Episodes
Friday Aug 28, 2020
How can soup empower your community? Interview w/ Renee Orth
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Our guest today is Renee Orth. Renee is a community organizer with a passion for nourishing people with healthy, plant-based, locally sourced food. She is the founder of The Stone Soup Collective and is eager to catalyze a worker-owned cooperative that can expand access to nourishing food while providing a foundation for a just transition to a regenerative and equitable economy.
The Stone Soup Collective is a committed group of Charleston citizens who share a vision of a community where all are nourished, body and spirit by the abundance of the Lowcountry, its earth and its people, one bowl of soup at a time.
Their mission is to align the efforts of the Lowcountry to nourish their community through a buy one, give one plant-based soup collective.
https://www.thestonesoupcollective.com/
https://twitter.com/stonesoupchs
https://www.instagram.com/thestonesoupcollective/
https://www.facebook.com/TheStoneSoupCollective/
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Friday Aug 28, 2020
The 2020 Shift - Global Justice, Local Revolt and Ultimate Anarchy
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Friday Aug 28, 2020
When we launched the Waking Justice project last year, we understood that we were launching during a busy election year. And one that many folks consider “maybe the most important election ever,”.
To that end, our articles and podcasts have explored what seems to be the most essential question in this election: does it even really matter which party wins anymore? That may seem like an absurd question for some. But for those who have been in the trenches for a while fighting for Global Justice– they seem fully convinced: the system is now completely rigged to resist any - substantive - change. And after a year of exploring such claims, we are now in full agreement.
For example, we’ve explored peer-reviewed research like the recent Princeton Study which shows that over the past half century, average working-class citizens have had “a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on US public policy.” But when corporate elites want to stop a new policy, “there’s a 100% chance they’ll get their way.”
We’ve explored the work of various independent journalists who expose how “corporate elites have corrupted all levers of democratic reform in America, including both political parties, [the election system], the courts, academia, and the mass media.”
We’ve explored how BigOil and BigDefense are warmongering for oil to prop up the petrodollar to profit BigBanks. How BigMeat&Dairy props up America’s Disease-for-Profit Food system to profit BigChemical and especially BigPharma. How BigMeat&Dairy is the #1 cause of global infectious disease pandemics as well as the Sixth Great Mass Extinction of Species now underway. And how BigMeat&Dairy and BigOil are the leading drivers of the global climate crisis.
We’ve shown how the corporate takeover of our democracy has reduced BigPolitics to mere - political theater - where “BigTech ushers in the audience while BigMedia directs the show.”
We’ve explored the landmark Swiss Study that reveals how all the top companies across all these industries are all mutually reliant and interdependent: they invest in each other’s stocks and appoint their people to each other's boards of directors.
In fact, the controlling shares of most all the top companies across all major industries are owned by just a handful of major investment companies. It’s basically just one big corporate plutocracy - or what many call a “Corporatocracy.”
We’ve discussed how the US-led Corporatocracy is actually just the latest incarnation of the same old patriarchy that has dominated societies for millennia. In America, it emerges as “neoliberal, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy”, as feminist scholar bell hooks explains it. And in America, patriarchy retains all the age-old structures of oppression including structural racism, structural sexism, structural classism, and structural speciesism. But under corporate plutocracy, these systems have become commodified, made profitable, and mass-produced - exponentially:
- Structural Racism morphs into the so-called “War on Drugs”, the for-profit prison industry, and the militarization of community policing. Police shootings become a leading cause of death among Black men.
- Structural Sexism morphs into the pornification of mainstream culture. The sex-trafficking of women and children becomes a multi-billion dollar industry in the US. And sexualized male violence against women increases exponentially.
- Structural Speciesism morphs into what indie journo Lee Camp calls the industrial scale “torture-farming” of animals for our disease-for-profit food system. Activists who try to expose its cruelty are indicted as domestic terrorists.
- Structural Classism morphs into Austerity politics, the plunder of the social safety net, and skyrocketing income and wealth inequality. Election after election, each successive President–regardless of their party– transfers more wealth from the working class to the Top1% than their predecessor.
Taken altogether, it’s why Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges concludes that “the ruling elites and the corporations they serve are the principal obstacles to change.” And since they won’t give up power democratically, he says, “we will have to take it through other non-violent means– and that means revolution.”
We agree with Chris Hedges’ assessment. It is beyond delusional to still believe that voting and protest marches can ever make real change. We’re not saying don’t vote and protest-– those actions are vital to awaken the masses. We’re just saying that we must combine those actions with real political power. And the only real power that the working class has in a “corporate plutocracy” is mass economic boycott.
Especially now– the interdependencies and mutual investment among this “Corporatocracy” are its greatest strengths. But also its greatest weakness: when one industry suffers, they all suffer, and they all know it. It’s why economic boycott is the most effective means to challenge the U.S. Corporatocracy.
Indeed, mass organized boycott is the only collective will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power:
- It was Gandhi’s Salt and Textile boycotts in the 1920s that helped win India her independence from Great Britain.
- It was the mass strikes and picket lines in the 1930s that won US workers a 40 hour work week, sick pay and overtime pay.
- It was the bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins by Black Americans in the 1960s that helped win major Civil Rights reforms.
- It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts of the 60s and 70s that helped Migrant Farm Workers win important safety reforms and a fair living wage.
- And it was the divestment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally helped end Apartheid in South Africa.
Those were all great wins for Global Justice, but they did not happen overnight. They took years, even decades of sustained mass actions. For example, Gandhi’s Salt and Textile boycotts began in the 1920s, but India didn’t win her independence until 1947! ...And the huge gains for working class Americans in the 1930s were the culmination of almost two decades of ongoing mass picketing, strikes, and boycotts.
If we expect to wage an effective revolt against this Corporatocracy, we must prepare ourselves and our movement for years and decades of sustained mass boycott. Otherwise we are just bullshitting ourselves about any real hope for real change.
Indeed, now more than ever, the Corporatocracy is well prepared for any long term disruption to industry. For example, the Trump administration just approved a $6 Trillion dollar giveaway to corporations as part of the Covid-19 stimulus package. And that was on top of Trump’s record $1.5 Trillion in tax cuts for corporations. Fortune Magazine says the Trump administration has just orchestrated “the Biggest Cash Grab for Wealthy Elites in Modern History”.
And do you know who held that record before Donald Trump? Barack Obama. During his administration, Obama transferred a record $4.5 Trillion in corporate welfare to Wall Street Banks. At the time, it was heralded as “the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the Top 1% in US history.”
Within just the past decade, Obama and Trump have transferred over $12 TRILLION dollars of free money to US corporations. And that’s in addition to the 100s of BILLIONS in corporate welfare that the ruling elites are already stealing from our tax base each and every year.
To be crystal clear- over the past half century, Americans have been conned and fleeced by corporate elites to fund their takeover of our democracy. As Chris Hedges has said: “the corporate coup d'état of American democracy is now complete– the corporations have won.” And, as we said above, it is beyond delusional to still believe that we can ever fix this corrupted system by working within it.
Indeed, as Buckminster Fuller has said: “you never change things by fighting the existing system. To change things, you build a parallel new system that makes the existing system obsolete.”
That is the revolution we seek.
And it’s why we have sharpened our focus on what many believe is the most strategic work we can all be doing right now: working together to build a just and sustainable new system that makes this existing system of corruption obsolete.
So what exactly does the work of building “a new social system” look like?
When Gandhi* rallied the people of India in nonviolent revolt against Britain, there were three key strategies that he used: self-rule (“Swaraj”), self-reliance (“Sadeshi”) and self-scrutiny (“Satyagraha”). Following is a quick explanation of each— and with a special note to readers:
*We are familiar with concerns about Gandhi’s racism during his early career in South Africa- and we share those concerns unequivocally. Our focus here is specifically on the strategies and tactics that Gandhi used decades later in his career, in his fight for India’s independence. His model for non-violent revolution has inspired countless revolutionaries the world over including Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. As Mandela once wrote, “Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms...“Gandhi is “the archetypal anticolonial revolutionary,” he said.
Gandhi’s first principle of non-violent revolution is self-rule which stressed self-governance, not by national groups organizing to elect a government hierarchy, but by local citizens organizing at the local level to build a network of resilient, self-reliant communities.".
Gandhi’s second principle of self-reliance guided their community development. It emphasized the production and consumption of local goods and services, especially to replace those of British corporations whenever possible. Swadeshi helped stop the corporate looting of local economies through targeted boycotts- and then they used targeted “buycotts” of local-produced goods to build community wealth, resilience and independence.
This movement toward self-reliant communities and away from dependency on corporations was guided by Gandhi’s third core principle of “Satyagraha” or self-scrutiny. According to this philosophy, practitioners of self scrutiny achieve [quote] “correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation - by observing a nonviolence of the mind; by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love, and by undergoing a rigorous process of self-scrutiny.” [unquote]
… … There are obviously many parallels to what the people of India faced 100 years ago, to what poor and working class folk now face in America today. And Gandhi’s three-fold path to revolution is (still) the best, most competent strategy forward for the liberation of our minds and bodies, our communities, and our society - from occupation by the US Corporatocracy.
The Corporatocracy is a top-down, centralized social system that concentrates wealth at the top and distributes power downward as a means of social control.
For a jUHst and sustainable new society, we must build a parallel new social system that’s decentralized, works bottom-up, and distributes wealth and power equitably to ensure prosperity for all... As Gandhi advised, the core building blocks of such a decentralized society are resilient, self-reliant communities… ...
But in America, our communities are in deep crisis. We already have “the highest disparity of wealth inequality of any nation in history.” And now, as the covid pandemic persists, experts predict that “the New Normal” for Americans will mean continued record unemployment, skyrocketing evictions, homelessness, food insecurity and loss of healthcare. And with escalating state-sponsored violence in cities across the country– by both local police and federal paramilitary– our communities are devolving into chaos, poverty and martial law.
In real-time, the once-great American middle class is now collapsing before our eyes, and the Corporatocracy is doing nothing to stop it- much less the escalating climate crisis and mass extinction of species now underway, which barely even register anymore in mainstream discourse …
Altogether, it’s why we must re-prioritize our activism at home, with urgency, to help build the real revolution: a revolution where local citizens take responsibility in caring for each other. And where local activists strategize and organize together to meet the fundamental needs in their community, including housing, healthcare, security - and especially food...
Indeed, we believe that a jUHst and sustainable local food system is the foundation of community resilience.
It’s a food system where local farms, food sheds and community gardens use sustainable, plant-based agriculture that restores local ecology and carbon sequestration rather than destroys it... It’s a food system that produces fresh, nutritious foods and distributes those equitably to ensure nutritional security for all its citizens. It creates good green jobs in local farming and community gardening, local food co-ops, local food crafting, and community education on healthy eating and preventive nutrition. And it exponentially increases the velocity of local money to help build community wealth.
So, for our part– going forward– we are focusing the Waking Justice podcast on two new series. The first is our series on community resilience. We’ll explore all aspects of community resilience such as housing, healthcare and community policing. But we’ll focus mainly on activists who are working to develop their local food economy. We’re calling this series “Local Revolt” as we’re fully convinced that the real revolution is a local revolt, community by community; it’s a strategic, nonviolent revolution that builds community resilience on the foundation of a jUHst and sustainable local food system.
We’re also doing a second podcast series that explores the practice of self-scrutiny that Gandhi referred to as “Satyagraha”. It seems more important than ever now that we learn how to practice this [quote] “rigorous process of..seeking truth” that Gandhi advised, “[about] this evil situation,” that we now find ourselves in...
[[ We’re calling it “Ultimate Anarchy” because we believe that the ultimate act of revolution is the commitment of a person to their own “self rule”; to decolonize their mind and body of this toxic, patriarchal consumerist culture that we’re all born into.
And by “anarchism”, we don’t mean “destruction, violence and chaos” as the corporate media typically portrays it. The term anarchy is actually derived from the greek word “an-archon”. It means “without rulers”. It’s the negation of the greek suffix for “-archy” as in without-monarchy, or without-plutarchy, or without-patriarchy, etc...
(You can see why the ruling elites and their corporate media would want to distort the true meaning of anarchy, right?)
In our Ultimate Anarchy podcast series, we explore the rich diversity of approaches to self- introspection that have been modeled by anarchists and revolutionaries from all walks of life, including the great spiritual traditions - as well as the arts and sciences of every age and culture.
If you want to learn more about this important work, please go to our website at WakingJustice.org. You can sign up for our free e-newsletter. And we’ll email you a weekly digest of our ongoing articles and podcasts, including the Ultimate Anarchy series as well as our main series on Local Revolt, community resilience and community-based food systems.
It’s time to build the real revolution, y’all. Join Us. Peace.
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Transcending the Transgender Debate
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 20, 2020.
Just days before the demcoratic primary in Iowa, Republicans were trying to push a bill through the Iowa state legislature. It was a bill to remove discrimination protections for transgender people. Transgender activists rallied to stop the bill, and on JAN 28th, the Republicans backed down and let the bill die in committee.
That same day, over in the state of Vermont, Trans activists were rallying to stop another action- this time it was an open public meeting to discuss -quote- “the unforeseen consequences of the transgender agenda.” It sounded like another hate-fest, like the one in Iowa, but then we saw the byline: -quote- “a public discussion about the subversion of Women's Rights by transgender people...” #WaitWut? ‘The subversion of Women's Rights by transgender people’? ...How..? Who was hosting this?! Surely, not the Republicans...
In a local article about the event, local critics claimed that it was just cleverly disguised “hate speech” aimed at transgender people. But one of the event organizers, Peggy Luhrs, said, -quote- “I'm a longtime, very out lesbian, and I have no problem with transgender people [but] this event is about protecting women's rights and lesbian rights. [And] the transgender agenda,” she said, “has had unforseen consequences...” -unquote-
Our core team at #WakingJustice includes some diversity on gender and sexuality, including lesbian, bisexual, straight female, and straight male persepctives. As a team, we try to explore issues like this together, ongoing, so we continue to build our team consensus on allyship...
It’s a three step-process for us, where first, we each reflect on our personal approach to allyship on a given issue. Then, second, we each present our personal views to the team; each person’s perspective is respected. It’s their personal truth relative to their own unique experience. Thus, we learn from each others’ unique perspectives and share feedback on what we’ve learned. Then third, we build a consensus perspective that represents our shared learning and agreements on the issue. It’s not always that simple, of course. But it’s always an enlightening and gratifying process. We all grow from the experience together– and we emerge stronger and more cohesive as a team.
So in our podcast today, we’re gonna summarizie our exploration of this debate among lesbians and transgender people. You might be surprised where it leads us… And like all allies should, we accept that we’re a work-in-progress. So we may get some stuff wrong here. But for those who may be grappling for understanding on this– as we are– we thought an earnest, transparent enquiry here might be helpful.
First– our take on true allyship is that it requires a critical set of skills. Especially for those who care about Global Justice... By definition, Global Justice is not just a collection of separate justice movements, but a global movement of coalescence across all sectors of global justice activism. No cause for justice is excluded. Whether your main emphasis is Social Justice, Democratic Justice, Environmental Justice and/or Animal Justice, we’re all fighting the same system. It’s a system wherein all structures of oppression are inter-connected. At its most fundamental level, it’s all based on a core human error: the idea that some lives matter more than others. We’re all born into it, and we all internalize it according to our various diversity.
