Escaping The Matrix

 Escaping the Matrix

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
—´René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy

“When they arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible and they told us to close our eyes to pray. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
—Desmond Tutu

The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been the pursuit of economic gain, ever since Queen Isabella funded Columbus on his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning wars, however, has typically been about other things – the White Man’s Burden, bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny, defeating the Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do, as long as it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time

A Jewish folk tale relates the story of a mute child who had never said a word despite all the efforts of the doctors. Then one day, at the ripe age of ten, he dropped his spoon and cried out, “The soup is too salty!” His parents asked him in amazement why he had kept silent for years, and the child replied, “Until now, everything was all right.”

Wolfe focuses particularly on the analysis Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington presented in a section of the report entitled “The United States.” Huntington is an articulate promoter of elite policy shifts, and contributes pivotal articles to publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs.

Huntington tells us that democratic societies “cannot work” unless the citizenry is “passive.” The “democratic surge of the 1960s” represented an “excess of democracy,” which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies. Huntington’s notion of “traditional policies” is expressed in a passage from the report:

If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
—Harry S. Truman, New York Times, June 24, 1941

Germany’s war effort, both before and after America and Germany were officially at war, was a collaboration between German and American industrialists and bankers. Ford, General Motors, and many other American firms built factories in Nazi Germany, produced planes, tanks, and the other weapons needed by the Reich, and continued operating throughout the war. In some cases critical supplies needed by Allied forces, were instead routed to German industries. Prescott Bush, grandfather of President G.W. Bush, acted as an American agent for Nazi interests during the war.

By carefully coordinating its assistance to both Germany and the Soviets, U.S. elites were able to maximize those nations’ mutual devastation. After entering the war officially, America had the additional lever of military action against the Axis, so as to further manipulate the progress of the war, in collaboration with British forces. America emerged from the war with its industry intact, with 40% of the world’s wealth and industrial capacity, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and control of the seven seas. Never before had one nation held such a degree of hegemony over world affairs.

“Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundation of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible.”
—Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

As adverse as the economic and human-welfare consequences of the neoliberal project may be, perhaps even more alarming are the political implications. What the neoliberal project is really about, at the most fundamental level, is the transference of economic sovereignty from elected governments to the globalist institutions (WTO et al.) that represent elite corporate and financial interests. While neoliberalism is generally considered to be an economic philosophy, the neoliberal project is at its core a political project, aimed at undermining the sovereign nation state, and replacing it with an institutionalized form of global corporate governance.

Mussolini said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
—Harper’s Magazine, January 2002

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…[V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ”

—Hermann Goering, interview during the Nuremberg Trials, April 18, 1946

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, March 28, 1999 

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
—attributed to John Maynard Keynes

 If those who have the most capital – those who control the biggest banks – are in charge of setting society’s agenda – which is what capitalism is about – then they will do so according to their overall perceived best interests, not by following any particular economic doctrine. A war or depression can be more useful, at times, than economic growth, while protectionism and free trade are simply tools for different jobs.

Aristocracy is one kind of plutocracy, and capitalism is another. It is in this realm of political systems that capitalism is most appropriately considered. While aristocracy favors inherited wealth, and is characteristically land-based and conservative, capitalism tends to favor wealth accumulation, and is characteristically development-based and change-oriented.

In economic terms, the essence of neoliberalism is monetization – everything being measured in terms of its value as a commodity on the market. If you’re not employed, that’s your fault: you need to get retrained so that you will have value on the employment market. If a nation’s economy is deteriorating, that’s because it is not competitive enough, i.e., it is not offering enough value to the all-powerful ‘investment community.’ Such a nation needs to lower its corporate taxes, relax its regulations, and cut back on public services, so that it will have more ‘value’ to offer on the investment market, particularly as regards privatization opportunities. 

Carlton J. H. Hayes Nationalism as a Religion (1926)

Nationalism as a Religion 

 why apostles of nationalism are characterised by a missionary zeal that is fiery and why its multitudinous disciples are possessed of a love that is consuming. Why are millions ready and willing to lay down their lives for nationalism?

There must be something more than a philosophy, something more than a doctrine and an historical process, about modern nationalism.

This something is obviously an emotion, an emotional loyalty to the idea or the fact of the national state, a loyalty so intensely emotional that it motivates all sorts of people and causes them to subordinate all other human loyalties to national loyalty.

