy on my grandparents’ farm in the 1950s the neighbors always banded together to make lard and apple butter, put up feed corn, bale hay, thresh wheat, pick apples, and plow snow off roads. One neighbor cut hair, another mended shoes and welded. With so little money available in those days in rural America, there was no way to get by without neighbors. And besides, all the money in the world would not get the lard cooked down and the peaches put up for the winter. You needed neighbors and they needed you. From birth to the grave. I was very lucky to have seen that culture which showed me that a real community of shared labor is possible - or at least was at one time in this country. And if I ever doubt it I can go up to those hill farms and look into the clouded old eyes and wrinkled visages of the people who once babysat me as a child and with whom I shot my first rabbit and quail. They are passing quickly now and I drive by more than a few of their graves in the old Greenwood Cemetery when I visit that place where there are still old men who know how to plow with horses and the women who can chop a live copperhead snake in half with a hoe then go right on weeding the garden. “Yew kids stay ‘way from that damned dead snake, ya hear me?”

Fifty years later nobody cans peaches any more, or depends upon a neighbor to cut their hair or get in the hay crop. And fifty years later I found myself in the middle class and softening like an overripe cheese. Given my background, I never guessed I’d see the day when I would be bitching because I could not get Hendricks gin or fresh salmon delivered to my door. (But when you’re too drunk to drive or even walk to the supermarket . . .) Such is the level of self-insufficiency to which some of us weaker souls devolved.

Whatever the case, we no longer depend upon community and other people around us. We live in our houses, idiotically sited vinyl “Tudor-esque” fuck-boxes with brick facade (sorry Neddie, I just had to steal that lick) which grow bigger each year in order to accommodate our massive asses, egos and collection of goods, and we “order out.” Or go shopping for it at the mall. Beyond the need to get laid, there is little real reason to be together with other thinking, feeling adults. We do not need each other to do anything important in our lives, because all those things are performed by strangers, often as not thousands of miles away. Including the sex, if your are an internet porn fan. Which leaves us strangers to the natural human community. After all, what can we really do together? Consume. Drink. Consume. Talk. Consume tickets to entertainment. Consume. There is little else to do with other human beings in America than consume. So most of our primary life activity is solitary. We drive, do housework, pay bills, watch television. When we do “get together with friends,” there is little to talk about, other than one form or another of consumption, consuming music, or movies or whatever. We cannot tell each other anything new because we all get the same news and information from the same monolithic sources. At the same time we try to fill the loneliness for a real human community that we have never experienced by calling any group of people who come together in any way a “community”. Online community. Planned community. As writer Charles Eisenstein, says in The Ascent of Humanity:

t is a mistake to think that we live ultra-specialized lives and somehow add another ingredient called “community” on top of it all. What is there really to share? Not much that matters, to the extent that we are independent of neighbors and dependent on faceless institutions and distant strangers. Real communities are interdependent.

Never in all history has there been such a lonely, inauthentic civilization.

This leaves those few fleetingly concerned Americans alone to momentarily stew over the condition of the world, fester upon national moral issues like squishing brown desert people under tanks . . . or building offshore gulags so the sight of naked prisoners being tortured in wire cages will not dampen the consumer confidence index. But ultimately somewhere between the seven o’clock showing of Law and Order and the third cocktail, or perhaps after that bracing evening trot around the block in your Land’s End shorts with the dogs, the mind settles down to the more relevant issues such as “Do I need a Blackberry, and if so, should I wait for the next generation of technology?”

Still, what about those cages in Gitmo? Or global warming? You and I may presently be yammering our asses off in cyberspace (talk about inauthentic!) about such topics, but most Americans, if they dialogue about those things at all, conduct the dialogue with those voices inside our heads, the one that says: Things cannot be as bad as the alarmists say. They cannot be as bad as I often suspect they are. If there really were such a thing as global warming they would be starting to do something about it. And besides, even if it were true, science will find a way to fix it. If there really were genocide going on in so many places far more people would be concerned. At the same time, every commercial and piece of sports hoopla, every celebrity news item leaves us with the impression that if we have time and money for such things, then matters cannot be all that bad, can they? If the earth were heating up we would surely notice it. If our soldiers and government agencies were torturing people around the world it would make the news. If millions were being exterminated, it would be more obvious, would it not? Look around. Nobody seems worried. Look how normal everything is every day. Look at your wife and your own family. No one is worried. Things cannot be that bad.

