.:|:. Dove Love’s .:. Points and Passions .:|:.

First of all, don’t fear it….  That gives them our power.  We have to shake the fear and the funk — the attitude that they’re winning, that there’s nothing we can do.  Know that we are not powerless…our beliefs are very powerful.   What you believe, so shall it be.  KNOW THAT YOU ARE POWERFUL.  “Knowing” anything else is a losing game. 

See, literally, and on a regular basis, see in your mind a world where freedom and justice actually do prevail.  If you can’t believe it, pretend — act the part, feel in your heart that freedom is our truth.  See it and FEEL it in your heart.  That’s powerful, I promise. 

See those who are trampling on our freedom, see them being escorted out of OUR government…  See our freedoms being restored, our world coming to a place of peace.  See it, feel it, just like a star athlete sees himself winning.  And then take the practical action that you feel is right for you.  Unite with others and care about their welfare as you would wish them to care about yours… 

There is no loss that is worse than losing our freedom.  The first and most crucial step toward not losing it is to FEAR NOT.

Knowing our power…and knowing our basic human right to freedom — to think and believe and speak and write as we choose, to be free of their excessive need to control us, and fearlessly uniting and taking heart-centered actions as we feel impassioned to do so will ensure our freedom… 

Read that again, not easy, but it will take all of those things.  They have now become accustomed to easily taking from us that which they wish to take.  They will take whatever we allow them to easily take.  We’ve got to snap out of it – our comfy couch and tv shows will not keep us safe.  It’s an absurd illusion of safety, and we have long lost the government that was to be for and of the People.

Lose the fear and sense of powerlessness.  Our power is in a genuine sense of powerfulness, righteous and well-guided anger, and in a well-intentioned and courageous heart.  Their power is great only because we stay separate and they do everything to keep us separate and fearful for that very reason.  It’s time to change all that, or endure the consequences of not doing so.

Excerpt from newstarget.com..

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The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It’s a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law: Philip Giraldi at the Huffington Post, Declan McCullagh at CNET’s News.com, Kathryn Smith at OpEdNews.com, and of course Alex Jones at PrisonPlanet.com

This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned. NewsTarget could be taken offline and I could be arrested as a “terrorist.” Jeff Rense at www.Rense.com could be labeled a “terrorist” and arrested. Byron Richards, Len Horowitz, Paul Craig Roberts, Greg Palast, Ron Paul and even Al Gore could all be arrested, silenced and incarcerated. This is not an exaggeration. It is a literal reading of the law, which you can check yourself here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h1955_rfs.xml

…

Take action now, or lose your freedoms forever

If you live in the U.S., it is urgent that you call your senators right now and voice your strong opposition against this extremely dangerous law.

Here are the phone numbers for the U.S. Senate switchboard:

1-877-851-6437
1-800-833-6354
1-888-355-3588
1-866-220-0044
1-866-808-0065
1-877-762-8762
1-866-340-9281
1-800-862-5530

How to do this:

1) Make sure you know the names of your Senators.
2) Call the U.S. Senate switchboard using one of the numbers above.
3) Ask to speak to the offices of your Senators.
4) Tell them you are strongly opposed to S. 1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
5) Ask for their fax number.
6) Follow up your phone call with a written, signed letter that you fax to your Senators.

Stopping this bill from becoming law is the single most important thing all Americans can do right now.

Read the rest here, http://www.newstarget.com/022308.html

What’s wrong with this picture?? 

A guy is trying to unlock his OWN front door and FROM THAT he’s tasered, arrested and convicted of supposedly resisting arrest. *look of total disbelief*   His attorney, after this guy is convicted, says, “I’m mortified…he shouldn’t have been convicted…they’re taser happy.”

Man Tasered” Breaking” Into Own Home

First point, wouldn’t one’s first thoughts upon seeing someone on THE FRONT PORCH at THE FRONT DOOR consider for a nano-second that just maybe this was the resident of said home?  Second point, the guy had been drinking, he didn’t look that big or dangerous, he showed them his hands — no weapon. They (two cops) had drawn guns on him. Why — why in hell was it necessary to taser this guy?  Because they could??

And then they further show their stupidity and control-freak crap by pursuing a conviction on a man who was simply trying to enter HIS OWN HOME. And the DA, lol, saying the tasering was a “smart” move on their part.  *eyes rolling*  It looked like it was hard for him to keep a straight face in saying that.  I say, thanks for showing us the, um, caliber of individuals that are policing and governing your fine community by ensuring all of this is strongly in public view – Omaha, Nebraska.  So, attention all law-abiding citizens, if you live in or are just passing through Omaha, Nebraska, ya’ might wanna hire a body guard before trying to enter your own home, or any other such outlandish activity or atrocity.