But nowadays, and herein lies the fundamental difference between us and our ancient and mediaeval and early modern forebears, the individual is commonly disposed, in case of conflict, to sacrifice one loyalty after another, loyalty to persons, places and ideas, loyalty even to family, to the paramount call of nationality and the national state. This is nationalism, and surely it must have a richly emotional content to predominate over all other emotional loyalties of the present generation.

In like manner it may be argued that the subsequent rapid disintegration of Protestantism into innumerable denominations and sects has been simply a modern parallel to the ancient deliquescence of Graeco-Roman Paganism and further that the syncretism latterly proceeding in the Protestant world may correspondingly usher in a new form of religion, which, however Christian and Protestant in name, will depart very considerably from historic Protestantism and historic Christianity. Yet such a neo-Protestantism, if and when it appears, will be, quite as much as historic Protestantism, and as historic Catholicism before that, an embodiment of man's religious sense

Doubt about a particular popular religion begins with intellectuals, and intellectuals as a class are notoriously timid. They have frequently been fearful of the unsettling effects of their own doubts upon the masses, and even willing on occasion that the masses, for the sake of social peace and general security, should go on indulging in belief and worship which to these intellectuals must seem superstitious.

“The state, it seems to me,” said the Abbe Raynal, “is not made for religion, but religion is made for the state. . . . The state has supremacy in everything . . . When the state has pronounced, the church has nothing more to say.” [3] 

Nationalism, viewed as a religion, has much in common with other great religious systems of the past. It has, for example, a god, who is either the patron or the personification of one's patrie, one's fatherland, one's national state. 

On his own national god the modern religious nationalist is conscious of dependence. Of His powerful help he feels the need. In Him he recognises the source of his own perfection and happiness. To Him, in a strictly religious sense, he subjects himself. Moreover, the religious nationalist not only is disposed subjectively to acknowledge his dependence on the national god, but also he is ready to acknowledge such dependence objectively through acts of homage and adoration. Nationalism, like any religion, calls into play not simply the will, but the intellect, the imagination, and the emotions.

To the modern national state, as to the mediaeval church, is attributable an ideal, a mission. It is the mission of salvation and the ideal of immortality. The nation is conceived of as eternal, and the deaths of her loyal sons do but add to her undying fame and glory. She protects her children and saves them from foreign devils; she assures them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; she fosters for them the arts and the sciences; and she gives them nourishment. Nor may the role of the modern national state, any more than that of the mediaeval church, be thought of as economic or mercenary; it is primarily spiritual, even otherworldly, and its driving force is its collective faith, a faith in its mission and destiny, a faith in things unseen, a faith that would move mountains. Nationalism is sentimental, emotional, and inspirational.

 Nationalism's chief symbol of faith and central object of worship is the flag, and curious liturgical forms have been devised for “saluting” the flag, for “dipping” the flag, for “lowering” the flag, and for “hoisting” the flag. Men bare their heads when the flag passes by; and in praise of the flag poets write odes and children sing hymns. In America young people are ranged in serried rows and required to recite daily, with hierophantic voice and ritualistic gesture, the mystical formula: “I pledge allegiance to our flag and to the country for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Everywhere, in all solemn feasts and fasts of nationalism the flag is in evidence, and with it that other sacred thing, the national anthem. 

 Mr. Speaker, I have an abiding and an unbounded faith in the great destiny and in the undying glory of my country. I believe that the time is not far distant when we shall have complete military and naval, economic and industrial, intellectual and spiritual preparedness; when American genius and American influence will dominate the nations and overshadow the earth; when our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence will be the mould and model of free institutions among all the tribes of men; when the torch of freedom which was lit at the flame of the American Revolution will be a beacon light to the oppressed of all mankind; when our soldiers and our sailors will be feared and respected on every land and on every sea; when the drum beat of our country will be heard around the world; when freedom's flag will illumine all the skies; and, whether proceeding from the mouth of an ambassador or from the hot throats of Federal guns, the mandate of the great Republic will be heard and obeyed throughout the earth. 

For there is a chronic fear among nationalists, as among most religious enthusiasts, that the masses are on the point of losing their faith, and a firm determination, therefore, that only such information should be imparted to them as will strengthen that faith and promote popular devotion to it.

