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by Ethan Indigo Smith
January 27, 2015
from
ZenGardner Website
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Activist, author
and Tai Chi teacher Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a
farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of
years before migrating west to Mendocino, California.
Guided by a keen sense of integrity and humanity,
Ethan's work is both deeply connected and extremely
insightful, blending philosophy, politics, activism,
spirituality, meditation and a unique sense of humor. |
"Lord, grant me the
serenity
to accept the things I cannot
change,
courage to change the things I
can,
and the wisdom to know the
difference."
Serenity Prayer
All the social systems controlled by
the figurative 1% and opposed
by the 99%, all the institutions that any compassionate person would
liken to fascist or feudal, all have been instigated, implemented
and reinforced by people.
I know that I alone cannot change such
systems; this is guaranteed by the combined oligarchical complex of
government, corporate, financial and military, all formed in a steep
pyramid system with "the 1%" (those in control) atop and "the 99%"
(those under control) below.
But it is perfectly obvious that if a system is simply the creation
of people, then people can change that system - with serenity,
courage and wisdom.
And since the systems in question
operate at the progressive expense of our physical environment and
personal freedoms, it is no longer a question of whether people can
force such change, but when.
Anyone who says that people cannot change things, that we are
powerless to the control systems that already exists, does not
realize they are in a system that began as imagination, an idea,
which came about through influence.
With new, better ideas, people can
change those outdated systems that other people once created; even
those that have become long-standing traditions, or pose as such.
War On
Individualism
The best business strategies utilize knowledge of trends, if a stock
is going up and has been going up, chances are it will continue to
go up for a time.
In the same way trends can be used to
gain an understanding of history and current events. If something
has occurred and is occurring and nothing is being done to change
it, chances are it will continue to occur, perhaps more frequently
so.
One such growing trend is the investment into a police state.
Increasingly the United States is becoming a police state where
institutions are allowed to figuratively and literally put the boot
down.
The aim of the game is social control,
not governance.
The police in the United States support
the institutional ties between the state, corporate and military
collective and are often used as cogs in a system of enforcement for
revenue, rather than enforcement for the purposes of upholding human
rights - as they were intended.
Individual police no doubt vary in their ethics, but right now, one
can accurately say police across the United States do not support
the rights of individuals - our rights are no longer what
informs their orders.
This is clear when observing the national
trend of the horrendous treatment of people (the 99%) who practice
their First Amendment rights to gather and demand redress of
legitimate grievances.
The result of last year's
demonstrations in
Ferguson a recent example.
It is clear to anyone with a sense of history who has been observing
trends that the increasing brutality of the police state state is a
financially-driven institutional movement, while
Occupy Wall Street
is dichotomously a morally-driven individual movement.
Currently, the police are forcefully
executing the will of a self-serving oligarchy at every turn, while
individuals resisting the unlawful encroachment of such government
agencies are forced to defend our rights twice - first by defending
ourselves against our so-called protectors in order to exercise our
rights (protected by the First Amendment) to communicate and protest
in the first place, and second, then insisting our original
grievance is redressed.
In an increasingly militaristic oligarchy, it seems the real
terrorists sometimes have uniforms on.
The War On
Drugs
It is arguable that the mechanics of
the Orwellian world being
implemented around us is predominantly funded through the
prohibition of narcotics.
Whole swaths of police forces are
funded solely by the money found in narcotics operations - literally
feeding off of prohibition and addiction.
Indeed the "War On Drugs" is big
business - a billion dollar industry. Countless companies make money
through the prison system, such as food distribution companies, as
does government, and the police who so diligently strive to
meet their arrest
quotas.
But most glaringly, the
questionably-connected private corporations that are paid per
incarceration to operate prison facilities that are
sub-standard by global standards.
Monetizing and industrializing the lives
of people held prisoner is akin to terrorism.
And given the co-operative
ties
that are evident between government agencies (like the CIA) and
the illegal drug trade, this is especially true of prisoners of the
government's never-ending, and highly profitable, "War On Drugs"
program.
According to journalist Victor
Thorn:
One of the big questions asked by
naïve media talking heads is: Where does all of this heroin come
from?
The answer is the same as it was a
decade ago following a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led
invasion of Afghanistan: 75%-80% of the world's heroin is
exported from Afghanistan.
In spite of the fact that the U.S.
military controls a great deal of that mountainous country,
production levels hit record highs last year.[1]
You do the math. And the seemingly
endless "War On Drugs" has led to an unparalleled culture of
incarceration in the United States.
