Why Do Poor People Who Need Help Vote For the Right Who Will Not Help Them?

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To The Right Wing: Get Your Bloody Boot Off My Neck!!!

“FASCISM should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of State and Corporate Power.”

Benito Mussolini


I am 61 years old and of French-English and Native American blood. I am recovering from tonsil cancer and am much weaker than I was. As long as I am breathing in and out my intention is to continue to enjoy my time here. I am not afraid of dying and I am not afraid of living. I have a wonderful woman I am proud to call my wife and a good life. I am grateful to the Goddess.

I would in normal times have better things to do with my time than getting involved with politics. Politics SUCK! Most politicians are ego-tripping manipulators who pretend to be speaking honestly from their hearts while lying like a teenager caught smoking dope. I am so bloody tired of them claiming to be our friends and promising to help us out of the shit they helped put us in and then turning around and screwing us some more.

But these are not normal times. I sincerely wish they were. But they are not. This country is closer to falling into fascism than at any time since the Robber Barons.

(If you want to know more about the Robber Barons go to the my links section))

I am very proud of my country and love the people of the United States. I honor our fore-fathers and mothers who gave their precious blood and lives creating a free country. The United States, when it has stood for freedom and democracy, has been an inspiration and light for the world. This country is in danger of losing that freedom and democracy. I cannot stand idly by and let that happen and neither can you.

In the beginning of this blog I wrote that the ancient Chinese healers expressed the belief that it was impossible to be or stay healthy in an unhealthy society or physical environment, we live in both an unhealthy society and an unhealthy world. The Chinese healers who wrote about the reality of the relationship between a society’s health and the health of the people within it understood the implications. Those who spoke the truth to loud or acted to fight corruption or abuse by the powerful were killed, tortured and imprisoned. Soon Chinese healers stopped talking about the relationship between the health of people and the society they lived within.

I believe our society has reached a tipping point. If nothing is done soon and profoundly we will become so toxic in this society and world that life will be unbearable for the majority of us. I cannot write and speak about healing and not point out the underlying cause of so much of our pain and suffering.

I had hopes that things would get better after Obama became president and I could stop worrying so much about the future of our democracy. Things are certainly better in many ways. But, sadly, the recent Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited funds to influence federal elections and the Democrats failure to provide strong leadership has me very worried. I have lost all faith in the Democratic Party and President Obama.

I believe a new Progressive Party in needed. But there is something needed more than a new party. We need a new commitment by the people of this country to stand up and take back our country from the politicians and the Oligarchy they serve.

(oligarchy [(ol-uh-gahr-kee, oh-luh-gahr-kee)]A system of government in which power is held by a small group.)

Yes the Oligarchy. The robber barons who brought so much misery to our people in the past are back. In fact they never left. They just hid behind politicians, economist and religious leaders while they manipulated us. Now they are trying once more, the way they did in the Gilded Age, to step out of the shadows and crush us economically and politically.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood the truth when he wrote in a private letter to Colonel House on November 21st 1933,

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson”

Our grandfathers and grandmothers were desperate and close to a revolution during the Depression. FDR’s New Deal coupled with the ruthlessness of the federal police and the power of the army were the only thing that prevented it. The New Deal eased the worst aspects of economic and social oppression and redistributed just enough wealth and political power to make life tolerable for the people. The Oligarchy and their corporations still ran and still run things but just not as openly or intolerably as before the reforms of the New Deal. I won’t go into what happened to the people who tried to organize against the Oligarchy. Suffice to say they were crushed.

The right wing of the elite that form the Oligarchy never stopped fighting the New Deal. They and their descendants were and are very patient and persistent. Their long term efforts are paying off. They are winning. The amount of wealth and political power that has flowed back to them from the pockets and lives of the working people of this country since Reagan is staggering and frightening.

In the sixties the right wing of the Oligarchy’s political party the Republicans made a decision to take advantage of the racism of most southerners in the face of the Civil Rights struggle. The Republicans poured a tremendous amounts of time and money into a long term project to turn the democratic South into servants and soldiers of the right wing of the Oligarchy. You got to give them credit. They did it. These Right Wing jerks succeeded in turning southern poor people into the most ardent and militant supporters of the the party representing the richest people in the country. That makes my blood boil.

One of first and most important targets for the Republicans was the Southern Baptists preacher. The Republicans understood the power of the church in the South. If you controlled the church the people would follow. Republican operatives in many guises met repeatedly over a long period of time with preachers all over the South. Republican organizers blatantly played the race card. They used white southern fears about blacks gaining political and social power to scare the heaven out of these men. Clever and emotional lies and half truths as well as money and promises of power flowed freely until the Republican organizers succeeded in their intent. Soon many if not most southern preachers became not only registered Republicans but also dedicated political organizers for the right wing agenda. I cannot help wondering how race relations would be now if the Republicans had not chosen to play the race card.