So, true allyship begins with a deep internal reckoning; we have to deconstruct our own biases first. One useful method for this is called the practice of self-enquiry... It requires a deep yearning for truth and justice above all else. And it requires empathy, of course... But it also demands stamina and courage: the ongoing practice of self-enquiry is a constant questioning of our habits of thinking. For example: how have we come to believe in the things that we believe? What purposes of self-justification or self-comfort might they achieve? And are these purposes gained at the expense of others? Would we still believe the way we believe if we’d been born into others’ circumstances; if we’d been born in a different generation– or in a different race, class, culture, gender, or sexuality? Or even a different species? How might reversing our perspective inform our bias on certain issues, etc?
Does it sound like some heavy lifting? Indeed, sometimes it can be... But if you’re not continually exploring your own biases and confronting any hypocrisies you find– feeling the shame of it, sure, but then letting it go– and then applying what you learn with a willingness to make mistakes; not expecting forgiveness or pats on the back, but just to keep going and growing... If you’re not experiencing all that on a regular basis, then you might better check yourself. Chances are you’re just dicking around in some bubble of self-delusion. Again, no shame– it’s just human nature– and everyone needs some respite from it. When you’re ready, shake it off, get centered, and get back to work… ...
So having said all that, let’s explore this present debate in Vermont and see where it leads our enquiry... And upfront, we should first clarify our use of some key terms. In the following, when we refer here to transgender men, we’re referring to people who were born into a female body but whose gender expression is that of a man. They may be attracted to male and/or female bodies, but they self-identify as men and want to be recognized as men.
And when we refer to transgender women, we’re referring to people who were born into a male body, but whose gender expression is that of a woman. They may be attracted to male and/or female bodies, but they self-identify as women and want to be recognized as women. [There’s been much discussion of these terms in scientific literature over the past few decades, which we’ll summarize later on in the podcast.]
For now, maybe the easiest entry to this debate is to start with what most folks know as “the transgender bathroom issue”. As trans activist Jackson Bird has explained: “It's a huge point of discussion in trans communities about which bathroom to start using and when...[Trans people] don’t want to attract attention that could lead to violence against us...The truth is,” he says “we trans people are so much more scared of you than you are of us.” And he adds -quote- “Here's a fun fact about bathrooms: more US congressmen have been convicted of assaulting someone in a public bathroom than trans people have been. “ -unquote-
But Peggy Luhrs, the co-organizer of the Vermont event has said, -quote- “we're not out to make transgender people less safe…Transgender people are very oppressed…they have a lot of violence directed at them...[But]..this [debate] is about protecting women's rights and lesbian rights… The bathroom solution for trans women should not be at the expense of ‘women born women’ -unquote- [She’s referring here to lesbian and straight women whose birth sex was female and specifically excluding trans women].
She says, “...so when you [establish a law] that says anyone who identifies themselves as a woman can go into any private female spaces where women are vulnerable, such as public restrooms, public showers or locker rooms etc., it's an open invitation for someone who is a pervert to put on a skirt– or maybe not even bother and [just] go in and say ‘I'm female’ and get to be there. This is crazy,” she says.
Peggy explains that -quote- “Radical feminists” have been the main group that's brought up the bathroom issue...We are constantly told that the most oppressed people..who have the most violence against them are transgender women, but that is not true,” she says...
However, according to the Bureau of Justice, about “1 out of every 6 women in the US have been the victim of rape or attempted rape”; whereas over “1 out of every 5 transgender people have been sexually assaulted…” and about half “(46%!) of bisexual women report being raped in their lifetime.”
So Peggy Luhrs may be splitting hairs here about which group of women are most endangered. But these accounts of sexualized violence by men against lesbian, transgender, bisexual and cisgender women and transgender men are altogether wholly disturbing... In fact, the bathroom debate– while obviously very important for all stakeholders involved– seems to have become a proxy debate for a far deeper, much more insidious issue: that of sexualized male violence. It seems to be an exploding epidemic... So from here, we’ll redirect our enquiry to explore this broader issue of sexualized male violence in our society– what are its origins and impacts; why is it expanding at such staggering rates; and how can we all work together to reverse it, heal it, and end it…
Here are some further data we found on the issue [and we offer a trigger warning here that the following information includes some staggering facts about sexual and deadly assault...]. Check this shit out:
- Every 92 seconds, an American (age 12 or older) is raped or sexually assaulted.
- 90% of adult victims and 82% of all juvenile victims of rape are female.
- 94% of women who are raped experience symptoms of PTSD during the two weeks following the rape, and
- About one-third report PTSD 9 months after the rape.
- About one-third contemplate suicide...
- Every 9 minutes, Child Protective Services finds evidence of child sexual abuse.
- 99% of the rapists of women and children are men.
- 99.5% of all rapists never serve jail time for their offense...
Further, more than 38 million American women have been victims of other domestic violence by men. In fact, about 5 women are murdered every day in America by their male partners. In over 80% of those murders, the motive was that they were -quote- “having an argument”.
As author Margaret Atwood has said,”a man’s greatest fear is that a woman will laugh at him... A woman’s greatest fear is that a man will kill her.” … ...
“Violence against women [by men in the US] is so ubiquitous that it’s invisible,” says Dawn Wilcox. She’s a school nurse in Plano, TX who in her spare time runs a website called Women Count USA. It’s a project that honors victims of what she says is the unseen epidemic of femicide in America... Have y’all heard of this term? It was the first time we’d heard it...
The technical definition of “femicide” is -quote: “a gender-based hate crime, broadly defined as the intentional killing of gendered women or girls by men.” Or more succinctly, it’s “the misogynistic killing of women by men.”
Misogyny is uniquely attributed to men, but what is misogyny exactly? Our take is that it’s a belief system much like racism. Like racism, misogyny taps into the corruptive human faculties of hate, violence, and power. Of course, misogyny combines those further with the potency of sexuality. But like racism, misogyny is ultimately about power... Remember: in over 80% of murders committed by men against their female partners, the motive was that they were -quote- “having an argument”.
As Cornell philosophy professor Kate Manne argues “misogyny is about controlling and punishing women who challenge male dominance.” Professor Manne differentiates misogyny from sexism. Sexism is a gender ideology that variously stereotypes women as weak and needing protection; as nurturing caregivers; as objects of beauty and sexual purity; or conversely, as objects for sexual gratification. Professor Manne says,“such sexist ideology supports our [social system of Patriarchy], but it’s misogyny that enforces it when there’s a threat of that system...”
Patriarchy is “the social order that systematically gives power to men and disempowers women.” So, misogyny, she says, should not be understood just in terms of the hatred or hostility that some men feel toward women. Rather, [it's primarily about power.] It’s about controlling and punishing the "bad" women who challenge systems of Patriarchy. And it’s about rewarding "the good ones" who uphold systems of Patriarchy. But those divides are not always so straightforward.
An instructive example of this is former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. There’s no doubt that candidate Clinton endured an onslaught of misogyny from men and even women who perceived her negatively as a feminist rejecting traditional gender roles and challenging male authority. However, many feminists actually saw Clinton’s candidacy as a betrayal of feminism and an endorsement of patriarchy. As renown feminist writer and activist bell hooks explained, -quote- “I can no longer be a Hillary Clinton supporter in the name of feminism.” Hillary, she said, is “a militarist, imperialist, and white supremacist.”
Of course, bell hooks wasn’t wrong about Clinton in those aspects. It’s widely known that Clinton was heavily favored by WallStreet and the Defense Industry. And Clinton was directly involved in “the largest increase of America’s prison system in US history” which disproportionately targeted Black people.” Hillary is considered a “corporate feminist” and those industries rewarded her as one of "the good ones" – a “corporate feminist” upholds the systems of Patriarchy. Corporate feminism is a perversion of feminism. And bell hooks understood this.
Corporatism and neoliberal globalization are ultimate expressions of misogyny. They are the super structures that enforce and reinforce the expansion of what bell hooks calls: white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. Of course, Patriarchy and male domination have been around for centuries and dominate modern human society. And male-dominant patriarchy is common in other species as well. But what most folks don’t know is that most alpha species– those species that have evolved to the top of the food chain– are not patriarchal. In fact, alpha species are typically female-dominated:
For example, Orcas, or killer whales, live in a matriarchal society. Their offspring stay with their mothers for life – even after having offspring of their own. A pod of killer whales is made of multiple families, known as matrilines, which tend to travel together. Wolves are typically matriarchal as well. They have a dominance hierarchy that is separate by gender. The alpha male and alpha female work out pack leadership together. But leadership among wolves is typically matrilineal, reverting to the female. Similar to Wolves and Killer Whales, Lions live in large groups called prides. A pride consists of multiple related females and their dependent offspring along with two or three unrelated males. Female lions do the hunting (usually in groups) while male lions stay home and watch over the pride.
Matriarchy has also existed in human society as well. Human history and mythology tend to recognize matriarchal civilizations as more advanced and stable cultures. For example, the Iroquois of North America were among the most advanced indigenous societies, controlling pretty much all the eastern seaboard of North America and several hundred miles inland. And Iroquois society was matrilineal, meaning descent was traced through the mother’s lineage rather than the father. No child was born a "bastard" – the concept didn't exist. Iroquois husbands lived with the wife’s family. And if a husband was deemed unfit by the wife, his belongings would simply be placed outside the home, and he knew to move on.
Iroquois women were responsible for defining the political, social, spiritual, and economic norms of the tribe. Iroquois chiefs were men, but the chiefs were nominated by the women. And it was the women who made sure the Chiefs fulfilled their responsibilities. If a chief was deemed unfit to lead, the women would demote him and nominate a new chief.
The Iroquois Nation was a confederacy of six tribes that had established peace among themselves before Europeans came to America. The constitution of the Iroquois confederacy is known as -quote- The Great Law of Peace. It was the model for "the confederation of the original 13 European colonies, and informed many of the democratic principles that were eventually built into the US Constitution.”
The Iroquois women also inspired the feminist movement among colonial women, called the suffragette movement. Among the Iroquois, sexual assault was forbidden. Their men did not rape their women. But in white colonial America, a husband had the legal right to batter his wife. Marital rape was commonplace. It was allowed by both church and state. The courts would not accept cases of domestic assault or maital rape. The courts upheld that -quote- “to interfere would upset the domestic tranquility of the home". -unquote- Women fleeing from an abusive husband could be returned to him by the police, as runaway slaves were returned to their master. It wasn't simply that colonial women had no rights; once they married they had no legal existence. As the Church preached: In marriage, -quote- “the two shall become one and the one is the man".
The church was a major influence in colonial America, so early suffragettes mainly focused on a biblical basis for women’s rights and protections. Many risked their safety to openly debate the male leaders of the church about their rights as women. Lucretia Mott was one who argued that It wasn’t Christianity, but the male leaders of the church that subjugated women to control them. She said, “The Church and State have been united [by men] and it is well for us to [expose it]”. That was a brave and very bold indictment of church-and-state-sponsored Patriarchy by Lucretia Mott.
She and other early suffragettes including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage were openly critical of the use of biblical text to subvert women’s legal rights. They found the biblical story of Adam and Eve especially troubling. The story of Adam and Eve, of course, is the Judeo-Christian Creation story about how God made the world and the first humans. As the story goes, God made the heavens and the Earth and the animals and all of nature. And then God made Adam, the first man, and placed him in the Garden of Eden. When God saw that Adam was alone, he made Eve, the first woman as -quote- “a helper” for Adam.
They would live in the Garden of Eden together to care for the animals. God told them, -quote- "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They shall be yours for food...But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” God warned them. That was forbidden. But eventually, Eve gave in to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit, and then she tempted Adam and he ate it too. When God found out, He cast them out of paradise for their sin of disobedience. And as further punishment, God cursed Man to work the fields for their food. And God commanded Woman to be subservient to man, and He cursed her with -quote-” the pains of childbirth...”
And that’s pretty much the Judeo-Christian version of the Creation story. Joseph Campbell, the renowned scholar of comparative mythology explains that there are many versions of such creation mythology in prehistory. The Judeo-Christian version was derived from other previous traditions in the Middle East; it uses some common themes but omits others.
Campbell says that creation myths are principally allegories for explaining the human psyche. Or at least the human psyche for the particular group of humans who invent them. For example, the Judeo-Christian version is an allegory for explaining the psyche of male patriarchy. Here’s what he means: In the Judeo-Chirstian Creation story, it is the man who is made in the image of God the father. Then God uses a rib from Man to create a woman for him. She is made to be Man’s helper. So, the woman is derivative and subordinate. And there’s no Goddess mother in this Creation story. Only God the father, and he is the sole creator. Nature and Eve are the only femine principles: nature is the maternal and nurturing femine principle. And Eve is man’s helper, but to both God and man’s great disappointment, Eve succumbs to evil and becomes man’s temptress; Woman is the cause of Man’s downfall.
God is not pleased with Man for succumbing to Woman’s weakness, but God is especially displeased with Woman. They are both banished from paradise, but Woman is singled out: she is -quote- “cursed with the pains of childbirth”, and she is put under the rule of man from that time forward...
Prior traditions from which the Judeo-Chirstian story was derived present God and Goddess as co-creators. In the prior traditions, Adam and Eve were equals. And the femine principle was revered as nature and nurturing; Woman represented wisdom and the regenerative power of fertility.
The Judeo-Christian version subverts the feminine principle. It eliminates the Goddess from the Godhead. The feminine principle of wisdom is recast as evil. And the regenerative power of fertility is stripped of its awe and mystery; childbirth is recast as a punishment for Woman’s sin.
So in the western psyche, the Judeo-Christian creation story becomes not the “Fall of Man” as it’s commonly referred to, but really the Fall of Woman... Patriarchy becomes the Divine order. Sexism against women is sanctioned and indoctrinated by the Church. And as suffragette Lucretia Mott observed, with “the union of Church and state”, structural sexism is variously institutionalized. Misogyny is enculturated... Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the impact that this story of Adam and Eve has had on women in Western culture...
In the modern era, the power of the Church is much diminished. The state has fallen to corporate control. Representative democracy has been usurped by corporate plutocracy. But misogyny is retained to maintain social order and reinforce corporate rule. Misogyny has become corporatized, commodified, and mass produced. In this era of the corporate state, misogyny has become a profit center, expanded exponentially, and with obsessional efficiency.
One striking example of this is what’s called the pornification of western culture. Erotic art has existed in various forms throughout all human history. Carvings of figurines with exaggerated vulva or phallus have been carbon-dated back tens of thousands of years. Cave paintings of copulating couples and orgies with graphic depictions of sexual variety have been found as well. Ancient Middle East cultures carved similar scenes on clay tablets dating back to 4,000 BCE. And in Roman cities at the dawn of the common era, around the time of Christ, paintings and sculpture depicting diverse sexual acts were openly displayed in the homes of early Romans as well as in open public spaces.
As Church and State merged in the early common era, the early Church associated erotic arts with human degeneracy. Church fathers believed that sexuality transmitted original sin. So for nearly 1,500 years, erotic art was effectively banished from public spaces in western culture. It was not until the Renaissance period (16C) through the Enlightenment (18C), that erotic art re-emerged. And interestingly, it emerged in large part as a challenge to Church authority. With the invention of the printing press, erotic literature and imagery would gradually find its way to the masses. But it was still forbidden by law to circulate erotic art and literature.
By the 20th century, with the advent of motion film and print magazines, an underground industry of pornography was growing internationally. And just after mid century, in the late 1960s, western nations began legalizing pornography. Now, a half century later, with the advent of the internet, the porn industry has become "radically decentralized." Internet porn is among the most popular web content. Porn sites now get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. And recent research has found that young boys are increasingly exposed to porn through social media sites like SnapChat and Instagram, which are becoming gateways for hardcore porn. As scholar and author Robert Jensen writes, pornography has become -quote- “the default for sex education..for boys and young men.”
