DEAR DEIDRE, about Catholics & the article you emailed to me - MY SECOND REPLY
Robert Weinert
OPEN LETTER TO MY CATHOLIC FRIEND DEIDRE FIELDS - SEE MY REPLY TO HER LETTER BELOW {INSIDE OF BRACKETS.} TO FOLLOW THE ARGUMENT FROM THE BEGINNING YOU MAY WISH TO READ THIS EMAIL FROM THE BOTTOM UP. - Robert Weinert
From: Dee-dee F. <knowledge...@gmail.com>
To: "Weinert, Robert" <rober...@gmail.com>
Cc: Bedford BROWN <bedfor...@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Aug 23, 2006 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: DEAR DEIDRE, about Catholics & the article you emailed to me
Hi Bob and Bedford,
Firstly, I did not write this article, and that paragraph is pretty meaningless anyway.
{BOB WRITES: Dear Deidre, the paragraph by Michael C. Ruppert that I quoted is most definitely not "meaningless." That paragraph is pregnant with meaning. It is pure communist thinking. I am saddened that you cannot perceive the obvious. I am saddened to find out as I have found out time and time again that Catholics are susceptible to erroneous ideas pertaining to economics. The economic system taught in the Old Testament is 100% capitalist. The economic system taught by Jesus in the New Testament is 100% capitalist. The economic system taught in the Bible from cover to cover is 100% capitalist. The founding fathers of America were 95% Protestant and100% capitalist. They gave America a system of suffrage limited to White Christian Males who were property owners. They gave America a currency based upon tangible gold that acted as both a medium of exchange and a store of value that was inflation proof. They gave America strong private property roots which is the foundation of Capitalism. Deidre, I assert again, the only Biblically legitimate role of civil government is "PUNISHING CRIMINALS." This means that THE STATE cannot redistribute income in any manner whatsoever. The State is forbidden the role of providing Health care or Education or Welfare of any kind. The State may and should punish fraud in the market place, coercion in the market place, but The State should never "help the poor" or level the rich so as to create a middle class.}
Secondly, You should know after all this time, Bob, that I am absolutely opposed to big government. This has been the Fabian approach to back big government from whatever political side they can achieve influence.
Having established big government, it is a small matter for them to take it over themselves. This is also the way things went in the Soviet Union.
{Deidre, it appears to me you are not thinking clearly on this subject. On the one hand you claim you are against big government and on the other hand you want to empower the state "induce" "the super rich" to redistribute some of their wealth. That is the quintessential definition of a big government, id est, a government that has the power to force (induce?) the wealthy to give their wealth away to help those who do not have property. This is the same mindset that I run into with Catholics time and time again. You have drunk deeply from the sermons of the priests who have taken unbiblical "vows of poverty" and then you ask these priests to preach to you each Sunday.}
I will reiterate the references my husband gave on matters economic: We reject liberalism and all of the other rot from the second Vatican council (1962 onwards). We are not socialists....but we're not capitalists either ( both systems 100% kosher!) For an insight into Traditional Catholic teachings on economics, do a google( individuly) on "Distributism, Hilliare Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Father Vincent McNabb. Father Dennis Fahey, and C.H. Douglas.
{Dear Deidre, you wrote: "we're not capitalists." That is what I feared about you as I read some of your writings. Capitalism is Biblical. All forms of Socialism, whether totalitarian Communism or Swedish Democratic Socialism are based upon giving THE STATE the power to take money from one group and give it to another group. Deidre there is no middle ground, you are either an advocate of 100% free market capitalism OR ELSE you by default are some kind of socialist. Deidre, you are a socialist. You would have voted for FDR in the 1930's with the rest of the American Catholics. It is my theory that the thinking of Catholics on economics is warped because of the theology and church government they are subjected too in the Catholic church. Whereas the final authority for the Protestant is the Bible, the final authority for the Catholic is church tradition. The government of the Catholic church is a mirror image of a centralized totalitarian dictatorship. Whereas the Protestants are divided into over 20,000 denominations (and I think this is a good thing) the Catholics are but powerless subjects who must submit to the authority of the church on matters of doctrine and they do not have a prayer of effecting change where those doctrines are in error. The Protestants who are disgruntled merely split and start a new denomination more to their liking and more accurately reflecting what they think the Bible teaches. This is beautiful to me because it is the essence of freedom and it mirrors exactly what happens in a free market capitalist society. I work for a lawn care company. If I get disgruntled with my employer I am free to start my own lawn care company and compete in the market place with my former employer. Catholics make good followers, good soldiers, good order takers. Protestants make good leaders who are innovative and constantly striving to reinvent products, services, inventions, ideas and theology. Catholics think their virtue is in having an unchangeable church, but just wait until you get the next really liberal pope and then Vatican Two will seem innocuous in comparison with what the liberals will then do with the centralized power of the papacy. }
Also take a look at the following websites: www.michaeljournal.org and www.holywar.org
Also, visit my Yahoo group www.yahoogroups.com/group/militiaofthearchangelmichael and check out our links.