Joe Bageant’s little inner voice is like everyone else’s. Whenever I shudder at the condition of the republic, whenever I feel its utter absence of community, it scolds me and tells me I am crazy: Nothing is wrong. This is merely the way things are. It has always been this way. You cannot change that. You expect too much. Look at your wife. She’s not upset. She wonders why you cannot just go ahead and be happy. What you see around you is normalcy. Take care of your own family. Relax. Buy something. And I do too. Which is why I own nine guitars, though I can only play one at a time, and even then not very well. The voice made me do it. I was bored.

Bored plus anxious. Hell, I could lose my job. I could lose everything. And if I lost my job I would indeed lose everything. Social status, family, the accumulated net worth of a lifetime. Which, believe me, ain’t much after two divorces and a run-in with cocaine.

Adding to the anxiety is the lack of evidence that the world needs you or me at all. In this totally commoditized life we are dispensable. Everything is standardized. It really doesn’t matter who grows our food or makes our clothing. If we don’t make it, it someone else will. If we don’t buy it, someone else will. Some other faceless person will step forward to fill in our place. The same goes for the engineers who created this computer and the same goes for your own job. The machine rolls on. With us or without us. Naturally, we have our loved ones and our friends. But increasingly even these relationships are monetized for all classes. Family and leisure activity has become intensely commoditized. Never has there been such a lonely and inauthentic civilization as the American middle class.

Now it took me one helluva long time to claw my redneck self into the middle class and it took me even longer to figure all this out about its inauthenticity. Always one to fuck up right in front of the whole damned world, I loudly declared American middle class life to be a crock of shit and vowed to kiss it off. Go someplace simpler. Run nekkid in the surf in Saint Kitts or smoke pot in Belize. Catch my own damned salmon on the Galician Coast. But whoaaa hoss! This bad news just in: Not only do you have to buy your way into the American middle class through forceful consumption of the lifestyle, but you have to buy your way out of it. I’m serious. Buy your right to live in poverty. Let’s say you’ve managed to get your kids through college one way or another, usually via a second mortgage and loans, and you decide like I did to say: Fuck this. I’ve done right by my family. Now I’ve got high blood pressure, a bad back, and a million other stress ailments. I’m overweight and have terrible lungs. Now I want to escape the ever rising cost and stress of playing the game, the grinding chase after enough net worth to feel safe about such things as health care and a safe place to shit. Spend a few years in some warm place blinking at blue, unpolluted sky before I go tits up. To my mind, these are completely understandable sentiments for any reasonable person. But, alas dear hearts, the American middle class is a lockdown facility. One that takes a lot of cash bribes and blackmail payoffs to break out of.

Now making complicated plans just to croak has always seemed rather excessive to me. Millions manage to do it without much planning or the need for highly paid experts. I don’t care about financial planners or plans for elder care and such crap in my old age. I’m willing to die wretchedly and maybe even unnecessarily, if doing it the right way means blowing a couple hundred thousand dollars I do not have to buy few extra months drooling and talking out of one side of my mouth following that stroke I so richly deserve, given my debauched life. To hell with health care as we know it in America, which is to say as a tool used to blackmail every working person in this country: Better to work less, own less and escape the plague of blackmailers.

You would think owning jack shit and expecting nothing would allow a guy slightly more freedom from toil, would you not? Yet, even though I never wish to own a car again, or ever own another house, don’t care about clothes, could easily live on grains, fruits and vegetables, and am willing to work maybe 20 hours a week at some mindless occupation so long as it does not contribute to the world’s misery and doesn’t require heavy lifting or good memory, and willing to live in the tiniest of rooms, it’s still impossible to do so inside this nation, once you’ve signed the middle class blood oath. Even if I managed to talk my wife into such a life, this is the one thing I am not free to do in the good old land of the free. In this country buster, you keep paying the going rate, even if you don’t care about going. Like the Cajuns say, you will know when you are dead because the bills will quit coming in.

