Discrepancies Stating Facts

This might be the most cacophonous piece of noise (I don't think you can call it music) you have ever heard. You might be wondering why would someone chose to make inharmonious noise with their precious time? And that would be a good question. Answers for me range from a lack of talent to coping with fear and/or anger. Mostly I am astounded that I actually spent my time doing this and even more so that I enjoyed it and even take delight in listening to it.

One listener said it had him in constant anticipation. This could be seen as good or bad depending on your perspective. You may not get through this. The key I think is selecting an appropriate volume. Whether you get through it or not, I am very interested to know how it made you feel or even what it made you think.

Enjoy,

Pro-Choice/Pro-Life

I find it hard to believe we live in a society that actually argues about pro-choice/pro-life. The fact that we live in a society that devalues family enough that women can't even get the support they need to raise children, that some women need to have abortions, is crazed insanity.

The issue is not whether a woman has a right to her own body, it's about a society that actually needs to make this an issue. It is a sign of a very sick society that needs to kill babies in the womb, that cannot support women enough so that they need to make these abominable decisions.

Awakening to Creating

I'm awakening to the reality that I am creating all of this, which could seem very egotistical, but I'm not talking about my personality. I'm talking about a place inside and everywhere around me that is also inside every man, woman and child.

Many spiritual teachers have spoken this truth. At the level of awakening, everything in this life is being drawn to me, for me, by me. Every thought I have is unerringly in every moment creating my physical reality, a reality that is much more than just the five senses, and by staying in the moment and observing my thoughts, feelings and actions the awakening continues.

School was probably the biggest hindrance to this awakening because while no one would assert the standard model of reality as truth it was certainly put forward to me as such. The teachers themselves certainly did not do this intentionally, but the system has been designed to propagate information this way: the structure of the schools, not exactly their curriculum. As Marshal Macluhan so aptly said, "The medium is the message." It's not the content; it's the structure. This goes for not only school and the media but also government and the like. They are all designed to make it appear as though they know the truth without actually making that claim.

The problem for me now is that knowing this doesn't help me stay awakened. The medium is so prevalent and unavoidable it catches me unawares. It draws me in and lulls me into a hypnotic trance. It begins to dictate my actions, not necessarily my specific actions but general actions that are in line with the system, and we all need to break free. My main function now seems to be helping others to awaken from this trance. This in turn helps me stay present and awake.

Make no mistake, our consciousness is creating this reality, and our consciousness has been hijacked by these systems. Sure they make for interesting and continual work, but that's the point. We've been blinded from the fact that as consciousness we are the creators. We are here to create, not to manipulate the creation and certainly not to be manipulated by it.

We will end war, disease and famine by recognising the truth inherent within these systems and ending the creation of them. It is futile to attempt to manipulate these issues from within creation itself, except that there's a lot of money to be made this way. This is the prison.

Prayer and meditation, connecting with the land and my food supply and connecting with my family and community are my freedom. In this way I receive guidance that is not system fed, and I begin to manifest my conscious world instead of the system's.

It's time to wake up. We are doing this. We are co-creating with God. There is nothing to change out there. That is the big scam: we're being sold the idea there is something to change out there in the world, and we're buying it.

There is truth, but it will not be found outside. There is great information out there, but it is only inside the tiny space of my heart where can truth be known.

We are manifesting this reality from inside, but it's hard to manifest a world of peace and love and unity when inside we are filled with the anger and fear and separateness pushed upon us by an apparently hell-bent media force. We need to release the illusion and tyranny of fear-based media and government and take control of our lives. We need to surrender to God our creator and our own hearts instead of the ego-maniacal mind manipulators.

Illuminati Cards

click to enlarge

These cards would be somewhat amusing if they were released today, but these cards were put out in 1995.

Here is an in depth explanation of them.

News

Some people believe by watching the news they know what's going on in the world, at least about important issues such as natural disasters. But it seems disasters are being reported simply as a smoke screen to hide other manipulations happening in the world. Obviously disasters really happen and it's important to know what's going on in the world, but these reports seem to be coming at the expense of covering core issues like the fraudulence of our current monetary system, the sorry state of our education/indoctrination system or the global corporate takeover of our governments.