What most folks may not know is that the most popular porn on the web promotes sexualized violence against women. In fact, aggressive acts against women in pornography occur in roughly 87% of the scenes, and 95% of the time when these acts are committed, the women actors respond with expressions of pleasure or neutrality.
As radical feminist, scholar, and ant-porn activist Gail Dines, explains: when the average 12-year-old boy enters "porn" into Google, within seconds he’s exposed to an array of free videos which depict hardcore sexualized violence to women.” [...and we offer a trigger warning here on the following graphic detail from Gail about how online porn has become hyper-sexualized violence...We believe her assessment is essential to understanding how pornography helps normalize misogyny, especially among young people these days...]
Gail says, “One of the first things this boy will see when he searches for porn via google is the main action on virtually all pornsites– it’s called gagging. It’s where the man puts the penis so far down her throat that she gags almost to the point of vomiting. They put a lot of mascara on her face, so that as she is tearing, you can see the rivulets of mascara running down her cheeks...he grabs her head, pulls it towards him, and tells her, "Look at me!" And she is choking!...Of course, the scene ends with what the industry calls -quote- ‘the money shot to the face’. This is a kind of sexual psychopathy,” Gail says.
Here’s Gail giving a sample of what this young boy will read when looking through regular “mainstream” porn sites on the web. [And again, we offer a trigger warning here regarding the graphic subject matter]. You can click here to hear Gail’s audio starting at 10:48 through 11:24. Or here’s a transcript of that clip from Gail [again, trigger warning re: graphic subject matter]:
“Here is the ad copy for the movie called "Anally Ripped Whores". It says, "We at Pure Filth know exactly what you want: chicks being ass-fucked till their sphincters are pink, puffy, and totally blown out. Adult diapers just might be in store for these whores when their work is done." This is the promotional copy. You don't need a PhD in media studies to understand the violence, and I want to make this clear: this is mainstream porn, this is what the 12-year-old boy gets to within 15 seconds…”
Again that was anti-porn activist Gail Dines… And understand: she’s talking about mainstream pornography... It’s ubiquitous across the internet today and begs the question: how is it impacting misogynistic attitudes among young men? Well here’s one hint: “a study by Princeton psychologists showed a group of men pictures of males and females, some barely clothed and some fully dressed. During the study, psychologists monitored the part of their brain that’s involved in recognizing human faces and distinguishing one person from another. When the participants viewed pictures of sexualized women, that part of the brain was not activated. Basically, the reaction suggests that men didn’t perceive sexulized women as distinct human beings, but more as objects or non-human animals.”
In another study, researchers found that U.S. college men who had watched porn in the previous 12 months were more likely to say that -quote- “they would commit rape or sexual assault if they knew they wouldn’t be caught” than men who hadn’t seen porn in the past 12 months.” That is a stunning, heart-breaking statistic…
Sexualized violence is part of a continuum of hyper-sexualized imagery across pretty much all mainstream media in western society. The net effect is that it reduces women and girls to sexual objects. More than two decades of research shows that exposure to sexualized images in mass media contributes to girls’ having an increased tendency to develop eating disorders and engage in self-harm. Today, about 1 out of 4 girls are self-harming – nearly four times as many girls as boys, and it’s on the rise. As Gail Dines says, mass corporate media is telling young girls, “you have two options, you can either look fuckable or be invisible, so which option do you think most teenage girls would choose?”
“In 2002, the lobbying arm of the porn industry won the legal right to use female actors who look under legal age; i.e. porn stars who could pass as young girls. And seemingly overnight, the porn industry began popularizing such titles as: -quote- “First time with Daddy”; -quote- “Daddy's Little Whore”; and -quote- “t's OK, She's My Stepdaughter”... How must young girls perceive self worth in a society that protects and rewards such pedophilia?
There is evidence that “for some adolescent girls, exposure to sexualized media is associated with an increased tolerance for sexual violence. Exposure to sexualized media has also led to a measured decrease in empathy for rape survivors.” ....What it all means is that the pornification of mass media culture is cultivating sexual predators among boys and men; and it’s turning girls and women against themselves and each other– Including lesbian, transgender, bisexual and cisgender girls and women....
If you’ve made it this far in the podcast, we think you’ll agree- this is some heartbreaking, gut wrenching information: at one level- the sexualized violence of the porn industry is destroying lives - directly and indirectly. At another level, the sexualized violence of porn serves as an adjunct to the broader, hypersexualized mainstream media in global society. It’s what Gail Dines refers to as the pornifcation of mainstream society. Ultimately though, the porn industry is a for-profit form of structural sexism. Much like the for-profit prison industry has become a for-profit form of structural racism. Both industries are part of what radical feminist bell hooks refers to as “white- supremacist- capitalist- patriacrhy”.
Though, respectfully, we would modify bell hooks’ term slightly to “white- supremacist- corporatist- patriarchy”. Replacing “capitalist” with “corporatist” seems more instructive to the current state of our supposed “representative democracy”. As Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Chris Hedges has said, corporations now control all levers of democratic reform in America. Both political parties, our election system, the courts, and the mainstream media are all near fully controlled by corporate elites now. A recent Princeton University study put it clearly: -quote- ”over the past 40 years, working class voters have had a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy...But corporate elites have had a near ideal impact on public policy...And when corporate elites want to stop a new policy, there is a 100% chance they’ll get their way.”
So, the US is no longer a representative democracy; it’s a corporate plutocracy- or a “Corporatocracy” as some call it. We mention all this to say that if we truly want to end sexualized violence against women and girls, we must first accept the fact that voting and protest marches are not sufficent political leverage against this Corproatocracy. It is beyond delusional to think that we could ever “vote” such entrenched and moneyed elites out of power. But we’re not saying to don’t vote and protest. We’re saying that we must combine our voting with real political leverage. And the only real leverage that the working class has in a corporate plutocracy is mass organized boycott (MOB).
Here’s what we mean: as a recent swiss study has shown, the great strength of the Corporatocracy is that the top companies across all major industries are all variously invested in each others success. They invest in each others’ stock and appoint their people to each others’ boards of directors. But their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. If one industry suffers, they all buckle and they all know it. It’s why a targeted, sustained mass organized boycott is the most effective means to force this Corporatocracy to the People’s bargaining table. [To negotiate a sustained path toward re-democratizing our society.]
Indeed, M.O.B. is the only political will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power. It was Gandhi’s Salt and Textile Boycotts at the turn of the century that won India their independence from Great Britain. It was the mass picket lines and sit-down strikes by workers in the 1930s that finally won us the 40 hour work week, sick-pay and overtime pay. It was the mass bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins that finally won Black Americans civil rights reforms in the 1960s. It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts of the 1960s and 70s that won migrant farm workers important safety reforms and a fair living wage. And it was the divestment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally helped end Apartheid in South Africa.
Combining voting and protest with mass organized boycott would give Global Justice activists the political leverage needed to regulate corporate mass media and restrict hypersexualized content. We would have the leverage to force zoning on the internet as Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has advised: access to pornography could be restricted to certain zoning on the web, just like cities restrict such businesses to certain areas of the community by creating zoning laws. We would also have the leverage needed to establish federal funding and tax incentives to build single stall, gender-neutral bathrooms in all public places, as trans activist Ivan Coyote suggests.
The Old Boys’ club of Patriarchy now rules as a Corporatocracy. It’s interlocking systems of structural sexism, structural racism, structural classism, and structural speciesism have pushed our planet to the brink of social and ecological collapse. If we truly want to build a just and sustainable world, we must dismantle Patriarchy once and for all. And to do so, we must first organize our collective power. As Gail Dines says, “the oppressor class works as a collective, so we must also...We must get back to our roots of collective action.”
If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and force the US corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table– to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast.
You can also sign up to get your #DailyWakeUpCall delivered free, right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of our home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick summary of the podcast for that day.
Or If you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Class Warfare by the DNC on behalf of Corporate Elites?
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 4th, 2020
In our podcast today, we’re gonna do a thought experiment with you. It’ll be instructive as to what the democratic leadership is up to regarding the primary results in Iowa this week. And it’s something that any of us who care about truth, freedom and democracy in America- whether Democrat or Republican- all of us should be thinking about...
Probably the best way to set this up is to reference our podcast from yesterday where we discussed the latest DNC Committee appointees. If you caught that podcast, you’ll recall that the DNC committees set the agenda for the democratic party, including foreign and domestic policy, etc. No surprise there. But that agenda also shapes how the democrats’ superdelegates will vote at the Democratic Convention next July.
Superdelegates are VIP democrats who are handpicked by the DNC leadership. At the convention in July, if the voting in the democratic state primaries has not produced a nominee with an overwhelming majority of delegates in state voting, then the super delegates cast their votes to determine the final nominee.
And the power of superdelegates to determine the final nominee is much more a near certainty than the DNC would have us believe. Most folks don’t realize that it was the super delegates who pushed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election. And it was state-by-state superdelegates who influenced Hillary Clintons’ win over Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Especially after the #IowaDebacle, most observers agree that no democratic candidate will be able to garner enough delegates to overwhelm the influence of the superdelegates at the Demcoratic Convention in July. So, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the superdelegates will decide the democratic nominee. Further, it’s widely accepted that the superdelegates pretty much all vote in lockstep with the guidance of the DNC committee members. Even Bernie’s own campaign aides admit this.
And as we explained on our podcast yesterday, the committee members are a virtual Who’s Who list of neoliberal corporate elites, dominant insiders from BigBanks, BigPharma, BigDefense and the CIA. Further, two members of the DNC committees are actually simultaneously working for the campaign of billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg. One was just nominated as vice-chair of the powerful Convention Rules Committee.
So, with those foundational, immutable facts established, let’s begin our thought experiment…
Most indie experts agree that the DNC has loaded its rules committees to ensure that Bernie Sanders does not become the Demcoratic Nominee. But for our thought experiment, let’s assume that by some Yuge act of protest, the DNC committees and super delegates went against everything they were appointed for and instead allowed Bernie to proceed as the nominee. Ok? We’ll call that MIRACLE #1 of our thought experiment.
So Bernie goes on to run in the general and beats Donald Trump, as all the polls say he would easily do. And along the way, Bernie also inspires 100s of people to run for the US Congress and even the senate. And by the sheer excitement of Bernie’s momentum, when he enters the presidency, he also has a majority-friendly House and Senate to work with. Also huge, because he’ll need a friendly majority in both houses to pass all the reforms he’s been running on, like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the elimination of student debt by taxing Wall Street speculators.
So let’s assume that Bernie’s miracle presidency coincides with a majority-friendly House and Senate. We’ll call that MIRACLE #2. And with that, let’s assume that by the end of his first year, Bernie works with both houses to pass his signature reform: a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program that provides everyone in America comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service. In 12 months, the Medicare for All Bill clears both houses and reaches his desk and he signs it into law. We’ll call that MIRACLE #3 in our thought experiment.
Now remember– to afford M4A, Bernie says that the US Government will have to force BigPharma to lower prices on prescription drugs. This is a critical aspect, because BigPharma currently charges Americans on average three times the price that it charges for the same drugs in other developed countries. It’s basically a massive price-fixing scam on Americans. And thanks to Barack Obama BigPharma basically has a triple firewall of legal protection. Here’s why— when Obama was president, he sponsored certain laws and court appointees to protect BigPharma profits. He effectively made both the FDA and the Dept of Justice revolving-door agencies for BigPharma. And Obama appointed judges who were friendly to BigPharma to set legal precedents that protect BigPharma’s price-fixing powers.
Of course, all that can be reversed through various legal actions taken ultimately to the Supreme Court. And as we all know, the Supreme Court has been stacked with corporate-friendly judges over the past decade. So, if we assume that all that legal maneuvering could happen in favor of Medicare for All, we would definitely need to consider it a miracle and a Yuge one at that- but f*ck it- it’s our thought experiment, So, let’s call that MIRACLE #4.
Now, if we’re accounting for all these miracles and putting them on an aggressive timeline, but still sorta keeping it real, it’d take at least the first three years of Bernie’s presidency to get all the way there- and that’s being very generous. So we’ll need to account for another miracle– that by his midterm, Bernie still has enough mojo to somehow keep corporate BigMedia at bay. And in the Midterm Elections, he’s able to retain a command majority in both the House and the Senate. That’d be crucial to getting to the finish line on Medicare for All by the end of year three. So, we’ll call that success in Midterm Elections MIRACLE #5.
We could keep going– but you get the picture, right? If we’re being straight up and forthright about the battles ahead, we’ve got some massive obstacles to overcome. And that’s just Medicare for All. That set of miracles and aggressive timeline are roughly the same for the Green New Deal and for taxiing Wall Street to pay off student debt and fund free college tuition.
But this thought experiment isn’t simply about identifying the battles ahead. It’s about identifying the enemy that we’re up against, so we’re best prepared to fight those battles. And it’s not simply a battle against the Republicans, as the DNC paints it. As we mentioned at the outset, the so-called corporate democrats have stacked the DNC committees to ensure that Bernie is not the nominee. It’s a betrayal of our democracy, and the so-called corporate BigMedia has not even mentioned it.
So if we’re trying to identify the true enemy that we’re up against– the enemy of democratic reforms and programs that Bernie and the other few anti-establishment candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren have proposed– we have to look at the industries that those reforms target. That’s who the corporate democrats represent.
We know that Medicare forAll will end the price-fixing schemes of BigPharma corporations. We know that pledges to end the grotesque overspending on regime-change wars for oil will diminish profiteering by both BigDefense and BigOil corporations. And BigOil will also be weakened by the Green New Deal, because of its aggressive plan to invest in new alternative energies that replace fossil fuels.
Which brings us to BigBanks… BigOil is the lifeblood of BigBanks. As we have explored in previous podcasts, the profitability of BigBanks is highly dependent on global sales of oil in US dollars. It’s called the petrodollar system, and foreign oil is the #1 reason that the CIA and CIA front groups like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy are constantly instigating regime change wars in oil-producing countries. Most folks don’t realize that Wall Street pretty much built the CIA back in the 1940s and has dominated its agenda ever since. It’s all well documented and clarifies why the primary agenda of US foreign policy is to force nations like Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Libya, Iraq and African countries including Nigeria, Angola and the Congo– it’s to force the sale of their oil in US dollars.
Of course, the forced sale of global oil in US dollars forces global demand for US currency. Global demand for US currency props up the value of the US dollar in global financial markets and empowers BigBanks as predatory lenders to debtor nations who need to buy oil to fuel their national economies.
And the buck stops there with BigBanks. The financial elite among BigBanks, Wall Street and related financial institutions are the controlling shareholders of pretty much all major corporations across all major industries, including BigOil, BigDefense, BigPharma, BigChemical, BigMeat&Dairy, and yes, BigMedia. 90% of all major media outlets are controlled by just six major corporations, and the controlling shares of all those corporations are owned by just a handful of financial institutions.
The financial elites at the top of this corporate hierarchy are variously called “the billionaires”, “the Top 1%”, “the oligarchs”, or more specifically, who indie scholar and author, Naomi Klein refers to as “the plutocrats”. Klein is right to make this distinction. As she recently tweeted in reference to billionaire Michael Bloomberg buying his way into the democratic primary, late- she wrote: “plu·toc·ra·cy [is] Government by the wealthy. [A] plu·to·crat [is] a person whose power derives from their wealth.” “[For example],” she continues -quote- "He had long been an oligarch but he longed to be a true plutocrat. So he dipped into his billions to buy an election."