Human beings do not normally and willingly give the lives for economic gain. The supreme sacrifice is oftenest paid in behalf of an ideal and in response to the “religious sense.” And perhaps the surest proof of the religious character of modern nationalism is the zeal with which all manner of its devotees have laid down their lives on battlefields of the last hundred years. At this very moment there are hundreds of thousands of little whitewashed crosses all over northern France, each bearing the simple black inscription “Mort pour la Patrie.” Vastly more men perished in the recent four-years War of the Nations than in the four centuries of mediaeval Christian Crusades.

Towards pagans and infidels in our midst, that is, towards unnaturalised immigrants, our attitude differs according as they are few or numerous. If they are few, we pity or despise them, but we do not directly persecute them; rather, we hope and work for their conversion to our faith, for their naturalisation in our national state. On the other hand, if they are numerous, and especially if they are recalcitrant about conversion, we grow fearful, lament the failure of the “melting-pot,” and erect social, sometimes legislative, barriers against them.

Indeed, to the national state are now popularly ascribed infallibility and impeccability. We moderns are prepared to grant that all our fellow countrymen may individually err in conduct and judgement, but we are loath to admit that our nation as a whole can make mistakes. We are willing to assail the policies and even the characters of some of our politicians, but we are stopped by the faith that is in us from doubting the Providential guidance of our national state. This is the final mark of the religious nature of modern nationalism.

Nationalism is a religion now common to the great majority of mankind. But this is not to say that older religions have been obliterated by nationalism. Buddhism and Hinduism still exist. So does Mohammedanism. So does Christianity - Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. What is actually occurring is a new religious syncretism, by virtue of which very many persons continue nominally to adhere to the faith of their ancestors and even to practice its cult, whilst they adapt it to the exigencies of nationalist worship and discipline. Some extreme (and, let us grant, logical) nationalists abandon and assail other religions. Some devotees of other religions criticise and condemn nationalism. But the bulk of nationalists, and a growing number of Christians, Mohammedans, and Buddhists, proceed more or less unreflectively to effect a compromise between the old faith and the new. And the compromise is increasingly favourable to the religion of nationalism.

Judaism is still a potent force in the lives of many Jews, but there can be little doubt that in recent times, with the development of scepticism about the divine inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures and the rise of “reform movements” and the consequently less strict observance of the Mosaic law and of the ceremonial of the orthodox synagogue, an ever augmenting number of Jews are expressing their religious sense in nationalism, either in devotion to the nationalism of the people among whom they live or in service and sacrifice in behalf of their own peculiar Zionism. Ancient Judaism was a religion which centred the hopes and aspirations of a “chosen people” upon a supernatural God, the God Yahweh, and anyone who believed in Yahweh and abided by His commandments was “chosen.” Modern Zionism is a religion which transfers the object of worship from Yahweh to the chosen people, and none is chosen who is wilfully ignorant of the Hebrew language.

Christianity in the United States is becoming more and more nationalist, - and naturally so. The Protestant majority, in holding their own and seeking the conversion of divers immigrants, constantly affirm that America is Protestant, and that Protestanism is American. The Catholic minority, not to be outdone by such an attractive plea, are bent on “Americanising” themselves and their immigrants. All this promotes the religion of Americanism, not quite as a substitute for Christianity, but rather as a most impressive supplement to it. The process is fostered, moreover, by the very fact that American Protestantism is divided into numerous sects and denominations. No Protestant sect is strong enough - and certainly the Catholic Church is not strong enough (even if it were so minded) - to establish itself as the official church of the United States. Hence there can be in a common Christianity no oneness of faith and worship for the whole American people. Consequently the spiritual unity, which almost everyone deems desirable, must be sought in nationalism.

I would not have anyone gather from what I have said that I condemn nationalism because it is an expression of man's “religious sense.” I am too convinced a believer in the inherently religious character of man to make light of religion; and to condemn nationalism because it depends on religious emotion would seem to me as futile as to condemn vegetation because it thrives on sunlight. I would suggest, however, that there are many, many ways in which man may express his religious sense, and that religious emotion, like any other instinctive emotion, is always susceptible and often needful of conscious direction and control. Some forms of religion are superior to others, and when we recognise the religious nature of modern nationalism we have still to ask ourselves whether it is the form or religion most conducive to human betterment.

Nationalism as a religion represents a reaction against historic Christianity, against the universal mission of Christ; it re-enshrines the earlier tribal mission of a chosen people. The ancient reflective Roman imagined that one chosen people - the Hebrew nation - was one too many for general comfort and safety; the thoughtful modern Christian may be pardoned for being a bit pessimistic about a world devoid of a Roman Empire and replete with dozens upon dozens of chosen peoples.