As the South was being organized the right wing spent vast amounts of money developing Think Tanks and media outlets to help further their agendas to manipulate and control middle and working class Americans. They have obviously studied the fascists and communist use of propaganda and manipulation in Germany and Russia. In fact they have improved upon them.

What an incredible con job. Blame all the pain and suffering working people suffer on the people and groups trying to ease that pain and suffering. Claim to be the friend and supporter of the very people you are robbing and killing. Man, what balls they got. And how sad and infuriating that so many people continue to buy that poisonous snake oil.

Convincing us that the Right Wing was on our side and the progressive people were the enemy was the key to their whole strategy. But that begs the question, why did it work? It worked and continues to work because not to many people bother to look behind the curtain and find the real Wizard of Oz. It is so much easier for many of us to just sit back on our arses and turn on our televisions or radios and go into a trance while we listen to the hypnotic, lying, right wing crap coming out of "False and Fascist" Fox News, and radio talk show hosts like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Beck.

Scaring the public with chicken little stories, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling and it’s the liberals and left wing that are behind it,” has worked well for them. Projecting their crimes on perceived enemies is rampant. For instance, claiming that so called liberal judges are “activist judges who use their positions on the courts to turn the country to the left” is one of their tactics. Meanwhile right wing judges are gutting the constitution and leading us towards fascism The right has succeeded to the point that Fox News and talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are some of the most trusted sources of news for a large percentage of our people. Air America by contrast has just declared bankruptcy and gone out of business

The right did not neglect the education or legal systems. Religious colleges were funded to produce teachers, political philosophers, lawyers, prosecutors and judges. These people would be used as part of a long term effort to infiltrate and take over the schools and courts of this country. The current Supreme Court is now effectively in the hands of the right wing of the Oligarchy. If you doubt that take a long hard look at the actions of the Robert’s Court in relationship to the rights of the Corporations when it conflicts with the rights of workers. Imagine what it would be like if their were no liberal justices.

If you think things are bad now just wait until the next Republican President and congress and that is coming. If we have not laid at least some of the ground work for a political organization that fights for our rights our fate is sealed. The Democrats will not stop what is happening to us. They might delay it but that is the best we can hope from them. The Democrats also serve a part of the Oligarchy and will never do anything that endangers the core wealth or power of their masters.

The struggle for freedom is world wide. The forms of our oppression may differ and the oligarchies that oppress us may or may not be same. But their intentions are the same. They want unlimited power, vast wealth and complete obedience and they want it from us. Our oppressors work across national lines and so must we. Our oppressors support each other and so must we. The need to struggle for freedom increases as those boots on our necks grows heavier. Everyday they try harder to press our faces ever deeper into the mud of obedience and silence. It is time to build our awareness and our strength and get theses bloody boots off our necks here and all over the world. Iran, Myanmar, Tibet, North Korea and so many more countries are but the tip of the bloody iceberg of oppression. What the people in those countries are experiencing now will be all our fates sooner or later if we do not get off our bellies and our asses and do something.

We know the oligarchies intent. Let them know ours. Let our intention be to create societies and a world where the people are free, sheltered, fed, educated, healthy, and live lives worth living. Let us create societies and a world we can be proud of passing on to our children and their children.

The first step towards freedom is simple. It is to get the sleep out of our eyes and look around at our societies and world. Commit yourself to try to understand what is happening in your country economically and politically and how those two things are intertwined. We cannot act blindly. We have to understand what we are experiencing before we can act. As our understanding matures our actions will evolve. Act creatively and non-violently. We will never defeat them with force of arms without becoming them, history has repeatedly prove that reality. How awful to fight so hard for freedom and end up becoming the oppressor. Let that not be our fate.

We do not need to follow leaders blindly or enslave ourselves to ideologies of the left or right. Those paths have only led to exchanging one master for another. We need to be the leaders in our own liberation and we need to be free of all ideologies. Ideologies blind our eyes and harden our hearts. We need clear eyes and open hearts to transform our societies and world for the good. Let us step out into the beautiful unknown and stay clear of old ideas and outmoded actions. Let love, joy, creativity and courage be our guides to transforming ourselves and our societies and our World. This is the song I sing to you. Let us sing and dance our way to victory this time. “Any revolution that asks you to kill or die for it is daddy’s revolution.” These words appeared as graffiti on a wall during the student uprising in Paris in 1968. They are good words to remember as we go forward.