Indeed, as Princeton University researchers have determined, that over the past 40 years, the average working class American has had “a near-zero statisitically non-significant impact on public policy. But when the Top 10% want to stop any new policy, there is a 100% chance they’ll get their way.” That’s Billionaires and the upper “professional class” that dominate US domestic and foreign policy. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has written, “The Coup D'etat Is Over, the Corporations Won.” The US is no longer a representative democracy. “Corporations now control all levers of democratic reform in America, including both political parties, the mass media and the courts.”
As the Princeton Study proves, the US is no longer a representative democracy but a corporate plutocracy, or Corporatocracy as some call it. It is agents of the Corporatocracy who are pulling the strings of the democratic party. All the while, its corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC distract and divide us for social control. Just as they are doing now with the absurd spectacle of the Iowa primary, holding back results, slowing revealing cherry-picked returns to steal the predictable bounce that Bernie would have gotten from that win. And instead, propping up establishment-favorite Pete Buttiegeig as the winner in Iowa. It’s a clever tactic and “We the People'' are seemingly helpless but to watch it unfold as it distracts the electorate from Bernie’s momentum.
But we’re not helpless– we just need to understand the enemy and the battlefield...
It’s class warfare. And it is war, y’all... People are getting killed. Our military is endlessly bombing poor nations, killing masses of poor people with bombs funded by our tax dollars– all so BigBanks can force those nations onto the petrodollar system. And here at home, people are needlessly dying too. It’s because so many can’t afford overpriced drugs by BigPharma. BigPharma charges Americans 3-times or more for medicines there in America than in other developed countries. And we’re sick and diseased because the corporate-controlled USDA promotes a food pyramid based on meat and dairy foods, which are the leading cause of death and disease: 18 of the Top 20 pharmaceutical products sold worldwide are medicines that treat diseases associated with animal-based foods. It’s a disease-for-profit food system.
And please be clear, healthcare spending in the US accounts for 20% of US GDP. That’s about $4 TRILLION dollars per year. That’s huge! It means healthcare spending in the US is greater than the entire GDP of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy. And do you think if Germany’s economy was threatened, they wouldn’t get on a war footing? That’s how the Corporatocracy sees Bernie Sanders. His Medicare for All program threatens BigPharma’s death grip on Americans’ health; it threatens 20% of annual revenues for the Corporatocracy. They know Bernie will end the revolving door of BigPharma into the FDA and Department of Justice. They know he’ll end the regime-change wars for oil and his Green New Deal will signal the beginning– finally– to replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable energies. And the BigBanks aren’t having it. It’s why they have stacked the DNC committees with Wall Street insiders and CIA associates. Anyone who can’t see it- or who looks away at this point is just being wilfully ignorant. But we can no longer afford the luxury of willful ignorance.
We have to wake up to this moment in history. Indeed, we are at war. It’s class warfare by the billionaire class of the Corporatocracy on the working class people. It’s playing out right now in the wake of election fraud in Iowa– the Corporatocracy and its corporate media are intentionally disrupting the election process to confuse and distract the electorate. And if you’re listening to this- or reading this on our website in disbelief, then they are winning. Don’t let them win– think for yourself- look at the facts. Look at history. What they are doing now in the democratic primary is right out of the CIA playbook psychological operations or psy-ops. It’s political warfare or information warfare, and it is supremely effective, because its victims don’t know how to fight it.
Voting in a rigged system will not win it. And protesting in the streets won’t either. We’re not saying don’t vote or protest. We’re saying we must combine voting and protest with real political leverage. And the only real political leverage we have in a corporate plutocracy is economic boycott.
Indeed, Mass Organized Boycott (MOB) is the only political will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power. It was the Salt and Textile Boycotts led by Gandhi that won India her Independence. It was the mass picket lines and sit-down strikes in the 1930s that won American workers a 40-hour work week, sick leave and overtime pay. It was the bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins in the 1960s by Black Americans that won civil rights reforms. It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts in the 1960s and 70s that won migrant farm workers economic justice. And it was the divesment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally ended Apartheid in South Africa.
If we understand that our enemy today is the Corporatocracy, and we investigate its vulnerabilities to boycott, we will find that there are two industries most susceptible to mass boycott– and most strategic to our cause: BigMedia and BigMeat&Dairy. A mass organized boycott of corporate BigMedia would effectively muzzle the corporatocracy. And combined with a mass Buycott of indie journos on social media who support our Just Revolt, we would elevate the bold diverse voices of independent journalism and hasten a global awakening.
And with a mass organized boycott of BigMeat&Dairy (what we’ll call BigMAD from hereon), we would send shockwaves throughout the Corporatocracy. Check this out: BigMAD consumption and production are the leading drivers of sales and profits for two other major industries– BigPharma and BigChemical. As we mentioned before, 18 of the Top 20 BigPharma products sold worldwide are medicines that treat diseases associated with animal-based foods. And re BigChem, the sales of fertilizers and pesticides made by BigChem companies like Monsanto-Bayer are used primarily to grow feed crops for farmed animals. For example, 70% of the grain grown in the US is used as feed crops for animal agriculture. So a mass organized boycott of BigMAD will directly threaten profits for BigPharma and BigChem as well.
And a mass organized boycott against BigMAD combined with a mass Buycott of plant-based foods would greatly improve our collective health, empower small local farmers, and open up mass tracks of land for reforestation. Global animal agriculture now uses about 60% of all lands used by humans to graze farmed animals and grow feed crops for famed animals. Recent research has shown that if just half those lands (41%) were restored to native forest, those recovered forests would sequester more carbon than has been put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age! That would not only halt climate change, it would reverse it, at least for a few decades while we transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. That would be huge.
Further– all three industries BigMAD, BigPharma and BigChem are huge customers of BigOil. Petrochemicals are the building blocks of most pharmaceuticals for BigPharma. And most all the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides made by BigChem are petroleum-based products. So a boycott of BigMAD will also significantly impact BigOil profits. And when oil sales drop, THAT is how we can finally challenge BigBanks and force the corporate elites and their political shills to the People’s bargaining table.
If we don’t invest ourselves in such comprehensive leverage now, we will never sustain the dozen or so miracles it’ll take to win Medicare for All and the Green New Deal– not in our lifetimes. Without applying real economic leverage, it’s a fantasy that the Corporatocracy will allow us. As long as we’re just voting and marching in the streets, we do not challenge their economic power. When we combine our voting and marching with mass organized boycott, we will have a substantive strategy that will command their reckoning.
We’ll leave it there for today. We hope you enjoyed the podcast... If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the People’s bargaining table, to end all this injustice and corruption– to save our democracy and to help save our planet– please visit our website at WakingJustice.org. You can check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. And while you’re there, you can sign up to get your #DailyWakeUp Call– delivered free right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of our home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick description of the podcast for that day. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
For the Democrats, ‘It’s Deja vu all over again’
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 4th, 2020
Yesterday, the state of #Iowa kicked off the beginning of the democratic primary process. For the next five months, democrats will vote, state by state to determine who will represent the democratic party in the general election next November against President Trump. And as America woke up this morning to hear who won the Iowa vote last night, interest or enthusiasm gave way to dread: the results are “in dispute”, say DNC officials,who claim a “coding error in the App” that tallies the votes has corrupted the voting data.
Posts on social media were trending, including -quote- “The #Iowa vote was a debacle.” “The Democrats are at it again” and “Mayor Pete is a cheat: #MayorCheat”. The latter “#MayorCheat” hashtag was due to establishment candidate Pete Buttegieg announcing an early victory with zero precincts reporting in. And, according to indie outlet @TheGrayzoneNews, the Voting App under suspicion is -quote- “a dark money operation funded by anti-Sanders billionaires [and] Its top donor, Seth Klarman, is a Buttigieg supporter”..and proponent of Israeli Appartheid in Palestine.
According to his own internal data, later released, Mayor Pete came in a distant second to candidate Bernie Sanders. And according to internal data from both the Sanders and Buttegie campaigns, Senator Bernie Sanders was the clear winner in Iowa. Knowing this in advance, it’s unclear why Mayor Pete claimed early victory, thus the trending hashtag this morning, “#MayorCheat”.
In fact, the internal data from those two campaigns match the predictions by entrance polling that were released early on: by all accounts, the Bernie Sanders campaign had a convincing win, getting over 40% of the Iowa vote including 51% of young voters, aged 18-29. Despite the Sanders’ campaign impressive performance in Iowa, frustration among his supporters is at a fever pitch. Berners are furious about the DNC’s widely recognized bias against Bernie, and many are claiming the delayed results in Iowa are tactical: to distract from Bernie’s win and dampen campaign momentum.
On social media, some Berners are lamenting having wasted the last four years trying to build a coalition within the corrupt DNC instead of building a 3rd Party as many prominent Progressive voices had suggested after the 2016 primary: some select comments include:
- “Jimmy Dore (@Jimmy_Dore) was right about forming a new party. Iowa is just the start, guys. The Democratic Party will not allow Bernie to win”
- “After this #IowaCaucuses shitshow, it's clear we need more leverage on the oligarchy.”
- And from indie journo Lee Camp (@LeeCamp), “The DNC knew they needed to stop the caucuses from going for Bernie Sanders. With funding from Biden & Buttigieg’s campaigns, they created an app thru a secret company literally called “Shadow Inc”! At worst it was meant to rig the results, at best it was meant to crash & delay them.”
- Indie journo Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) adds “...there is a conspiracy against Bernie Sanders, the establishment is very open about their intention to stop him. So you can’t blame people for assuming Iowa was part of the plot.”
Speaking of “the [DNC] plot” against Sanders as Rania called it, she tweeted a 7-min video yesterday listing out the obvious evidence that the DNC elites are trying to sabotage Bernie’s campaign. The most consequential sabotage, Rania says, is their latest move to stack the DNC committees with “a mix of neoliberal corporate hacks, pro-Israel lobyists and regime-change stooges to obstruct Bernie’s agenda.” It’s as if they’re planning a pre-emptive coup.” Rania says.
The DNC committees determine policy positions that could -technically- prevent Bernie from winning the nomination even if he wins the delegate race. Here is just a small sampling of who the DNC appointed to their committees, as reported by indie journo Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) of @TheGrayzoneNews:
- Pro-Apartheid Israel operatives like Bakari Sellers and Dan Shapiro;
- James Boland who’s on the board of the CIA front group National Endowment for Democracy (NED);
- Michael Steed whose investment firm has been charged for corruption in their management of pension fund businesses;
- Claire Lucas of USAID which is a “central arm of Washington’s hybrid war on socialist states around the world.”; and
- John Podesta (of all people) who was exposed by wikileaks for helping Hillary Clinton rig the democratic primary against Bernie in 2016.
What’s important to know about the DNC appointments is that they can heavily influence the Democratic National Convention in July when the final democratic nominee is officially ratified. If the leading nominee doesn’t have enough votes to outright win the nomination, then superdelegates vote at the convention to determine the final nominee. In the democratic party, the superdelegates include about 750 elected officials, party elders, and activists who are appointed by the DNC leadership. So, superdelegate votes are heavily influenced by the DNC Committees mentioned above.
And given the way the DNC leadership has stacked its committees, the Sanders team believes their only real chance in 2020 is to make sure he’s the outight nominee among democratic voters. That’s not as easy as it might seem. It was the Superdelegate system that pushed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary. And in 2016, superdelegate votes are credited for influencing Hillary Clinton’s win over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary…
In her comments today after the Iowa vote, anti-establishment candidate Tulsi Gabbard said, plainly, that the DNC is "rigging the primary process for billionaire candidates". She was referring of course to billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg, who entered the primary late. Bloomberg missed the deadline to qualify for Iowa yesterday and New Hampshire next week. It seems a huge disadvantage, but many believe that the savvy billionaire is playing the superdelegate system: he only needs to take enough delegates away from Sanders to force a superdelegate vote at the Democratic Convention, which most experts, including Sanders’ own aides, believe Bloomberg would win very easily.
So have the corporate elites in the DNC rigged the 2020 Primary again against Sanders? If so, will Sanders supporters begin renewed talk of an independent run in the general election?
That’s what we’ll be watching for and reporting here ongoing. And along the way, we’ll discuss ways that we should all be working together now to ensure that whatever the outcome of the election, we’ll have sufficient leverage against the Corporatocracy to force real change. Indeed, as the corporate elites in the DNC have reminded us in Iowa, if there’s gonna be a real revolution, it’ll require more leverage than just voting and protest marches.
We’ll leave it there for today. We hope you enjoyed the podcast... If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table, to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please visit our website at WakingJustice.org. You can check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. While you’re there, you can sign up to get your #DailyWakeUp Call– delivered right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of our home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick description of the podcast for that day. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Democratic Primary kicks off in Iowa
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 03, 2020. You can visit our website at WakingJustice.org for more details- here are the headlines…
Today is the first day of voting in the democratic primary where democrats vote to decide who they want to run next November in the general election against President Trump. So we thought we’d offer a general primer on how the nominating process is supposed to work, as most voters understand it. And we’ll contrast that with a summary of key revelations over the years that have exposed a vast network of corporate corruption in the democratic primary process– and the democratic party itself.
Whether your personal focus is Social Justice, Democratic Justice, Environmental Justice or Animal Justice– every Global Justice activist should understand the dynamics of power that have corrupted the Democratic Party leadership. Indeed, competent, informed voters understand that the real contest in the democratic primary is not merely among candidates who best represent the issues that they care about; but further, the true contest is between those candidates who want to end party corruption versus those candidates who seek to uphold it.
So maybe the easiest way to understand the true dynamics of power in today’s Democratic Party is to go back to 1992, when Bill Clinton won the democratic primary and went on to win the US Presidency. Before Clinton was elected that year, he was president of the Democratic Leadership Council (or DLC). It was a corporate-funded Think Tank whose mission was to transform the Democratic Party.
Clinton and the DLC called themselves the New Democrats, and their aim was to -quote- “discard the New Deal Policies that had united the middle class” and instead prioritize the interests of -quote- “the professional class” among US multinational corporations – the neoliberal elites...
The DLC and New Democrats were direct descendants of the corporatism and neoliberalism that had emerged in the early 1970s. And that new era of corporatism in the 70s, of course, had risen in response to the “New Left of the 1960s”. Over the ‘60s, the New Left had coalesced into a movement of solidarity among Blacks and middle class Whites— it included the integration of Civil Rights and anti-war activists, environmental activists and anti-corporatists like Ralph Nader. And It had culminated in the idea of a Poor People’s Campaign, originally conceived by Senator Bobby Kennedy and led by Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Poor People’s Campaign was supposed to challenge what Dr. King called -quote “the triplicates of militarism, racism and materialism”; to demand defunding of war-profiteering and neoliberal projects; and to prioritize the funding of anti-poverty programs like education and jobs programs- and guaranteed income, housing and healthcare for all Americans. Sadly, both Dr, King and Senator Kennedy were both assassinated within weeks of the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Before his assination, Senator Kennedy was winning in the 1968 democratic primary. He would have been the democratic challenger to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1968 general election. After Nixon was elected President, he immediately began programs such as his so-called “War on Drugs” to “disrupt” and “vilify” the New Left that had coalesced under Dr. King and Senator Kennedy.