The fact is we have no idea what is actually going on in the world no matter how much TV we watch because corporations are determining what we are seeing. What we are getting is information private companies want us to have, and we get hooked by their promoted and distracting sensationalism. Hurricanes are more engaging than parliament.

Media critic Michael Parenti in his article "Monopoly Media Manipulation" takes this thought even further: "More insidious than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance. Truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic) are downplayed or avoided outright. Sometimes the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself, even ones of major import. Reports that might reflect poorly upon the national security state are least likely to see the light of day....being suppressed with a consistency that would be called 'totalitarian' were it to occur in some other countries."

Maxwell E McCombs and Donald L Shaw show the political ramifications of this issue with their article "The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media" in the academic journal The Public Opinion Quarterly published by Oxford University Press: "the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues." [italics in original]

And Bernard C Cohen in his 1963 book The Press and Foreign Policy boils it down to the almost unarguable: "[The Press] may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about." Imagine how much more true this is in 2012 when six multinational corporations control almost everything the average North American sees, hears or reads.

Journalist Jim Marrs connects some of these dots: AOL Time Warner, in addition to owning AOL, Time magazine and Warner Bros Pictures, also owns Hanna-Barbera cartoons, CNN and HBO, while The Walt Disney Company owns ABC, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, MGM, Miramax, Pixar, Jim Henson's Muppets, Marvel Entertainment and shares board members with warmongers Halliburton and Boeing. And Viacom owns CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike TV, VH1, BET and Comedy Central, while General electric owns NBC Universal and Universal Music Group, which holds twenty-two percent of the world's music market.

Verily I say the only place we can have any idea what is going on is inside ourselves. And the mass hypnosis masquerading as news coming through the TV set and other sources is hindering even that. Wake up!

Resistance

I've been hearing and reading a lot about resistance in the alternative media these days, but do not be deceived. Resistance is war. The global power elite are counting on our continual resistance. It's gasoline for their fire.

You've heard the cheesy cliché: what you resist persists. It's true. As a co-creator of this world, when I see troubles in it, which are glaring and cannot be missed except by the wilfully ignorant, I must ask myself where these problems are unaddressed in my own being that I am helping to manifest them into the world. Every problem I have, be it personal, family or global, is my access to the divine. So why would I resist it? Only to stay independent, to stay separated, to avoid the truth: we are all one.

I don't wish to digress too far, but independence is a lie that's been sold to us. The point is any time I resist something out there I am missing access to my own truth that will set me free and bring me closer to God. Once I admit my anger or resentment of what I'm perceiving and accept it as part of my own being, God then puts people and situations in my path to help. There is no independence in this. There is a cycle through myself, God and others: a trinity if you will.

Do not resist. Anyone telling you to do so is adding to the problem. However, do not throw the baby out with the bath water. There is much good information out there. It's just that once it gets into resistance it's gotten off track. Leave resistance for the warmongers.

Through non-resistance God will lead us to actions. We will have fun, and this life will open to us like a flower. We will stop fighting, and we will put our drives into creations of immense beauty and strength.

Systems

When systems stop serving people and we become servants to the systems it becomes the responsibility of free people to stand up for what is right. Currently we are in this type of systemic problem, and as a free being it is my responsibility to take a stand and say, enough.

Not only is the world a living hell for most, we are enslaving ourselves in the process. Surely we must realise this life is not just happening to us. We are cause in our lives, not subjects, and we have been manipulated to create this. We have allowed ourselves to be enslaved by our systems.

When an organic farmer gets sued for patent infringement because Monsanto's terminator seeds have blown onto his farm and infected his crop there is a problem. It should be the other way around: the farmer should be suing Monsanto. But because of our current system the farmer doesn't stand a chance against Monsanto's lawyers and their millions of dollars even though Monstanto really doesn't have a legal or moral leg to stand on.

This is not the only case where this kind of thing is happening. Our monetary, political and health care systems are also enslaving us in the same way. And we are not only being enslaved by our systems. These systems much like a cancer are destroying our humanity. We must of our own free will let go of these systems of control and choose to reconnect with the land and our food supply. This is the solution: connecting to a real and tangible reality.

