Government
Freedom in Autocracy and Democracy
In America, some of us have mistaken autocratic government as freedom. Conservative societies know that true freedom is possible only in well-regulated societies where democratically enacted laws and legal procedures outline acceptable behavior. Without laws that regulate the limits of behavior, societies are at the mercy of the powerful. In extreme dictatorships of the right, or left, autocratic “laws” dictate the lifestyle of their subjects. In autocratic systems, a demagogic leader convinces his followers that they can express their individual freedom by joining his ...
Don’t Tread on Me….Big Business!
Down the road whereon our home sits a neighbor flies the flag with a coiled rattlesnake and the words Don't tread on me written above it. I'm sure you've seen one like it. This is a flag with a history reaching to the mid eighteenth century. Back then the original colonies were pretty loosely connected and were facing off against the French and their Native American allies in what historians call the French and Indian War.
My neighbor's flag evolved from a political cartoon image that Benjamin Franklin first published in 1754. It depicted a snake chopped up into ...
THE HUMAN JOURNEY
Historically, two of the strongest indicators that a dominant "empire" is irreversibly in decline, are the financialization of its economy (manipulating money to make money - effectively parasitism) and excessive militarism (to defend and spread its parasitism). The US now exhibits these indicators in spades. Our nation, the United States, follows the path of previous great powers exiting the stage.
But again, speaking historically, the equation is different this time around. Humanity, for the first time, faces two great threats to our actual ongoing presence on Earth ...
Tiffany Song and Dance
“I hope you are enjoying the summer heat.” Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI).
This is the opening line in Tiffany's August 11 email newsletter. Wisconsin is suffering from unprecedented heat. Almost all of Wisconsin is experiencing drought. Parts or the state – including Tiffany's northwestern district – are in “extreme” drought with the south shore of Lake Superior having “exceptional” drought (the National Weather Service's highest category). Where I live in Douglas County is 6-9 inches below normal rainfall. Given these facts, Tiffany's statement is particularly ...
CONFLICT OF INTEREST???
The following is an excerpt from a statement made by journalist Max Blumenthal of the “Gray Zone” to the UN Security Council on June 29, 2023. It is self-explanatory.
“Indeed, military cemeteries in Ukraine are expanding almost as rapidly as the Northern Virginia McMansions and beachfront estates of executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and assorted Beltway contractors benefitting from the second highest level of military spending since World War Two.
These are the real winners of the Ukraine proxy war. Not average Ukrainians or Americans. Or Russians ...
Commonwealth Spirituality
Here in northern Wisconsin, on Tuesday night, August 15, 2023, the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors defeated, by a vote of 13-9, a resolution calling for a county-wide referendum on the funding of the county-owned nursing home, Pine Crest. Over one hundred people—many of them elderly, some in wheelchairs—were in attendance in the big room where supervisors meet. Over half-a-dozen citizens spoke, all in favor of the resolution, including one man who pointed out that a ten-year $8 per month price tag (the property tax increase) offered an astonishingly inexpensive ...
BOOK BANNING AND OTHER CENSORSHIP
No one should be dictating what you can and cannot read. It appears this is becoming a trend in our nation. We need you to help stop it in its tracks. We do not need a rating system either. If you are old enough to go to the library yourself, you’re old enough to pick out books. In the world we live in, the library is the one safe place where children can get solid factual materials. Take a moment to watch the video at the bottom of this article by Donna Jo Napoli, “What Children (and Everyone else) Need to Read.” Please come to the Wausau library on Monday, August ...
LACKING THE WISDOM OF JFK
"Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world." – John F. Kennedy
The slaughter of an estimated 3 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the U.S. war on Vietnam was based on lies.
The bombing of Yugoslavia under Clinton was based on lies.
The incineration of hundreds of thousands in Iraq under W. Bush ...
Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
“The likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than during the cold war, and the
public is completely unaware of the danger.” Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry
“American leaders have declared that nuclear weapons will remain the cornerstone of US
national security indefinitely. In truth...nuclear weapons are the sole military source of our
national insecurity. We, and the whole world, would be much safer if nuclear weapons were
abolished.” Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, USN (Ret.)
Nuclear Weapons did not go away ...
JUST MONEY SIX
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, banks and corporations will grow to deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson
What Jefferson warned about two centuries ago, has come to pass.
People seem unable to comprehend that money doesn’t exist in nature and somebody has to create money OUT OF THIN AIR.
This ...