And so about a year or so ago I swore in print and on the net that I was going to buy a cottage in some warm and simpler place abroad. Someplace VERY cheap that I can go and write and make music with these hands and this tired but willing voice. And I am getting closer to that goal, despite the blackmailers. For starters, I have gotten over the American fetish of ownership -- I can rent a place from some deserving poor native family who needs the income. Maybe build an addition onto their house for them for free. Maybe we can go into business together, a small bodega on a dusty street, mango stand, take in laundry or whatever. I will be the old white guy who lives in the back room, plays banjo and guitar and writes. This is the one promise I intended to keep to myself. I still do.

But I never in my life imagined it would be so hard to escape the various American forms of institutionalized extortion and blackmail. Becoming debt free was the least of it. And having everyone you know and love believe your have slipped your moorings is just the beginning. Meanwhile, you become a Kafkaesque character wondering if you’ve gone nuts, as you simmer in the ambient wrongness pervading American society and watch the futility of our vast life-consuming program of intense management and control of everything, the money, the bombs, the roads, the retirement fund, the communications, the propaganda, the entire buzzing tower of bullshit so massive as to make Babel look like a chicken coop. And you ask every passing stranger in the shopping mall, “Is all this fucking necessary?” Only to discover that you are in an isolation chamber, a vacuum, a void in which no one can hear your voice at all. They are sleepwalking. They are shopping. Shhhh….

The loss of our human kinship identities has left us to define ourselves by what we own, where we live or what sports teams we support. But even more insidiously, our lost stories of community and kinship are replaced by the work of unseen professionals over the distant horizon. TV and movie producers, the news media and educational establishment, they provide the answer to the most important spiritual kinship and identity question we will ever ask ourselves: Who are my people? Some of the worst people on the planet are ready to answer that question for us in a way that serves their own ends. They stand ready to answer other questions too, such as, where did we come from? Why are we here? They are the cadre of empire’s paid professionals who write the history and the news stories that fill the deep need for a “story of the people.” The most horrific events of history have nearly always been set in motion by manipulation of this national story.

After a while, it does not matter that the story was manipulated. Deep need for a national story drives most to come to love and accept the story over time. It is the only one they have. And if the story is sufficiently intolerant and mean, we don’t care about Iraqi deaths. And we come to love empire and capitalism. Beyond that, many would have become bullies anyway, without any help from the national storyline. They don’t value democracy, or the ecology or liberty, but they do believe in authority and discipline. Aw common! It ain’t just Dick Cheney and his pet president Sparky doing all this. At least half the country is loving the queer bashing and the bombing and the god rhetoric. We should quit pretending that a very large portion of Americans are not degraded human beings. They are. Skeptics are welcome to visit me here in the armed and inbred environs of Winchester, Virginia. It no longer matters what or who degraded them. Much time has passed and this is how many Americans have become. Fundamentalist cults abound, both religious and economic. Millions upon millions of Christians live in hermetic worlds of their own, with their own books stores, schools, media. Millions of middle-class Americans, both conservative and liberal, live in suburbs and condos and brownstone row houses completely surrounded by their own kind, all of them worshippers in the American value cult, commodity fetishists. They are differentiated mainly in their own minds and the narratives they have made up for themselves. And of course in their consumption.

After 35 years of inattention to these not-so-nice Americans among us (in another time they would have been called fascists, but now they are considered merely a political “base”, which is in itself a strange sort of national acceptance of cruelty as part of the national character) we are now watching them consolidate power. For the time being they control the Presidency, the Congress, the Media, the Supreme Court, the Federal Courts, most Governorships, and most State Legislatures. And if their manipulation of congressional districts stays put they could feasibly stay in power indefinitely.

Do these people, this half of our population which cheers on unprovoked wars abroad, spying on the citizenry and demonizing of the poor truly hate democracy? Fuck if I know. But after generations of brainwashing and psychological molding and exploitation of their fears, I suspect they never really knew what democracy was.

If anyone is going to turn the ship of the republic around, put us on a course more in the direction of liberty and openness, it will require the navigational help of those among us who can still remember what it was like before totalistic capitalism took such grip. People who can remember that genuine good will and intent was once alive in the hearts of most people even if it never has been in the halls of Congress. Remember when at least some human and social progress was evident around us, thereby giving reason to hope.

