Reality is what we can get away with.

We tend to look at religion in certain ways. There is truth in these ways but it is not the entire truth. There are things that most do not know or understand. The mystery traditions teach a fuller truth but few of their adepts look deep enough to see the entirety of it. Ultimately the lesson is that there is no truth. Reality is made up of what we put into it collectively. We summon the godhead from within.

God is internal rather then external. We are all “of god”, Christos. Jesus taught this as well as an anarchistic view of the world. He was not Jesus of Nazareth, he was Jesus of god. The city state did not matter to him rather we were all created equal, we were all children of god.

There have always been dark forces that understood the teaching of the mysteries and used them for their own ends. Many of those dark forces hold positions of power within the church. By 336AD those forces had control and the Council of Nicaea did more then put out a creed. They hand picked the books that would become the new testament and did so in a way as to control the masses. The bible we have today is made up of only those books they felt could be used to control.

Jefferson understood this and he picked only verses that did not involve Jesus performing miracles when he put together his book “The life and moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth”. His choices come from the oldest books of the new testament but even these are only datable to around 100 years after the time of Jesus. However there are other books that the Nicaean council kept out of their version of the bible. The Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Judas, the collection known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and others.

These lost books were hidden for nearly 2000 years and only resurfaced now in a time when those who found them and brought them to the people would not be labeled heretics and burned along with the texts they discovered. If ever god had a plan it was in keeping these books safe and bringing them to us in this age of semi-enlightenment.

To re-write our reality, to overturn the cult of the slain god and bring back the true message of Jesus, this is a worthy goal that will require the work of many. Spreading the words of Jesus, showing how he stood up against unjust authority, how he challenged the status quo , and teaching how his words have been twisted to the very opposite of his original message, is of the utmost importance.

His church was one of resistance and self improvement while the churches that use the roman torture device known as the crucifix as their symbol tend to teach obedience and improvement only through the sanctioned church. We must rebuild the church of Jesus, one that values life over money, poor over rich, enrichment of the self by enriching the entirety of society.

Many historians have noted that there are no tombs marked with crucifixes found in the centuries immediately following the life of Jesus. However there are those tombs marked with an upside down V, a chevron, over a circle. The chevron represents ascension, the journey upward to heaven while the circle represents the self. This is most likely the original symbol of the teachings of Jesus. The self ascending. Not just at the moment of death but throughout their life. The goal of these early Christians was bringing the kingdom of heaven, one where all men and women are equal, to earth through their tireless work. A kingdom that had no ruler or laws outside of the laws of god. This proto-socialism was a threat to the empire and the reason while early Christians, the people of god, were persecuted by the Romans.

Constantine found the ultimate persecution and turned the teachings into something that supported Rome rather then resisting it. Rather than feed people to lions he turned them into the lions, praying on their own. Instead of trying to better all the goal became to better the self here on earth. No longer was the goal to bring heaven to earth, instead one would sin and support the church to have those sins forgiven so they could go to heaven in the afterlife. Jesus cursed those who hoarded while others suffered but Constantine's church was made of those who would gather gold and worldly possessions. The parables against the rich became ways to fleece the poor of what little they had. The eye of the needle became a fictitious gate rather then an impossibility. The church itself became a hoarder of money and power. Gold and jewels adorn these churches. While Jesus preached in open air markets with the sun above him these pretenders preached in the darkness of closed rooms with only candles and stray sunlight filtered through gilded and stained glass to light the room.

These are more than allegory, these are the truths. The church of Christos, the church of the people of god, was an Anarchist (against the state, Rome) Socialist (for the entire people rather than the few) organization that resisted injustice and whose members were willing to die for their beliefs. Few today understand what Jesus fought for let alone the risks he knowingly took in doing so.

Jesus preached resistance to oppression. Resistance to repression from state and resistance to repression from the church. The majority of those alive today who call themselves Christians are those Jesus would have stood against. It does not matter how charismatic a preacher is, when he is wearing a thousand dollar suit and being displayed on giant screens behind him then he is just another force of Mammon. If only the poor can get into heaven then why are so many priests surrounded by the luxuries of the the rich? Why are their churches filled with golden idols?

These are some of the questions that the Christians of today need to ask themselves. What would Jesus do? It's not just a simple slogan worn on t-shirts and bracelets it is a legitimate question that we should all be asking ourselves every day. Jesus would have been in liberty plaza in New York as part of the Occupy Movement. He would be walking into the banks and flipping over their tables. He would understand how the banks exist only to take a portion of your earnings, that they are a force of Mammon.