Have our systems made the world a better place to live? It is not better for most. And even if the whole world could have our systemic way of living it still wouldn't be better because the systems have caused us to disconnect from reality. We have become more connected to intangible systems like the economy than the tangible world, and these systems are killing us.

It is time to say, enough. Getting back to the land may not seem like the most appealing thing to do, but that's because of the complacency inherent in the system. People like their high standard of living, and a simpler, more comfortable lifestyle is always around the corner. But for all the ostensibly time saving and comforting systems we have, we do not have more free time nor are we more comfortable or connected. We are more isolated and alone. We work hard as slaves for elite tyrants and an ideology we aren't benefiting from. Most people have scarce time for their families or communities. Working the land may be hard, but at least we can do it together, surrounded by loving family and communities truly in reality.

Currently we live in a type of caste system. People starving in Third World countries don't work less hard than I do. They work harder, and yet I have more wealth. I'm not living more extravagantly than a king from the middle-ages because I work hard. I live this way because I was born in Canada, because this is the way the system is designed.

We can not continue to live like kings nor should we want to. We are being sold an ideology to ensure our servitude, and ideas such as lessening the world's population to continue this insane ideology are furthering our disconnection. The idea that some human beings have more worth or authority than others is simply more insanity. The poor and the starving do not have less worth than anyone else. Again I say, enough. I choose a simpler life, now. I choose to live in the solution not the system.

Parenting or Grandparenting

It seems to me that what most people think of as parenting is actually grandparenting.

Grandparenting is being responsible and stable, providing a home and having the wisdom to know what works and what doesn't. Parenting is being attentive and loving, being attuned to your children, being with your babies constantly and seeing to their needs.

This confusion may partially explain the huge push to have children later in life. Nowadays parents are encouraged to leave home to have babies, to have an education and a good job. But kids don't need more responsible parents. They need active grandparents. Parenting while trying to also fill the role of grandparent is very difficult.

From this perspective it's easy to see why so many parents seem to be struggling and how the push to have kids later in life is essentially giving children directly to a grandparent's role and depriving them of parents. Plus vilifying teen pregnancy and promoting independence is actually adding to the problem. Independence is dividing when what parents really need is more support.

What the establishment is essentially saying is they need a workforce more than good parents. In fact the worse parents become the more reason there is for the state to take complete control.

Canada Inc.

I am not the property of Canada Inc. I am not a subject of a monarch. I am a free thinking human being, and as such I can and will do as I please. Their imposed rules do not apply to me. I am manifesting this reality as a co-creation with God, and I answer to none other than he who presides over us all (and my wife).

I do not have to work at a job and pay taxes in order to contribute to society. My contribution begins with loving care for my family and the people around me and extends to taking responsibility for my life and actually being of service physically within my community.

The Steve Jobs Connection

I'm about to go on a bit of a tirade. Brace yourself.

All the recent didactic stories and quotes attributed to Steve Jobs do not inspire me in the least. I believe he was a big part of what is wrong with the world today. By selling out to the Power Elite he has helped to atrophy our psychic capabilities and hindered our ability to remember who we are. Much like using a prosthetic limb instead of my real leg would cause it to atrophy, the technology created by Mr Jobs is a prosthetic for our minds.

If he really wanted to help the world he would have grown his own food and eaten a vegetarian diet. Those two things alone are more profitable to the world than all the iSHIT combined. More importantly he would still be alive to be of service to his family and community instead of through his death serving the capitalist pigs who are now exploiting his name to further the enslavement of humanity while screaming "connection!"

Sure I can know at any given moment what is happening with Paris Hilton, but it's at the cost of our humanity. And through his death he has become a martyr for the greedy individualistic man of today who wants nothing more than to manifest wealth for himself under the guise of being of service to humanity by creating shit to appease our five senses and turn us into mindless biological drones.

Whatever goodness was in Steve Jobs, be it the entrepreneurial spirit or whatever, has been sucked out by the lecherous Power Elite that is enslaving this planet and its people.