And these sorts of people are indeed still with us, though quiet, perhaps out of insecurity. Only last Saturday I saw them at the Jiffy Lube. Sitting in the waiting room with our little Jiffy Lube paper coffee cups, waiting for our cars to be finished, we were watching on CNN the placement of the casket of Coretta Scott King in the rotunda of the Georgia State Capitol. To my right there was the huge black lady with cornrows and two bright-eyed children hanging on her ankles. There was the thin young 30-something half-black dude who had just got off his cell to his wife (“Yeah honey, it’s on CNN. Bye.”) There was the very straight suburban blonde yuppie woman with her sculpted ponytail sticking through the back of her aubergene Eddie Bauer ball cap. And as those Georgia state troopers on CNN, looking so much like the very same kind who once struck fear into the Martins and the Medgars of the South, were climbing those marble stairs under the gray February Georgia sky, one step at a time, then a pause, then one more step. There was not a dry eye in that Jiffy Lube waiting room. It was not just the cheap emotionalism of televised pandering. Everyone there remembered, by God! Remembered, or found reason to believe in an America that at one moment in history, at least, rose from its stupor to struggle forward toward something higher. Something better. And yes, noble even.

And when I was finished blubbering inside, I thought to myself, “Well, that small room in St. Kitts, or the tarpon fishing in Belize, they can probably wait one more year.

Joe Bageant is a writer and magazine editor living in Winchester, Virginia. His forthcoming book, Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, is due out this year, to be published by Random House. Visit his blog at: www.joebageant.com. He may be contacted at: [e-mail]. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.

I appreciate the above article. Although interested in politics at a young age, my real passion and training has been protection of the environment. I also was blessed with the role of being a parent. My goal as a parent was to raise and set into the world the best human being possible. This is not an easy task in our society, all was against my goal as a parent: schools, TV, rampant consumerism, etc..

People bitch and moan about the state of affairs and where our world is headed. We can blame political powers, corporations, and the bankers for all that is ill in the world, but who put them in position, who supports them? Truth is the general population has. We needed to change our way of functioning in the world years ago. Now, through years of apathy and neglect, we are being forced to look at the world and change our ways.
When has mankind ever been motivated to change without pain and extreme discomfort?

I see that what the global elite represent is what the rest of the population has bought into through their obsessive compulsion to buy and own all that is presented to them, no matter what the cost to the earth and ALL its creatures. That every stock they add to their portfolios to increase their wealth, even though these companies exploit and destroy 3rd world labor and resources, makes them partners with the global elite. That every vacation condo they buy destroys precious natural land and beaches [can't people just take a vacation without OWNING everything?] I see the population increasing the destruction and furthering the status quo by deserting their towns to buy massive "McMansion" homes, even though they leave their poorer neighbors behind to concentrate poverty in burnout, abandoned towns, by which they drag developmental, urban sprawl into our natural areas and existing farmland. Every purchase they make from known exploitive companies joins them to the globalists. And these citizens will argue with you that it is their RIGHT to live how they want, acquire what they want, pursue a better life and all the trappings that come with it. They will tell you democracy allows them to do this! They are sick with the disease of AFFLUENZA, an all consuming epidemic.!!!

Every time they allow their children to be injected with toxic mercury laced vaccinations, send them to school to teach their children to be mindless drones [and they can opt out of the testing madness here as a parent], that every violent video game they buy their children helps to form young people into violent killers [parents shrug shoulders and say my kid wants it, everyone has them...], etc.: they turn their children over to the fiends.

They throw up their hands and vote for one of two parties, saying that the 3rd party candidates will never win, and they don't win because nobody votes for them; they buy into a corrupt system, believing that's all there is.

Yes, many are seeing what our government is, but they look at it as if they have had no responsibility in bringing it about. Until they do, until they change their way of living, until they stop the us/them mentality [even the us/government mentality], and change their THINKING, the DRAMA will continue to play out......

Michelle

[michelle]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Born January 15, 1929
Assassinated April 4, 1968

The ultimate weakness of violence
is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate....
Returning violence for violence multiples violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.