Once Upon a Time, Walter Cronkite signed off his nightly broadcast with those words.  After the local news and sports, Cronkite came on the tube and recited the evening news for half an hour, and we believed every word he said.  After the news, we might have tuned in to ‘The Price is Right’ or ‘What’s My Line,’ but existence itself was as neatly defined as Walter Cronkite taking up his notes and tapping them on his desk at the end of his broadcast, to make an orderly pile of life in his hands.  We knew ourselves through his words.  We were defined as neatly as those sheets of 8½ by 11.  He gave us the news, and our political and social structure kept us comfortable and safe from the threat of communism and the bomb.  We were in capable hands.  We had Perry Mason and our famous system of American justice to put things right if someone went over the line.  There were no options, little dissent, few conspiracy theories.  Walter Cronkite was the mouthpiece of reality. We had the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Now I know better than to trust what they tell us on the evening news.  We elected a President who asked us to believe; who championed the clarion call for ‘change…,’ but after Obama’s  victory, Congress kept on handing hundreds of billions of dollars to the same irresponsible, gluttonous bankers and CEO’s who nearly capsized the economy under George W. Bush; so you can tell where the President get’s his orders from. 

You know who really runs the country now.  Those corporations were ‘too big to fail,’ and the population is too controlled to make a peep.  We are still waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan for dubious purposes, and our kids are still coming home wounded, broken, and in body bags.  We still run a hideous prison at Guantanamo.  Change you can believe in?  All this was supposed to be stopped by now.  We had Obama’s word on that.  We still fly unmanned drones into Pakistan, killing and maiming innocent civilians with national impunity. Presumably we kill some of the bad guys too, but being bad is a matter of perspective.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, there are patriots who love their country, and don’t want to be occupied by a foreign power.  So who is a terrorist?  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists in the eyes of the British Crown.  Jesus was a terrorist.  Under Obama, we’re still the largest weapons dealers in the world.  We still have military bases in 140 countries.  Our “Defense Department” budget was $664 billion dollars this year.  They call it defense.  There is no Department of Peace. 

There are a few other details Mr. Obama speeched about as key to his candidacy, and our elation at supporting and voting for him, but I don’t think any of that has manifested either.  He’s already a lame duck.  Universal medical coverage?  Not unless you count a health care system obviously run by the giant insurance corporations.  We have a Department of Homeland Security, which seems designed more in line with the Third Reich.  They are well funded.  Many are now calling for cuts in Social Security, welfare, unemployment benefits, and the public school system, per usual; among other programs and benefits for the public good that make it ‘impossible for us to balance the budget,’ although we have money to prolong the war machine.  It’s important to have our priorities in order. 

The farming of opium poppies in Afghanistan is at a record high, as is the resulting heroin production, now that the Russians are out and the CIA is back in the driver’s seat.  We’re fighting ‘the Taliban,’ a motley group of insurgents whom we actively supported and funded during the Russian Afghan war.  The Taliban actually stopped Afghan farmers from growing poppies, claiming it was against God; and after the war, poppy production fell by 85%.   That fact was unreported in the evening news.  Then we had 911 and our troops went into Afghanistan.  The result is a history we will never read.  Now we own Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, and the Taliban are once again broadcast as terrorists and opium farmers.  Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali is still a power broker with ties to the opium trade, and he is rumored to be on the payroll of the CIA. 

It helps to have connections, and even more so if you can make up the “news” to suit yourself.  The federal agencies responsible for stopping drugs are actually the ones bringing the bulk of it all into our country (and Europe); and the big banks are laundering trillions in their behalf.  The Colombian drug cartel and the various mafias are merely violent competition.  There’s more money at stake than Midas ever dreamed of.  If a corporation is traded on the NYSE, they are not required to report deposits of cash into their accounts, no matter how large the amount.  All the major financial institutions are traded on the NYSE, and they capitalize on that convenient loophole in the tax code.  Like I said, they make the laws.  Money laundering is one of the most lucrative businesses on Earth.  It’s been suggested that if not for the ‘untraceable’ cash generated and laundered for the drug trade, the world economy would collapse.  Change you can believe in?

Meanwhile, the  Federal Reserve keeps printing more dollars 24/7, further devaluating the currency in our wallets.  No one mentions that the Federal government has the right and authority to print money and lend it out at interest, for the benefit of the people.  Instead, we allow the Federal Reserve to print our dollars and borrow trillions from them, and pay interest to them; rather than collecting the interest for ourselves and the public good.  This practice is a great benefit to the banks.  It enriches the Fed, and renders the budget permanently out of balance.  Our government thereby knowingly creates a usurious debt on the debt, which is $13.3 trillion, or $65 trillion, depending on who’s accounting.  Some economists claim it’s $202 trillion. We’ll never see the end of it.

The entire U.S. economy is based on debt.  Ninety five percent of all money is now digital; digits moved from one account to another.  Shazam!  Add to this the banking industry’s ‘rule of fractional reserves’ which allows banks to create money out of thin air; money for nothing. which they then lend out at more interest, to create more debt, and you have the prescription for disaster that everyone is talking about; but no one is ever really explaining.  That is why the economy is in a shambles.  How I know all this and economists do not is a great mystery to me.

Banks rule, along with major corporations, who have their way with us; and the hapless environment.  BP cuts corners a mile deep and we have hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil and gas billowing into the Gulf of Mexico.  To remedy the situation, BP dumps Corexit, a chemical dispersant into the sea, which has the added benefit of killing and sinking the endangered sea turtles so they don’t float so embarrassingly up onto the beach. 

Corexit is far more toxic than the oil itself, further defiling the ocean, killing more wildlife, turtles, birds, and fish; and also volatilizing into the atmosphere; putting the economy of the Gulf into additional distress.  The bulk of all that oil still lies beneath the thermocline, hovering underwater like a giant gelatinous cloud of muck in suspended animation.  One big hurricane in the Gulf and it will be churned up and borne aloft into the atmosphere, like Disney gone berserk; along with the Corexit.  It will be generations before the oil is dispersed and the coast is clean. 

Are there criminal charges?  Of course not.  Is the government in collusion?  Seems obvious.  Is this sort of wholesale industrial pollution going on elsewhere?  Definitely. It’s a world wide corporate feeding frenzy.  Communism had nothing on us.  We’re badder than the bomb.  Now the fastest growing industry in America is our prison system, and they’re too often putting the wrong people behind bars.  The REAL terrorists have ‘Inc.” after their name. 

Change you can believe in?  It’s like George W. Bush just went behind the curtain and pulled an Obama mask over his head.  

photo credit: http://www.doobybrain.com/2009/01/24/george-w-bush-morphing-into-barack-h-obama/

I don’t watch TV anymore.  I wouldn’t get my news from the television if I did. It turns out Walter Cronkite was a member of the NSC (National Security Council) and the equally nefarious CFR (Council on Foreign Relations).  So is every celebrity newscaster for every major media network.  They all work for the PTB (Powers That Be, otherwise known as ‘the ruling elite’); all of them, for generations.  It’s a communist plot with an American asterisk. 

All of our major politicians are members of the same organizations, which are controlled by the most powerful men on Earth; and they are all in collusion for the benefit of the very few, and control and manipulation of the people.  The world media is owned by a few families; and they tell the public what the PTB wants us to hear.  They have one goal in mind.  Global domination through our money supply, our medical system, it’s insidious drugs; and our food.  Every time there’s a commercial break, you see another plug for some drug that’s going to change your life.  Believe it.  Drugs are a major component of the world wide deception.  Of the Fortune 500 companies, the top ten drug and pharmaceutical companies make more profits than the other 490 combined. 

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Fruits and vegetables don't have bar codes on them. The number on the little sticker is a PLU, Price Look Up number.  The first digit is the key to the code.

 •8 means it’s GMO (Genetically Modified Organism),

•3 = it’s been irradiated,

•4 = it’s been conventionally grown (ie. with petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides) and

•9 = ORGANIC, which is the ONLY healthy choice.

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Copy and paste this and print it out; and pass it to all your friends and relatives.  Encourage them to read the labels on what they buy and consume.  Help them to understand the difference between ‘conventionally grown’ and organic.

We DO have a choice.  And that’s the way it is. 

I’m not signing off.  We can’t fight the PTB on the battlefield, or in the courts, or on the streets.  They own the courts.  They own the police.  They own the armed forces.  They own the banks.  They own the media. They own Congress.  And they own the Presidency.  We can’t expect to win if we play by their rules; and those are the only rules we have.  They make the law.  There is actually legislation being considered in Congress at this very moment that would have a profound impact on our food supply.  It is Senate bill S 510.  This bill will ban vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements (except in very low dosages) and make it impossible and unlawful to buy farmers market produce, organically produced fruits and vegetables; raw, unpasteurized milk (ie. milk that hasn’t been killed by boiling it until it’s dead and nutritionally inert and useless) and organic eggs and raw, organic cheeses and butter.  This bill, if approved, will decimate small farmers and shift commercial food production yet further into the toxic hands of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Con Agra, Tyson, and other megalithic corporations.  It has long been the goal of Agribusiness to dominate the food production market, and they’re succeeding.  Read the labels.  Or better yet, don’t buy anything with a label on it.  And I know…

This is change you don’t want to believe in.

It is a paradigm that must be stopped.  Our children are riding our sagging shoulders into oblivion.  Please do not think for a moment that you are immune to what is happening.  Our planet is at risk.  Avatar isn’t merely a prophetic film.  It’s a symptom.  An icon. We are staring at the extinction of civilization. In fifty years there won’t be a middle class in the United States of America.  The devastation and depletion of resources has doomed every major culture throughout history; only this time, we’re doing it on a planetary scale. 

We can change things.  Buy local, organic food.  Drive less.  Walk and bicycle more.  Use biofuel.  Don’t eat commercially processed foods.  Grow your own organic food.  The key modifier is ‘organic’ and local.  Local is fresh.  Fresh is closer to the Earth, and more alive = more life force = better nutrition. Feed your body, not your stomach.  READ THE LABEL.  Don’t take prescription drugs.  More than 100,000 people die every year from prescription drugs.  That’s more than twice the number of people who die in car accidents.  Be your own doctor.  Listen to your body, and take it’s advice.  Live simple.  Trade, and barter, and make do with less.  You will find this gives you more appreciation for everything.  Seek out nature, and the stars.  Go out there, where the city lights do not interfere with the natural world.  Take off your shoes and walk barefoot on the Earth.  Ground yourself.  Breathe.  Each breath is connection with the divine.

There is a dynamic relationship between our consciousness and our condition; and world conditions too.  As we acknowledge the presence and the love of God and Goddess within, we develop and hone our native ability to radiate that energetic reality out… into the world.  We are powerful electromagnetic beings, able to transmit our love and inner peace to others, wherever we are.  We do this all the time on a personal level; and we can do it globally. The entrenched political machine and the PTB fear our awakening; as far fetched as it sounds, and this is the only solution to the troubles of humankind. 

We must activate our internal technologies.  We must reach for and acknowledge our inner connection with the Earth, and the stars.  That is where we come from.   We aren’t contemporary apes.  We are children of the stars, and those of us who acknowledge this can be a collective catalyst for the evolution of humanity on Earth.  It is time to manifest our truth, power up our enormous potential as human beings, and allow our inner divinity to blossom forth.  The apes deserve it too, as do all creatures; or as my native American brothers would say, the two leggeds, the tree people, the four legged people, the winged people; the water, the air, the soil. 

United we stand.  We have the PTB outnumbered ten thousand to one.  But we cannot fight them.  That would serve their purpose.  We must rise up in peace and faith and love and solidarity.  We must ally ourselves with Mother Earth.

She is a living organism.  We are so blessed to be stewards of Her magnificence. Though we are unconscious, she shelters us.  She is matrilineal, not patriarchal.  She rarely complains.  She endures.  She honors all beings, and brings new life into the world.  Once, we understood and celebrated the beauty and significance of our indigenous relationship.  Organized religion had not yet harnessed the spiritual yearnings of humankind; business was simple; profit was not our life force; television was not our glowing altar; petrochemicals were not our blood; men and women were not confused by their sexuality or their purpose in life; the Earth was not polluted, and neither were we.  There was no politics.  No religion.  No corporations.  No conspiracy.  Life on Earth was simple then, black and white and shades of gray so colorful as to bring us into recognition of a place where good and evil merge as one. This is Earth.  This is home.  This is our circle of life.  

The essence of revolution is evolution. 

© W. Bruce Wright.  Ashland, Oregon