Jesus would be outside of the Pentagon protesting the actions of the Department of Defense around the world. He would understand how our destruction in the middle east, his homeland, is the reason why the United States is so hated over there. How decades of our compliance with dictators and supplying them with the weapons they need to repress their people has driven some of them to extremism. How our very actions are the cause of the terrorism we now fight.

Some preachers today talk of fire and brimstone. They talk of the wrath of god. They use the fear of god to put you into a position where you will obey the state. This has nothing to do with the teaching of Jesus. Jesus taught love and tolerance. He taught that the old laws of Leviticus no longer apply. He taught equality. When others would relegate someone to the lowly rank of a foot washer Jesus lowered himself and washed her feet. The reality of Jesus must become the reality we live in. A homeless Palestinian Anarchist changed the world in his time. In his name we must stand up against the very forces he stood against in his time and bring back the world he created. If we do not and we continue to let Mammon rule over us then we are doomed.

The time of judgment is upon us. False divides like Republican and Democrat, Left and Right, Black and White, have been used to keep us fighting amongst ourselves for too long. The enemy Jesus fought, the forces of Mammon, the rich who would rule over us, must be defeated before it is too late. We must make a stand now, for all of mankind, for the equality that Jesus stood for, right now and for the rest of our lives. You can live like Jesus, live as one of the people of god, or you can continue to work for Mammon and doom us all.

The first lesson.

Kindergarten. The first place where someone outside of our family-unit attempts to program us. The first place a professional programmer gets inside our brain.

Not all 'teachers' are the same. Some teach skills, some teach life lessons, some just teach obedience. I've had all sorts in my short lived career as a professional student. I do not remember the name of the first person who tried to teach blind obedience to me but I'll forever remember the moment when I realized it was all a lie.

See there was this fish tank. I liked the fish tank, it was an entire microcosm of the sea. Living creatures, plants, water, sun, earth, and air. The air especially interested me. It bubbled up from the bottom and my young brain was already beginning to work as an engineer so I quickly found the hose that fed air under the rocks and to test my hypothesis I squeezed the hose.

The bubbles stopped.

I released the hose, the bubbles started again.

I squeezed the hose a second time and again the bubbles stopped confirming my hypothesis that the hose was involved in the creation of the bubbles.

Now I should note that all this was before class began. Maybe half the children in the class were already there. I remember one child standing with me next to the fish tank likewise enthralled by the near magickal control over the element of air this piece of rubber hose held.

Enter the teacher. I'm not sure if I heard the teacher enter the room, I feel like I must have. However since class had not yet started and it was typical for the children to roam about the room until the bell rang I simply continued being enraptured by the connection between the hose and the bubbles. Squeeze the hose bubbles stop, release and they start again. Squeeze the hose and...

The left side of my head exploded in pain as the teacher grabbed me by the ear and yanked me away from the tank. Instantly my entire world was centered on the pain and the screaming adult in front of me.

“What do you think you're doing?” was yelled at me. I did not yet understand what a rhetorical question was so I was a little distraught when I was given no chance to answer the apparent question. The teacher continued with “Why are you trying to kill the fish?” again no chance for a reply was given to what had appeared to be a question.

At this point I became aware that the entire class was watching the two of us. The imprint was meant not just for me but for the entirety of the classroom. I was sure the teacher wanted us to learn something but I wasn't sure what it could be. I wasn't trying to hurt the fish, I certainly wasn't trying to kill them. I had been very careful not to release the hose while any fish were right in the path of the bubbles unlike the teacher who did not seem to mind causing pain, both as she had pulled me away from the tank by my ear and now as she practically threw me at my table area.

I'm sure I must have been a poor student that day as my mind raced with questions like 'why did she think I was trying to hurt the fish?' and 'what did I do wrong' leaving no room to pay attention during the rest of the class. This started a long tradition of me internalizing things to an extent that would often make it appear as if I was less attentive than I could be. I was very attentive but it was only to those things that I thought were really important and the lessons of the day were of much less importance to me than figuring out why I had been both physically injured and been singled out for a reprimand in front of my peers.

By the end of the class I had if figured out. The teacher did not care to know the answers to the 'questions' she asked me, that much was easy to discover as she never gave me time to answer. So my mind decided that she must already know the answers. Of course the answer to the first question was “trying to figure out how this works” and the second was “I'm not, I like the fish.” Since she must (as an adult and a teacher no less, the keepers of all knowledge) know the answers than then lesson must be something else.

