by Carol Warner Christen
"The time has come," our Editor said, "to talk of many things: of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax -- of cabbages -- and kings -- and why the planet is so hot -- and whether people should have strings." (Apologies to Lewis Carroll, who wrote Jabberwocky)
(Swans - December 17, 2007) If every 25 years is a generation and if each generation has its own agenda, we have had in 230 years "the nine stages of civilizations," according to Allen L. Roland, PhD. (1) Those nine stages are bondage (to the English crown), spiritual faith (in humankind to be free), great courage (during the American Revolution), liberty (springing from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), abundance (as the People produced their own wealth), selfishness (culminating in the Civil War), complacency (as national life settled down and grew), apathy (as more inventions took over daily life), dependence (on technologies of enormous scale), and back to the beginning, bondage (as the three branches of government play with unconstitutional ideas and love the profits of war, thus forgetting the People).
So, People, here we are at the end of the year 2007 without a single human right in the world, with debts beyond belief -- individually and nationally, with the planet in the throes of real decline -- raped of resources facing the specter of hunger, wars, radiation poisoning, birth defects, imprisonment for thinking "radical thoughts," without a country because 700 very rich, worldly people have declared "One World Globalization" is the future; as they pick and choose amongst the rest of us who have the proper deference towards them.
The sheep, described by Judge Napolitano in his marvelously clear book, A Nation of Sheep, refers to those who go along to get along. (2) The opposite of sheep are wolves, such as the Founders. Sheep are mesmerized by grass and will always follow goats wherever they lead. Wolves on the other hand are the People who still love liberty. The shepherds: police, military, the vice president, the too wealthy, the arrogant, and the toadies intend to kill and conquer those "Wolf" People as soon as possible, especially in camps built by their sponsors. At the end of 2007, it will never do to get in the shepherd's way; they think they have all the ammunition they need now. But, do they?
Food prices are up 21%; gasoline rises weekly. We pretend we are still free. The news is now media and no longer reports anything except it is promoting shopping. War has been stymied by the new Iran report but the "powers that be" still intend to start a nuclear war for oil territory. The FDA can no longer vouch for food or drug safety, which causes me to wonder why we fund it at all. Most government bureaus in the executive branch have been turned over to people with political pedigrees while the previous better workers quit.
The procession of presidential candidates seems endless with meaninglessness. Only two have integrity. The three branches of government have coalesced into one: the executive branch, which has attained arrogance over people, law, rights, and reality that the Founders would find appalling if not treasonous. The Congress passes bills it doesn't bother to read after it is briefed by the executive branch. The fine print is anti-American; it is all the far end of the behavior scale: fascistic. And, the People keep shopping. Communication is by cell phone or any of the new marvels to keep attention focused on itself rather than the state of our country.
Just to get personal, as has happened to many citizens already, suddenly my husband was ordered to work ten-hour days and some Saturdays after a lifetime of eight-hour days. He is an engineer. His company was sold to investors more than once; the latest group is trying to close all the plants, get people to quit, and then move the operation to Mexico. The law in this state allows some persons to be exempt from overtime pay because they are entitled to days off in lieu of that pay. He is one of them who took the option when the company was still in competent hands. The new manager does not think he owes anyone anything. Therefore, the cost is to me, at 68, to handle all the farm chores alone because it is dark when he leaves and dark when he returns. We had split the chores so each of us would get physical exercise; now he has none; I have too much. If it were possible, we would hire someone, but, his raises are now non-existent and we barely make a median income. This end to 2007 infuriates me beyond belief. My dream is a lawsuit at the end of this horrid year.
My sympathies have always been with those humans harmed by racism, disaster capitalism, and the One World Order people. Their selfishness and "my way or the highway" ideology reminds me (and others) of the lemmings. The world is now the lemming and there is no way off it as the disasters begin to roll in and over all of us except the selfish few who have been engineering these since 1954.Those few number 646 obscenely wealthy people on the planet, not just Americans. They are human but their fear is the real one: loss of resources, loss of the good life they have granted themselves. They are promoting fear as a way of life to kill the unwanted, the unwashed, the human who is just human but different from them. This pushes their fear onto the rest of us.
The religion of the humans who live above or on buried resources is merely an excuse to blast parts of the planet into dust ahead of time. They are also building a seed bank bunker on a Norwegian Island to save the genetically modified seeds and others after their depredations are over. Our richest foundations put up the money. Reports have it that oil has eight more years and then that resource bites the dust. I wonder if these people intend to survive for 4 billion years when the radiation dust from their lusts dies down. I wonder if the Maya were correct about 2012 because it is five years away in this December of 2007. The Hopi seem to agree that the next reincarnation of earth will begin sometime after that albeit with very few, maybe only the Hopi.