Nationalism as a religion inculcates neither charity nor justice; it is proud, not humble; and it signally fails to universalise human aims. It repudiates the revolutionary message of St. Paul and proclaims anew the primitive doctrine that there shall be Jew and Greek, only that now there shall be Jew and Greek more quintessentially than ever. Nationalism's kingdom is frankly of this world, and its attainment involves tribal selfishness and vainglory, a particularly ignorant and tyrannical intolerance, - and war. That nationalism brings not peace but the sword, we propose next to show.

Happy Birthday

 The Episcopal Church is founded on scripture, tradition and reason. Tradition is older than scripture and includes symbols. The oldest symbol of Christ, older than the cross, is the candle. The light that shines in the darkness, that the darkness cannot overcome. Reason compels us to value the questions over the answers. It is questions that offer the opportunity for learning. We have a moral responsibility to learn and to pursue knowledge. 

O God of grace and glory
we remember before you this day
our brothers and sisters. 

We thank you for giving them to us,
their family and friends

to know and to love

as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. 

In your boundless compassion, 

console us who mourn.

Give us faith to see in death

the gate of eternal life, 

so that in quiet confidence 

we may continue our course on earth, 

until by your call

we are reunited with those

who have gone before us. 

Book of Common Prayer. 

it wasn't perfect, but it was damn close

it wasn't perfect, but it was damn close
it's the ordinary, that is so special
the mundane, so beautiful


we plant a seedling into the soil
and water it from rain that falls from the sky
the sun energizes it
when after a few days a flower blooms
we think what a great thing we have done

if we are lucky, We are observers.

thoughts come to us from where we don't know
the ideas are not ours, not even the words
what we think some other has planted
if you have a choice
be careful of your gardener

if We are lucky, we are observers

chords

some chords belong together
others are beautiful in their own right
but are in disharmony with others

some chords are so sad
they make you wanna cry
but their melancholy
can lift you from the blues

some chords sing out for joy
and make you wanna dance and sing out
their joy always wants a partner
to share the song and the dance

it is good to be loved

Somewhere along the way I learned what love is

Kurdistan

you said, You shed your blood for us, 
you said, thank-you. 

Is this blood being shed for the remission of sin or the commission of sin? 
Does the blood remain on the slaughtered or is it sprinkled on us all? 

This sin of ours, is it participation, or just willful omission? 
It's just war. Bad things happen in war. It can't be helped.
I'm sorry about your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother
it couldn't be helped.
it all just part of a bigger strategic decision
i'm sure you understand

thoughts and prayers, 
especially for your loved ones. 
the old ones, and the little ones. 
stay safe

as the bombs fall upon your house, your mosques, your hospital. 
your only true friend is the mountains you flee to

who could have known this would happen, again
your word is your bond
no one trusts you
sold out, and used again
we knew it would happen again

Kurds left to die like Palestinians
no place to play, no place to pray
no home except to die for

will you take us in, after we fought, bled and died beside you? 
you said you were our friend
you bought us your guns
you taught us how to fight 
then you turned your backs 
as the guns were turned on us

who could have known this would happen, again
we knew it would happen again
your only friend is the mountain to run to

This is My Country

We built a wall to keep you out,
didn't you hear?
Go back where you come from.
You come from a shithole country,
too bad for you.
wait there to die.
you can't come here.

Go back where you come from.
you weren't born here.
Go back where you come from.
you don't belong here.

Your English, it ain't no good,
am I misunderstood.
You're no different than any other brown one,
it would be better if there were none.
We killed the red man,
we enslaved the black,
not even the buffaloes roam here.
this is our land.

Go back where you come from.
you weren't born here,
go back where you come from.
you don't belong here.

Your religion isn't ours.
You've got a cross, climb up and die there.
We've got one too, we're saved here.
Even your virgin ain't right, she has dark skin.
you can't come in.
you waved her banner, fought for your freedom,
now die there.
The church bell rings, a song for you to sing,
just go and die there.
you've got no money,
how you gonna pay to get in?
I ain't paying for you to live here.

Go back where you come from.
you weren't born here.
Go back where you come from.
you don't belong here.

- Die Like a Palestinian

did you ever wonder why America imported so many black slaves from Africa when there were so many red men already available here?


In the pre-Colombian period the Nahuati language existed. Gautemala (Quauhtlemalain) means land of trees.