And other news… Oh look, what a coincidence :) A story reflecting why we, um, should trust and totally cooperate with any “law enforcement officer” — no matter what.

Ex-Cop Arrested on 30 Identity Fraud Charges

Oh, but I’m sure this is an isolated case, and that most cops are way up there in the honesty and other morals department. And I’m sure they screen those cops-to-be with a fine-tooth comb. Yep, we should not concern our little sheeple head about such things.  So we should just bend over and take our beating tasering like a good little slave citizen should.   

Here’s a fact. The nature of this existence is change. That’s a surety. So either something gets better — or it gets worse. Look at our legal system, our government, has it been getting better?

Dove

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  I’m one of those people who starts a lot of books, but finishes few :)  But this book I felt strongly guided to read, driven to finish it.  It’s worthy. 

“The Paradigm Conspiracy” by  Denise Breton and Chris Largent.  Five stars on Amazon.  Reading it would surely help many of us to “wake up” to the reality of this controlling society — anyone who values real freedom should read it.

Here’s an overview I just came upon. 

Peace,
Dove

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Paradigm Conspiracy
Denise Breton and Christopher Largent

FILTERING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH PARADIGMS
[Abridged]

A brief but comprehensive overview of the structure of paradigms is presented regarding how control systems work within consciousness levels, and why there is a need to change governing paradigms to move beyond victim-blaming and toward system transformations. The concept of filtering consciousness through paradigms is presented, followed by: discussions regarding choice of paradigms; what is normal or possible for consciousness; seeking paradigms that fit us; saving paradigms but modifying them for more efficient performance. The cultural non-commitment to human potentials is discussed, and the importance of learning that new worldviews bring new worlds.

FILTERING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH PARADIGMS
Most of all, though, we resonate with Mr. Swann’s emphasis on mindsets, worldviews, and paradigms as the key to it all. That’s no surprise, since we’re philosophers. It just makes sense to us that philosophical models provide the channels through which our consciousness and hence our lives flow. Filtering aspatial, atemporal, superconnected consciousness through paradigms is like pushing cookie dough through a cookie press with different gadgets to put on the end: whatever gadget we choose gives the cookies their shape. So too with consciousness: whatever mindsets or paradigms we choose determine the form of our perceptions, which in turn shape our decisions, actions, experiences, social systems, worlds, and futures.

A colleague of ours, Sue Rolfe at Hazelden, uses the 5-day work week to illustrate the power of a paradigm to shape the rhythm and flow of our lives. She writes, “Our 5-day work week is a paradigm….Who decided we must work 5 days a week? Perhaps on Mars they work on the weekend and have 5 days off. In any event, this ‘working paradigm’ which rules us is of our making. We decided that, for the economic health of our planet, 5 is the magic number. If you work more than 5 days a week you are a hard worker or maybe even a workaholic, less than this and you might be considered lazy and unmotivated.” (It’s actually Venus where they work only on weekends; on Mars they work all 7 days.)

CHOICE OF PARADIGMS
Choice, as Sue points out, is precisely what’s at stake. But we first have to be aware of paradigms and how they’re affecting us in order to exercise our power of choice.

If we’re not aware of the role that paradigms have in shaping experience, then we believe we’re stuck with the world as it is and ourselves as we are. “What paradigm? My belief-structure has nothing to do with it. This is the way I am, that’s the way human beings are, and that’s the way the world will always be.” The sort of universe that the paradigm creates becomes absolute. Scientists of the old school, for instance, claimed to have no worldview intruding on their “objective observation of reality”: they were simply “seeing things as they are.” No more. Scientists up to speed with “new physics” (a century old by now) know that their models or paradigms determine how they think, what kind of experiments they construct, therefore what they observe and how they interpret their observations. Reality isn’t “out there” the way we once thought it was. It’s an interactive process that’s continually coming into being relative to the paradigms we choose-the cookie press gadgets we use to filter reality.

That’s good news. Insofar as we recognize the power of paradigms and our power to change them, we have options-paradigm options. We’re not stuck with the world as it is, because we can shift paradigms, and as we do, everything shifts with us. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn-who died in June 1996 and to whom we are indebted for naming paradigms and their power in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions-explained that when scientists shift paradigms, they live in new worlds. The old rules don’t hold in the same way, and what before was considered impossible can become not only possible but even normal.

This means that whenever we shift paradigms, not only do new possibilities emerge for how we can structure our worlds together but also we discover potentials within ourselves that the old paradigm declared either nonexistent or off-limits. (If we shift away from the indentured-servants-to-money-systems paradigm, we’ll have time to explore these potentials.)