Don't investigate on your own. Don't teach yourself. That had to be what she was trying to teach the class.

This was the first moment when I learned to not blindly trust adults.

This was the first moment I remember noticing irrational behavior. Her actions made no sense to me and I truly had to ponder the situation to try and decipher the meanings behind the actions.

This was the first time I questioned authority. I knew what I was doing and she did not.

This was the first time I realized that if you really wanted to learn you had to do it on your own because the people sent to teach us were there to keep us in line and only following the paths of learning we were approved to follow. Real learning, unadulterated learning, could only be had by teaching yourself.

That was the day I fell out of love with school. That day opened my mind to distrust and made me aware of misunderstandings. I knew from that day on that I would quest for knowledge and that the hidden lessons held more for me than the school sanctioned ones.

I thank that nameless teacher. She may have been one of the worst teachers I ever had but only by having so horrid was I able to learn these lessons. I had been woken up from the dream by pain and humiliation and in the new awake world I knew I now existed in I must be careful as somethings we learn we must never let those in authority over us know we have learned or there will be repercussions.

My true programming had begun.

A year has passed sing last this blog was updated.

Here is a collection of thoughts on recent events.

Looking back at these observations I must remind myself and others it's always darkest before the dawn.

                                                              _______________________



Day 46 of the 45th administration.

A massive dump of information by Wikileaks includes much information about activities performed by the CIA during the 44th administration. Amid protests of 45 we are reminded that "our" government does not serve the people, they spy on the people.

The fever dreams of every tinfoil hat wearing paranoid seems credible as the code used by the CIA to turn TV's into recording devices monitoring the population is revealed.

While the hacking world begins to dig into this code, both white hats looking for ways to stop such intrusions and black hats seeking to use them for their own purposes, the majority of the populations keeps looking for the specter of the cold war, just as their media has told them too, rather than caring about the actual proof that the CIA interfered with the 2012 election in France.

Our collective decent into madness mines deeper and deeper realms to delve into.

     _________________________________________________________________________



 40th day of the 45th administration

The air smells as it did in France the spring of 1789. Senators lock their doors and hide from their constituents. This would be promising if the warm spring breeze did not carry this to us in winter.

While Senator Ron Johnson hides in a darkened office as his staff delivers a cease and desist note to his constituents gathered to talk with him the permafrost in large swaths of the arctic including Alaska and Canada is no longer frost, nor perma.

Recent news is that over 52,000 square miles of permafrost has been lost just this winter. Record temperatures have spiked all over the world and total we are looking at setting a new all time high. Alongside humans wearing shorts in February we can add less die off of wood boar beetles due to the lack of freeze. The forests continue to thin at an accelerated pace.

The Democrats continue to pretend to represent the people even as they vote to not add a ban on corporate money. Meanwhile they are silent as the military has moved in with assault rifles and forcibly remove natives from their land and role as protectors of our water.

When corporate bottom line is more important then continued planetary stability then no one is allowed to call themselves conservative.

I hope your seat belt is fully fastened because things are just starting to speed up.


     _________________________________________________________________________




As I Awaken on this the 33rd day of the 45th administration I find that the sword of Damocles is hanging over the heads of our collective future.

Despite being only a fraction of a percentage (0.000062%) of the budget the giant banhammer of doom has targeted the National Endowment for the Arts.

That's right, in a 2.5 Trillion dollar budget that is planed to include increases to Military spending and a giant fucking wall to replace the medium fucking wall we already have that does nothing to keep immigrants out 45 thinks that getting rid of the 145 million dollars that funds public radio and TV is going to fix things.

In an age when schools are increasingly inept at teaching, when parents are unable to afford preschool, this is not the time to be gutting our limited free programing of all educational programs yet that is what has been targeted.

I'm not sure if I am furious or happy as 45 seems hell bent on accelerating our decent into oblivion.
Will the world be a better place when the US is no longer a world leader? Will we all be better off when the United States has turned into the largest 3rd world nation filled with those who underwent the DeVos corporate education system? Will the children who grow up without PBS realize what they are missing?

Or will our increase in military spending bring about mutually assured destruction before they even come of age?

As the seconds keep ticking off on the doomsday clock I ponder these things as I begin gathering the needed documents to get a passport...