Why I Fight When I Know Life Is An Illusion

Why I chose to act when I know life is an illusion

In this world I am Sufi. I love many mystical traditions and study and practices various teachings and disciplines from Buddhism and the Chinese mystical arts to modern and esoteric psychologies. But first and foremost I am a Sufi. I am Sufi because I know I am. I could say this or that about how I came to be a Sufi or why but they would just be words not the reality. It is like explaining why I married my wife. Impossible, you would have to be me and even than you would not know.
You can find links to explanations of what a Sufi is and if you desire go right ahead. I say I am a Sufi to explain how I can take part in a political, and material struggle and yet know that everything is Goddess playing with me in the form of the world around and within. Why fight for or against anything if I know that there is no world the way it seems to be but an incredibly complicated Illusion created by Goddess. Life is like a dream that seems so real that we forget that it is not and go through a gauntlet of emotions and reactions only to wake up one day and see that nothing we thought happened was real. So why act as if an illusion is real?
My all time favorite mystical book is the Bhagavada Gita. The Gita is a story about a civil war in ancient India. Arjuna is a prince on one side of the war and Khrisna is the driver of his war chariot. Both sides of the waring families and friends are drawn up in battle formations facing each other. The battle will start soon but there is a pause.
Arjuna tell Khrisna to pull his chariot out of formation and drive to a place between the two lines. When they arrive Arjuna confesses that he is bummed out about having to fight and kill his family and friends who joined the other side. He says that maybe he should renounce all violence and go into the woods and become an ascetic. Krishna reveals that he is not what he appears to be. Krishna proclaims that He is God in human form who has befriended Arjuna because well He just did. Who can say why one is a lover of another, remember?
At any rate Krisna shows Arjuna that the world is a Illusion created by Him for reasons beyond comprehension and that there is not birth or death and you cannot kill what was never born and can never die. What is important is reaching the place where you can know the illusion and be in it and act within it to honor it. We all have our roles to play according to the nature of our consciousness or karma. It is better to live your own karma badly than to live another perfectly. Arjuna is not an ascetic and if he went into the woods he would just upset the animals and kill many of them. He is a warrior and his karma is to fight. But to fight with awareness and honor and to transform through his actions into another form of being within the illusion.
Arjuna is stunned by all that Khrisna said but especially that his best friend is actually not a man but the Godhead. Arjuna asks a favor of Krishna. He asks Krishna to let him see the reality of God. Khrisna tells Arjuna that he could not handle seeing the true reality of God. Arjuna persists and says something like, “Come on Khrisna I am your best friend, please, please, please. I can handle it, honest I can.”
So Krishna reveals himself. Arjuna freaks out because the experiences is so overwhelming that he begs Krisna to recreate the illusion. Krishna does and smiles.The story goes on from here and if you want to read it or hear it you can click the link above this entry.
The reason I told you about the Gita is that it helps explain my actions. I know the world is not as it appears. I know that there is no reality except Goddess and that what appears to be separate and ugly is not. I know that it is OK to do nothing about the conditions of the social world. I also know it is not my karma to sit back and not act as my karma compels me. I understand that my actions are vehicles for my evolution not to do anything real. I have come to this planet to take part in the illusion-play and my intention is act in a way that makes Goddess smile.
So now you might understand a little why I am acting to fight against injustices that are illusions. Are they illusions or real? They are both. I fight the illusion and struggle within myself to deepen my experience of the Real.
There is a famous Sufi story about a battle that Ali fought way back in the day. Ali was the son-in-law of the Prophet and a man who is considered to be one of the first Sufis. He was the best warrior in the Prophets army, and was fighting the best warrior in the enemies army. After a long bloody fight Ali had the other warrior on the ground and was about to kill him. Before Ali could strike, the enemy spit in Ali’s face. Ali stopped, paused and than sheathed his sword and walked away. The stunned fallen warrior rose to his feet and ran after Ali. He caught up with Ali and begged to know why Ali did not kill him. Ali looked at the man and said something like,” I was going to kill you in the name of God. But when you spit on me I became angry and would have killed you because of that anger. I will not kill because of selfish reasons, but only with the awareness that I am doing it in the name of Allah.”
Now do not get your self in an uproar if you can help it. I know that some people
say they kill in the name of Allah when in fact they are killing because they are deep in illusion. It is the nature of the illusion that this happens. I can do nothing about that. They have their own part in the play. I reject killing for any reason. Killing and violence to transform the self or society only creates ugliness and more trouble.