A Twelve-Year-Old Explains...

A twelve-year-old girl explains money, inflation, fraud and slavery in six minutes.

Audio Spectral Travel or Letters to Willie Nelson

I've recently made a meditation/contemplation album. It's 55 minutes (12 tracks) of music created to facilitate the expansion of the listener’s consciousness beyond the limits of this vibrational spectrum of reality, or it might just help you relax.

You can download it for free or by donation here: jwalraven.bandcamp.com. Feel free to copy, buy, sell, trade, remix or whatever. It is music created for music's sake.

Government Concern

Q: Why is the government of Canada so concerned with my child's education?

A: Illiterate, non-indoctrinated slaves are not very useful.

The Canadian government demands I send my child to school, but they under fund the education system and under pay the teachers. This makes no sense unless we open to the broader, underlying reality. Our education system is designed to keep us focused on an understandable and narrow version reality. And once we have become fully indoctrinated we demand that narrow version of reality, calling the broader reality hocus pocus.

The fact is there are divine mysteries that cannot be grasped by mere human reasoning, and it is possible to open ourselves to this greater reality which is in the heart of every man, woman and child. Then we can get back to the land God has given us and get back to the business of co-creating interdependently within communities.

Unfortunately, most people are so indoctrinated they don't even want to be connected to the land or their food or other people for that matter. There are more important things for them. They need to sell their labour to pay for further indoctrination in the hopes of getting a good job furthering this system. Then they can buy a house for themselves and their individual families while others starve out in the cold.

It is sad for them that other people have to starve outside, but it's the best they can do within the system. They have no time for utopian hocus pocus or romanticising the past, but they can buy "certified organic" food from the Mega Mart and believe it is all right and just. There are young, inventive people who they understand are working feverishly to remedy our worldly problems for us.

This is all designed by a centralised global power elite to have us living in a world of scarcity engineered for our servitude. It is not by coincidence we have been moved off the land, corralled and herded into cities. We must wake up! We could collectively live in the abundant world naturally provided for us, but it takes faith, courage and compassion, combined with humility and perseverance to exist in community with our extended family living together in the broader reality of co-creation with God.

The power elite count on us not tapping into these inner qualities. They count on us compliantly taking what they serve us. They may even believe what they are doing is right, but I suggest they are not right and have counted wrong.

Microwave Ovens

Microwaves remove nutritional content from food. When people eat food with low nutritional content their bodies tell them they need to eat more. They become obese wondering why their bodies are still craving food.

Ninety-seven percent of Broccoli's antioxidants are removed by microwaves. Same goes for cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. So much emphasis has been ostensibly put on the radiation factor of microwaves that we've masked the real issue of nutrition removal.

Like so much else in life this is not by coincidence. Information about the positive health benefits of eating raw, living food is marred by technological advancement. Many of these studies date back to the seventies but hardly reach the mainstream even forty years later.

Ideas & Intellectual Property Rights

Ideas help us move forward through this life. They are to be shared, added to and developed publicly. They are a common property of an evolving consciousness.

When we reduce ideas to commodities of individual expression for personal ownership and profit it becomes possible for individuals to own public reality. These individuals then become able to manipulate public opinion to their will. Ownership of ideas therefore creates ownership of society.

We then begin living in a reality of ideology and cease being the free expression of consciousness we really are. We start to believe this narrow reality is who we are rather than simply what we are experiencing. We become imprisoned into a limited and slavish reality controlled by the owners of our public ideas, instead of creators of a wonderful and brilliant world.

This is where we are now, on a planet controlled by a power elite no human force is going to change. Einstein says no problem in the Universe can be solved by the same mind that created it. The problems we are currently facing on this planet stem from our minds, and so according to Einstein our thinking is not going to get us out of them. Part of the solution is dropping these mind-created systems that are destroying us, and dropping this limited reality of the ownership of ideas is a good place to start.

We do not need intellectual property rights to survive. We need food and water. We need love, family and community. Then we can live in this abundant world created for us to share in together, instead of the scarcity world of intellectual property rights.