Journalist Maya Schenwar
describes the scope of the problem:
An estimated 2.4 million people [are
incarcerated] at any moment in,
"1,719 state prisons, 102 federal
prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local
jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military
prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment
centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories." [1]
That's about one of every 100
Americans,[2]
more than 60% of whom are people of color.[3]
Add in another almost five million
on probation or in some way under the supervision of the
criminal justice system and you've reached about seven
million,[4]
the equivalent of the population of Serbia or Paraguay.
Not surprisingly, that's also the
largest prison population on Earth… On any day of your choice,
the United States, with 5% of the world's population, has close
to 25% of the people imprisoned on this planet.[5]
That population, by the way, has
risen by 700% since 1970, a tidal movement for incarceration
that only in recent years has shown small signs of finally
ebbing.[6]
In short, state by state or as a
country, the U.S. leaves the rest of the world in the dust.
(USA! USA!)
As this trend has proven, making
narcotics 'illegal' does not eliminate drug use, or cure addiction,
it only stimulates a very dark corner of the economy.
As other cultures have demonstrated,
illicit drugs are a bigger health risk to a prohibitionist society
than one that deals openly and constructively with issues of
addiction and regards the alteration of consciousness (whether
casually or addictively) as a personal and spiritual concern instead
of a social and criminal one.
The possession and use of mind-altering
substances is of itself a victimless "crime"; it is only through
substance prohibition, by the same governments that ultimately
profits from prohibition, that crime becomes an inherent part of the
story.
Thus, the "War On Drugs" can only be
considered a money-making venture conducted by a creeping
militaristic government.
The War On
Kids
Creating a police state is an unwanted and unsustainable violation
of human rights, as protected by the
First Amendment of the Bill Of
Rights.
But how did we get here? By progressive
indoctrination; a steady process of normalizing that which was once
considered abhorrent.
It is arguable that most all prominent institutions today, including
media and the public education system, help to shape the mindset
that accepts a prescribed life as a cog in someone else's industry;
one that accepts a corporate prison system, aimless "wars on"
everything, and a police state that does not respect the spirit of
the First Amendment.
The (below) documentary "The War on Kids" examines the increased policing of
children in public schools which is, incidentally, concurrent with
decreasing quality of education and genuine student engagement.
Today, the United States education system has become so corrupted
from its original purpose that most schools in the average
neighborhood now resemble prisons.
In school kids are taught how to
behave in an oligarchy:
The kids must change to fit the
syllabus, not the other way around.
Their heads are crammed full of false
history, false measures of success, and unnatural social
expectations, all at an emotionally vulnerable time of their lives.
And they learn to live in an Orwellian world, with body scanners,
video security, standardized testing (what child is "standard"?) and
an instilled behavioral conformity, reinforced by the virtues of
competition, punishment and ostracism.
Regardless of your perspective, this continuing trend is clearly
counterproductive to the development of a child's individuality,
sense of security, inherently peaceful nature, and trust in their
natural impulses.
No child development expert in their right mind
would prescribe such treatment to children.
And yet as a society we continue this
system of instilled conformity, which is crafted to train (and
failing that, medicate) children into an inherited preconception of
"social normality" - one that facilitates our society's collective
march toward industrialized totalitarianism.
Zero tolerance for divergence = zero common sense + zero liberty.
Alter, Reform,
Abolish
Of course I alone cannot change the prison industrial complex.
I alone cannot reform the education
system. I alone cannot hold a peaceful global revolution, or sever
the viperous head of the corporate oligarchy. But I alone can start,
and so can you.
We can exercise our rights, as protected
by the First Amendment, to think, seek, speak, stop, act, peaceably,
as we see fit… and we can change any human made systems together.
These systems are simply conundrums made
by people, and they can be altered, reformed or abolished - by
people, armed with serenity, courage and wisdom.
"Whenever any form of government
becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or abolish it, and to institute
new
government…"
U.S.A. Declaration of Independence
A New Paradigm
Resolution
Resolved,
That the existence
of secret and affiliated institutions is hostile to one of the
principal defenses of liberty - free and open discussion - and
can serve no purpose of utility in a free government save oligarchical institutions.
Resolved,
That we, as global citizens, individuals with hearts,
will adopt the counsel given us by the illustrious Washington,
"That all combinations and associations, under whatever
plausible character, with the real design to direct, control,
counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the
constituted authorities, are destructive of the fundamental
principle of liberty, and of fatal tendency."