And Nixon appointed corporate attorney Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court. Powell was the author of the now-famous “Powell Memo”. It was a secret memo – and effectively a “Call to Arms” – to key leaders of US corporations to “wage guerilla warfare on the New Left” to protect the interests of BigBusiness. Powell’s Memo is widely credited for inspiring mass investment by US Corporations to develop Washington Think Tanks in the 1970s and 80s. These corporate Think tanks would become incubators for corporate-friendly politicians who would eventually help corporations seize control of both major political parties in the U.S.
This era marks the final chapter of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges calls the Corporate Coup D'etat of our democracy. Indeed, one of those corporate-funded Think Tanks was the “Democratic Leadership Council”. It was funded by major corporations like Dupont, Chevron and Koch Industries, among others. And in 1992, Bill Clinton was their hand-picked presidential nominee.
The Clinton administration signalled the takeover of the Democratic Party by corporate elites whose control of the DNC today is stronger than ever. It’s now maintained “behind the scenes” by corporate think tanks like the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and the Third Way.
If all this sounds like conspiracy theory to you, please be sure to check out the links provided in this article. It’s the truth...
And the corporate takeover of the Democratic party is pretty much the same thing that’s happened in the Republican Party. In fact, Donald Trump ran on his platform to -quote- “drain the swamp” of corporate corruption, but as his voters have now realized (hopefully) is that just like Obama did, Trump has completely sold out his administration to corporate interests. Just like Obama before him, Trump’s administration has now transferred more wealth to the Top 1% (corporate elites) than any president before him.
So in both political parties- these contests are now about sorting out which politicians are aligned in the interests of the 1% versus the 99% – or what’s commonly referred to as -quote- the “Establishment” versus anti-establishment candidates.
-
- And in the democratic primary this year, it seems clear that Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are the anti-establishment candidates. And the top remaining Establishment candidates are Joe Biden, Pete Butegieg, and Amy Klobachar.
- Of course, the other major pro-establishment corporatist is billionaire Mike Bloomberg. But Bloomberg got in late to the race- too late to run in Iowa.
- And as for Elizabeth Warren– she originally entered the race as an anti-establishment progressive, but her honesty and integrity have been questioned during the course of her campaign. As leading indie journo and anti-corporatist Chris Hedges said, “I do not trust Warren completely”
- So, according to the latest polls, the race today in Iowa seems to be a virtual tie between anti-establishment progressive Bernie Sanders and pro-establishment corporatist Joe Biden.
- And in the democratic primary this year, it seems clear that Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are the anti-establishment candidates. And the top remaining Establishment candidates are Joe Biden, Pete Butegieg, and Amy Klobachar.
Will the corporate establishment try to rig the election against Sanders as it did in 2016? Or will the 99% prevail today in Iowa? We shall see! And going forward on your #DailyWakeUpCall, we’ll focus more on the democratic primary and then the general election. We’ll promote the best indie journos out there who are telling the truth about this whole process. And along the way, we’ll discuss ways that we can all be working together now to ensure that whatever the outcome, we’ll have sufficient leverage against the Corporatocracy to force real change after the election.
Ok, that’ll do it for today. We hope you enjoyed the podcast... If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table, to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. While you’re here, you can also sign up to get your #DailyWakeUpCall– delivered right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of our home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick description of the podcast for that day. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Friday Jan 31, 2020
#WhistleblowerWednesday:Jesus the Whistleblower?
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, January 22, 2020
It’s #WhistleblowerWednesday today, where each Wednesday, we focus on whistleblowers – the brave activists who work to expose the corporate takeover of our democracy.
Some of the most important patriots in US history were Whistleblowers. In fact, the US was practically founded by Whistleblowers. For a brief history, you can check out the first edition of #WhistleblowerWednesday in our October 2nd podcast.
For today, we’d like to reshare our Christmas edition of #WhistleblowerWednesday. We’ve been getting great feedback on that episode and wanted to reshare in case you missed it. In this episode, we explore the secular history and Christian narrative of the historical Jesus and ask, “Was Jesus the original whistleblower?”
Full disclosure– we’re not church-going Christians (and no offense to Christian folk), but this project turned out to be a fascinating journey of discovery for our whole team. We hope you’ll make time to listen to the whole podcast– and please let us know: were you as surprised as we were at the conclusions we reached?
Here’s the original episode:
It’s Christmas Day today, and to all you who celebrate it, we wish you a Merry Christmas.
It’s also #WhistleblowerWednesday today on your Daily WakeUp Call. And in recognition of Christmas, we’re doing a special Christmas Day edition for #WhistleBlowerWednesday.
Christmas of course is the day when Christians the world over celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. As with any religious figure, there are diverse perspectives on what the life and teachings of Jesus mean to his believers and non-believers. Is Jesus the supernatural Son of God as his followers believe? Or was he an enemy of the state and a heretic as the Romans and Jewish Priests believed? Or could he be none of the above? Or perhaps all three...?
In our podcast today, we’ll explore those questions from various perspectives. Our main exploration will be informed by the biblical narrative of Jesus as recorded in the Christian bible. And where possible and helpful, we’ll cross-reference biblical narrative with the historical record as interpreted by secular and state historians of the day. So with all due respect to true believers- including Jews, Christians and statists– we’ll offer a trigger warning here in hopes that folks won’t be offended by our efforts of inquiry. It’s all meant in the spirit of Truth and love, as we expect you all– and Jesus– would want it.
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
So, as most folks know, “B.C”. stands for years “Before Christ”. And around the year 4 B.C. – about 2,024 years ago– is when most historians agree that Jesus was born. He was born in a small countryside town called Bethlehem in the land known then as Judea. It was situated in the mountainous region of what is now present-day southern Palestine.
Back then, Judea was a Jewish kingdom. And at the time of Jesus’ birth, “Herod the Great” was their King. Judea was also a “client-state” (or more derogatorily, a “puppet-state”) of the Roman Empire, subordinate to Roman governance and taxation. And Herod was a “puppet-king”, appointed by Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor back then. The Romans had colonized the kingdom of Judea some 60 years before. Herod’s father and then Herod’s son supported the Roman conquerors and were greatly rewarded with state status and power.
By the time of Jesus’ birth, King Herod was nearing the end of his reign and getting paranoid in his old age. He’d assassinated one of his wives and three of his sons believing they were all plotting to kill him. The ruthless violence and uncertainty about his successor created chaos in the kingdom. Blood feuds and conflicts were already escalating when the Jewish king heard rumour that some wise men from the East were traveling to Judea to witness the birth of a new King.
CHAPTER 2 – THE BIRTH OF JESUS
The wise men were called “Magi” – they were Zoroastrian priests, renown for their knowledge of astronomy and astrology. And at the time of their journey, a rare astronomical event was underway in the western horizon. From their vantage point in the East, the event guided their journey to the land of Judea. By the Magi’s interpretation, the event signified that a future “King of the Jews” would soon be born. When the Magi arrived in Jerusalem, which was the capital and “Holy City” of Judea, they explained their theory to King Herod. The King’s advisors responded that indeed, according to ancient Jewish prophecy, a “King of the Jews” would one day be born somewhere south of the Holy City. Could this be the newborn king that the Magi were seeking?
King Herod asked the Magi to go south to the town of Bethlehem and report back to him on their findings. The Magi journeyed there and soon found a young couple, Mary and Joseph, who’d just been blessed with the birth of a child. The couple was from Nazareth, a city in the land of Galilee, about 90 miles north of Bethlehem. About a week before, the couple had been forced to leave their home in Nazareth. Mary was nine months pregnant and they were required to register for a Roman census in southern Judea, the land of Joseph’s ancestors. So over the past several days, Mary and Joseph had walked about 10 miles a day through hill country and across desert, enduring harsh winter weather to make it to Bethlehem.
By the time they arrived in Bethlehem, Mary was ready to give birth. They found an Inn in the town, but there were no more rooms available there. The only refuge available was a cave that was used by the Inn as a stable for donkeys, sheep and other animals. It was in this stable that Mary gave birth to her baby, whom she named Yeshua (Yahshua), or Jesus as we pronounce it in english.
CHAPTER 3 – THE MASSACRE OF INNOCENTS
Soon after Jesus’ birth, the couple found a local who was willing to share space in their home for the young family. And it was at this house, where the Magi finally found them. The Magi presented gifts for the baby. And they told Mary and Joseph about their journey... By now, the news had spread that King Herod intended to “seek out the child to destroy him.'' And when the Magi did not report back to Herod, the King commanded a terrible massacre– killing all male children in Bethlehem under the age of two...
To protect their baby from persecution, the family fled south to the land of Egypt which was beyond the rule of King Herod. Soon after his “Massacre of Innocents” in Bethlehem, Herod reportedly died a very painful death. It resulted from complications of kidney disease including gangrene of his genitalia… (That obscure fact has somehow survived over 2000 years of history, so we thought it worth repeating here.)
CHAPTER 4 – THE HIDDEN YEARS OF JESUS
So after King Herod’s death, Mary, Joseph and Jesus journeyed back to Nazareth. And for the next three decades, they apparently lived a quiet, humble life. These are known as the “Hidden Years of Jesus”. In fact, there’s only one other account of Jesus’ childhood in the biblical narrative. It tells the story of when Jesus, at the age of 12, accompanied his family and friends on their annual pilgrimage to the Holy City. After the festival, as they journeyed back home, Mary realized that Jesus was not among them. For three days, Mary and Joseph searched the city looking for Jesus, until finally they found him in the temple courts. The bible says, He was sitting among the temple elders, “listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone was amazed at his understanding.”
When young Jesus was reunited with his parents, he asked them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” And that marks the first spoken words by Jesus presented in the biblical narrative. Theologians say that the rest of what we know about Jesus’ life is an exposition of the meaning of these first recorded words. So let’s see what Jesus meant by being “about [his] Father’s business...”
CHAPTER 5 –JOHN THE BAPTIST AT THE JORDAN RIVER
There are no other biblical accounts or historical records of Jesus’ life until his 30th year. The bible picks up his story there with the introduction of a Jewish holy man named John the Baptist. Most all theologians and secular historians agree– the account of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River is both the most indisputable and most pivotal historical event in the launch of Jesus’ ministry.
It’s because John is widely considered the last of the “Old Covenant” Jewish prophets. The Old Covenant represents their belief that “the People of Israel are God’s Chosen People”. Their Covenant is bound by the Ten Commandments, a set of moral laws which the Jewish People believe was given to them directly by God. And if they obeyed the Commandments, God would eventually deliver them to the “Promised Land”, a “land overflowing with milk and honey”.
Over generations, Jewish leaders would codify the Ten Commandments into various rules and rituals that governed Jewish life. If anyone violated a rule or commandment, their “sin” must be ritually “cleansed” by the blood of an animal sacrifice. Depending on the sin, doves, sheep and cows were most commonly prescribed for sacrifice by the Jewish priests. There were daily communal blood sacrifices conducted as well.
When the priests prescribed a blood sacrifice, the ritual required that the animal’s throat be cut and its blood splattered on the Temple altar. The animal was then skinned and a portion of the animal’s flesh was carved out and retained by the Temple priests. The remaining carcass was then burned on the altar and the sin was considered cleansed.
It’s useful to remember here that the ancient Jewish people were nomadic herders, The health and number of one’s herd or flock reflected their relative wealth. For sinners who had no animals of their own, they would have to purchase an animal for sacrifice from a herd or flock approved by the priests. Animal trading and animal sacrifice was a major source of revenue for the priests.
The Temple Priests were appointed by a High Priest who was ultimately approved– or directly installed– by the Jewish King. So animal sacrifice and the farming of animals was central to the distribution of wealth and political power controlled by the Temple priests. And ultimately all served at the pleasure of the Jewish King. So, you can imagine how this system would become corrupted where “the high priesthood was for sale to the one who offered the king the largest bribe.”
CHAPTER 6 – THE ESSENES
That’s all worth noting because John the Baptist and Jesus both came from communities that were dominated by a Jewish sect called the Essenes. The Essenes were Jewish reformists who believed that the Jewish priesthood had become defiled by “impious and unscrupulous men.” And as we shall see, the ministries of John and Jesus appear to be strongly influenced by the Essene movement.
The Essenes had an apocalyptic point of view. But not in the sense that “the whole world was about to end.” Rather, the Essenes believed that the original “Old Covenant” had been perverted by generations of corrupt Jewish leadership. And that the Jewish people had been misled into an evil age. But the Essenes believed that this evil age was now in its “Last Days”. And the “Good News” was that a “New Covenant” and “glorious new Kingdom” was now “at hand”.
The Essenes were a sectarian (or separatist) community. Their settlements were located far from the Jerusalem Temple which was the central institution of Jewish life. Indeed, the Essene movement defined itself as a “radical questioning of mainstream Temple life.”
For example, the Essenes opposed such Jewish norms as slavery, the stoning to death of people including homosexuals, astrologers, and even children for backtalking their parents. They opposed the so-called Jewish “Holy War” which included smashing to death the babies of their enemies. And by banning the eating of meat and the ritual of blood sacrifice, the Essenes dismantled the profit incentive of peddling animals that had contributed to the corruption of the Temple priests...
In fact, the Essenes pretty much eliminated all private property. Personal wealth and possessions were surrendered to the community. And in turn, the overall wealth of the community was used to ensure individual prosperity, equally. It was an egalitarian community, and it served the Essenes as the surrogate Temple of Jewish life.
The Essenes replaced blood sacrifice with baptism by water for ritual cleansing. And it was the holy man, John the Baptist who began openly preaching a baptism of repentance in preparation for the coming New Kingdom. The biblical and historical accounts agree that great masses of Jewish people from all of Judea came to be baptized by John. And it’s important to remember here that the Jewish Kingdom was no longer simply a religious movement of the People of Israel. It had become a corrupt theocratic autocracy ordered by wealth and political power. The Jewish priesthood and King made up it’s political class and financial elite, who John publicly proclaimed as “the offspring of vipers,” and who Jesus would later refer to as the “den of thieves.”
CHAPTER 7 – JESUS IS BAPTIZED BY JOHN THE BAPTIST
So a Jew’s act of repentance through public baptism by John was not just an admission of personal sin. It was a bold political act– a public affirmation of their agreement with John that the Jewish priests and even the Jewish King were unfit to lead. So John was sowing the seeds of both spiritual and political Revolution back then...
According to the biblical narrative, when Jesus learned of John’s mission, he traveled down from Galilee to southern Judea to be baptized by John– and to publicly endorse John’s message and prophecy of the coming new kingdom... As John beheld Jesus and baptized him, John asked, “are you the new Messiah?” But Jesus gave no answer. He accepted John’s blessing of baptism, and soon departed from the camp.
The bible story says that after Jesus was baptized, he “went alone into the wilderness” to reflect on his life and what John the Baptist had asked of him. What did John sense in Jesus that would compel such a question from John? Was Jesus indeed the messiah? And what would that even mean..?
As many have suggested, Jesus was most likely exposed to the wisdom of the Essene tradition. It means Jesus would have studied the great teachers of antiquity like the great Jewish prophets Elijah, Moses and Enoch; as well as Plato, Pythagoras, and the Orphic tradition of Greece; Zarathustra of Persia, Krishna and Buddha in India, and the great sages of ancient Egypt. He would have learned about geometry, astronomy, permaculture, and the healing arts. And spirituality too, of course: he would have learned the interpretation of hidden meaning in the great parables of holy scripture, the ancient science of human consciousness, and the wisdom gained in fasting, prayer and meditation.