Reverse Culture Shock

When I went to India people said I could never be prepared for the culture shock, but when I got there I never felt more at home. I was actually interacting with human beings rather than systems. However, when I got home that's where I experienced the real culture shock. Everything seemed so contrived and fabricated, and everyone seemed so divorced from reality. I almost couldn't believe what I was witnessing. It seemed very clear in contrast we get to live the way we do in the West (rich slaves) at the expense of those in the East (poor and free).


Inspired from a post by Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids.

Education or Freedom

The uneducated accept their slavery. And now in Canada we think we are free because we have access to education, but we are not educated. We have been indoctrinated into a belief system of reasonableness and political correctness that is not only enslaving us but is having us demand our slavery.

It has recently been brought to my attention that the words develop and envelope come from the same root, velop, which means veil. So to en-velop is to make veiled, and to de-velop is to remove the veil. Hence to conceal a letter we put it in an envelope.

We need to allow our children to develop, but instead they are enveloped in systems of indoctrination. We badger them with education and religion or non-religion. If we simply let children play and explore, they naturally and inquisitively become greatly intelligent. Certainly we need to keep children from harming themselves or others, but in this way it is easy to see it is not so much education that breeds freedom but simply lack of suppression.

It is not for lack of great minds that there are so few geniuses. It is that so few children are able to escape the clutches of our indoctrination to allow their minds to flourish to their full potential. If we were to allow children the full expression of who they are, we would have many geniuses. And we would find ourselves living in a more abundant and free world.

And make no mistake, this indoctrination system has not happened naturally or by coincidence. It has been specifically designed and manufactured to be this way, to enslave the mass of the population to toil for the few. And those few are psychopathic puppets, manipulated by forces outside this third dimensional reality.

Until we wake up to this greater reality we will continue to waste our lives attempting to fix the symptoms. Economists and politicians cannot create change. They are afraid to face themselves, and so they continue to be enslaved by the world.

Only internally can we recognise our freedom and then extend that freedom to our children.


Inspired by OSHO.

Indoctrination

We have all been indoctrinated, taken away from our families five days a week from the age of five and sometimes earlier until we are eighteen, and this is just preparation for our undergraduate and finally graduate degrees. In that indoctrination we are sold the lies of the Power Elite, not in the curriculum which can actually be quite educational, but in how to act and think.

We are taught that it is necessary to be separated from our food supply, that it's not humanly possible for every single human being to grow their own food and that we wouldn't really want to anyway. Then we are freed up to do other things with our lives other than the labourious toil of growing food. It's part of evolution, and it's natural. We are also taught that though is is terribly unfair it is also natural for some of the world's population to be starving, and we make a really great show of trying to do something about it, like we haven't done enough already.

It is from this context that scientists have been guided to be our moral teachers. The clergy smock has been traded for the scientific lab coat. Personally I prefer to get my guidance from the source: within. But those days will be coming to an end if the Power Elite have their way and the reasonableness of science backed by government military might prevails. Then we will do what we have all logically and reasonably been told, or we will be punished.

Seeds of Freedom

In Canada we have to get permission to go fishing or to build a house, and you might think this was normal if you were a monkey in a cage who knew nothing about freedom. However, I have come to understand something about freedom. In fact I am freedom, and therefore it appears the rules do not apply to me. The world will conform to free Men, not the other way around.

It is absurd that an apparently free individual is governed under virtually the same law as a corporate institution. Sure a company capable of entirely depleting the oceans of fish or similarly a company consistently building structurally unsound buildings for profit ought to be governed, but saying an individual who wants to fish or build for himself must get permission is unjust. Individuals fishing with rods so there bellies are constantly filled would still never deplete the oceans of all their fish, even if everyone was doing it. Therefore treating individuals to the same rules as businesses is unreasonable.

All this being said I have come to recognise the rightness of everything. It may seem most of my posts are dwelling on the negative, but there is nothing wrong in this world. Everything is exactly as it should be. That I would shine a light on it is only to illuminate my own and other's souls. We have already passed through the darkness, and there is nothing to fear.