Resolved,
That the organization of the majority of love party is
founded upon the most satisfactory and undeniable evidence, that
secretive institutions are dangerous to the liberties, and
subversive of the laws in The Bill of Rights and contrary to
natural and spiritual laws as well.
Resolved,
That where evils of this nature are found existing in
a free government, holding, by means of a secret combination, a
majority of the civil, judicial, and military offices in the
country, there are but two modes of redressing the grievance -
either by revolution, or by an appeal to the ballot boxes.
Resolved,
That the majority of love party, in choosing the
latter remedy, have taken up the peaceful and legitimate weapons
of freemen, and that they ought never to lay them down in this
cause, until the liberty of the press, the liberty of speech,
equal rights, and an entire overthrow of oligarchical
usurpations, are fully and completely achieved.
Resolved,
That the direct object of secretive institutions is to
benefit the few, at the expense of the many, by creating a
privileged class, in the midst of a community entitled to enjoy
equal rights and privileges.
Resolved,
That we esteem it the plain duty of the members of
those institutions as sons and daughters of Earth Mother, either
collectively to abolish them, or individually to abandon them.
Resolved,
That we have witnessed with pleasure, the efforts on
the part of some of the oligarchical institutional fraternity to
produce a voluntary abandonment of their order of operations.
While we regard these efforts as the manifestation of homage to
public opinion, we should rejoice in their success, inasmuch as
it would produce a more speedy accomplishment of the great
object which the majority of love part, with singleness of
purpose, are striving to effect - that is open information and
individual liberty.
Resolved,
That discussion, persuasion, and argument, in
connection with the exercise of the right of suffrage, is a
correct and speedy mode of diffusing information upon the
subject of oligarchy, and is the best method to ensure the
entire destruction of the oligarchical institutions.
Resolved,
That the oaths and obligations imposed upon persons
when admitted into oligarchical secretive institutions, deserve
the unqualified reprobation and abhorrence of every son and
daughter of Earth Mother, and every friend of morality and
justice.
Resolved,
That these oaths, being illegally administered, and
designed to serve fraudulent purposes, ought not to be regarded
as binding in conscience, morality, or honor; but the higher
obligations of spirituality and civil society require them to be
explicitly renounced by every son and daughter of Earth Mother.
Resolved,
That the gigantic global conspiracy for the few to
rule the many, where every strata of entirety is polluted and
degraded on behalf of energy oligarchies and industrial
complexes of the most nefarious sorts, was the natural result of
secretive oligarchical functions and obligations, understood and
acted upon according to their plain and obvious meaning.
Resolved,
That there is sufficient proof that the perpetrators
of oligarchical corruption to the environmental and social
detriment of every person, place and thing have, in several
instances, been shielded from the punishment due to their
crimes, by the collectivism of oligarchical institutions,
according to their secretive obligations and mutual oligarchical
interests, whereby those institutions become accomplices in
their guilt.
Resolved,
That those oligarchical collectivists who became
acquainted with and concealed the facts relative to oligarchical
corruption and destruction of Earth Mother, are accessory to
that horrid transaction and that we, the majority of love, seek
justice among the institutions, but most importantly solutions
for individuals.
Resolved,
That, in applying the right of suffrage to effect the
suppression of oligarchical institutions, we not only exercise a
right which is inalienably secured to us, but discharge a duty
of the highest obligation, in thus endeavoring to abate a great
political evil and environmental calamity.
Resolved,
That there can be no proscription, where every freeman
has a right - and exercises that right - to vote for the
candidate of his own choice.
Resolved,
That the majority of love has for its object the
destruction of oligarchical collectivism; for its means, public
opinion, manifested through the exercise of the elective
franchise; that it acts upon the great principles of liberty and
the brotherhood of man, and relies upon them to ensure the
attainment of its high purpose.
Resolved,
That an actual adherence, by secretive oligarchical
collectivists, to the principles contained in the obligations of
secrets, is inconsistent with paramount duties, which they owe
to the state, and is a disqualification for offices of public
trust.
Resolved,
That we find, in the unexampled growth of the majority
of love, the diffusion and prevalence of its principles, the
continued approbation bestowed upon them by the enlightened and
wise individuals of the world, abundant cause for encouragement,
and perseverance with increased zeal and unabated determination,
until the oligarchical institutions shall be overthrown or
abandoned.
Peace… only for real.
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