     ______________________________________________________________________



24th day of the 45th administration.

#Resistance continues in North Dakota. As judges push forward with the corporate agenda, drill baby drill, veterans gather in anticipation of what comes next.

While the Los Angeles Times tells us how quickly 45's poll numbers have fallen since he took office they also try to push people away from radicalism by publishing a hit piece on "the Black Bloc"

California continues to lay under a haze of legal smoke that blankets the entire west coast as yet unworried that the change in administrations may bring a change to enforcement.

The winter continues on as one of the warmest of record. While full data is not yet available and the current winter storms on the northeast may change things up until today it has been the warmest winter ever on record in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

As we continue our rollercoaster ride into oblivion I urge all to remember to live their life as morally and nobly as they can they can while succumbing to every hedonistic wish they can get away with without harming others.

Fight the Establishment

So this is the were I bitch about corruption and such right? Well let me tell you all about a little something that I've been standing up against for years now.

I'll start with a quick mention of Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall was a political group in new your city. What would be called a good old boys network. They were the establishment of the Democratic party in the mid 1800's and under Boss Tweed they controlled they city with near mobster like precision. When people try to play the Republicans are the bad guys card Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall are the go to counter.

But Tammany Hall lost it's power and their grip over New York politics and were fully kicked out in the 30's by the New Deal you say. Sure they were but that does not mean there have not been other fraudulent democratic parties that have tried to control things since.

This brings me to my time 'Living here in Allentown.' Well the factories have already been all torn down and now they built an arena. An arena built on the backs of the tax payer. I first got involved with fighting the future PPL center hokey arena in Allentown PA near the very start, early 2011. Eminent Domain was being thrown about as a way to scare business owners into selling their property to the city. Meeting were held, citizens were outraged, and the city council did not care. Things are going to move forward they said. You can fight us or give n now either way you will lose.

Just the threat got all but one business to sell to the city right away. That one business that fought got more for their property then anyone else. Never give up the fight, even if you can't win.

Then came occupy. I didn't do it. I was never at a meeting at the beaver street building in New York, I didn't camp on Bloombergs lawn that summer, but I had heard that something was in the works. Our own Arab Spring. (An American Fall if you will) And when it hit I knew what was up. We were going to do what we had been doing for years. Protest income inequality, point to the banks (and the WTO, and the G8's & 20's) This was old hat for me. I had been doing these sorts of events for years. I didn't start with the big one in Seattle in 99but I had followed that and knew the ins and outs. This time however we were going to go to an old method of protest, seizing public land, and since no one understood us we were going to put away our black flags and ideologies. Sure Anarchism is about empowering the workers but so much propaganda against us over the last 150+ years had fooled people into thinking we really were the bomb throwing crazy people we had been framed as since the Haymarket Massacre.

I did not call the first Occupy Allentown protest but I was there the first day. I had read "How to cook a pacific revolution" the handbook created by those behind the Arab Spring. Take a global problem and find a local issue that involves it they said. That's why New York took the monetary issue right to the root, Wall Street. In Allentown someone else already called the first Occupy Allentown protest on the corner where they were taking peoples businesses away from them to build a tax payer funded arena.

Now I know what your saying right now, arenas are usually built by tax payers but Allentowns case is special. They set up a new law, the NIZ (Neighborhood Improvement Zone) that not only lets the arena get funded by tax dollars it also gives private developers that ability to take tax money and use it to pay off loans for new construction. Before the first day of Occupy I was already following the money. As Occupy was going strong I was in the streets with the news paper, often that days edition, running commentary on what was going on. Showing people who two people, J.B.Reilly and Joe Topper, who own 'City Center Development co.' had bought up much of area just before the law was signed by Pat Browne, J.B.'s old school chum. How the Lawyer who had been hired by Browne to draft the law was also J.B.'s personal lawyer. How Reilly and Topper had hired Browne's wife Heather to work as a lobbyist for them. How City Center was given a 20 million dollar tax payer backed loan to buy more property BEFORE THERE WAS A WAY TO APPLY FOR NIZ FUNDS. How when the NIZ area of 120 acres was mapped out if was not a simple rectangle but rather a complex form that jutted out here and there to include only certain buildings here, and odd block there. All properties owned by City Center.

And of course JB and Joe were the top donors to Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. While Ed was not in charge of creating the NIZ zone he was the one who appointed the people to the comity that did draw up those borders.