The point of this post is that a seed will yield a return of ten thousand percent on itself. No investment of any other kind will produce this kind of return. There is no sound reason in the face of this information to deal with the bankers' piddley little dollars. Call it what you will: this is only quality information.

Take a Half-Gramme Holiday (or Not)

Okay come on people let's admit the truth here. Human beings are incapable of raising their own children. All babies should be delivered by Caesarean and immediately given to the State. Better still as fast as we can we should be developing technology where babies can be born directly from a petri dish into an incubator, thus avoiding pregnancy all together. Too much can go wrong.

We've already ceded everything else to the State: the safety of our food and water supplies, our energy needs, protection from terrorism, the meaning we derive from life. We ought to just give them our children directly, and stop pretending it's not already happening. Then we could get to the real business of living life: video games. They're just like real life.

Or we could start taking responsibility for our lives and our perceptions.

If a bunch of people got on a plane to go on vacation and they all said they had no idea where they were going and that furthermore it was not even possible for them to find out where they were going, you'd say they were daft. Yet here we are all together on this planet, not taking responsibility for where we're going, instead leaving it to someone else to take care of for us.

I assume since we've paid for our ticket the Pilot will take us anywhere we want to go. Presumably we would've had an idea where we wanted to go before we bought the ticket.

Personally I live in God's world with my wife delivering our children in our home where we grow and eat our own food. We've stopped playing the video game, and we're taking responsibility for our lives and where we want to go, one day at a time.

Creative Beings

My spiritual adviser Nehru has long worked with me providing answers to questions I hadn't even asked. It has been clear to me since our first meeting that God has brought us together to help bring enlightenment to ourselves and to this planet.

He has recently said something I think I have always believed but didn't have the conscious understanding of nor words to explain what I was experiencing. However, he has explained the process more succinctly than I could have hoped. This is one of the most undeniable truths I've awoken to:

My explanation is that as sovereign creative beings, we create everything we experience, good and bad, and mostly unconsciously. So we don't or can't take responsibility for the fact that we've created the thing that's become a problem because we created it unconsciously. The process just automatically happens. Creation happens; it's just that we don't realize that we're creating our own issues, because it's a very high level creative process!  

The truth is: We have to have an (unconscious) need to create the issues we create for ourselves otherwise we wouldn't do it. Simple. And it's an ongoing, mysterious process. We think it's just life, or we generate many consistent theories to explain our issues, and devise treatments to hopefully resolve them. 

We don't realize that we've created it all!!

And the realisation we have or God has created everything for us gives us the freedom to stop blaming and to take responsibility for our lives.

Nehru goes on further to say:

When a creative, conscious being like you or I looks fully at what he has created unconsciously, it will disappear as an item of concern or unhappiness because in the looking, one sees what he has created, is able to accept it as his creation without self condemnation. He is only looking at not thinking about what is there, and then he realizes it's his own creation, and "poof" ~ gone! 

My dad has told me repeatedly: "Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake." Both him and Nehru seem to be telling me essentially the same thing. Not only must I accept this truth, but I must also see everything as being drawn to me, for me, by me, if I am to live joyously and free in this world.

Borrowing, Saving & Local Currencies

Right now in Canada it makes more sense to borrow than to save. All our money is currently created out of thin air as debt based notes, and there is no point in saving money that is created as debt. Plus, banker controlled interest rates, not people's desires, are what determine whether individuals or businesses will borrow, spend or save. Whether we are aware of how this system works or not we are all working from within this premise.

It's not coincidence that more money is lent out than is saved. Every dollar that is saved in a bank gets lent out at least ten times. But in reality there is no limit to the amount that can be lent by a Canadian bank. They are only limited by the amount of risk they are willing to take. In fact this is how the majority of our money is created in our current fractional reserve banking system.

It would seem obvious to me that something that has not been earned cannot be lent; but that is not how it is. If it was, people would own their homes, rather than banks owning the titles. There would be more incentive to save and less to borrow. In fact, banks own the titles to most real estate.

This is so obviously wrong. We are enslaved. Yet we continue along not taking responsibility for ourselves, looking to governments, bankers, doctors and teachers to be responsible for us so we can take a vacation from our slavish existence.

