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Distract and Divide . . . Focus and Unite

JD

Distractions divide us and guarantee we’ll never talk about essential core challenges. The egregious, central obstacles to “promoting the general welfare” are never mentioned by the talking heads, the pundits or politicians, to whom we look for guidance and leadership.

Distract and divide promises catastrophe, even to those who use it to further their sinister agenda. It’s astonishing how myopic most of the people at the top are, eh?

The control of everything by a tiny, short-sighted ruling elite is now total and the consequences are apocalyptic. We helplessly watch as their pursuit of wealth and consolidation of power has resulted in a merciless war being waged against the 99.999%, the trashing of the ecosystem, and destruction of any prospects for humans ever living in harmony with either — that is, co-existing cooperatively and constructively with one another and living sustainably on the only planet we can call home.

There are three major battlefields for this amoral and sociopathic assault and we rarely have meaningful discussions about them, are forced to wade through a swamp of deceit and disinformation to even identify and try to address them, or are consigned to having non-sensical discussions which have no possible impact on outcomes.

Wealth Inequality:  The funneling of wealth upwards has accelerated and long ago passed the threshold of irreversibility. 24,000 people die a day from starvation, while guys like Bezos, Gates and Musk have so much money they couldn’t spend it all in a million lifetimes. Corporations continue to consolidate and a handful of investment firms literally own everything. The system rewards monomaniacal pursuit of obscene levels of riches and opulence, the media lionizes self-aggrandizement. Every major religion has posted the warnings. Maybe they’re onto something.

War and Peace:  War has become a religion and ‘peace’ an expletive. The U.S. economy is now built around and defended by endless wars and requires world conquest to continue satisfying its rapacious appetite. Arrogance and hubris have replaced civility and common sense. We are now confronting two major nuclear powers at the same time, Russia and China. The U.S. won’t back off and Russia and China will not bow down. Total war would be the last chapter in human history. No need to return the book to the library. Books and libraries would be radioactive dust.

Ecological Destruction: Notice I didn’t say ‘climate change’ and this is intentional. Because this exemplifies precisely how the cabal uses a worthy topic to defeat any hope for real reform. Climate change is one component of a war on the entire ecosystem which supports all life, which includes ocean depletion, toxicity of air and water, species extinction, soil depletion, desertification, deforestation, promotion of monoculture, not to mention the assault on the human organism with poorly tested medicinal drugs, chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, food additives, industrial and agricultural pollution, manmade radiation, the intensification of exposure to electromagnetic waves, gene “therapies” and genetic modification of foods, on and on. We are directed to focus all of our attention on climate change, a battle we might at best win — likely will not win at all — over the next five decades, at the expense of all other perilous policies and undertakings, working in sync to compromise and probably destroy the prospects for survival of life on Earth. Pretty clever, eh?

Distract and divide assures that these three destructive trends work synergistically. Wealth inequality is created and sustained by war, war itself makes the rich richer, the military is the number one institutional source of ecological destruction, ecological destruction drives desperation and creates the conditions for war over resources and resource-rich territory, wealth inequality puts the decisions about the health of ecosystems in the hands of those who are incentivized to externalize the damages their pursuit of wealth creates — dumping it in the laps of the 99.999% — likewise with the decisions to go to war. It’s an endless, accelerating, self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop — a race to the bottom in terms of quality of life and a hopeful or even survivable future for the masses of humanity. We are too distracted to assess and discuss them rationally and constructively, too divided to put up even a weak fight.

All three of these globalized pathologies likewise reinforce political control, as power is in parallel funneled and concentrated upwards.

Reversing any and all of this can only be achieved with focus and unity by a huge percentage of the global population: unwavering focus and unassailable unity directly targeting those responsible for the unfolding catastrophe.

There are two courses of action with the potential to break and defeat this skewed, oppressive, top-heavy, hierarchical system.

1) Imprisoning or killing the rich and powerful.

. . . and/or . . .

2) Vanquishing their control of all private and government institutions, then restructuring the entire system.

Neither is pleasant or easy. It seems, however, these two options are still on the table.

But let’s be clear. They won’t be for very long. Historical opportunity never arrives at a convenient time or when we expect it to. And it can disappear in a flash.

Moreover, while totalitarianism, oppression, abuse of power, class warfare, enslavement certainly never arrive at a convenient time, even a superficial glance at human history tells us these are what we can always expect.

Google ‘sociopaths’.

History also teaches us that the more ennobling, inspiring periods of history, those occasional surges that we deem progress, result from substantial numbers of people focusing on the challenges and uniting their energies, dedication, determination, creativity and time.

Focus and unite . . . the only solution.

Of course, often there have been violent revolutions — refer to #1 above — which create the conditions for comprehensive legal, systemic reform and restructuring — refer to #2 above. While nothing dictates that they are inseparable, again referring to history, we usually see them conjoined when the battle is in full swing.

I regret having to conclude with this, but there is a third possible course, the product of unprecedented technological advances, the direct result of humankind’s incredible ingenuity. Both our capacity to 1) generate life-terminating levels of toxicity in the environment and 2) produce weapons of war with total lethality for life on earth, puts the ultimate spanner in the works. We are in a race against time. If we continue to poison the planet and/or unleash the fury of nuclear war, other options become moot considerations. The end of the end game will be the end. Period. No sequel. No do overs.

Focus and unite . . . the only sane and possible solution.