Our year out here has ended on a stormy note. Our farm is along a creek which flooded twice in the eleven years we have lived here. The waters come as close to the barn as they dare and then recede. I've always felt we provide a service allowing the floods to flow here safely in our fields. It was so bad, though, it cut the town nearest us off because the bridge flooded. The winds that were promised did no damage and, actually, stayed away. Over time, I -- yes, by myself -- have dug trenches to send the water safely to the street ditches and away from the house built in 1894 as a hops barn.
The State, however, put an illegal culvert across the highway in 1904 (we had a prior right) which causes all the water from the hills over there to rush down to my front porch and flood the place. We had to replace the wooden sills over the foundation when we moved in. As a mechanical water designer for years, this is child's play to me and my Welsh coal-mining ancestors provided me with a body able to dig for hours, days. So, I do. I also told the State that I would use that water for anything I wanted as long as they persisted in keeping the culvert in its illegal position. The State here owns all water that flows off a property. Since they put it here, I will keep it here.
The future does not bode well for food supplies if transportation costs are considered. My plan is to terrace the area below the culvert and make beds for vegetables, maybe even rice paddies with that water! Or, I could dig fish ponds. In spite of the distressing direction of the local area and the nation and the planet, reports are that we here in the Northwest will get more water. The Equatorial belt in the Pacific has become wider and wetter.
This year I also found out watching "Sicko" by Michael Moore why health care here is so expensive. I found out that every civilized country except the United States has decent healthcare in lieu of war costs. The plot, for that is what it is, by the unconvicted neocons who wrote and promote the "Project for the New American Century" has created a $2,000,000,000,000-plus debt for my grandchildren and yours, so far this year. They have sent industries off-shore to make sure earnings fall for all but them. College degrees abound but good jobs go to India for a pittance.
Debt piles up for everyone and houses become white elephants. Neighborhoods are boarded up; no one can afford to buy. I read somewhere that one man knew where all these devious games with money were and how they worked but that no one else did. This is like stuffing your house with stuff and then having no time to catalog it or dust it. Now where did you put that derivative? I am sure from the complaints of relatives that 2007 is ending in chaos within the home. I hope that 2008 does not end with chaos everywhere else.
We have gone along with a government that has deep-sixed every possible American right and is still looking for more to destroy. The people running for president are delusional. Everything is in place for the commander in chief, as he likes to think of himself, to create an actual coup d'etat here where Allen Roland's bondage comes full circle. The last election was rigged. Why not the next? I would like to see Washington, DC, cleared of lobbyists, cleared of corporate disasters, filled with a Congress that reads laws and honors the People by rescinding all these horrors in our future that are coming here. I would like to know if the People filled every square inch of Washington, DC, would the military dare drive them out of their national capitol?
But, mostly, I want to know how any subsidiary of the People can overwrite and overrule the rights of the People using specious and, basically, illegal ideas as the vehicle to do so. I want to know why the Fourth Estate has turned its back on truth and integrity and ethics when it was honored with free speech. I want to know why my congressman feels that radical ideas are dangerous enough to pass a bill outlawing thoughts expressed. Why on earth do we have thoughts? Thoughts are intangible to everyone else. If some who are human can have thoughts to imprison those who have thoughts contrary to that, then we have given that someone dictatorial powers. There is no right that can overrule our humanity to prevent expression, which is our First Amendment Right. Or, are some Americans now more equal than others? I think not.
The new 2007 paradigm, or dogma, is preventive detention, preventive war, and preventive thought. What this means is that some of us will head off any and all ideas not coming from the following groups: The Trilateral Commission, The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, or the pack of neoconservatives who infiltrated our government. "Bad guys," bad ideas, crimes before the fact or without trial, torture whether innocent or guilty, endless and illegal imprisonment, and on and on and on in the preventive dogmatism of 2007. It kills; it decides who lives, who suffers, who dies. These groups have usurped our government and assumed the place of God Himself as the planet's rulers. Thank heaven that it will only be a generation long and they'll all be dead, too, for my great-grandchildren's sake if they survive this abomination of governance. Why do we as Americans take this? It mystifies me.
To sum up: 2007 was, and still is, the main precursor year to disasters unfolding. Too many citizens are blinded by the light of television sets, iPods, cell phones, and the Holy Grail of being rich and famous to care, to study, to think, to read, to change, to even listen. 2007 is the year of the "Huh?" Alfred E. Newman made famous in Mad Magazine, the current American motto: "What, me worry?" Now, he is us. I intend to continue to have hope. I don't see it happening, though, unless the second idea -- spiritual faith in freedom -- rears its beautiful head and begins the second American Revolution.
Notes
1. "Only The Truth Is Revolutionary." http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/ (back)
2. Andrew P. Napolitano; A Nation of Sheep, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007. (back)
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