Ask any economist, the bankers' monopolistic right to print money is an illusion that is kept real by our belief in it. As communities and nations we must start taking responsibility for our money situation, not ceding it to the bankers. However, this requires thought, and the bankers count on us not thinking.

Local community currencies are the beginning of the solution. They require thought and preparation, and they require us to be connected to the source of our money. Local currencies help communities flourish. And they are meant as a compliment to a national currency, although national currencies ought to be printed by the government and not by private, profit seeking bankers.

Most people believe governments print our money, but economists know that's not true. Banks print our money. Economists think if governments printed money we would have hyperinflation. Images of a wheel barrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread come to mind. However, the truth is if governments responsibly printed interest and debt free money, we would live more abundant lives.

The sixteenth US president Abraham Lincoln tried this with his Greenbacks and was assassinated. Twentieth US president James Garfield tried and advocated bimetallism and was assassinated. Thirty-fifth US president John F Kennedy tried this with his Silver Certificates and was assassinated.

Anyone who tries to subvert the current fractional reserve, debt based, interest bearing money system is eliminated. Current presidential candidate Ron Paul has recently introduced a bill to legalise currencies that actually compete with, not just compliment, the Federal Reserve's US Dollar. Time will tell how that will end up.

As of 2001 there were only seven countries in the world without privately owned central banks: Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, after 2003 Afghanistan was converted, and after 2005 so was Iraq. This brought the count down to five, though I'm pretty sure with the elimination of Muammar Gaddafi Libya will acquire a privately owned central bank, and then there will be only four. And I'm sure those remaining will be convinced to convert before long.

(Edit 25 Feb 2012: I just read something interesting at the Daily Bell: "This year Iran is changing it's policy for payment of oil. Iran will no longer accept the US dollar and will be looking for other currencies and commodities instead." Iraq and Libya tried something similar. In the immortal words of Tony Montana, "Look at you now." And make no mistake, though I'm talking about privately owned central banks, they are all owned and controlled by a centralised group of elite families. Also the recent death of Kim Jong-il ought to change the lack of private central bank in North Korea.)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Gaddafi's Libya:

Libya enjoys large natural resources, which Gaddafi utilized to help develop the country. Under Gaddafi's Jamahiriya "direct democracy" state, the country's literacy rate rose from 10% to 90%, life expectancy rose from 57 to 77 years, equal rights were established for women and black people, employment opportunities were established for migrant workers, and welfare systems were introduced that allowed access to free education, free healthcare, and financial assistance for housing. In addition, financial support was provided for university scholarships and employment programs. Gaddafi also initiated development of the Great Manmade River, in order to allow free access to fresh water across large parts of the country. The country was developed without taking any foreign loans, and, as a result, Libya was debt-free.

Clearly governments could print their own money. The real reason they don't is articulated very well by Ellen Brown in her book The Web of Debt: "The notion that government could simply print the money it needs is considered unrealistically utopian and inflationary; yet banks create money all the time. The chief reason the US government can't do it is that a private banking cartel already has a monopoly on the practice." (336)

Here is a list of communities using their own local currencies:

http://www.ithacahours.org/ A New York community currency that has been operating for over twenty years.
http://www.berkshares.org/ A local currency out of Massachusetts.
http://www.saltspringdollars.com/ Money used on Salt Spring Island.
http://www.dunbardollar.com/ The community of Dunbar in Vancouver is now using its own money.
http://www.communityway.ca/news-events/ Comox Valley money. (The best form of local currency I've seen yet, called Community Way.)

I was inspired to write and borrowed information from an article in The Daily Bell (an online economics magazine), in addition to information from Wikipedia, Ellen Brown, David Icke and Leonard Orr.

Jesus Christ

It seems no wonder that we must remove Jesus Christ from our society. He preached that we should help the poor unconditionally. We can't live in a society with Christ, while some people starve outside in the cold. Either Jesus has got to go or the imbalance of wealth. It makes me sad to see our choice.

Ready to Share

I have argued for a long time that copyrights and patents are hindering the expansion of human consciousness, but my arguments had lacked comparative validity until now. I stumbled across some information from the Norman Lear Centre that compares the fashion industry with other creative industries. It sums up what I've been only able to hint at for years.

