Americans spend trillions of dollars on warfare every single year. This is an absurd amount of money to spend on anything, let alone using it to blow up your fellow humans on an industrialized scale. With that kind of cash, you could end extreme poverty the world over, give every person a home and an education, and dramatically lift the tide which raises all ships.
The financial costs are an incredible burden, and the emotional scars would take generations to heal even if war ended this very second. The longer these large scale conflicts get prolonged, the worse off our entire world is.
So why aren’t Americans ending war? If the US people, much like the rest of us, just want to live and prosper in peace, why don’t their politicians listen to them and give them what they want?
The sad truth is that they can’t.
The entire American system has, to the detriment of the world, fallen victim to what can only be described as a parasitic entity, a beast that has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
Whether through anesthetizing concepts like pride and security, the unfettered power of wealth, or, when all else fails, brute force, the war machine of which I speak has been able to keep countless populations within their grasp – and right now their prey is the American public.
In the United States, mainstream newsanchors all dance around the issue ending war, and ‘radical’ concepts like bringing home the troops rarely arise. Politicians are no better, for they too are in the pockets of the military industry, as made evident by a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who intentionally escalates wars around the world.
So even when the vast majority of Americans want peace, a political system which is mostly theatre combined with a deliberate lack of guidance from the media makes it hard for the anti-war movement to gain the momentum needed to make a significant impact.
But peace-loving Americans won’t stay down for much longer. They simply cannot. Fueled by a crumbling economy, driven by global awareness, and united by social media, a multi-million person strong movement will prove more powerful than the entire military industrial complex. Or so we shall hope.
The world is changing faster than even those who sit atop can control. Unprecedented technology is causing new concepts like transparency and global solidarity to crash down on our world. As the old guard falls away, a newfound democracy is sure to bring to fruition the civilization our species has been cultivating for eons.
CEOs from a handful of the world’s largest corporations have been meeting in secret, penning blueprints intended to tighten their stranglehold over our planet and further conform our species into complacent consumers.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – once ratified in under three DAYS TIME!!! – will give global businesses the means to supersede domestic law, imposing pro-corporate legislation on all complicit countries.
If you already know about the World Trade Organization and how they often bully smaller nations into accepting detrimental financial regulations desired by stronger nations, then you’ll recognize the TPP as a further extension of that same mechanism.
This corporate pact – the latest in an unending quest to privatize the world – ultimately seeks to strip regular people of power. Less ways to hold businesses accountable. Fewer means to challenge the authority of big money. All this, plus a fundamental erosion of democratic processes by global forces overpowering sovereign will.
So if you care about your freedom, if you want choice to be more than just an illusion, if you think that people should take priority over profits, then you need to take action. Do something, anything. Even if it’s just signing a petition.
The sooner enough of us stand up to our burgeoning oppressors, the sooner we can reclaim our destiny from the hands of the selfish few.
Democracy is more than just voting for one figurehead or another every couple of years. It’s more than simply slapping some bumper sticker on your car or sticking some sign in your lawn. There’s more to democracy than what happens on election day and at the ballot box.
Real democracy is about taking issue with what’s most important to you. It’s about starting or joining a movement. It’s about getting people involved, out in the streets and on the interwebs, in big enough numbers to force change on to the political system itself.
The Arab Spring. The Occupy Movement. Even the Tea Party. All of these are fine examples of democracy in action where hundreds of thousands – even millions – of engaged individuals worked diligently towards a shared goal. And the best part is that they’ve all made a lasting impact on the world’s political system.
Now this very essence of democracy – this coordinated will to power by the masses – has sprouted up on the streets of China. Outraged at the prospect of a giant sewer running through their backyards, angry citizens clashed with police and rioted in the streets, offering a rare glimpse into China’s ripening revolution.
Here’s hoping for more protests in the days and years to come. Not just in China, but everywhere on earth as our world’s people comes together and rises up against the forces of injustice and inequality that have persisted for far too long.
Occupy is back! Not that it really went away… t’was just a mild hibernation over winter. Now, with Mother Nature being a little more hospitable, the uprising can switch back into high gear, louder and stronger than ever before!
To kick off this season’s social uprising, scores of protesters retook the famed Zuccotti park, aka Liberty Square, after which dozens were arrested. During the march up to the square, NYPD callously smashed a medics head into reinforced glass, breaking the glass and probably the medic’s skull (video above).
Navigating between extinction and enslavement, brave humankind could very well avoid both to reach compelling new heights.
Neils Bohr once said that prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. Despite the words of caution from the pioneering quantum physicist, I’d like to offer you my take on the three potential futures that we, as a species, are facing.
The first is extinction. This is where the human race is no more because we’ve wiped ourselves out in some foolish conflict or scientific mishap. Either that, or the universe conspires to eliminate us using it’s vast arsenal. There’s not a lot we can do to avoid this, apart from building peace instead of war.
The good news, despite what the mainstream media may want us to believe, is that humankind is actually the most peaceful we’ve ever been. (more…)
Amazing! Upwards of 200,000 people are in the streets of Bahrain in what could be the tiny kingdom’s largest protest rally ever!
The significance of this gathering cannot be understated, as it represents over 15% of the entire population.
Already the protests are proving effective. The government has now dropped charges on a few of the medics who were imprisoned for helping injured activists during earlier demonstrations.
What an inspirational sight! Can’t wait to see who will be next.
There’s a standard business negotiation tactic which has been brought into the realm of politics, used most effectively by right wing conservatives: ask for the stars and settle with the moon. So effective has this strategy been that the entire political spectrum has consistently shifted to the right over the past few decades.
The world is improving faster than ever before, speeding us all towards a brighter future. Yet, for us to go from here to there, enough of us will have to abandon certain perspectives and internalize new ones. That being said, here’s 3 key scripts that need to be flipped: (more…)
The world is different now. The rules have changed, and methods like petitions and mass demonstrations are proving themselves invaluable tools for reform. (more…)