Responsible Non-Adversarial Policing: Community Facilitators

JD

This proposal is a rapid response to the BLM protests, which seem to lack coherent demands with bulletproof metrics to determine if the authorities are actually complying, or just putting up another smokescreen to pacify the mob. It may not be fully formed, complete in all the details. Thus, I welcome anyone and everyone to consider its merits, then make suggestions and improvements.

There’s a lot of anger, passion, frustration, enthusiasm, pessimism, optimism, confusion, determination, disorganization, organization, chaos and hope, out there on the streets right now. Open, exuberant display of civic concern and commitment to improvements in government in the form of mass protests is not only a constitutional right, but sometimes our duty as citizens.

But many folks are rightfully asking: What do the protesters want?

I have strong opinions about what they should want, should be demanding. It’s a long list.

But these current demonstrations are essentially about police violence, abuse of police power.

So here’s an idea. A clear, unambiguous, non-negotiable demand should be put front and center from this point forward.

There are two components to the demand . . .

  1. Any cop abusing his position should be immediately taken out of circulation, then ultimately replaced, if he is too aggressive. Any officer of the law who is caught provoking peaceful protesters; attacking protesters and especially members of the press; attacking unarmed non-threatening citizens; using force, weapons, tear gas or so-called “non-lethal” armaments, restraining holds or equipment; bludgeoning, pepper spraying, tear gassing, even pushing; when such force is questionable, should be immediately put on indefinite leave pending investigation, and then dismissed if the errant behavior is confirmed.
  2. That officer’s position on the police force would be turned over to a new type of law enforcement official, called a Community Facilitator. A Community Facilitator would be hired at full pay with full benefits. Hiring a such an individual would require the approval of both the police bureau and a committee selected by the communities where that Community Facilitator would be assigned or might appear for a policing incident. Every cop would be ultimately paired with a Community Facilitator. Every Community Facilitator would be paired with a regular cop. The regular cop would handle the rough stuff. The Community Facilitator would initially handle everything else, with the regular cop at his/her side.

Understand where I’m going with this: Ultimately — as soon as humanly possible — no patrol car would show up ANYWHERE to address ANY SITUATION, unless there were at least one regular cop and one Community Facilitator.

By the way, the Community Facilitator would be in uniform, very much like a regular police uniform. But there would be some aspect, shirt color, special hat, helmet, something, which would make it immediately obvious this person was not a regular cop, but a community facilitator.

We should demand that Community Facilitators be hired and deployed as quickly as possible. Since there would be pairing of a fully-trained cop with every Community Facilitator, the training would not have to be as long and rigorous for the Community Facilitator. It could be a quick course in the basics, safety, protocol, the law, etc. They don’t have to be Navy Seals to be effective at this job.

Police now view citizens as the enemy. Regular citizens now fear, often distrust and hate the police.

We need 1) to get rid of the bad cops, and 2) encourage proper, respectful, constructive communication between the everyday citizens and law enforcement.

Bad cop behavior is not hard to identify. These guys need to be pulled out of service immediately, before they further exacerbate the tensions and escalate the violence. Seeing bad cops immediately and publicly pulled off the beat when they display anything even slightly resembling the aggression we now see repeated every day in the news will demonstrate that local governments are taking seriously the demand for reform.

Having a member of the community in every patrol car and appearing on the scene when the police are called will in the future likewise reverse the adversarial dynamic which now characterizes citizen-police encounters and hopefully reduce the potential for violent confrontation.

Let’s replace half of the cops with Community Facilitators starting NOW!

If the mayor, police commissioner, city council refuse to entertain this idea, then maybe it’s time to get out the Molotov cocktails.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Norman Gleich

Grieving in ParisYou have to hand it to them.

When it comes to sewing confusion, creating chaos, overwhelming the public with distraction and disinformation, they are masters of the game.

There is no attempt here to marginalize the grief that people feel when they view the carnage resulting from terrorist attacks, both that of the jihadists and that by the Western powers who created this whole mess in the first place.

But we must never lose sight of who caused all of it, why it serves their sick agenda, and exactly what must be done to stop them.

And that is the challenge. The human mind, no matter how capacious or driven by concern and noble intentions, can only handle so much. So much killing, so much terrorism, so much bombing, so much war, so much death and destruction, so much cruelty, so much evil, so much blame, so much political posturing, so much lying and propaganda, so much scapegoating.

It’s truly overwhelming.

Yes, they have got our number.

They know how to play on our fears and sympathies.

They know how to wear us down.

They know how to desensitize us, divide us, debilitate us, dissipate our energies, destroy our resolve.

But at the same time, we know exactly what they’re doing!

It is this understanding that is the foundation of our strength.

City Lights – San Francisco

Celine Hoffstaeder

The folks over at the world-renowned and highly-acclaimed City Lights Book Store in San Francisco tuned into our recommended reading list, making particular note of our endorsement of two of Professor Henry Giroux’s excellent works, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed and The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine.

These works, like everything we’ve listed, are extraordinary works. The analysis, writing, and exposition are all first order, but we believe it is Dr. Giroux’s unique and exceptional perspective — something which certainly shines through in all of his writing — which commends them so highly.

Thanks to City Lights for noticing. We continue to do what we can to broaden the public’s understanding of the complex challenges we face in these troubling times.

City Lights Bookstore_NEAR Recommended