Following a strictly materialistic approach to economics has resulted in injustice from the very beginning.
{Deidre, this sentence above that you wrote is utter nonsense. We "free market" advocates who love the Bible sublimate the market to the morality of the Ten Commandments, God's Law and Jesus Teachings all of which are 100% supportive of all of the basic foundational concepts that undergird free markets. My Catholic friend, you are a socialist. You do not understand the Free Market. You do not understand that God gives wealth and power to whomever He wishes and it is not up to government bureaucrats to redistribute income or property from those who are creative, inventive and productive to those who are sinfully indolent nor to those low IQ simians to whom God only gave one talent.}
We learn in Sparta that eventually a small few owned everything and the rest owned nothing and were relegated to the status of virtual slaves and beggars and ran in the streets looking for food.
{Oh my Lord Deidre, are you now using Sparta and not the Bible as a source to buttress your points. Not only is that anti-christian, I am sorry to say it is typical of the discussions I have with Catholics, since they just do not know their Bibles. I doubt that 1% of Catholics have read their Bible cover to cover even once in their entire life whereas most Protestants in Bible loving churches attempt to read their Bible from cover to cover once each year. Deidre, I do not care about the Greek and Roman empires, I want to hear you argue your points on the subject of economics from THE HOLY BIBLE.}
This is obviously unconscionable, and a reformer in the form of a king, Lysander, made extensive changes, inducing the super rich to redistribute some of their wealth, so that everyone had a plot of land upon which they could farm and produce enough food for the year.
{Dear Deidre, I hear that the government of South Africa is "inducing" the White Farmers to give up their farm lands. Isn't great when you give government the power to "induce" men to give up their wealth to "help the poor." WRONG! NOT! Deidre, I know that you hate what is going on in South Africa. Deidre, if you hate it in South Africa, why would you advocate giving any government the power to "induce" men to surrender their wealth and or property???}
The same thing happened in Athens, and this too was reformed the same way, (Lycurgus I believe).
It is just obscene for some fat cats to own everything, when others are homeless.
{Deidre, This is the sickest sentence I have ever seen you write. This sentence above is pure socialist thinking. It is the verbiage of the Marxist class warfare rhetoric found in every leftwing screed ever written or spoken. Yes my Catholic friend, you are a socialist, I am very sad to report.}
Many times the fat cats got that way in the first place through unscrupulous measures and deceit. In this case, it is important to reverse such imbalances, and life-sucking practices.
{Deidre, a legitimate role of THE STATE is to punish criminals of all kinds. A legitimate role of THE STATE is to police the market place to keep it free of fraud and coercion and to force the criminal to make restitution. But the sickness of your writing is that you do not distinguish between the Billionaire who got rich by swindling others from the Billionaire who got rich by providing goods and services that people gladly, voluntarily purchase. You think that the "FAT CATS" must pay up and not just the criminal FAT CATS. That is Marxism Deidre. The Billionaire who made his money honestly is entitled to keep every penny and if you use the power of government to steal via a "progressive tax rate" from the honest Billionaire to "help the poor or the homeless" THEN YOU ARE A MARXIST THIEF DEIDRE, just like the Jews who rule America, just like the Bolshevik Jews who took over Russia. Deidre, you need to repent of your violation of the 10th COMMANDMENT which says "THOU SHALT NOT COVET… ANYTHING THAT IS THY NEIGHBORS." That is the sin of the Catholics I have debated. They think it is the role of THE STATE to "take from the rich to give to the poor" and these Catholics do not realize they are following satan and marx by coveting the wealth that God gave to the man with 10 talents.}
This Bible parable cannot be interpreted literally, as this would then infer that God wanted us to serve Mammon, and you know that Jesus said it was easier for a camel to get through a needle than a rich man to get into Heaven.