Violence does not work for the good and has never worked to bring good or beauty in any form to this planet and never will. Its only value is to help transform the people who indulge in it by their later realizations and regrets. I believe that in the depths of my heart and being. If violence was the only path of social transformation I would walk another path. I believe that the way of social transformation is a mystical adventure to find the Holy Grail within the heart of each person and situation we confront. I believe that we must find the Friend within each illusionary enemy and situation and than the illusion will become a beautiful play and the Mother will smile and applaud.
So I am going to end this entry here. Namaste.

Breath like your life depends on it. The quality of life is influenced by how you breath

Click here for a well written article bout chi kung

We Got to TRY A LITTLE BIT HARDER

I use to wonder why the right wing is so strong and the liberals so weak and the progressives so marginalized. But I have come to realize that is because the right is always out there working hard to take this country away from everyone else. They are up early and doing what ever it takes as long as it takes. The liberal just want to make nice, feed at the corporate trough and not rock the boat to much. And progressives well, hmm, why are there not more of us?
Janice Joplin tells a story on one of her songs. She says that the chick down stairs is always getting laid. And she isn’t. Janice says the girl is cool but not that cool. So she wants to know her secret. So Janice does something she doesn’t usually do. She gets up early and stakes the girls apartment out. Janice follows her and finds out why she is getting more than Janice.
The secret is that the girl tires harder. So than Joplin sings the truth.” You got to try harder.” I was listening to Steve Jobs of Apple fame and he said something like. “The secret of his success is to build wonderful products that people really want” We have to develop visions that inspires people and live those visions long enough and beautifully enough to inspire people to dance with us.
The liberals vision is weak and corrupt. Look at the Democrats. The right has many visions that they live. Fox is one that came true because they made a media that inspires people even though the inspiration is toxic. Air America went bankrupt. What does that tell you? Listen to Janice.

A Video Guide to Deep Breathing

Some songs keep coming back so do some times

I remember when this song and the one below and others like them first hit the air waves. Vietnam and the Civil Rights movements and Haight-Ashbury were all going strong. Change was in the air and so was oppression. What were we to do? We acted. We were young and ignorant but we had to do something




We stood up and fought and bled and some of us died and many of us are still recovering. We made so many bad calls it shames me still to remember. But if we had done nothing it would have been worse. These songs and others like them touched our hearts and quickened our blood when we were young.









Do you really think that the kids of today have no heart to stand up when they have to? Nobody wins when the youth hits the streets. And they will, sooner or later, if something isn’t done. We need to find new ways to harness our rage and win this time.We need to confront the juggernaut that is running over us in new creative non-violet ways. That is the challenge. Let us vow to meet that challenge in a way that future generations will call this generation the “Greatest Generation”. The alternative is to awful to contemplate.

Sometimes You Have to Face it!

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Martin Luther King
The question we ALL have to ask ourselves right now is, "Am I a good person?" Do not be to quick to answer the question. Take some time and let it sink in and examine your life to see how you really feel about what is going on and what you are doing about it. Not just what is going on in the world socially, politically and economically but what is going on in YOUR LIFE. How are you with your mate or your children or your parents or your friends or your enemies? What kind of person are you in RELATIONSHIPS?
It is a dangerous thing to try to change the world outside our relationships until we confront ourselves on an on going basis about how we personally relate to others. We must commit to facing and examining ourselves and than commit too transforming ourselves when needed so we can be a good person. The beauty is that when enough of us do that the world will have changed.

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

A hand written letter written to Colonel House, November 21st 1933

Click here for a series of chi exercises. Very good long video.

Basics of Chi Kung Movements

Bill Moyer's PBS Show on Chi Kung

Chi kung exercise for arthritis

Chi kung exercise for asthma

The Earth Is Our Mother

A Tribute to Sitting Bull

The Chakras

My Brother the Hawk

My animal spirit is the Hawk. The Hawk has come to me many times in many ways as a guide and friend. My words are true from my heart. The Hawk is my friend and guide and allie. I place this song to honor Hawk.

Click here to find out about Tecumseh

Tecumseh has always been a man and a spirit I have admired and drawn strength from. Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Hafiz, Rumi, Shams of Tabriz and Malcom X are also my inspirations and spirit guides. It is from them that I learned what it is to be a human being.

Below are some of the things Tecumseh taught the people.

Tecumseh’s Guidelines
•
◦Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
◦Trouble no one about their religion.
◦Respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
◦Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
◦Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
◦Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
◦Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
◦Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
◦When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
◦If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
◦Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
◦When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
◦Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Click here to go to Opensourcebuddhism.org

This site is a treasure chest of video documentaries and other media files to explore many areas of Buddhism. It is a place worth exploring.