For months I camped on the streets telling everyone who walked past about what was going on. I connected all the dots. I pointed out connections to then Montgomery county Democratic Party Chair Marcel Groen (Now Chair of the State party) I warned that the city was miscounting parking spaces (the city has now said there is not enough parking and has increased meter prices from $1 an hour to $2 and hour and extended paid parking hours from 6 to 10pm to encourage carpooling) I pointed to lists of names that had given money to the local Democratic Party only to end up with lucrative contracts. I showed how the Allentown hokey arena cost 3 times as much as any other minor league hokey arena.

When the police came are destroyed our camp, cutting tents open and breaking tent polls in half, claiming the camp was covered in piss and shit and that's why they had to throw our stuff in the dump, I was there leading chants against them. And I did not go away. I spent another year + holding rallies and going to city council meetings. I tried to save the water when they city, after giving away over a billion in tax payer backed loans, needed to make up lost revenue so they sold the public water supply. I fought Marcel Groen when he tried to put in an incinerator downtown that would have burned an experimental mix of feces and garbage. So experimental that it was given special status that would have let it break EPA emission guidelines as a "test"

Total from the time I first heard of the arena plans, through occupy, till I left after we lost the water (but we did stop the incinerator) I spent 3 years fighting city hall in Allentown. Fighting the Democratic party establishment. They say you can't fight city hall, well I did. I fought them long and hard. I had a lot of allies. Old political friends from my anti war days, new people mad as hell who joined occupy, clean water action, the sierra club, fellow union members (IWW 4 life) Some stayed for one or two campaigns, so were there for the long hall. Finally I left. I was to tired. I had watched too many battles get lost. The construction was in full swing, people had re-elected the same assholes I had warned them about. The very people who made fun of citizens when they came to council meetings. The money we were fighting was too much. I was suffering from protester burnout. It happens to us all. When your giving everything you have and your fighting against a system that just takes from those your trying to help to fund the fight against you... nothing is easy.

But then something happened. Something I never would have expected. The FBI had my back. No not with cross hairs (not just with cross hairs) they filed last year a corruption case against the mayors of Allentown and Reading. They raided city hall looking for documents pertaining to many of the people I had been pointing at. They have started charging people and getting guilty pleas, sending politicians to prison. The case is still early but it looks like a full blown RICO trial will happen soon. Right now they are still gathering, getting confessions from the weak links. But Mayor Pawlowski is going down. Once he was prepped to run for Governor, soon he will just be another perp walking up to a federal judge. Allentowns own Tammany Hall is falling.

I like to think the protests I helped organize had something to do with it. (or maybe those multiple calls to the state ethics hotline) but there is one thing I do know. Boss Tweed fell but Tammany Hall continued, albeit smaller and slower. It took the Democratic Socialism of FDR and the New Deal to really clean house. I know the Democratic party today is full of establishment politicians like Pawlowski. While the NIZ is being investigated three new cities in PA have been set up in similar fashion as CRIZ's (Community Revitalization and Improvement Zones) If we want to have a Left in this country, a real Left like the rest of the world has, then we need a new New Deal to clean out the establishment. We need to get rid of centrists like the Democratic Leadership Council (that later merged with the Clinton Foundation.) We need to elect people like Bernie Sanders, people like John Fetterman.

Only if we clean the Democratic party of these Tammany Hall types can we truly go back to having a democracy of the people.

Why I hate Bing and Google.

There is bullshit about. Not the nice kind that makes the flowers grow either.
Go to Bing. Search Bernie Sanders, search Hillary Clinton, search Donald Trump or Mark Rubio, search Iowa caucus. Search just about anything involving the primaries and see what comes up. I'll wait...
I'll attach what you should have seen here.