{Deidre, the Bible clearly teaches us to have God first place in our hearts and then He, God will prosper us in every way, spiritually and financially. The Bible says it like this: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you."}
{Deidre, the priests have completely warped your thinking about economics and what the Bible teaches about money. When you go into a Protestant Bible loving church and listen to the teaching about money and success it is entirely opposite of the teaching of those priests who have taken vows of poverty. Diedre, many of our Protestant Pastors drive brand new Caddilacs and Mercedes Benz's and live in beautiful mansions and we Protestants think that is great and we also know that it is 100% Biblical for effective men of God to prosper and be well paid. Deidre, there is a gulf between you and I that cannot be bridged. A gulf of years and years of teaching from pulpits that are teaching the exact opposite of one another. Deidre, you most certainly do support big government socialism just like almost all Catholics who think it is the role of THE STATE to "help the poor." Deidre, Catholics are destroying America via their ignorant voting for Democrats who promise to "help the poor."}
People should be free to conduct business freely, the Churches should handle charity, but there has to be a social, and racial conscience in curbing monopolies, and keeping foreigners out.
Similarly, as in South Africa, if the country does not have the ability for the private sector to produce something, then the State should step in and fill the gap, as in our ESCOM (Electiricity), SASOL plants (Oil from coal), the Railways, the Post and Telegraphs, and ARMSCOR (Armaments).
{Oh my Lord Jesus please open her blind eyes. Deidre, it is NOT THE ROLE OF "THE STATE" to do any of that crap. You most certainly are a socialist as bad as any American Jew. I cannot, I truly cannot believe what you wrote in the sentences above, it betrays your utter ignorance on matters of economics and what the Bible teaches about economics. I love you Deidre. We agree on so very much. But you must get out of the Catholic church if you want to be an American, fully American. Catholics who think like you could never have created America. America had to be created by men who hated the centralized power of the Catholic church and did not want a centralized government in America. But thanks to the ignorance of Catholic voters, we now have a highly centralized federal government. Dear Lord Jesus, I want to live in a White Protestant Christian nation. Please deliver us from these Catholic idolaters. Deidre, keep in mind I told you at the outset of this conversation. I stated that we could strongly disagree on theology and still remain friends and I still feel the same about you as before we embarked on this conversation. I deeply respect the work you do and will continue to support you in any way that I am able.}
The problem arises when certain fat cats want to take these enterprises over. This is exactly what is happening with so-called "privitization" when these mega corporations are the only ones capable of purchasing such large enterprises.
{Deidre, there you go again mouthing Marxist class warfare rhetoric by belittling the wealthy as "fat cats." You again fail to distinguish between the hard working entrepreneur and the criminal class. That is wrong and evil on your part Deidre. You should repent of this sin. Deidre, you have no right to covet what God has given to others. Maybe God only gave you one talent or 5 talents and the rich man has 10 talents. That is God's business not yours and certainly not THE STATE's business.}
In SA, the Posts and Telegraphs have doubled their prices and decimated their efficiency, and Oppenheimer is managing to get hold of everything else.
We know that usury and the production of money have been the chief methods of controlling populaces and funneling the wealth of the people into the hands of these mega-corporations. So it is the duty of the state to coin money. In this regard CH Douglas' "Social Credit" is magnificent. The Island of Guernsey employed these methods and soon boomed, because money is not a commodity in itself, but merely a medium of exchange. Lincoln used this method briefly with his "Greenbacks", and Hitler made use of this system to a large degree, and the nation surged from total poverty to booming nation. This is the system that the Jews fear the most, because it gets nations out of debt, and I do think that nations are of crucial importance, and they should be racial nations as the nation is merely an extension of the family and the tribe.
{Deidre, Now I know for certain that you are an outright socialist. You are advocating a paper money system that will have a built in continuously rising inflationary effect upon the "fiat currency." Here is a short quote from Wikipedia about the "Social Credit" theories of C.H. Douglas: "Many if not all critics of Social Credit have argued that it would cause inflation. The Christian Reconstructionist writer Gary North (who wrote a book on Social Credit and allows it to appear online) addresses Douglas's plan to stop inflation, but calls it socialistic. He also adds moral arguments, such as the claim that God intends us to work for our survival. North makes several arguments (beyond those that consider Social Credit to be inflationary), all concerning the justification Douglas offered for his plan. First, he states that the fact of consumer debt destroys Douglas's theory. Second, he says the A+B Theorem ignores the fact that all payments go to individuals. Third, he asserts that if the current system causes a break in the flow of purchasing power, so will the guaranteed income payments. Lastly, North proposes that we outlaw fractional reserve banking without instituting Social Credit. He says a 100% reserve free market system would not have any of the flaws Douglas points out." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit }
The real injustice comes in with multiracial countries, for this inevitably includes individuals of varying I.Q.'s and talents, and a propensity with the less talented races living off the more talented. In a homogeneous nation, the dregs fall to the bottom, it is true, but then these can do the menial tasks, more talented people would rather not do.