CHAPTER 8 – JESUS GOES INTO THE WILDERNESS
The Bible says Jesus fasted in the wilderness for “40 days and 40 nights”. And if you’ve ever fasted before, you know that even after just a day or so, a mighty internal rebellion sets in. The mind conjures up every reason under the sun to end your fast. It gets worse over the first few days, but about a week or so in, the body begins a process of deep cleansing and healing. Your overall energy actually begins to increase. And at times, you’ll notice that you’re normally busy mind has spontaneously gone quiet... After a few weeks into a fast, the mind can get eerily, blissfully quiet... And when combined with prayer or meditative inquiry, many have had profound, life-changing insights… ...
You can’t help but wonder, what insights might Jesus have had during his 40 day fast? He’d just been baptized by a holy man– who many were calling a prophet– and the holy man had asked Jesus, straight up: “Are you the new messiah?” Can you imagine what that must have been like for him...?
And he’d seen scores of his fellow Jews, up close– poor, suffering, and desperate for justice. And looming in the backdrop, the broken Promise– the Kingdom of Israel descending into decadence, corruption, barbarism and chaos.
By all accounts, Jesus had a deep, abiding love for people. Like a familial brotherly love, as an adoring brother would love his own sister or brother. But he embodied such love for all people... Have you ever known such a person? We’re not meaning the plastic approval-seeker who desperately feigns compassion for others in exchange for their validation. But one who can see deeply in such a person; understand their desperation; and see the sadness and even dignity in their yearning. And further– be compelled to help heal their yearning; to help them trust that dignity in themselves.
CHAPTER 9 – WAS JESUS THE MESSIAH?
It’s a beautiful ideal for humanity– the archetype of the loving Messiah– who embodies such perfect compassion for others that they’re inspired to find such Truth in themselves. And all doubts aside: what greater example is there is there in all of human history than the all-loving man of compassion that Jesus would come to mean for us?
In our cynical age, it’s very hard to imagine such perfection of compassion, isn’t it? But just as a mental experiment- suspend your disbelief just for a moment, and imagine that all the requisite qualities had somehow come together in the life of this one man, Jesus. And in the depths of 40 days of fasting, prayer and rigorous self enquiry, Jesus found a core Truth in himself, the genius of perfect compassion.
For some reason, when we call it “genius” it’s easier for us to accept. For example, when we behold the great geniuses who are chronicled in our culture like Bach or Rembrandt, or da Vinci– their genius seems indisputable. And, interestingly, when you examine the works of these great geniuses, you find that their greatest works were actually in homage to Jesus himself: check out Bach’s Passion of Jesus, or Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, or da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
Or see the bare genius of perfected will in the great revolutionaries like Gandhi, "Black Moses" Harriett Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King– all who attribute their deep conviction for Justice to that example in Jesus Christ.
Indeed, would it not have taken a genius of compassion with a perfect sense of Justice to muster the will that must have been needed to accept the impossible challenge of walking the walk of a would-be Messiah? Considering the history that Jesus made over the next few years of his life- which would go on to inspire such genius as those mentioned above, and countless more like them in all walks of life– and over the course of more than 2,000 years of human history– how else can we define what he has come to mean to so many but as “Jesus, the Messiah”?
CHAPTER 10 – JESUS BEGINS HIS MINISTRY
According to the biblical narrative, Jesus ended his fast in the wilderness, journeyed back to Galilee and launched his public ministry. For the next two years, Jesus would travel across Galilee preaching and finetuning his message of Universal Love and Global Justice. Most biblical scholars agree that his message culminates in what the bible refers to as “The Sermon on the Mount”. We expect this sermon includes layered meaning for interpretation by those who receive it. So we’ll offer our perspective here in the spirit that we received it:
This Sermon on the Mount includes the famous “Eight Beatitudes (or ‘blessings’) of Jesus”. You can read about the full context of the sermon in the book of Matthew in the Chrirstain bible. We’ll just quote the Eight Beatitudes here and offer some insights on a few of those after. Jesus said:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven... Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted... Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness* for they shall be satisfied... Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy... Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God... [And] Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness*, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." [Gospel of Matthew 5:3-10]
So those are the “Eight Beatitudes (or ‘blessings’) of Jesus”. And for some context, it’s worth reminding here that Jesus would have given this “Sermon on the Mount” around the year 30 A.D. The Book of Matthew, which quotes that sermon, was originally written in the Hebrew language for a Hebrew audience that would have understood the dynamics of the People of Israel back then. The following is a quick glimpse of those dynamics to help provide context and better inform our brief analysis of the Beatitudes.
So there were four main groups (or sects) of Jews at the time of Jesus: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. The Pharisees were the Jewish Priests who oversaw the business of the Temple, including that business of ritual blood sacrifice that we previously explained. The Sadducees were those of the priestly
families, who could be considered the Jewish aristocracy. These two groups– the Pharisees and Sadducees– made up what we could call the political class and financial elites of that time. These were the folks who John the Baptist referred to as the “offspring of vipers”...
Then there were the Essenes who we previously explained as the seperatist sect of Jews who banned eating meat and the Temple’s business of blood sacrifice. They also banned other barbarism as well, including stoning to death as a punishment for various sins. The Essenes’ top aims were “to be pious before God,” and “to practice justice before men.” They created a surrogate Temple based on communal wealth to ensure equality and individual prosperity.
The fourth sect of Jews were known as the Zealots. They were a militant Jewish group who regarded political freedom as a religious imperative. The Zealots despised equally, the corrupt Jewish elites and the Roman occupation, and maintained an underground resistance movement against both, centered in Galilee. And like the Essenes, they expected the return of a Messiah to save and rally their cause...
CHAPTER 11 – UNIVERSAL LOVE AND GLOBAL JUSTICE
With that summary of class dynamics and revolutionary spirit that pervaded the Jewish kingdom in the first century, here are a few brief observations about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We believe these points illustrate key aspects of Jesus’ ministry that are persistently left out of mainstream discourse about Jesus. And which result in a gross distortion of mission and ministry.
Recalling the first Beatitude in the biblical narrative, Jesus says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” If you’re familiar with this passage, you’ve likely wondered what Jesus meant by “the poor in spirit”. Did he mean sad, suffering people? Actually, leading scholars [1,2] believe it is a distinct reference to the Essenes who referred to themselves as “the Poor” due to their “spirit” of egalitarianism, communal economy, rejection of private property, and their boycott of “the rich” corrupt aristocracy of the Jewish Kingdom. So according to those scholars: in this Beatitude, Jesus is effectively saying that those who are like the Essenes– who reject greed and materialism and prioritize equality for all – are blessed with “the Kingdom of Heaven”.
And by the way, there’s more to that phrase, “the Kingdom of Heaven” as well, which we’ll come back to in a moment… *But first, let’s look at the fourth and eighth Beatitudes which say: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” –AND– “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He seems to define what he means by righteousness in the other Beatitudes as “meek, merciful, and peaceful.” But it doesn’t it seem odd to state that a person would be “persecuted” for being “meek, merciful, and peaceful”?
Actually the use of the term “righteousness” in these two passages has a long and storied debate. Leading Experts and scholars agree that the term “righteousness” was erroneously or even “suspiciously” substituted there for the correct term which should be “justice”. According to scholars then, the correct translation should be: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for “justice”, for they shall be satisfied.” –AND– “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of “justice”, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." So, the correct translations reveal clearly that the ministry of Jesus was a mission of Global Justice.
In fact there are over 300 occurences of the original greek term for “Justice” in the New Testament, but most are translated as “Righteousness”. So, why the seeming conspiracy against the term “Justice” in the Christian bible?
CHAPTER 12 – THE CONSECRATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Perhaps one major clue can come from a seminal event in Chritianity that happened about 300 years after Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It was an official meeting in 325 A.D. called the Council of Nicea– a meeting of two opposing Chirstian factions in the early formation of the Church. Their main disagreement was a theological dispute: one group believed Jesus should be portrayed in church doctrine as an eternal being having always co-existed with God. The other side disagreed, claiming Jesus should be portrayed as a creation of God and therefore subordinate to God. Our concern here is not their theological debate; but rather the political context of that debate.
The meeting was organized by the Roman Emperor Constatine. His apparent goal was to host the theological debate and rig the outcome in favor of his preferred majority. According to the historical record, “Constantine invited over 2,000 Christian Bishops to the event, but in the end, he “disqualified over 1,700 Bishops from voting due to what he called their “political views”. He rigged the debate- and the remaining Bishops who wanted Jesus portrayed as “co-eternal with God” won with only two dissenting votes.
It was a shrewd political move by Constinine that gained him favor with the winners of that debate. Those Bishops held important influence in the eastern region of the Roman Empire. In return, they helped Constantine consolidate political power and effectively transform the empire from a Roman Republic into “an absolute monarchy divested of republican forms.” Christianity would soon become the State Church of the new Roman autocracy. And the organization of the early Church would be modeled after the imperial Roman army: Bishops and their deacons would rule districts corresponding with military districts, controlling political appointments, disciplinary actions, and allocation of funding.
Constantine was embraced by the Church as a converted Christian. But it was well known he was a murderous tyrant. Among his many murders, he had “boiled alive” his first wife– and he’d strangled his oldest son to death. Still, the Church Bishops deferred to the Emperor as their “enforcer of religious purity.” With Constantine’s support they led mass persecutions of all perceived enemies of the Church. And with support from the Imperial army, the Church plundered Pagan temples and stole precious treasures that had been amassed for centuries throughout the Empire. By the fourth century, the early Christian Church had become the complete antithesis of “Justice” that Jesus had preached 300 years before.
And by emphasizing a doctrine of “Righteousness” rather than “Justice”, church leaders had a powerful tool of spiritual austerity with which to control the masses: a focus on “Justice” – as Jesus had done – would highlight the sins of the Church and the State. But a focus on “Righteousness” reversed that dynamic. It focused the attention of the Church on the sins of the masses. It sets up the Church as God’s judge and jury over the masses on behalf of the State.
And the greatest conjob of all by those tricksters? The early Christian Church deified the State: the imperialist empire was propped up by the Church as a Holy Empire. Its ruler became God’s chosen Emperor. So any calls for Justice against the State or the Emperor could be interpreted as blasphemy. The early Church then effectively made the pursuit of “Justice” that Jesus had preached, a state heresy– a crime against God and punishable by death...
CHAPTER 13 – WHERE IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN?
Was the new Christian Church the new “Body of Christ” as it claimed? Or had it actually become the Antichrist as foretold in its bible in the Book of Revelations? Most certainly it was not seeking the “Kingdom of Heaven” that Jesus had preached...
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven...”, Jesus had said, “and all else will be given unto you.” So, what did Jesus mean by this “Kingdom of Heaven” he preached? Was it just a utopian pipe dream? Or is there more to his meaning?
In the sixth Beatitude that he recited at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” Did he mean that if we live a pure life, then upon our death we could finally “see” God in the afterlife, in his celestial “Kingdom of Heaven”? Certainly that’s what the early Christian Church would indoctrinate. But according to other biblical verse, Jesus also said that “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” and the “Kingdom of God is within you.”
So in reference to that sixth Beatitude - did Jesus actually mean - that if someone could be “pure of heart” - then they would “see” that the God they’ve been seeking- is the God that’s been within them - all along...? It would mean the Kingdom of Heaven is already here on Earth, “among us” and “in our midst”, would it not? And that we need only purify our habits of perceiving and being to “see” it? For what is the “heart”, as Jesus puts it, but the habits of thinking, doing and being of its bearer?
And what examples in his life did Jesus give us - for seeking such purity within ourselves? Most certainly he advocated “mercy and love for each other - and all God’s creation” in committing oneself to the great quest for Global Justice. But by his own example, in preparation for that quest, he sought first to ready himself. He went into “the wilderness” of self-enquiry and rigorous introspection. He fasted, meditated and prayed to the God of Heaven within… He rejected the seduction of self-doubt and temptation of self-glory. He uncovered the Messiah within, and embraced its mission: to find the “meek and merciful peacemakers” who could join together and build a new Kingdom of Heaven based on a perpetualrevolution of Universal Love and Global Justice.
CHAPTER 14 – DIVINITY IN CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
His great quest proceeded from the Sermon on the Mount to his “triumphal entry” into the Temple City. According to the biblical narrative, Jesus entered the city through its “Golden Gate”, the traditional entrance of foreign kings and princes who claim to come in peace. The crowd parted as he made his way to the Temple Courtyard. It was the annual festival of Passover, and the crowds would have numbered 300,000 people or more.
In the courtyard, he confronted the animal traders- those selling cows, sheep and doves for repentance by blood sacrifice. And he confronted the moneychangers and loan sharks, who bartered with those needing funds to purchase their repentance. He turned over their tables and cast them out– and he scorned the Temple Priests saying they’d turned God’s holy house into “a den of robbers and thieves.” The crowds were inspired by his activism and praised him. And as Jesus left he asked the crowd to boycott all trade in the Temple, “a sanction that would have disrupted all commerce” in the city.
According to the biblical narrative, the Jewish priests feared his sway with the crowds, and began “scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.” They formed a mob of men to track him down and bring him back to the Priests to be tried for blasphemy. “Are you the Messiah?” they asked him when he was brought before the priests. “I am,” Jesus said, and gave them the answer they needed.
The bible says that the priests then bound Jesus and brought him to the Roman Governor, Pontious Pilate. They told Pilate that he’d claimed to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews. “We have no king but Caesar,” said the
Priests. And “anyone who declares himself a king is defying Caesar.” So, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar,” they said. “Away with him! Crucify him!”
And with that, Pilate commanded his soldiers to prepare Jesus for execution. They twisted together a crown of thorns and set it upon his head. And they led him out through the crowd to the place of his crucifixion. His final hours had come. The defender of the poor and oppressed would be martyred in a place of death reserved for robbers and runaway slaves.
CHAPTER 15 – JESUS IS CRUCIFIED
The Bible says Jesus refused the elixir that pious women traditionally offered the victims of crucifixion. In full consciousness then, Jesus would feel the full pain of this terrible death: the nails being pounded through his hands and feet, the weight of his body upright, tearing at the wounds; his loved ones nearby horrified, heartbroken and sobbing. And all while the priests were mocking them, shouting, “if he is the Saviour why won’t he save himself?”
The Bible says Jesus had prayed early on, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” And for the next six hours he hung there, helpless and suffering for all to see, until a soldier finally stabbed him with a spear. Towards the end, the Bible says Jesus spoke again, saying “My God why have you forsaken me?” Can you imagine what questions would tear through the mind of one who had met such an end to a quest such as his? Or what visions he might have seen over six hours of such excruciating pain?
If the crucible of such intense suffering could induce prophetic vision as some claim, what might Jesus have seen..? The last 2,000 years is a minefield of human history... Might he have seen how his teachings were twisted by early church leaders, as we previously explained? Or how 10 centuries later, murderous raids and campaigns of mass torture would be justified in his name during the Christian Crusades and Inquisitions? Or how 15 centuries later, the Chrstian “Doctrine of Discovery” would sanctify mass genocide, plunder, and slavery by imperialist Christian Explorers? Or how 20 centuries later, the Church would abide in the grotesque consumerism that we now call “Merry Christmas”?
Indeed, in the bitterest of ironies, Church leaders today seem more concerned about keeping the words “Merry Christmas” attached to this hypocrisiy of materialism, than any meaningful fight to proclaim Jesus’ true mission to boycott materialism and promote Universal Love and Global Justice.
We’re not aiming here to shame anyone- just pointing out that if Jesus had gotten a glimpse of the vast horror and hypocrisy made in his name over the past two millennia, what else might he exclaim, but “My God! Why have you forsaken me?!” Was he maybe talking to us?