So last night the Iowa caucus was a dead heat. Clinton won by .3 percent but only because of 6 coin tosses that all came out in her favor. You get rid of those tosses and it ends up with Sanders 834 vs Clinton 833.
But that does not really matter. It was so close that each candidate will have one half the delegates for Iowa. 44 delegates going 22 each to Clinton and Sanders.
That's where things stand right now. 22 delegates each.
But Bing is telling anyone who looks up anything to do with the primaries that the delegate count is like this.
Clinton 384
Sanders 29
O'Malley 2
Why? Because of Super Delegates that have already said who they are going to vote for at the DNC.
You see the Democratic National Convention is very undemocratic. 20% of the final delegate count is made of Super Delegates.
It works like this. I'll use Iowa as an example since they just did their Caucus (a primary of sorts, just a really weird one. That's a story for another post) and we know their results.
As I mentioned above there are 44 delegates in Iowa. These are assigned based on the percentage of votes a candidate gets. Last night it was split down the middle. The almost 200,000 people who voted last night get turned into those 44 delegates. But another 8 people, party insiders like the Democratic party chair for the state, are super delegates. They get to vote however they want. They are not bound to the democratic results of the primaries. So that's 52 delegates for Iowa total.
Many of the super delegates (they count for 20% of the total vote and the DNC) have already said who they will vote for. Bing is adding those undemocratic super delegate pledges to the total numbers to make it look like Clinton is in the lead. None of those Super Delegates have voted yet and they may still change their mind, they did in 2008.
But Bing wants us to think that Sanders has no chance. That Clinton is leading him 384 to 29. They want anyone looking into the primaries to think Sanders has already lost. This is perhaps the most evil underhanded thing any news group has done so far this election. While Bing's owner Microsoft is not in Hillary's top donors the Gates foundation (run by Microsoft founder Bill Gates) is the Clinton foundation's (run by Bill and Hillary) top donor having given them over 26 million dollars. While the Gates foundation did not lobby Clinton when she was Secretary of State Microsoft did. Legally this is okay but it's easy to read between the lines and see that the 26 million donation was sure to effect Clinton's views.
This election is going to be a fight the likes of which has not been seen since 1968. In 68 the Super Delegates used the fact that there were multiple pro peace candidates running to elect a pro war Democrat who had not even run in the primary. This led to fist fights on the floor of the DNC including security sucker punching Dan Rather.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wItUjFU1i4M
We may very well be facing this again. At the very least Bing is trying to use the not yet even voted but only pledged Super Delegates to try and throw the election for Clinton. We are witnessing the perversion of Democracy first hand.

I have now been informed that Google is doing it as well.

Socialist countries are failing you say?

Every time someone on the internet brings up Socialism there has to be at least one person who starts the "Socialism is bad, m'cay" routine.   It's a given.  And it seems like the all got the same mass email of "how to debate Socialism" in their inbox.  Nothing the say is ever backed up with facts.  There are no hard numbers, or in the rare case that there are numbers they are only from one side.  One I always hear is "Look at the Scandinavian Debt clock.  The Nordic countries are failing. They want to get rid of their Socialism and go back to Capitalism.

Well lets start with some Debt clocks then shall we?

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/denmark

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/finland

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/norway
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/sweden

There are the Nordic block countries and yes their National debt is swelling.  Gosh those clocks keep spinning while I watch them.  How about some of those numbers below the debt.


Denmark  -     Interest per Second - $115    Debt as % of GDP - 46.57%    Debt per Citizen $27,985
Finland  -        Interest per Second - $119    Debt as % of GDP - 59.68%    Debt per Citizen - $28,752 
Norway  -       Interest per Second - $68      Debt as % of GDP - 19.62%    Debt per Citizen - $14,419
Sweden  -       Interest per Second - $127    Debt as % of GDP - 28.09%    Debt per Citizen - $16,536


Boy oh boy those are some scary numbers.  There is no way out of it. The north Of Europe, that vast Socialist with with all their universal healthcare, free college, welfare programs.  It's no wonder they are so deeply in debt.

Of course we here are doing so much better

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedstates

USA       Interest per Second - $16,692     Debt as % of GDP - 104.50%    Debt per Citizen - $56,797

Or maybe not so much.

If you bring this up the next thing you get to hear is that those Nordic countries have super high tax rates.  They only keep their debt down by having exorbitant taxes.   So how about that?

Finland Tax rates 2011

Taxable earned income (US Dollars)		Rate within brackets
17,332 – 25,776		6.5%
25776 – 41,997		17.5%
41,997 – 75,773		21.5%
75,773 –		30.0%

 United States Tax rates 2011

Taxable earned income		Rate within brackets
8,500		10%
8,500–34,500		15%
34,500–83,600 83,600 83,600		25%
83,600–174,400		28.%

174,400–379,150		33%
379,150–		35%

Again to be fair there are other taxes too.  In Finland municipal taxes are Fixed and vary from 16.5% – 21.5%

Just like we have state taxes the vary from 0% in some states to as high as 13% in California. 