{Deidre, Perhaps you will take offense at my arguments above where I assert that there is a connection between Catholic doctrine and Catholic teaching and Catholics voting for liberal Democrats and other types of socialists in other nations around the world. Deidre, I say this to Jews and Muslims and Hindu's and Buddists all the time, "You are not fully American if you are not a Bible loving, Bible believing Christian." Now I am saying it to my Catholic friends on this email list, You are not American, not fully American until you get out of the Catholic church and join a Bible loving Protestant church that teaches what the Bible says about economics, money, success and great wealth in the hands of individuals who made it the old fashioned way, by working for it. There is a huge difference between what Protestant churches teach about money and prosperity and what Catholic priests teach. You can see the difference in the Prosperity of the nations that are majority Protestant, versus the nations that are majority Catholic. Catholicism and Catholic teaching leads to socialism and poverty. Look at Southern Europe versus Northern Europe and look at the dominant Catholic countries of South and Central America. Whereas in contradistinction, the Calvinist Pilgrims and Puritans who founded America created a free market paradise that everyone could prosper within, including those with only one talent. I wish to educate all of you reading this email about what the Bible teaches on the subject of economics. It is my hope that Deidre has had her eyes opened just a crack so that a sliver of truth may penetrate and a seed of honest Biblically based understanding of economics may take root in her mind and grow and produce much good fruit.}
Love in Christ,
Robert Weinert
1301 Penrod Ct.
Lansing, Michigan
On 8/23/06, Bedford BROWN <bedfor...@sbcglobal.net > wrote:Without seperating paragraph from statement it's about the 11th one down...It's not a big flaw and due to the way you write, I believe it's a error and you didn't intend to write it...Answer me back, if you don't mind, and I will answer you back tonight..My courses started at 8:00 a.m. today and due to travel time I woke up at 5: a.m. I'm going to take a nap and will talk to you tonight about the subjects you and Winert were talking about..Thank You
Robert Weinert <rober...@gmail.com> wrote:Dee-dee, That quote was a direct quote from the article that you emailed to me. Same author, same article, same website.
As I wrote before: This guy is an idiot. He is a socialist. He is a leftwing moron.QUOTE FROM HIS ARTICLE BELOW: "We must also recognize that Happiness cannot be defined solely within the mind and the will of individuals alone, without regard to the availability of the same potential for all mankind and all life placed here by the Creator. One human being, or group of human beings, cannot possess a disproportionate share, deprive others, and justly call this Happiness. True Happiness and Peace result from harmony between peoples, the planet and all life forms without which no life is possible. These can only be achieved in a world where men and women in all places realize the need for Balance, Equity, Harmony and Justice and that only these will ensure equal and fair Rights for subsequent generations and the sustainability of the planet itself." GO SEE THE QUOTE ON HIS WEBSITE IN THE LAST 3-4 PARAGRAPHS OF THE COMPLETE STORY - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml
DEE-DEE, THAT IS TOTAL ASININE STUPIDITY.
DEE-DEE, PLEASE, I BEG YOU TO TELL ME YOU ARE NOT A CATHOLIC SOCIALIST WHO BELIEVES IT IS THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT TO PAY FOR OUR HEALTH CARE, OUR EDUCATION, OUR SOCIAL SECURITY OLD AGE RETIREMENT PENSION, ETC.
Dee-Dee, I hate, I mean I really hate big government.
Sadly it has been my experience to find that Catholics are far more likely as a voting block to support big government, especially when it comes to the so called mission of "helping the poor."
More Catholics vote leftwing than Bible loving Protestants.
America was founded by Bible loving Protestants who were 100% free market, private property rights advocates.
There were very few Catholics in America until the huge waves of immigration began around the late 19th century.
Catholics have traditionally voted Democrat in America. JFK was the first Democrat Catholic to be elected President and it WAS A BIG DEAL that Protestant America had a Catholic President.