CHAPTER 16 – REVELATIONS...
As we celebrate Christmas this year, we celebrate in the nation that hosts the vastest, most destructive empire ever on the face of the Earth. We now have greater wealth inequality than any nation, at anytime in human history. The US Criminal Justice System is now a subsidiary of the For-Profit Prison Industry, where the US now imprisons more of its own citizens than any other nation.
Skyrocketing healthcare costs are now greater in the US than any other developed nation. And the leading cause of disease and death is America’s Disease-for-Profit Food System: 18 of the Top 20 BigPharma products sold worldwide are medicines that treat diseases associated with meat- and- dairy-based foods.
The meat and dairy industry is also the #1 driver of the Mass Extinction of Species now underway. We’re now on track to lose 90% of Earth’s wildlife populations by 2025- that’s just five years away. As we record this Christmas podcast, record wildfires driven by global warming have turned southeast Australia into “a charred, apocalyptic nightmare that threatens to wipe out entire species of animals.”
The meat and dairy industry is also a leading driver of global warming as well. And on Christmas Eve 2019, the Earth capped an all-time record for Antarctic Ice-Melt over a single 24 hour period...
Of course, fossil fuel use is also a leading driver of global warming. And even as Climatologists declare Climate Breakdown a ‘Planetary Emergency’ in the wake of the record ice melt Christmas Eve, the US War machine is– right now– trying to start three different foreign wars for oil in Venezuela, Syria and Iran. All three wars are about forcing the sale of global oil in petrodollars to profit the BigBanks. And anyone counting on a decline of fossil fuel sales to help slow down global warming is spectacularly naive about the power of BigBanks and the global petrodollar system…
CHAPTER 17 – A CONCLUSION TO JESUS' REVOLUTION
2,000 years later, the trading of animal flesh by BigMeat&Dairy, and the peddling of debt by the money changers of the BigBanks has pushed our planet to the brink of ecological and social collapse… And the mass corporate media has so perfected state propaganda, that– as the great Noam Chomskey has said– “People not only don't know what's happening to them, they don't even know that they don't know.”
That’s what we believe the Christmas Story must become, beginning today and going forward into this pivotal New Year– a revelation of the Truth of the times that we’re in; a radical re-awakening to our responsibility in the Revolution that began 2,000-years ago: the revelation that now, this Revolution must finally conclude.
According to the science, never before in human history has “the End Times” been so relevant and accurate a warning as now... But, too, never before have we had such access to each other to rally together and do what we must do.. It’s not rocket science either: Jesus gave us the playbook, we just didn’t follow through. We have to boycott the power structure of the elites, starting with its most strategic, most vulnerable and archaic industry: BigMeat&Dairy.
A Mass Organized Boycott of BigMeat&Dairy (BigMAD) is the most accessible and strategic boycott we can undertake. It would deliver huge gains in the fight against climate change. And it would quickly and dramatically improve our health and well being, which would then impact BigPharma. In fact, both BigPharma and BigChemical are highly dependent on the consumption and production of global meat and dairy. And all three industries– BigMAD, BigPharma and BigChem are huge customers of BigOil. Petrochemicals provide the molecular building blocks for BigPharma and BigChemical products.
And if BigOil suffers then the Petrodollar suffers and that’s finally how we can effectively force BigBanks to the bargaining table.
Of course, a Mass Organized Boycott must include a Boycott of BigMedia, combined with a “Buycott” of independent media. It would effectively muzzle the Corporatocracy, and we’d empower the best indie journos out there to hasten our Just Revolt.
And please be clear- we’re under no illusion that organizing such a mass boycott across all sectors of Global Justice would not present unprecedented challenges- we get it. But do understand that this boycott strategy is supported by solid research as we’ve reported over the past year: all the major corporations across all industries of the Corporatocracy are all variously invested in each others success. They buy each others’ stock and appoint their people to each others boards of directors. Their shared ownership and mutual investment is what binds the Corporatocracy. It’s their greatest strength, but it’s also their greatest weakness. When one industry falters, they all suffer and they all know it. And the most vulnerable and strategic industry of the Corporatocracy is BigMeat&Dairy.
As Jesus might call it– that’s the “Good News” in our Christmas Story, and we hope you’ll look into it. And if you’d like to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in Mass Organized Boycott and force this Corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table, to end all this injustice, cruelty and corruption, and to help save our planet– please visit our website at wakingjustice.org. You can check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. And if you want to get your Daily WakeUp Call delivered each day by email, please fill out the “Contact” form at the top/right of the Home page– or you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org -We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Can we “confront reality on reality’s own terms?”
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, January 23, 2020...
Yesterday, one of our fave indie journos, Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) published a really good article called “How To Be A Mentally Sovereign Human”. She explains why “Most people believe that they are truly free thinkers [but] Most people are wrong.” It’s an instructive essay on what the great Noam Chomskey (@noamchomskyT) meant when he famously said, “The general population doesn't know what’s happening and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.”
Caitlin’s essay is instructive because she digs into the how-and-why of Chomskey’s observation as only she can- with great heart, wit, piercing intelligence, and such inspired prose:
“We all showed up naked, slimy and clueless in a world of inexplicable sensory input we couldn’t make head or tail out of. We were then taught what’s what by people who showed up under the exact same circumstances a blink of an eye earlier.
“The amniotic fluid is barely washed from our tiny naked bodies before we find ourselves in a marriage and a day job, staring down at a small pair of eyes looking up to us for guidance.
“This is not a good environment for developing mental sovereignty, the ownership and authorship of your own cognitive relationship with life…”
She’s like one of those great Indian sages who give profound insight in seemingly simple phrasing. In a nutshell, her core message in all her work:
“To attain a truly self-sovereign mind, you need to put truth above all else in every waking moment. You need to constantly dedicate yourself to learning what’s true and what’s real, and to living in alignment with the truth that has been discovered.”
That’s pretty much the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and the teachings of Ramana Maharshi all in two lines. Not kidding...
In a future podcast, we’ll explore those classic texts in more depth, including various approaches to meditative practice, as well as the science on it (the psychology, biology and even physics on its legitimacy is fascinating and quite convincing). But for now, we wanna stick to Caitlin’s advice in her article (which we highly recommend reading). And we’ll offer a specific example of how her advice can/should be applied by all of us in the work of Global Justice, including us fans of indie-journos as well as the indie journos and leading activists themselves...
First then— one of Caitlin’s main ideas is that to be a competent activist in this age of great urgency and mass propaganda:
“It means wanting to know the truth about what’s really happening in your world, and how it contrasts with what you’re being told to believe about what’s happening in your world by confident-sounding voices on the screens that you see.”
Here’s a not-so-obvious example of what we think she means. The video below features Guardian reporter George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) and climate activist Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg). We love Greta of course and have covered her tireless activism multiple times before. And we greatly respect George’s work as a journalist on #ClimateBreakdown and mass species extinction. But we think their video below– though obviously well intentioned– is a huge missed opportunity and a good example of what Caitlin warns about re: our “[living] in various degrees of untruth, accepting unexamined assumptions as true because it is much easier and more comfortable than confronting reality on reality’s own terms.”
So, just for a quick experiment, please check out George and Greta’s brief video below and see if can pick out any “degrees of untruth” which might make its overall message “easier and more comfortable” than confronting reality on “reality’s own terms.”
Did you come up with any? If so, let’s compare notes… Here’s our take: we found four big ideas in their script:
- A mass extinction of species is underway; “up to 200 species are going extinct every day”. And “our climate is breaking down…”
- And even though forests can protect wildlife diversity and “massively reduce climate change,” we’re destroying forests faster than ever: “tropical forests are being cut down at the rate of 30 football fields/minute”. So, what should we do?
- “It’s simple,” Greta says “we need to protect tropical forests.” But we spend a 1000X more on fossil fuel subsidies than nature-based solutions. [And] “this is your money, your taxes,” Greta reminds us. So (again) What should we do?
- George says we need to vote for politicians who will (a) end [fossil fuel subsidies] and (b) pay for reforestation and rewilding projects. (Again,) “It is that simple,” George says...
And checking their claims on the problems we face, we agree with the first three: a mass extinction of species is now underway- we’re losing up to 200 species of wildlife everyday. We’re at the brink of runaway climate change. And a leading solution to help reverse both crises is to reverse global deforestation. So everything holds up there...
But we weren’t clear on how ending fossil fuels would reverse global deforestation. We get that we need to move to renewable energies and end fossil fuel consumption. But they didn’t explain how to reverse global deforestation, which is pretty much their whole argument in the video on reducing climate change and ending mass species extinction. They did mention planting more trees, but that doesn’t reverse ongoing global deforestation; it’d be like using a tea cup to bail water from a boat while waves are crashing upon it...
George deflected: “it’s simple,” he said, “we need to vote for [politicians who will end [fossil fuel subsidies] and [invest in reforestation and rewilding projects].
Ok, but is it really so “simple” as just voting for the right politician? George is a Brit, and the UK just held a critically important election for their new prime minister. We follow George’s work, and we followed that entire election as well. George would agree that the Labour Party’s Jermey Corbyn was definitely the candidate who would have fought for the solutions that George and Greta suggest. But Corbyn lost that election by an historic landslide. And as George well knows, Corbyn lost because the billionaire-owned media that dominate public opinion in the UK were unrelenting in their vicious smears of Corbyn. He didn’t have a prayer.
And– sidebar– if you know how critical the petrodollar system is to the profitability of BigBanks, BigOil, and BigDefense- and the fact that the billionaires who own controlling shares in those industries also control pretty much all BigMedia and all levers of democratic reform in the West– then you know that it is– at the very least– spectacularly naive to advise people that “voting” will change things.
At worst, it’s downright deceptive. Indeed, as George well knows, his own employer, the Guardian was one of the worst offenders, smearing Corbyn as anti-semitic.
Still, even if by some miracle Corbyn had survived the billionaire smear campaigns against him and somehow won the election; and if by another miracle, he’d somehow convinced enough conservatives in the Tory party– which is pretty much owned by BigBanks and BigOil– to actually pass new legislation to transition fossil fuel subsidies to restoring forests, he knows full well that those industries also own the Judges and thereby the Courts. Such legislation would be tied up in the courts for years, even decades… It’s as Pulitzer Prize winning indie journo Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) has said: western politics can no longer bring about the kinds of radical reforms that are needed– “nonviolent rebellion is the only way to stop the ruling elites.”
Nor can joining “the amazing protest movements fighting for nature around the world” that Geroge advised. As Hedges further explains, as long as street protests are about “venting anger, frustration and rage, all legitimate, [but] without alternative structures to challenge power,” then we will never succeed.
All that said, what’s most surprising to us about George and Greta’s video, is the fact that they’re both vegetarians. And therefore, both would likely know that the main reason our forests are being burned at such high rates are to clear lands to graze farmed animals and to grow feed crops for farmed animals. BigMeat&Dairy is the #1 cause of global deforestation– Geroge and Greta must know this. Over 60% of all lands now used by humans are used to farm animals for food. And independent academic research has shown that if just half (41%) of those graze lands were returned to native forest, the restored forests would sequester more carbon than has been put into the atmosphere by humans since the beginning of the industrial age (~1750)!
That’s HUGE! So why wouldn’t George and Greta lead with that? George said in his tweet above that “the video is...an extraordinary success, and still getting massive play.” But what real success is being made? The video basically tells people to vote in a system that’s rigged to protect the power and profits of the corporate elites. It accomplishes little else than reinforcing belief that we should continue to vote and protest a system that is specifically rigged to resist such activism.
Isn’t that what Einstein called “the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?” We wonder what extraordinary success that video could be achieving if both Greta and George were actually doing what Caitlin advises: “confronting reality on reality’s own terms.”
Is it “easier and more comfortable” as Caitlin puts it, to avoid challenging others about the reality of our rigged system of government? Or their food habits..? Giving up meat and dairy for healthier plant-based alternatives is the single-most effective change an individual can make to impact both climate change and mass species extinction.
Pulling it all together: as Chris Hedges says, “Rebellion is the only way to stop the ruling elites” from destroying our planet. And the ruling elites he refers to are not politicians or Kings- they’re billionaire shareholders in multinational corporations across mutually reliant industries. The companies they control are all variously invested in each others success- they invest in each others stock and appoint their people to each others boards of directors. And over the past half century, they have overtaken western democracy. The reality that we must confront is that western democracy has been transformed into a corporate plutocracy. And the only real leverage the working class has in such a plutocracy is mass organized boycott.
The weakest industry among this “Corporatocracy” is BigMeat&Dairy, and it’s also the most strategic. It’s the one industry we can impact most with our consumer choices– to fight both climate change and mass species extinction. PLUS, it’s the one industry the one industry we can impact most with our consumer choices to challenge the entire power structure of the Corporatocracy.
Here’s some intel we all should know: BigMeat&Dairy (BigMAD) is a leading driver of profits for both BigPharma and BigChemical: 18 of the Top 20 BigPharma Products are medicines that treat diseases associated with animal-based foods. It’s similar for BigChem– its primary profits are derived from global sales of fertilizers and pesticides to grow feed crops for farmed animals (e.g., about 70% of all grain grown in the US is used as feed for farmed animals).
Further, all three industries– BigMAD, BigPharma and BigChem– are massive consumers of fossil fuels. Petrochemicals are the core building blocks for most pharmaceuticals made by BigPharma, as well as the fertilizer and pesticide products made by BigChem. So a mass organized boycott (MOB) of BigMAD would substantially reduce demand for fossil fuels. And remember– global sales of fossil fuels are the engine of the petrodollar system. Ultimately then, a sustained “MOB” against BigMAD could finally force BigBanks to the bargaining table.
For those seeking a nonviolent path to legitimate revolution, they’ll find that the only leverage that’s ever affected real change against such entrenched and monied power is mass organized boycott: it was Gandhi’s Salt and Textile boycotts that helped win India’s independence from Britain in the 1900s. It was the mass strikes and picket lines that helped US workers in the 1930s win a 40-hour work week, overtime pay and collective bargaining for labor unions. It was the bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins in the 1960s that helped Black Americans win Civil Rights reforms. It was the Salad Boycotts and Grape Boycotts in the 60s and 70s that helped win Economic Justice for migrant farm workers. And it was the divestment boycotts in the 1980s that finally forced an end to Apartheid in South Africa.
When we dedicate ourselves to learning “what’s true and what’s real” about the current state of our world, a grim even terrifying reality emerges about the power structures that oppress us and constrain our understanding. If we stay with it though, the good news emerges too. The good news is that we already have all the power we need to save ourselves and our planet. A sustained MOB of BigMAD will totally transform us, the Corporatocracy, and our planet. We just need to “dedicate ourselves to it and live in alignment with it.”
If you want to learn how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and force this corporatocracy to the People’s bargaining table– to end all this injustice, and corruption, and to help save our planet– you can check out our ABOUT page and listen to our first podcast.
You can sign up to get your free #DailyWakeUpCall delivered right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of the home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick description of the podcast for that day…
And if you want more info on how you can get involved in the Waking Justice project, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org - We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Greta Thunberg Calls Out the Corporatocracy at Davos
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, JANUARY 21, 2020
Beginning today through January 24th, the world’s most powerful bankers and corporate elites and their appointed political leaders will be attending the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And the keynote speaker for the opening ceremony today was 16 year old climate activist, Greta Thunberg.