So yes Taxes end up being a little bit higher but not as much as those attacking Socialism would have you believe.  Not when you compare what they get for those taxes.  We get no healthcare and instead subsidize the health insurance marketplace with our taxes.  While a few people are happy with the Affordable Care Act there are plenty who are not for good reason.  High out of pocket costs, large deductible and premiums that are not included in our tax rates and would start to equalize things out a bit.  Then of course there's no tuition paid be the state for college here, limited workplace protections, no mandatory vacation time.  The list goes on. 

What do we pay for with our tax money?  One of the worst performing primary school systems in the developed world, more prisoners per capita then anywhere in the history of the world. Military aid sent out to both sides of conflicts our two largest military aid packages being to Israel and Egypt. And an overall military spending budget that is higher then the next 20 countries on the list combined all of whom we have treaties with.  Even our Veterans Administration in underfunded and those many who fought to keep our country "free" get less service the the average citizen in the Nordic bloc.

But they must have more poor people right?

Well I like to look at the children first so lets quote a study done of the 35 riches countries ranked by percentage of children who live in poverty. Here is info from the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in 2012

Children living in relative poverty:

Iceland     4.7
Finland     5.3
Norway    6.1


Denmark  7.3
Sweden    7.3


How about us?
We came in at number 34 out of 35
USA        23.1

In fact only two countries have more than 20% of their children living in relative poverty, Romania and the United States.


Now to be fair none of the Nordic countries are Socialist, they are mixed markets with both Capitalist and Socialist Economics being used.   In my mind this mixture of the two systems is the best way to go and I can only hope this country begins to follow this trend as mixing the two has in the past show to lead to economic growth.

Introduction to a book a have been working off and on since early 2012.

Does anything matter anymore? Tens of thousands gather together to say they are fed up with the treatment of the people by the government and we barely even hear about it except to create disinformation about what is going on. Why should we continue to try and gather for a redress of grievances if "our" government clearly does not want to let that happen? We now know that the FBI worked with DHS and other government agencies and local municipalities to organize a crackdown on local occupy movement groups around the country. Why? The only reason would be that the government knows the occupy movement is correct, that we have attained levels of corruption that surpass the oppressive regime we fought against over 200 years ago. No taxation without representation was the call then and today we again face that same thing. "We the people" were upset with all our taxes being taken away from us and given to the royal family. Today we have new leaders, the 1% as occupy likes to call them, but they rule us today the same as the British royal family ruled us then.

If next to nothing has changed over this time then we need to examine why. The truth is things have changed but then they went back. We must look at both how and why this happened. In 1776 we as a people decided enough was enough. We looked beyond left right divided and realized the truth, that every man woman and child were treated as less then slaves of the royal family. We were no more then cattle to them. Today, despite all the efforts of the founding fathers, we are right back to being cattle. What went wrong? Many things happened starting with making too many deals. The declaration of independence, written in June of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson, paints a very different version of what the founding fathers imagined then the constitution and the bill of rights when they were written from 1787 to 1789. During those years something happened, part of finding out what happened is looking at who signed those two documents, and who didn't. We all look at Jefferson as a founding father yet he never signed the constitution as it went against nearly everything he stood for. While the Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal" the constitution counted 5 slaves as 3 people for districting and limited voting rights to only landowners until the 1830's. "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the Declaration of Independence. "Inalienable rights" the Declaration. Just about everything we think this country stands for comes from the Declaration of Independence, a Document that has nothing to do with the system of government we now have. So we can see that within those few years we had already lost much of what we think this country was founded on.

Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers wanted a federal government that only oversaw the interactions of the different states. This can be seen in the articles of confederation, the system of government we had in this country from 1774 until 1789. The first true president of this country was Peyton Randolph in 1774. George Washington called the president of the continental congress "the most important office in this country." After Peyton Randolph there were another 14 Presidents of the continental congress until we got rid of the articles of confederation and replaced them with the constitution. So why then do the history books not talk about this early government? Why are they hidden away from us? What do they not want us to know? The most important thing to know is that war is not cheap. Even the guerrilla war waged by the minutemen cost quite a bit and since it was a war against taxes there was no easy way to fund it. Much of the funding came from France who were at odds with the British but still wealthy citizens of the Americas needed to be brought on board so many changes were made to keep them happy. While the Declaration held that there should be a small government of the people based on Jeffersonian Republicanism, the constitution pushed for a larger government based of Alexander Hamilton's federalist papers. A government where we would replace the British crown with a new ruling class, the richest of those who lived in the "new world."