Truthfully I trace the decline of America to those large numbers of Catholic voters who put men in office like Democrat President F.D.R. who was a truly evil socialist, a man who stayed in office for 4 terms violating all previous protocol.
Dee-dee, I would really like an answer from you concerning your view of the role of government.
I think the only role of government to to punish criminals, to protect my life, liberty and property by providing police courts and perhaps a small military.
I do not think the role of the government, BIBLICALLY SPEAKING, is to provide food stamps and pay for space exploration and pay for Universities and pay for k-12 school for children or to pay for medicine or medical care for anyone young or old, no matter how poor or unfortunate they may be.
Charity is the role of the church, via voluntarily donated funds.
Dee-dee, this issue is very important to me and I am requesting that you please take the time to write a thoughtful lengthy reply about your view of the role of government. Do you use the Bible to reason from when it comes to forming your political opinions?
I would also like to know about the Catholic-Protestant makeup of the Boers. I had always assumed they were mostly Protestants.
Dee-dee, please know that it is my opinion that we, you and I, can strongly disagree about religion and yet still be friends and allies in the war for the survival of Western Civilization. I greatly respect the work you do. I have supported you in very substantial ways, you know what I am referring to here, email addresses. I still support you. I will be very disappointed though if you do not understand what an evil big government is and how our enemies have used big government to disempower us.I am cc'ing this to some close friends on my email list, many of whom are Catholic.Sincerely yours,Bob Weinert
On 8/22/06, Dee-dee F. <knowledge...@gmail.com > wrote:Bob,I don't know about the quotation you sent, I haven't seen it, but I don't know what you find to disagree with in this article. Surely you don't beleive we still have freedoms here in the USA?We are about to become the new Soviet Union. The new Empire of the Financial Elite is upon us.Deirdre
On 8/21/06, Robert Weinert <rober...@gmail.com > wrote:This is the first email you have ever sent me that I disagreed with.
Someone else named Deb sent it to me last night and here is the letter I sent to Deb about the author of this article further below that you Dee-dee sent out to your list... bob
+++++++
Deb, I wish you had better discernment.This guy is an idiot.He is a socialist.He is a leftwing moron.QUOTE FROM HIS ARTICLE BELOW: "We must also recognize that Happiness cannot be defined solely within the mind and the will of individuals alone, without regard to the availability of the same potential for all mankind and all life placed here by the Creator. One human being, or group of human beings, cannot possess a disproportionate share, deprive others, and justly call this Happiness. True Happiness and Peace result from harmony between peoples, the planet and all life forms without which no life is possible. These can only be achieved in a world where men and women in all places realize the need for Balance, Equity, Harmony and Justice and that only these will ensure equal and fair Rights for subsequent generations and the sustainability of the planet itself."
DEB THAT IS TOTAL ASININE STUPIDITY.Jesus in the parable of the Talents... well let me just copy and paste the scriptures here for you to read:MATTHEW 25:14-30The Parable of the Talents
14 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. 15 And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. 16 Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. 17 And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. 18 But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's money. 19 After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.20 "So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, 'Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.' 21 His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.' 22 He also who had received two talents came and said, 'Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.' 23 His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'
24 "Then he who had received the one talent came and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.'26 "But his lord answered and said to him, 'You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. 27 So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.
29 'For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'DEB DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THE TEACHINGS OF CHRIST UTTERLY DESTROY SOCIALISMSOCIALISM IS SATANIC, UNBIBLICAL, ANTI-CHRISTIANPLEASE DEB, TELL ME YOU ARE NOT A SOCIALIST.DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT HAS A BIBLICAL ROLE IN PROVIDING HEALTH CARE OR EDUCATION OR A RETIREMENT PENSION FOR ITS CITIZENS?Waiting expectantly for your answer,BobOn 8/20/06, Deb <d...@itextra.net > wrote:
This is the one DEB!!Subject: BY THE LIGHT OF A BURNING BRIDGE.htm
snip ... snip...
On 8/21/06, Dee-dee F. <knowledge...@gmail.com > wrote:
By The Light Of
A Burning Bridge -
A Permanent Goodbye
To the United States
Michael C. Ruppert
From The Wilderness Publications
8-17-6
- "Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge" - Don Henley, "My Thanksgiving"
- CARACAS - It was about a week before I left the United States forever that I watched Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tell Charlie Rose something all of us already know in our hearts. "Today," he said, "the United States is hated around the world far worse than it was at the height of the Vietnam War." I remember the Vietnam War. I will never forget it.