In her opening speech, Greta delivered a blistering indictment of the financial elites inaction on the climate emergency. We’ve included the full transcript to Greta’s speech below. But first– for some context– here’s a brief history of the annual Forum in Davos:
The World Economic Forum began in 1971 as a conference of about 400 of Europe’s top CEOs. The mission of that first meeting was to promote American forms of international business management. It occurred the same year that US President Richard Nixon abandoned the gold standard to adopt the petrodollar system for sustaining the value of US currency. In the decade prior, the US dollar had been losing value due to overspending on the US military industrial complex, especially in Vietnam. European nations had begun cashing in their US dollars demanding gold in return. To stop the run on US gold reserves, Nixon abruptly eliminated the gold standard in favor of the petrodollar system.
It was later revealed that the petrodollar system was part of a secret deal brokered by the Nixon administration with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were the single largest producer of global oil. And with the Nixon deal, they agreed to trade their oil exclusively in US dollars, creating massive global demand for US currency. Eventually the U.S. dollar became the world's reserve currency and, through this status, the United States enjoys persistent trade deficits and global economic hegemony.
Of course, this system has greatly empowered the US banking system, Wall Street and US Corporate elites over the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Bank for International Settlements, UN, OECD and other western institutions of global financial governance.
Thus began US-led globalization and the coalescence of transnational corporations into what we now call the US-led Corporatocracy. And ever since, the World Economic Forum at Davos has served as an annual meeting for western corporate elites and their chosen political and bureaucratic leaders. In later years, in response to growing criticisms of corporate power, Davos organizers have invited various celebrities and outstanding critics of corporate globalization to attend and present their concerns.
Greta Thunberg attended Davos at their annual meeting last year. And due to her continued progress in promoting the climate crisis, she was invited this year to be the keynote speaker for opening remarks.
Here’s the full transcript of Greta’s speech at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos:
One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic.
I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I assure you it doesn’t lead to anything.
And for the record, when we children tell you to panic we’re not telling you to go on like before.
We’re not telling you to rely on technologies that don’t even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will.
We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching “net zero emissions” or “carbon neutrality” by cheating and fiddling around with numbers.
We are not telling you to “offset your emissions” by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate.
Planting trees is good, of course, but it’s nowhere near enough of what needs to be done, and it cannot replace real mitigation or rewilding nature.
Let’s be clear. We don’t need a “low carbon economy.” We don’t need to “lower emissions.” Our emissions have to stop. And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus then we must forget about net zero — we need real zero.
Because distant net zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget — which applies for today, not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years, that remaining budget will soon be completely used up.
The fact that the USA is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should. But the fact that we’re all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least.
Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5-degree or well-below-2-degrees commitments of the Paris Agreement.
And again — this is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics.
From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left as well as the centre have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world. Because, in case you haven’t noticed, that world is currently on fire.
You say children shouldn’t worry. You say: “Just leave this to us. We will fix this, we promise we won’t let you down.”
And then — nothing. Silence. Or something worse than silence. Empty words and promises which give the impression that sufficient action is being taken.
All the solutions are obviously not available within today’s societies. Nor do we have the time to wait for new technological solutions to become available to start drastically reducing our emissions.
So of course the transition isn’t going to be easy. It will be hard. And unless we start facing this now together, with all cards on the table, we won’t be able to solve this in time.
In the days running up to the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum, I joined a group of climate activists who are demanding that you, the world’s most influential business and political leaders, begin to take the action needed. We demand that at this year’s World Economic Forum participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:
- Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
- Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.
- And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now.
It may seem like we’re asking for a lot. And you will of course say that we are naïve. But this is just the very minimum amount of effort that is needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.
So either you do this or you’re going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5-degree target.
Giving up without even trying.
Well I’m here to tell you that unlike you, my generation will not give up without a fight.
The facts are clear, but they’re still too uncomfortable for you to address. You just leave it because you think it’s too depressing and people will give up. But people will not give up. You’re the ones who are giving up.
Last week I met with coal miners in Poland who lost their jobs because their mine was closed. And even they had not given up. On the contrary, they seem to understand the fact that we need to change more than you do.
I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing a climate chaos you knowingly brought upon them? The 1.5-degree target? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?
Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.
Thank You....
___________________________________
If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table– to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
Monday Jan 20, 2020
#MondayRoundup Special: “Prevent the Rise of a Messiah”
Monday Jan 20, 2020
Monday Jan 20, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, JANUARY 20, 2020.
This is our “#MondayRoundup” edition in case you missed any news last week.
Today is also “Martin Luther King Day” in the U.S. It’s the annual holiday when America celebrates the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. So for this #MondayRoundup edition of your #DailyWakeupCall we’re gonna dedicate the whole show to Dr. King. We’ll share what we know about his great legacy as a crusader for Global Justice. And we’ll offer some bits that might surprise you– critical info that all activists for global justice should know…
He was born in Atlanta, GA in 1929 to a family of preachers. Both his mother and father were ordained ministers, and they had three children— Martin Luther King, Jr., his older sister and younger brother.
Dr. King was raised in church life, of course. But probably not the life that most folks might think for the son of a Baptist preacher. Dr. King’s father, King Sr., preached what’s called the “social gospel” of Jesus. It combines a belief in personal salvation with Jesus’ core teachings of political dissent. It’s what many theologians consider the true ministry of Jesus. We explored this in a recent podcast on Jesus’s life and ministry. You should check out that podcast when you can– you might be surprised at what we discovered about Jesus- we certainly were...
So Dr. King’s father openly challenged the social injustices of his day. For example, he’d ride the elevator at city hall that was reserved for -quote- “Whites Only”. And he organized voter registration drives among local Blacks. These may seem like small things today. But they were bold acts in the “Jim Crow” south that could get a Black man lynched. His father’s courage obviously made a huge impression on young Martin, Jr.
Years later, when he graduated from the seminary himself, Dr. King led his first boycott. It was 1955 in Montgomery Alabama. Dr. King had just begun his first full-time job as a pastor in Montgomery. As was common throughout the South, in the city of Montgomery, Blacks were forced by law to sit in the backs of city buses. The seats at the front of the bus were reserved for -quote- “Whites Only”.
That year, a brave Black woman named Rosa Parks had boarded a city bus in Montgomery. She found a seat in the “Whites Only” section of the bus, and deliberately sat there. When the bus driver told her to move to the back, she refused, and the bus driver had her arrested.
When the young reverend heard about Rosa Parks’ arrest, he organized a local boycott of all city buses. It lasted for over a year… and it became a dangerous, intense time in the city. Dr. King was arrested, and white supremacists even bombed his house. But Dr. King and the local Black folk didn’t give up. And finaly, 385 days later, the US District Court ruled that racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses was illegal. It was a huge win for civil rights, and it vaulted Dr. King as an international figure and spokesperson for the Civil Rights movement.
After the bus boycott, Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, took a one-month sabbatical in India. Coretta Scott was an activist in her own right. They’d met during graduate school when she was studying to be a concert soprano and pianist. She was also an avid activist, more involved in activism than Dr. King when they first met. She’d organized protests against the ban on black teachers in public schools. When they were married, Coretta had the vow to -quote- “obey thy husband” removed from the ceremony, which was highly “unusual” for the time...
In Montgomery, she’d played a key role in the Bus boycotts. And it was their success in Montgomery that convinced the Kings that mass economic boycott is the most effective way to work for non-violent revolutionary change in society. Therein was their interest in India where a half-century before, Gandhi had led mass economic boycotts to help India win independence from Great Britain.
After the Kings returned from their trip to India, Dr. King accepted pastorship at a church in Atlanta where he continued to preach the social gospel of justice and political dissent. He broadened his boycott strategy and challenged other Christian leaders to do the same. In Greensboro, NC he was arrested for participating in a “sit-in” at a “Whites-Only” restaurant. And again, in Birmingham, AL, where he lead boycotts against local merchants who banned Blacks from their stores.
That was when Dr. King wrote his famous -quote- "Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. It was an open letter to national clergy who had criticized his economic activism. Here are some excerpts:
“My Christian and Jewish brothers,” he wrote, “...the Negro..has waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights… [And] I must confess that..[I’m] gravely disappointed..that the Negro's great stumbling block..toward freedom is not..the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate..who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"...who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will...I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can..see that [such] injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it...I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists...The judgment of God is upon the church as never before....You warmly commended the Birmingham police..for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police..if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes..[or]..if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; [or] see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys…[So] I cannot join you in your praise of the..police…[Instead] I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators..for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation… ...If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth..I beg you..forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth..I beg God to forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith..fellow clergy..and Christian brother[s]. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty — Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
That was in the spring of 1963. The letter would be published in hundreds of outlets. People all over the world would read it. And in just a few months, later that summer, Dr. King would then give his famous “I Have a Dream Speech”. It was at the March on Washington, before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people.
His “Dream” speech is considered a pivotal moment in Civil Rights history. Indeed, the next year, the US Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And President Lyndon Johnson launched his so-called “Great Society” programs, which promised that “no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.” But Dr. King would soon come to lament the “sunny optimism” in his “I Have a Dream” speech...
The Civil Rights Act and the Great Society programs helped President Johnson win a landslide reelection in 1964. And the Democrats won a landslide two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate. But despite controlling the Presidency and both Houses, the democrats continued to escalate the burgeoning war in Vietnam. Johnson’s increases in war spending diverted funding from the Great Society programs. And by 1966-67, progress against poverty had stalled.
In response to both outcomes, anti-racism and anti-war protestors began coalescing their efforts: more and more, Blacks and Whites began organizing together across both fronts– against both the violence of war abroad and the violence of racism and poverty back home.
It was in this context in 1967, that Dr. King gave what many consider the most powerful and most relevant speech of his career. The speech was called “Beyond Vietnam”. He was speaking to a capacity crowd at the Riverside Church in New York. It was a meeting of “Clergy and Laymen” concerned about the war.
In that speech, Dr. King congratulated the Clergy for their attendance, “for surely this is the first time in our nation's history,” he said, “that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and reading of history...”
He said, “the [Vietnamese people] must see Americans as strange liberators.” They had fought and won their independence from colonization by France. They even “quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom [but] we refused to recognize them...We rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination [which for the] peasants..meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives...Instead, we funded the French military to recolonize Vietnam; to take back the lands that the peasants had regained in their revolution.”
And when France finally backed away, we took on the war ourselves. “The most powerful nation [in] the world– [claiming] aggression [by these peasants]– drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores….[Our president] refused to tell us the truth about the earlier..overtures for peace [by the Vietnamese]..when they had clearly been made.”
“I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there...” Dr. King said. “..they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle [on behalf] of the wealthy..[to] create a hell for the poor.” ... We in the churches and synagogues [must] urge our government to disengage [from..] its perverse ways..[and if it] persists..we must be prepared to match actions with words...every [person] of humane conviction must decide on the protest that best suits [their] convictions but we must all protest.”
“We must enter that struggle,” he said, “but..even more disturbing...the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady…[Beyond Vietnam] in Venezuela, Guatemala, Cambodia, Peru… our nation has taken the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments...If we are to get on..the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When..profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that [the system] which produces beggars needs restructuring...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death…
“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe [people] are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression...This call for a worldwide fellowship..beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind…[And] when I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response...I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John [which states] “Let us love one another...for God is love...If we love one another, God dwells in us and [God’s] love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day… ...”
Dr. King’s bold speech was widely condemned by establishment elites, of course. But some leaders like Robert F. Kennedy were inspired by King’s courage. In fact, it was Robert Kennedy who suggested to Dr. King that he organize a Poor People’s March on Washington. Kennedy himself had become a leading opponent of the war profiteering in Vietnam. And he agreed with Dr. King that tax dollars spent on war should instead be invested to end poverty and uplift people at home.
In late 1967, Dr. King announced plans for the Poor People’s March. His planning committee included Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and white communities, representing 53 different organizations. People of all races and backgrounds would march together in solidarity against the violence of war and on behalf of caring for the poor and needy. But Dr. King’s vision was beyond mere reforms. He saw "racism, poverty, materialism and militarism" as intentional structures to keep people divided against each other and protect corporate profits and power. He argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."
He was calling for -quote- “a new stage of massive, active, nonviolent resistance to the evils of modern corporate society.” A “nonviolent army,” a “freedom church of the poor,” that would demand -quote- a “radical redistribution of economic power.”
The Poor People’s March was set to commence in mid May,1968. The Plan was to build a make-shft encampment on the National Mall. Participants would camp there for several weeks while lobbying Congress for their demands.
And remember, it was Robert Kennedy who had suggested the Poor People’s March to Dr.King early on. As the event drew closer, Kennedy was leading the Democratic primary to run for President in the ‘68 general election.. Likely, the plan was for RFK to join Dr. King at the March, where each would endorse the other. It would have been a most powerful, inspiring moment– the leading Black leader and White leader in America, standing together in solidarity against racism, poverty, war and corporate greed...
But neither would make it to the Poor People’s March. On April 4th, just weeks before the March– and exactly one year to the day after his “Beyond Vietnam” speech– Dr.King would be assassinated. And just weeks later, Robert Kennedy would be assassinated as well.
In her mourning, Mrs. King soldiered on and helped keep the March alive. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King’s longtime confidant and close friend took over organizing the event. Of course, the shock of the assassinations took their toll on the organizers and participants. And ultimately, little tangible results were achieved.
Years later, it was revealed that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had initiated a counter-intelligence program called “COINTELPRO” against what he called -quote- “Black-Nationalist Hate Groups.” Hoover had directed COINTELPRO agents to “PREVENT THE RISE OF A MESSIAH” who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” He specifically named Dr. King stating -quote- “King could be a very real contender for this position.” And after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, whom Hoover famously despised, Republican Richard Nixon went on to win the US Presidency in 1968.
Nixon retained Hoover as FBI director, and in 1969, just months after his election, Nixon announced his new “War on Drugs” in America. He declared "drug abuse as public enemy number one”. But wasNixon’s so-called “War on Drugs” really about “drug abuse” as he claimed? Or did he have more sinister aims?
Years later, Nixon’s top advisor, John Ehrlichman shared a most revealing truth about Nixon’s War on Drugs. In an interview, Ehrlichman said -quote- "You want to know what [Nixon’s Drug War] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Also revealing was Nixon’s appointment of corporate law attorney Lewis Powell to the US Supreme Court. After Powell’s appointment, a confidential memo by Powell was leaked to the media. It was written in 1971 to a right-wing corporate Think Tank euphemistically called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As we have previously reported– in his memo, Powell characterized the coalescence of Black Civil Rights activists with white anti-war activists as a “broad assault” on the “free enterprise system” by “extremists on the Left”.
Powell advised corporate leaders to learn how to -quote- “conduct guerrilla warfare” against the Left. He called on corporate elites to fight back by infiltrating the free press, academia, the three branches of Government, and the Courts. Powell’s memo had an immediate influence on the Corporate elites. In the 70s, they began building a powerful array of corporate Think Tanks and other institutions designed to -quote- “shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades.”
If you think we’re implying that Dr. King’s legacy helped hasten the transformation of our once representative democracy into what’s now well documented as a corporate plutocracy– then you’d be right... Indeed, more than any other American, Dr. King scared the hell out of the corporate power elites. But we don’t think he failed. Dr. King kick-started the Revolution, and it’s up to us to finish it. And like his personal hero, Gandhi, and his personal saviour, Jesus Christ did, Dr.King showed us how to win it: through mass economic boycott.
If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the people’s bargaining table– to end all this injustice and corruption, and to help save our planet– please visit our website at WakingJustice.org. You can check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.