We have to admit that without the funding of these richest early Americans the war might not have gone on very long, but to give up on the system of government set forth in the articles of confederation was to give up on the very thing these revolutionary soldiers were fighting for. Truth, Liberty, and Freedom were to be replaced by Lies, Injustice, and Slavery. Were it not for early Republicans who fought for the Bill of Rights this country would have failed from the start. However much of those rights were assumed to be quite easy to interpret, yet have proved to be open to much changes of intent. Let’s look at the 2nd Amendment. The promise of an armed militia was to keep our own government honest. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What is important to see here is the term "free state," that a militia, not an army, is required for freedom. How did the revolutionary militia differ from an army? The militias were true direct democracy in action. Leaders were elected by those who served in them and decisions were put to a vote. There was no requirement to serve, no prison time for deserters, and as such those who fought and died for their country had to feel as if they were a part of the unit, not a servant to their officers. Today's armed forces would fall to pieces if there was no requirement to serve once enlistment papers were signed. Would an openly run, democratic military be facing a suicide every day? Not likely as soldiers would not be forced to do things they do not agree with. Today's armed service men and women are forced into killing innocent civilians and trained to not feel guilty if they do kill someone just because of an itchy trigger finger. If soldiers were able to vote out commanding officers whose orders they disagreed with then most CO's would be gone. Those who joined the militias were made a part of the governing of this countries defense and they were armed with the best technology of the era.

Today gun ownership is relegated to sport weapons. If there was ever an armed revolt it would be put down by the very military that has sworn an oath to protect the rights it would suppress. Say that today, Texas decided to leave the union. That they would no longer be a part of the United States because it had grown in corruption to the point of citizens interests no longer being represented and had formed a new local government that did not recognize U.S. rule. The military would be called in and they would disarm or kill everyone who stood for "no taxation without representation" The very militias the second amendment protects are now listed as terrorist organizations by the FBI. However for a peoples militia to protect the values of this country it would have to have weapons of equal power to the governments military. I'm sure there are few who would argue that we should arm the people with stinger missiles but with bans on assault weapons being proposed we are seeing the one thing the people had left to protect themselves being taken from them.

The loss of the second amendment was gradual, just like the other losses we have suffered. They have swung back and forth many times but eventually we have lost everything this country was founded on. One great example is the civil war. In modern times we look at the civil war as being fought to end slavery but there are two main things to look at. One, was forcing the end of slavery before it naturally was unable to compete and failed on its own the cause of over 100 years of bigotry and racism? And two, did the loss of the States rights to govern themselves hurt us more than freeing the slaves helped? Today we are the leading the global race to lock our population up in a for profit prison system. A disproportionate ratio of the prison population is Black and the leading cause of incarceration is drug related. States efforts to regulate and decriminalize drug use are fought on the federal level and the very loss of States rights that were fought over during the civil war now keeps tens of thousands as slaves of the prison industrial complex.

From the cattle and railroad barons of the old west to the factory owners in the late 1800's things continued to get worse until we had the biggest income divide this country had ever seen. The pendulum finally swung back to the working class and the labor movement was born but from the beginning there was a divide in the labor movement. On one side you had the mainstream trade unions today represented mainly by the AFL-CIO and on the other side you had the radial industrial unions survived in the U.S. by only the IWW but elsewhere in the world many anarcho-syndicalist and socialist unions still thrive. Unfortunately first the tactics used were demonized by the Taft Hartley act then the very activists and organizers who were still active were vilified by McCarthyism until those battles won by the radicals are the few concessions still seen today. The fight for the 8 hour work day directly led to the haymarket massacre and the execution of 7 Anarchist union leaders for nothing beyond political ideology. Today we are seeing the return of many of the tactics used by radical unions in the early 20th century. 500,000 gathered in the Wisconsin capital chanting general strike during 2010 and the first general strike in over 60 years took place in Oakland California in October 2011. The IWW is the strongest it has been in decades and worldwide radical unions old and new are gaining support.

In the following chapters we will look in detail at both what has gone on in the past as well as what is going on now, how we are still fighting the same battles that the founding fathers waged and how we can learn from the mistakes of the past. We will look at the pendulum of the left right political spectrum that has been used to keep us enslaved and why we must break that system now and move beyond this false ideological divide and unite the working class to take back this country. In particular we will look at the two largest populist movements on the century, the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement, how they differ and how they are the same.