- I opposed that war, and I still remember riots on the UCLA campus in May,1970 when four students were shot dead by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. I was a college student then, and I was 2S-deferred for the draft. A year later I would be re-classified 1A as the nation shifted to a lottery system. At least someone in my country was willing to risk his life in the face of injustice. It gave me hope. That kind of risk-taking was commonplace then, from the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement, to the American Indian Movement. American blood was shed regularly on American soil to resist American tyranny; from Watts, to Detroit, to Selma, to San Francisco to Memphis to Wounded Knee. It fertilized our lives and souls as it touched the ground. The willingness to endure physical suffering, material sacrifice, and jail for the sake of justice was a singular mark of the American character that earned respect as it infected the world.
- What is the United States infecting the world with today?
- Now it seems the American people won't even risk their credit ratings, student loans, the next piece of ass, or a sideways glance from people who look at them like AIDS patients for daring to deviate from the corporate, media-instilled norm. We have come a long way backward. Rodney King's "Can't we all just get along" has become the modern day theme song for the surrender of America's character, and the L.A. Rebellion of 1992 was probably the last flame of will to fight injustice in American history.
- This new quiescence comes at a time when US crimes are far worse and more far-reaching than they were in 1970; certainly in the eyes of the world. In 2001 the US government both facilitated and executed the attacks of 9/11 against its own people, killing thousands of its citizens as an excuse to launch a neo-imperial conquest for energy. A few Americans held small rallies, organized some ineffective groups, bought a few hundred thousand books and DVDs, listened to a few radio programs and lectures, and then quietly lined up to have their bags, emails, credit histories, minds and bodies searched. Critical mass was never achieved as Executive Orders along with the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to our Bill of Rights.
- In my book Crossing the Rubicon I wrote that events that took place in the five years following those attacks would determine the course of human history for centuries to come. We now stand at the brink of that fateful anniversary.
- After the 9-11 attacks the US government lied to create a war for oil in Iraq telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, almost-ready atom bombs, poison gas and deadly germs. We were told that he helped execute the 9/11 attacks. It was all lies, and no one has held the US accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths (murders) in Iraq and Afghanistan since then. Few have tried to hold the government accountable for 2,500 Americans who have died needlessly, and those who have, have been remarkably ineffective.
- US presidential elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004 through rigged electronic voting software and intimidation. Not one drop of blood was spilled anywhere, even as the US Supreme Court rendered an illegal decision supporting the overthrow of the Constitution and trampling the rights of individual states.
- I never thought I would call the 60s and 70s "the good old days". I would cry tears of joy today to see just one campus overrun by a modern equivalent of the Students for a Democratic Society. I would cheer to see a general strike paralyze a city. It would be living proof that American character had not been submerged, drugged, weakened, and rendered anemic beyond revival.
- My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny's primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed. Convince the American people that they can't live without the "good things", then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures. Do whatever you want.
- No amount of mind control spin can absolve any of us from acknowledging this ugly truth about the US and its crimes today. It lurks invisibly behind every corporate news broadcast, every commercially-made television show, every infomercial, every new magazine ad, and almost every new popular song that leads Americans deeper into ever-less-satisfying consumption, self-indulgence and debt. It stands grinning behind every report on the world's rapacious financial markets and every new automobile, shampoo, or other product that promises to give the world larger and more potent sexual organs, bigger (more ridiculous) breasts, a better love life, and peace of mind.
- I left my last classes that spring day in 1970 after four students had been murdered, crying from both the emotional pain and the tear gas that wafted up the Janns Steps and onto the Quad at UCLA. I went to my job as an intern at the Los Angeles Police Department. After donning my khaki uniform without gun or badge I returned to UCLA to work at LAPD's command post, ferrying dispatches and running errands for Deputy Chiefs, Commanders, and Captains as LAPD batons shed the blood of my fellow students. My life has always been full of ironies. Then, I believed that the system could be changed from the inside. Then, I believed that the United States could be changed from the inside.
- Mistrusted by both sides there was no safe place for me to cry that day.
- My shame today is that it took a set of circumstances where my life was in danger to make me make the right choice, a choice I would now like to say was totally a matter of conscience, but it was not. The truth is that I was prompted to do what I should have done long ago out of a well-justified desire to save my life.