Here is an excerpt from their site:

The music and film industries have argued that financial ruin awaits anyone who lets creative work be freely appropriated. They’ve argued that creative works must be strictly controlled through technology and copyright law. These efforts have a direct effect on artists, musicians, writers, researchers and filmmakers – unlike fashion designers, they cannot freely sample from the creative products that surround them. 

Whether inspiration comes from fellow designers, vintage patterns, street kids or royalty, fashion designers openly pay homage to their influences through appropriation. Each new wave of designers depends upon its predecessors. And, because fashion (like DNA) is recombinant to its core, no one presumes that they can own design elements such as the Dolman sleeve, the trench coat or the pearl neckline.

Reuse, repurpose, redefine, recreate, recombine – any way you look at it, the genius of the fashion industry is its ability to thrive in a system built upon borrowed inspiration. As long as there is no trademark infringement, designers are free to roam the creative landscape, sampling what they wish. Just imagine if it were the same in other industries.

What else can be said? Imagine if the music industry could thrive like the fashion industry instead of being stifled like it is now. Musicians would have to create works that were harder to copy instead of making musical pablum and relying on copyright protections to get paid.

Copyright law is actually doing the opposite of what its proponents argue for. And the diversity and size of the fashion industry seems to support this idea.

Learning to Die

If we put as much effort into learning how to die properly as we did into learning how to stop disease or prolong life, we would probably live longer, more disease free lives.

Provisional & Permanent Governments

I wonder whether it's generally understood there are two forms of government: our democratic provisional government and an unelected permanent government; the provisional government is elected, and the permanent government is a self-appointed elite, which overshadows the provisional government.

Paul Hellyer, founder of the Canadian Action Party, Member of Parliament at age twenty-five, worked as Minister of Defence under Trudeau and Pearson, is now eighty-eight years old and sums up the permanent government fairly well is his book Light at the End of the Tunnel:

"The big supranatural corporations with their lobbyists, public relations firms and lawyers, the international banks with their close ties to both the Fed and Treasury Department ... the IMF and world bank ... the information conglomerates that blur the lines between the manufacture of news and culture and its dissemination, these are all parts of the permanent government that holds the reins of real power. It is a power camouflaged by the diversions created by the antics of the politicians comprising the parallel provisional government." (201-2)

And just to be clear what we're talking about, "our governments rather than being of, by and for the people, in accordance with the textbooks, are government by the elite for the benefit of the elite. Their dominance is maintained by an intricate network of interlocking private  and public groups that control vast banking, commercial, including oil, and 'news' distribution empires. Collectively, they are without doubt the most powerful unofficial conglomerate in the world." (203)

The reason I wonder if this is common knowledge is because if we know our elected provisional government is controlled by an unelected permanent government, then why do we allow it to continue? Do we feel powerless? Are we controlled? Or do we actually like the current system? And if the understanding of these two forms of government is not common knowledge, then why is it not?

Making Babies

There is a large and growing argument for mass depopulation. Some arguments go as far as to claim that couples who cannot provide a decent income and support for a child should not produce children to be a burden for their neighbours, that bringing unneeded children into an overcrowded lifeboat is evil.

Many will nod their heads in agreement. But the argument speaks of unneeded children. Excuse me?

While on the topic of need, how much income and support does a child need? For that matter, how much does any human being need? The problem is not overpopulation but over consumption. We do not need fewer people; we need fewer cars and televisions and wars.

It's hard to believe there is a strong argument suggesting the need for fewer people because we are unwilling to have less stuff. Or is it? Somehow it seems easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Yet one is real and the other an ideology.

Life is about making babies, caring for them and caring for our elders. Instead we have been creating systems and machines to care for them so we can have free time to destroy the planet in the name of progress. Although this may have not been our intention, the road to hell has thus been paved.

Then the argument cries for more education (read: indoctrination) to stop making babies, to create more systems and machines in order to repair the world we have damaged, instead of doing what we are supposed to do: care for our children and our elders, and allow the planet to heal herself.