I’ll keep reading, though, and hopefully we can spark a conversation with those who have an inside on the topic.

Thanks for the laugh!

Your ancestors most likely did not “buy” the land that they settled upon from anyone. I am not sure but from everything that I have read about the Native Americans the concept of ownership was nonexistant (and you can set me straight on this if I am wrong) and more of a symbiotic way of life.

This mindset is what I am alluding to. We (”Americans” and all other nationalities) could not possibly own the planet….we are just stewards of it, and, therefore to do battle over it is in complete opposition to the laws of nature. To believe that these borders are our borders is ridiculous. So ridiculous that it appears that we are an insane species.

Mr. Pell, my husband is from Europe so that is a distinct possibility, but, until that day comes when I will leave my four sons and grandchild to relenquish what was once stolen I will have to do as my conscience tells me….and it tells me that I must not support this paradigm any longer. You know the one where men claim kingship and authority over those who are ignorant of even the simplest things.

I really do not like this kind of talk where we point fingers at a nation of peoples and lump them altogether as slave traders, tyrannts, terrorists, or whatever else we’d like to name them. Any nation could say this of almost any nation…….no? So where does this nightmare end? Who will stop the blame game?

A woman said (during a phone conversation) that her 11 year old son was crying because he had to wear a suit to a “function”. Because this woman has issues with authority and power she kneels before the erroneous definitons of these words. She believes that people who attend famous universities and graduate with “honors” are to command respect…irregardless of their characters or the character of the school. She also believes that what one wears makes a statement about their social status. She believes that we should hold up old traditions even if they make someone cry. I believe that is the definition of insanity.
I said to her, “then why make him wear one if it makes him uncomfortable enough to cry?” She wanted to make a statement about her position in society and this is the problem. I said that perhaps we should reconsider what wealth, power and prestige mean and do exactly the opposite of what they currently represent. She said that it may well be true that the old paradigm must go but it would not be her or her son who would be the ones to usher it out.

And therein lies the problem. Everyone wants a new way of life but no one wants to do the work of getting one.

I practice no rituals, uphold no family traditions or map family trees. I am more interested in replacing them with activities that will benefit all.
I want a world where there are no labels of identification. No caste systems. No gender assignment (other than the one you are born with of course) and no belief in war. I want it so badly that I have dedicated my life to this leap of evolution through the living of it.

What will the rest of us do? I say live the talk and the paradigm will shift.

In many of these regions poverty is pervasive and accepted as a way of life. I really don’t think that it is so much about “Americans” as it is about apathy and the acceptance of someone else’s standards.

Just think if we did not have the GOD mentality of someone bigger and more powerful than us constantly eyeballing our every move and taking notes on our every transgression then perhaps we’d feel “free to move about the cabin” without fear. Perhaps we’d even go as far as claiming autonomy and the right to participate in building a society rather than just footing the bill for it.

I really see this as a mind set of powerlesness which is the capstone of all societies. In order for someone to be “in power” others must relenquish their power. How stupid is that?

To be able to gain our power back from those whom we have willingly given it over to we must own every action, thought and desire that impedes our collective evolution.
We are a world of addicts. Addicted to the very thing that makes us slaves and it is the erroneous concept of “power”.
Pluto in Capricorn will force this issue to the fore for years to come and many “powerful” people will come tumbling from their pedestals….but not before they take many of us with them.

During this time we will have to come to terms with our inability to discern basic concepts of love, power, freedom and authority.
We will have to come to terms with our inability to walk away from desire and, most of all, ego.
We will have to face the truth of our complicity in this hell we have created on this planet.
If and when we learn the truth of power and love only then can we even fathom the creation of a new world for the benefit of all and not just the few.

This goes much deeper than many understand. To continually scratch superficially at the surface of this festering wound we call life will only lessen our inability to heal what really ails us as a collective body.

The people within the “U.S.” who really have a stake in ending capitalist imperialism - the people of the “internal colonies”: Africans, Native Americans, Kanaka Maoli, etc. - are too small in number to overcome the inertia of the masses of the well-fed and the forces of the US military.

However, in the rest of the world, there is plenty of impetus to dismantle the pillars of support for neoliberalism. The revolution will come from without, not within. It has already started.

Still, we have to work diligently here to build alternatives. The question isn’t whether or not capitalism will survive, but what exactly will replace it when it falls.

The people within the “U.S.” who really have a stake in ending capitalist imperialism - the people of the “internal colonies”: Africans, Native Americans, Kanaka Maoli, etc. - are too small in number to overcome the inertia of the masses of the well-fed and the forces of the US military.

However, in the rest of the world, there is plenty of impetus to dismantle the pillars of support for neoliberalism. The revolution will come from without, not within. It has already started.

However, we have to work diligently here to build alternatives. The question isn’t whether or not capitalism will survive, but what exactly will replace it when it falls.

Mr. Pell, would it be possible for you to look at this from, oh I don’t know, perhaps the perspective of the indigenous people of this country….the ones our forbearers forced from their rightful properties and made into lepers by banishing them to institutionalized “colonies” ???? We won’t even mention the all the “trips” Georgy Porgy” made to the slave quarters for a “night cap”…..and Sallie Hemings who had the great misfortune of having to “adjust her skirts” after an encounter with the demi-god Thomas Jefferson? I don’t know but back where I come from that is akin to rape. She was in servitude and I cannot imagine her saying “No”…no?
Poor dear. Because of her position she was made to bear five children with her rapist. Sounds a lot like the same ol’ same ‘ol.
Nothing has changed as Arch and hp have pointed out and for a very insideous reason.

We give our power and authority away on a daily basis and we want to cry “foul”??
We continually point out the flaws of our political and societal structures yet we prop them up through our ignorant participation?

These borders are NOT our borders. Remember, we took them by force and other heinous criminal acts. Stop holding up the old paradigm and it will surely fall away.
We have deceived ourselves and in this state have built relations and societies upon these principals. How could we NOT fail miserably at this thing called life?
Get out of that “box” you’ve fabricated from “rabid” nationalism, elitist concepts and corporate propaganda and build one constructed solely of your inner fiber……it will serve not only yourself but humanity in general.

Unions (well some unions) are the one place left in America where people can trust each other. If you know where I can get a teamsters bumper sticker let me know. Thanks.

The storm is coming (this century). We can ride it out here in the U.S. if we close the borders (both people and trade with slave states like China). If we do not then we go down with the world at large. Not a pretty picture.

I have my own favorite quote from the Old Testament:

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.
Wherefore I praised the dead who are already dead more than the living who are yet alive.
Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

Things haven’t really changed much in thirty centuries have they?
Maybe evolution is just a theory after all.

Which ever way the election goes, disaster is coming - buy your bicycles and wood stoves now.

Would someone give me directions to the “serious anti-imperalists left” in the US? Thus far they all seem connected one way or another to the phony global “left” billionaires who’s goal is the same one world order as the “right” - they just call it another fruit “ism.”

I would suggest whoever this “serious left” is, that they look closer at Wright and Obama’s connections to Chicago’s dirty sociopolitical machine and the Euro-Iraqi money. Then again, I should keep my mouth shut as the last time I tried that Nadhmi Auchi threatened to sue me.

All eight of them?