- In this life I have chosen not to die a martyr's death. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one's life. I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack. I left behind my precious library, most of my clothing, my personal possessions, my guns, and a house full of furniture. I brought with me less than eight thousand dollars in cash and gold to start the final segment of my life.
- My permanent exodus from the US was actually ordained thirty years -- to the month -- before I left for good on July 18th, 2006. It was thirty years ago that my then-fiance, a career contract agent for the CIA, disclosed to me that "her people" were interested in giving a major boost to my career with LAPD if I would become involved with her "anti-terror" operations that involved "overlooking" ( i.e. protecting) large drug shipments coming in while facilitating the movement of large quantities of firearms going out. I refused to compromise my ethics as a police officer and -- as I wrote on page 6 of Crossing the Rubicon - "that has determined the course of my life ever since."
- Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United States of America cannot and will never be changed from within. I recall the words spoken to me by a senior FBI agent in Los Angeles in 1986: "Mike, the world doesn't want to be saved."
- Stupid me. I still believe it does -- at least the parts of it that lie outside the US, Great Britain, and Israel; the real Axis of Evil.
- Today the United States is the cause of ever-expanding wars (covert and overt), carnage, suffering, and political and economic exploitation -- even within its own borders against its own people -- that fill our corporate-issued headlines and TV shows. The US economy, the privately-owned Federal Reserve system, and the government which they operate like a franchise are the greatest enemies of the entire human race and especially the rapidly- deteriorating and fragile ecosystem which supports all life. U.S. citizens are slowly discovering that they are not immune because of their nationality. On our planet today, what happens to one must inevitably happen to all. Peak Oil and global warming will spare no nationality in the end.
- The US economy, driven by a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, debt-based financing -- and "doped" with the billions of dollars of drug profits laundered through its corporations and banks -- is a superheated pyramid scheme of infinite growth wherein 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's energy and a totally disproportionate share of the world's diminishing resources and commodities.
- In their silence and acquiescence Americans have voted -- even if by abstention -- to stand on the shoulders of all drowning peoples in the vain hope that they will somehow be saved from a paradigm which they support and empower by obeying it; by endorsing it with their silence or knowingly impotent protests; by refusing to throw themselves against the gears of the machine. In this world, a protest which is allowed and encouraged, corralled into free-speech areas, and then policed by the ruling government only to be ignored by the media is, by definition, meaningless.
- The US is a nation where the "non-negotiable" and unsustainable "American" way of life is propped up by global conflict, out-of-control military spending, massive and unsustainable debt, and an increasingly-aggressive fascist police state. It is a nation where all US citizens who do not resist and disconnect from this paradigm enjoy their ever-diminishing privileges with the guilty knowledge that somewhere else, hopefully in some "other" country, others are paying the price for it.
- The world is now my country.
- With the passage of time, the degree of corporate oppression, the outrageousness of the cruelty, and the absurdity of the lies can only increase as dwindling resources diminish and desperation erupts. Ironically, the disappearing American middle class will still cheer at each new millionaire success story, even if they quietly understand that a hundred or a thousand of their kind had to disappear to create it. They chase illusions of hope rather than the real possibility of justice and change like lottery players with a one-in-a-billion chance of winning. They prefer that to hard work and sacrifice with much better odds where almost everybody can win something.
- As the human race enters the first stages of inevitable collapse resulting from Peak Oil, it does so ass-backwards, in complete denial, and in the one way most certain to guarantee the greatest amount of suffering and death for future generations. It does so because, for a time at least, U.S. foreign, military, and economic policy holds the steering wheel of human destiny through dollar hegemony, military force, technology and globalization.
- This control is inevitably weakening, and other hands in other countries are successfully struggling for an ever-increasing measure of influence. The Empire is dying from within, and like all wounded beasts, it is becoming more vicious and dangerous in the process; its lies more transparent.
- A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent threat of my own death at the hands of my government to make me fully admit to my innermost self what I have known for years. Having failed to change my country's direction after 30 years of effort, I had to stop living in the problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died just as surely as my body would have died after the recent burglary that savaged our offices.
- I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, maybe in Mexico with the Zapatistas, maybe in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days here.
- Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions being discovered and implemented by peoples willing to take risks and who understand the challenges, I will be better able to report usefully to FTW readers and the world in future books and articles. I am currently in a country where the people have changed and are changing their government; where the elected head of state has won six elections while George W. Bush has stolen two. Is it any wonder I feel better already?
- More...
- http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml