6/25 Vital Conversation: Occupy Patriarchy - Occupy Cafe2024-03-29T14:14:15Zhttp://www.occupycafe.org/forum/topics/6-25-vital-conversation-occupy-patriarchy?commentId=6451976%3AComment%3A26941&feed=yes&xn_auth=noYes, it was! (I'm listening t…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2013-06-13:6451976:Comment:385302013-06-13T15:44:05.341ZBen Robertshttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/BenRoberts
<p>Yes, it was! (I'm listening to the podcast of this call now, almost a year later). It was a good one, thanks in no small part to your efforts, Kelly.</p>
<p>Yes, it was! (I'm listening to the podcast of this call now, almost a year later). It was a good one, thanks in no small part to your efforts, Kelly.</p> Portland and Philly. you cou…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-29:6451976:Comment:270442012-06-29T02:48:53.329ZBen Robertshttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/BenRoberts
<p>Portland and Philly. you could gather your own group too if you wish.</p>
<p>Portland and Philly. you could gather your own group too if you wish.</p> I'm excited we will be contin…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-28:6451976:Comment:272422012-06-28T15:29:01.716ZKellyAngelPdxhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/KellyAngelPdx
<p>I'm excited we will be continuing to get into this topic this coming Monday July 2nd at 8am PST (11am Eastern time) in conjunction with the Occupy National Gathering! Invite your friends!</p>
<p>I'm excited we will be continuing to get into this topic this coming Monday July 2nd at 8am PST (11am Eastern time) in conjunction with the Occupy National Gathering! Invite your friends!</p> Mushin, I think it would be a…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:270112012-06-27T18:32:16.969ZMark E. Smithhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/MarkESmith
<p>Mushin, I think it would be a tragedy if the bison replaced the beef industry.</p>
<p>Bison were once so many that it would take days for a herd of them to pass by. They provided everything that people needed to survive: food, clothing, and shelter. They roamed freely and the earth provided for their needs as they provided for ours. They were not meant to be captives any more than we were.</p>
<p>Because the bison made it possible for indigenous people to survive without having to work for…</p>
<p>Mushin, I think it would be a tragedy if the bison replaced the beef industry.</p>
<p>Bison were once so many that it would take days for a herd of them to pass by. They provided everything that people needed to survive: food, clothing, and shelter. They roamed freely and the earth provided for their needs as they provided for ours. They were not meant to be captives any more than we were.</p>
<p>Because the bison made it possible for indigenous people to survive without having to work for corporations, Predator deliberately tried to kill them all. Only a few survived, but their habitat was destroyed. There are very few places they could roam freely if they returned--they would have to be fenced in. No living creature likes being fenced in.</p>
<p>Domesticated bison aren't the same as free bison, any more than domesticated humans are the same as free humans. Very few free humans remain on this earth, and as Winona LaDuke explained in my all-time favorite book, <em>All Our Relations</em>, all of them are under attack. Corporations want their land, their resources, or simply don't want them to exist as an example of the truth that it is possible for humans to exist without working for corporations.</p>
<p>We too, like the bison, were almost exterminated by western civilization. Billions of us were murdered and the survivors became captives. Some of us were domesticated, deprived of the right to roam and survive freely and fenced in, thousands of years ago, some only yesterday. But we are being raised for industry, not as free creatures with the dignity, respect, and freedoms to which all creatures are inherently and unalienably entitled.</p>
<p>The commons, the natural diversity that nature provided to sustain us freely, has been destroyed. Only tiny pockets and remnants survive and they are constantly under attack. Were the commons to be restored, so that people could live and roam freely like the buffalo, nobody would aspire to being a wage-slave. Why work when you already have everything you need?</p>
<p>I didn't choose to become homeless. Most people don't. Most people become homeless to escape unbearable abuse or because industrial "progress" and "technology" have found cheaper, more docile slaves and no longer needs them. I was absolutely certain that I would die on the streets. Very few homeless people ever get housing and the numbers of homeless are growing all the time. When I first got a roof over my head, about thirty years ago, it took me three years before I stopped thinking that I would be forced back onto the streets the next day, and was able to contemplate that I might be able to have a roof over my head for another week, or month, or year. The collapse of this system of government would certainly mean that I'd be homeless again. But if it would stop "progress," the pollution of the planet and the privatization of the commons, and stop "technology," turning living things, animals, and people into dead things for profit, I can only support it. My comfort should not come at the cost of genocide in the Congo to obtain coltan for electronics, genocide in half a dozen foreign countries to obtain fossil fuels (I've never owned a car), and death squads in hundreds of countries where the US sends them to foment violence in hopes of provoking wars so that defense contractors can sell more weapons. Nobody should be killed or enslaved to sustain the US lifestyle. Quoting S. Brian Willson, "We are not worth more, they are not worth less."</p>
<p>The bison are also our sisters and brothers. What was done to them was also done to us. When Robert King, the only member of the Angola 3 to have been freed (Angola is a slave plantation in Louisiana that is now called a prison, but only the name has changed--the conditions remain exactly the same.), spoke here in San Diego, an audience member asked him how he remained so calm after decades of solitary confinement. He said that while he had been in a maximum security prison, the rest of us are not free--we're just in minimum security prisons. He's right. In minimum security we get more privileges, but that's not the same as freedom. In my view we shouldn't be fighting for more privileges, we should be fighting for freedom. For everyone.</p>
<p>Where are the lifeboats, you ask? The owners of this cruise ship thought it was unsinkable, so they didn't provide enough lifeboats to begin with, and they were trying to cut costs, so the few lifeboats they provided weren't properly maintained (think Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans). They really weren't concerned about us surviving, they were thinking of their bottom line, profits. When our unsustainable lifestyles collapse, many of us will drown, many will survive by clinging to bits of wreckage, and only a very foresighted few will have constructed their own rafts. Many of us, like myself, live in cities and the closest thing to a life raft we can construct is an urban garden. But even our precious permaculture organic gardens are inundated daily with radiation from Fukushima. As Annie Leonard said in <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/" target="_blank">The Story of Stuff</a>, there is no "away." Patriarchy has conquered the entire planet (yes, a few tiny pockets remain, but they cannot sustain us all) and there is no longer an "away" where we can throw our nonbiodegradable trash, or an "away" that we can escape to. We clamber aboard a liferaft, only to sink it with our excess weight, to be turned away at every port, or to gain landfall only to find ourselves in a worse situation than the one we escaped.</p>
<p>Thank you, Mushin. I appreciate your perspective and am enjoying this discussion. Strangely enough, I believe that we can set things straight, but before we can do it, we need to understand the problem. I think the problem is basically the old monkey trap, where there's a box with a narrow opening and a desirable object inside that is too big to fit through the hole, so the monkey puts a hand in to get the object but can't withdraw the hand without dropping the object. Thus the monkey is trapped even though the solution is easy--nothing more than the old Buddhist advise to rid ourselves of desire so that we can be free.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p> Mark,
It's interesting how al…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:269412012-06-27T12:37:10.447ZMushinhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/PatricRoberts
<p>Mark,</p>
<p>It's interesting how aligned we are when we provoke then listen to the stories revealing the heart's passionate asirations in our common humanness. I often reflect how we are all innocent orphans, lost in the noise, confusion, distrust and despair just looking for our home in the midst of this "Get Money or Eat Dirt" running innovations upon innovations leaving us emptier and more alone, isolated and fearing in the mental structure of civilization. And I totally agree that the…</p>
<p>Mark,</p>
<p>It's interesting how aligned we are when we provoke then listen to the stories revealing the heart's passionate asirations in our common humanness. I often reflect how we are all innocent orphans, lost in the noise, confusion, distrust and despair just looking for our home in the midst of this "Get Money or Eat Dirt" running innovations upon innovations leaving us emptier and more alone, isolated and fearing in the mental structure of civilization. And I totally agree that the current mental structure is over, ended and non repairable. Reform is like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. </p>
<p>Where is the life boats we are looking for?</p>
<p>I am no defender of any injustice that uses self indulgent arrogance and aggression as a weapon of power in discourse to enslave the beauty and wonder in our human nature. Simultaneously, I recognize we are where we are in a global cultural matrix that has run out of time and where every human narrative needs listened to and valued as thread in a wonderful tapestry of enactive embodied presence in designing a new world together. </p>
<p>You spoke of the bisons disappearing and today they are also returning, and who is to say that someday the Bison replaces the beef industry? I have spent the last 8 years crossing over to a 3rd world country in my own backyard called American Prison Camp #334 Pine Ridge Reservation. What I learned is that even in the most painful genocidal situational conditions within this arrogant aggressive patriarchal western civilization people in cultures conserve a biological wisdom continuum that you point to in the experience of your story. The Lakota have a word "Wolakota" which means "Treaty promising to live in peace and friendship without greed." </p>
<p>What we are realizing in all these emergent creative collapsing opportunities in diverse domains of permanent human concerns is that political power has many unintended consequences in our social relations as a humanity. We hunger for wholeness in living realization with one another, love, a heartfelt experience of feeling legitimate in coexistence with one another and the web of life. Our (you) (i) authentic vulnerable imperfect identities are suffering in the patriarchal dance of the history that owns us and now "eats it's own" in war, education, politics, faith and commerce. Liberating each other happens in human conversations in P2P (person to person) manners of appreciative dignity of speakers and hears; tango dancing in the presence of one another and embracing the emotional heart felt juices. It's better than sex in my assessment! </p>
<p>Yet, we live in a chaotic subjective relativism today where individuated epistemologies exist and have no ground upon which to stand and a belief may be justified for the wrong reasoning and there is no negative feedback loop for correction in society. Is Larry Flint's right to pornography as a social community standard an equal voice to the Dalai Lama's understanding and teaching of human happiness as a monk? Just because you can do something in the name of individual freedom doesn't mean it's ethically justified in truth or reality in agreeing to our collective standard practices of designing a future world together? </p>
<p>What is you (I) (We) (Us) really want is the question, not necessarily where we are in ontological arguments based in old worn out epistemologies indoctrinating our current devisions as human beings I call Homo sapiens amans = wise~sing up social loving animals not gods.</p>
<p>Since 1984 I have been exploring a biological explanation called "Autopoiese" that is offering a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology" target="_blank">constructivist epistemology</a> where we leave forever ontological arguments of objective truth or reality, and take a stance opposing positivism based solely on sensual, romantic, psychic or fantasyland cultural belief systems, sometimes called blind faith or taken for granted paradigms in our global cultural indoctrinated belief systems of race, gender, tribal, nationality, religious, theoretical and commercial mores in culture. The only ground in constructivist enactive embodied approach is your own autopoietic reflection in experience within constellations of human knowledge, general systems. No one knows where we are going in this leading edge reflection of cognitive science. Imagine to start that we no longer have any assertions of truth or reality based on a transcendental authority to stand upon and one embraces the 1st Person experience in a living realization of being "a" observer giving a report intersecting "knowledge" arising in the commons we share as a humanity. Bateson's notion for "Steps in an Ecology of Mind" was an initial breakthrough of what we are up against in the hard rock certainties that are dividing us today. Humberto Maturana in my assessment offers us a deep rooted biological understanding of love that literally opens an optimistic transformation capable of liberating human conversations and creative collapsing opportunities to a new discourse bringing forth radical changes in institutions and standard practices in designing a future world together.</p>
<p>Finally, I first met Ben Roberts in a notion of "Four Years to Go" where the intention was to create a "Platform for Change" that commits to change the world in four years. A bold notion that requires everybody on board. Over the past few months experiencing the "Occupy Cafe's" appreciative inquiry and dialog process in real time and pure play has inspired my engagement today as a voice. I submit appreciation in conversations is enactive embodied love in action and the process produces a "3rd Party" within the speaker and hearer's experience of an emergent arising creative commons based in friendship. The domain of friendship is interesting to explore and understand because we all want friends and hate our bosses in daily living. Some of us, like yourself Mark, would rather be homeless for years and suffer the marginalization in the cultural conditions then loose the autopoietic spirit in the heart of who we are. Being different and hearing our own drummer in the swept along drift is never easy, yet, would anyone of us exchange where we are today to be a 1%'er living in the blind spot and missing the pain point we know now so well in the heart of the matter? </p>
<p>Being committed to appreciative inquiry and dialog is a radical trans~formative experience in "listening" where the emotional cognitive autopoietic 1st person identity becomes an "observer of the observer" in dignified manners of communication. Authenticity is what we desire in becoming whole and we see through "distinctions" in oral languaging with one another. Any transcendental epistemology is a lense that creates a viewpoint and what is interesting is everywhere you look that is what you see in the world. As an autopoietic Homo sapiens amans you choose to wear and participate in a new set of distinctions and lense where instead of division, war, strikes, violence, arrogance, aggression, exclusion and appropriation of power, one embraces social interactive dignity in presencing deep source knowing in living live speech utterances in authenticity connecting the heart felt experiences of getting to really know one another for a change.</p>
<p>You my friend are a blessing and I appreciate you and who knows where we walk together as the strategy enfolds us in walking together. With authentic voices like yours the homeless, waifs, imprisoned, wounded warriors, and rebellious disruptors I am and love will reconstruct and redesign our broken down civilization. I invite any 1%'er's interested in fun(d) raising give~a~way sacred money to join this cadre of innocent orphans coming home and occupying earth once and for all!</p>
<p>Thank you, Mushin</p>
<p>By the way "I am very tired and exhausted by all the insanity in the human conditional situations and looking to vegetate in my 'No~Thing Box' soon." Where does one go today to find that expansive space in the desert, cave or mountain top where autopoietic solitude, stillness and silence exists in experience with a living universe of beauty in the web of life? Ahhh yes that Aloha Heart Experience Jitendra brings us where the "eyes" relax and we are home at last naturally breathing the wonder in momentariness. </p> Yes indeed love without compa…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:267902012-06-27T08:12:09.916ZGael Bagehttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/GaelBage
<p>Yes indeed love without compassion is not love at all. It occurs to me tne thing that stands in our way of changing this is inherent in our present system where the economic situation demands that two parents work - a new born childs brain is undeveloped compared to a horses, the horse can stand, move and get around from birth the human child learns this gradually over the first few years including learning what love is and interaacting making connections learning to recieve love and…</p>
<p>Yes indeed love without compassion is not love at all. It occurs to me tne thing that stands in our way of changing this is inherent in our present system where the economic situation demands that two parents work - a new born childs brain is undeveloped compared to a horses, the horse can stand, move and get around from birth the human child learns this gradually over the first few years including learning what love is and interaacting making connections learning to recieve love and compassion having its needs met from an unstressed loving parent helps it to develop these qualities. One to one with the nurturing parent or parents, constantly available during the first few years it develops and learns to aquire and develop the same loving capabilities. stressed parents or absent parents mean the child does not acquire these skills that are essential for peace and happiness. Compassion is something we learn from our parents knee not from strangers and childminders. Another major block is also our present economic system, our two major industries help perpetuate the status quo without them the economy fails and we hit serious economic decline. What are these industries? The war machine and pharma, that is why our governments are so reluctant to change, why they are so eager to go to war, and why they try to outlaw natural medecine, and all the major banks invest in those, we are too if we bank with the major banks, Better to invest in a local currency or cooperative. That is why many in government top jobs, and heads of corporations etc have no compassion for the plight of the 99% most had a succession of nannies and did not recieve that one to one nurturing, so in a way they perhaps they could not help it. How do we change this present system which is perpetuating more of the same.?</p> Perfect timing! Just found th…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:268822012-06-27T06:32:48.478ZMark E. Smithhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/MarkESmith
<p>Perfect timing! Just found this blog post by Brian from yesterday, where he quotes Smedley Butler and lays out exactly what we have to do to bring about peace:</p>
<p><strong>War is a racket. It preserves the racket of capitalism.</strong></p>
<p>by S. Brian Willson</p>
<p>June 26, 2012</p>
<div class="entry-content"><p>The US Marine Corps most highly decorated general in its history, Smedley Butler (1881-1940) wrote a biting and scathing indictment of capitalism and the role of the US…</p>
</div>
<p>Perfect timing! Just found this blog post by Brian from yesterday, where he quotes Smedley Butler and lays out exactly what we have to do to bring about peace:</p>
<p><strong>War is a racket. It preserves the racket of capitalism.</strong></p>
<p>by S. Brian Willson</p>
<p>June 26, 2012</p>
<div class="entry-content"><p>The US Marine Corps most highly decorated general in its history, Smedley Butler (1881-1940) wrote a biting and scathing indictment of capitalism and the role of the US military in preserving it. It was called “War Is A Racket” (1935). But it is important to understand that the political economy we call capitalism is a racket that depends upon its military to preserve it’s capacity to steal from everywhere benefiting a few people in the West, in this case, the USA, while outsourcing incredible amount of pain and suffering to other people and the earth.</p>
<blockquote><p>Wikipedia: “<a title="War" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#Economic_theories">War</a> is a <a title="Racket (crime)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28crime%29">racket</a>. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”</p>
<p><em>“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for <a title="Big Business" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Business">Big Business</a>, for <a title="Wall Street" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street">Wall Street</a> and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make <a title="Mexico" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico">Mexico</a> and especially <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampico_Affair" target="_self">Tampico safe</a> for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make <a title="United States occupation of Haiti" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Haiti">Haiti</a> and <a title="Cuba" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba">Cuba</a> a decent place for the <a title="National City Bank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Bank">National City Bank</a> boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen <a title="Central American" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_American">Central American</a> republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped <a title="United States occupation of Nicaragua" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Nicaragua">purify Nicaragua</a> for the <a title="Bank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank">International Banking House</a> of <a title="Brown Bros. & Co." href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bros._%26_Co.">Brown Brothers</a> in 1902-1912. I brought light to the <a title="United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–1924)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_the_Dominican_Republic_%281916%E2%80%931924%29">Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916</a>. I helped <a title="Manuel Bonilla" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Bonilla">make Honduras right</a> for the <a title="Banana Wars" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars">American fruit companies</a> in 1903. In <a title="China Marines" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Marines">China in 1927</a> I helped see to it that <a title="Standard Oil" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Standard_Oil_In_China">Standard Oil</a> went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given <a title="Al Capone" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone">Al Capone</a> a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."</em></p>
<p><em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nothing constructively durable can emerge in such a political economy thru its electoral and litigation processes. A humane culture arises from a decentralized people’s nonviolent revolution, radically downsizing our consumption patterns, while re-learning cooperation and sharing in thousands of bioregionally based food sufficient communities.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.brianwillson.com/war-is-a-racket-it-preserves-the-racket-of-capitalism/" target="_blank">http://www.brianwillson.com/war-is-a-racket-it-preserves-the-racket-of-capitalism/</a></p>
</div> ROFL -- trying to embed a vid…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:269352012-06-27T03:49:48.765ZMark E. Smithhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/MarkESmith
<p>ROFL -- trying to embed a video for the first time, I lost most of my comment, so I'll try to reconstruct it.</p>
<p>In his book and his talks, S. Brian Willson often says, "We are not worth more, they are not worth less." That is the truth I believe.</p>
<p>It isn't anarchists or terrorists firing teachers and firemen, Mushin, it is the government you want to preserve. You look around and say, "How could anyone want to risk destroying all this?" I look around and say, "This is not worth…</p>
<p>ROFL -- trying to embed a video for the first time, I lost most of my comment, so I'll try to reconstruct it.</p>
<p>In his book and his talks, S. Brian Willson often says, "We are not worth more, they are not worth less." That is the truth I believe.</p>
<p>It isn't anarchists or terrorists firing teachers and firemen, Mushin, it is the government you want to preserve. You look around and say, "How could anyone want to risk destroying all this?" I look around and say, "This is not worth killing millions of innocent people and destroying the planet for."</p>
<p>I don't think cars and plastic are worth having killed off all the bison, cut down all the forests, removed whole mountaintops, and polluted all the air and water on the planet. I don't think that the US has a right to kill my Afghan cousins, because I found the people of Afghanistan, where I lived for about five years in the late '60s and early '70s, to be less self-centered and more compassionate than most people in the US. They are no more terrorists than Occupiers are terrorists. That's the dehumanizing label du jour which replaced Communists when the US became dependent upon Communist China and couldn't use the old label any more. Of course the US still calls anyone it wants to destroy in order to steal their resources, "savages," even when they have much older and less bloodthirsty civilizations.</p>
<p>I'm glad that you have the same aspirations for human justice and ending war that I do, Mushin. But if your country is perpetrating injustice everywhere, you cannot attain justice by asking what you can do for your country. I believe that JFK was assassinated by the US government for refusing an all-out invasion of Cuba and for trying to end the Vietnam war. If that makes you think I'm a crackpot conspiracy theorist (albeit one who edited <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amazon.com/Correspondence-Vincent-Salandria-Michael-Morrissey/dp/1430326646" target="_blank">a book</a> about early JFK assassination researchers), so be it.</p>
<p>I apologize for my blunt tone, Mushin, but Bush hasn't been President for three and a half years. Hanging him would be symbolic, but it wouldn't enable the world to gain respect for the current president, who has started more wars of aggression based on lies than Bush did, drone-bombed more innocent babies than Bush did, and even has his own Kill List, something so abhorrent to democracy than not even Bush did such a thing.</p>
<p>Anarchy does not mean chaos, Mushin. It means no rulers, not no rules. The nuclear football would be much safer with more citizen oversight than it is now in the sole possession of madmen and war criminals. Why would anyone trust a government that "lost" (had no records of, other than that it received the money, and was totally unable to account for what had happened to any of it) $2.3 trillion in 1981, with a nuclear football? I wouldn't trust them to remember their own names without a TelePrompter.</p>
<p>My avatar is a very old picture of me, but the only one I have on my computer and I don't have or want a camera. I've got too many genocide-derived luxuries already, including the computer itself which was constructed with blood coltan from the Congo.</p>
<p>Well, that's as much of the comment I lost that I can remember, Mushin. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, your fears, and your aspirations. Things aren't always as they seem. We live, we learn. As our relatives in Afghanistan say, "May you not be tired."</p>
<p></p> I'm 72, Mushin, I was never i…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:269342012-06-27T03:14:05.232ZMark E. Smithhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/MarkESmith
<p>I'm 72, Mushin, I was never in the military, but I was homeless for over twenty years and I've lived in other countries like Mexico, Honduras, and Afghanistan. While it might not be for everyone, I found that living in a mud hut with a thatched roof, a dirt floor, and no running water, electricity, or modern appliances, was much preferable to being homeless on the streets of New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. But enough about me, child. (Just joking, Mushin, please excuse my feeble attempt…</p>
<p>I'm 72, Mushin, I was never in the military, but I was homeless for over twenty years and I've lived in other countries like Mexico, Honduras, and Afghanistan. While it might not be for everyone, I found that living in a mud hut with a thatched roof, a dirt floor, and no running water, electricity, or modern appliances, was much preferable to being homeless on the streets of New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. But enough about me, child. (Just joking, Mushin, please excuse my feeble attempt at humor.)</p>
<p>Have you ever read <a rel="nofollow" href="http://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket" target="_blank">War is a Racket</a> by General Smedley Butler? You weren't fighting for my right to be an anarchist, you were fighting for Rockefeller's right to steal other countries' oil.</p>
<p>S. Brian Willson was a veteran. He's the peace activist who lost both his legs when the military he had voluntarily joined and once been gung ho for, illegally ran him over with a train at Concord Naval Weapons Station. In his book <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Tracks-Times-Brian-Willson/dp/1604864214" target="_blank">Blood on the Tracks and in videos like this one, <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cmIWp12MV5M?rel=0&wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Tracks-Times-Brian-Willson/dp/1604864214" target="_blank"></a><p></p>
<p>Brian explains that "We are not worth more, they are not worth less."</p>
</iframe>
</a></p> Mark,
Appreciate your passion…tag:www.occupycafe.org,2012-06-27:6451976:Comment:266772012-06-27T00:31:58.517ZMushinhttp://www.occupycafe.org/profile/PatricRoberts
<p>Mark,</p>
<p>Appreciate your passion for human justice and ending all war. I am by all means interested in the same outcome using a different method and process. What I am pointing to is that trans~formative change emerging in the American Experience is happening to a very young nation in the world that has exploded innovations like a "Big Bang" (like right now this Internet connectivity your experiencing) and has also lost it's ethical center as a compass. JFK said "Ask not what your…</p>
<p>Mark,</p>
<p>Appreciate your passion for human justice and ending all war. I am by all means interested in the same outcome using a different method and process. What I am pointing to is that trans~formative change emerging in the American Experience is happening to a very young nation in the world that has exploded innovations like a "Big Bang" (like right now this Internet connectivity your experiencing) and has also lost it's ethical center as a compass. JFK said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?" Good question in my assessment. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere? MLK So, I get it!</p>
<p>I am a Veteran and totally against armed conflicts since Kent State. The fact is there is less war today then anytime in human history by the calculations of some observers. Simultaneously we are on the verge of a very serious exponential collapse in diverse domains of human activities globally, and you want anarchy in America? Are you literally telling me you want America to fail, disappear, be over and experience the resulting immediate chaos in every neighborhood, village and community in the world? Really? What happens to the nuclear football? You want to fire policeman and firefighters too, and of course teachers won't be needed either, and definitely burn the churches!</p>
<p>Now I know we may have our collective American heads up our asses after the George Bush episode and the entire world may have lost total trust in our leadership? It's a humiliating experience. I may go along with sacrificial hanging of him to make everyone feel better as an act of atonement. But Brother I live with lakota men and women who serve honorably in the US Military to protect your right to be an anarchist, and the sad news is they have yet to experience a moment of your daily elite taken for granted arrogant freedom as the new age "king philosopher." </p>
<p>You may disagree with me and no wonder the "Occupy Movement" is having problems enlisting common folks! I may be indignant that doesn't mean I am crazy! Are you claiming the anarchy movement and terrorists in the world are the "Arising Commons?"</p>
<p>Please just for data how old are you? I don't want top be arrested for abusing a minor!</p>
<p>Mushin</p>
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