WHAT’S NORMAL OR POSSIBLE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS?
Awareness of paradigms and the possibilities that emerge with changing them carry enormous implications for how we understand consciousness. Are the limits we experience in perception, learning, and knowing absolute, or are they imposed by a paradigm-one that we can choose to have or not?

Psychic and paranormal experiences suggest that the limits imposed by materialist philosophy are not absolute. Even one case of powers that defy physical limits proves what’s possible, whether these possibilities are commonplace in the current paradigm or not. By challenging paradigms that put our mental powers in straitjackets, we free ourselves to tap powers we’ve barely begun to imagine.Examples of mental powers defying so-called laws of matter abound. Then of course there’s research begun by Georgi Lozanov in Bulgaria and reported by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder in their books Superlearning and SuperMemory. According to learning studies going on all over the globe, our minds are capable of vastly more than we ever imagined. If we have human brains, we’re geniuses, and the only reason we’re not experiencing our minds’ powers is that they’ve been shut down by stress, negative programming, trauma, or mind-numbing boredom.

Clearly, there’s more going on with consciousness and our human potential than the official paradigm acknowledges. Again, the fact that extraordinary powers occur at all proves the possibility of powers that may be latent in all of us.

SEEKING PARADIGMS THAT FIT US
Imagine, for instance, a paradigm that describes us as free beings, moving in time, space, and matter through the powers of consciousness, unconstrained by demands for money and unconcerned by the quest for power or control. Imagine further a paradigm that honors us for who we are, that treats human beings-as well as all beings-as treasures of the universe, and that therefore places a priority on nurturing and developing our potential.In the current world where humans are ownable, exploitable, controllable commodities-useful only insofar as they can either command or generate capital-such models seem utter fantasy.

According to spiritual teachings the world over, though, such models more closely fit what they call “True Human Beings.” Hindu philosophy, for instance, takes our potential seriously enough to categorize liberation as the fourth basic desire of human beings, the one that naturally arises in us after we’ve grown weary of pursuing the desires for 1) pleasure, 2) success, and 3) duty.
Liberation is the liberation to be who we are in the big picture, not to be narrowed by models that aren’t worthy of us. It’s the freedom to live from the inside out, to be guided by who we are in our essence, rather than to spend our lives juggling family, social, financial, religious, or other cultural expectations.

SAVING THE PARADIGM
If we don’t experience ourselves or each other as free and great beings, it’s not because we lack this potential but rather because the paradigm/cookie gadgets our cultures pour us through aren’t equal to our essence. We come out twisted, grasping, angry, and insatiable because we know we’re more, yet the cultural paradigm has no room for us. The paradigm can’t both acknowledge our innate worth and treat us as objects to be subjugated-objects that must be coerced into systems that violate our dignity and potential by their very structures.
Born into the culture, what choice do we have but to be subjugated? Babies and children don’t have options but to submit. So we adapt ourselves accordingly. We conform to social systems by adopting the roles that go with them, narrowing ourselves to fit the cultural agenda. We become the competitive, insecure, obedient, brain dead, soul-disconnected creature that our social systems require. If we didn’t comply, there’d be no place for social systems to hook into us and control our behavior, which the paradigm says they must do in order to achieve social order.
But instead of social order, the paradigm generates violence and suffering-images of which we see everyday on the news and feelings of which we experience as stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or even self-hate. These images and feelings say nothing about which alternative paradigms might better serve human beings or who we might be if we used less narrowing models. They simply give us feedback about our cultural paradigm.
But paradigm oblivious, we don’t interpret culture-wide pain as paradigm related. We don’t trace personal and social suffering back to the cultural paradigm and so set the stage for changing it. Instead, we save the paradigm by believing that humans must be fatally flawed and we ourselves more than most. Accepting the cultural paradigm that excludes what’s most valuable about us, we view ourselves in the mirror that social systems give us: a mirror of externals. Our paradigm options go unexplored.

CONTROLLED BY EXTERNAL REWARDS
In a paradigm of externals, externals call the shots. Instead of allowing us to be guided from the inside out (a formula for anarchy, the control paradigm claims), the paradigm controls our behavior through rewards and punishments. We come to think and act like Pavlov’s dog, salivating over the next bonus, a bigger kennel to call home, a fancier collar to sport, or a top dog position. The paradigm isn’t about developing our talents, abilities, or potential; it’s about making us controllable by giving or withholding external rewards.
To achieve this control, the paradigm grades each “thing” in a hierarchy of externals. The inner life means nothing compared to the outward characteristics indicated by our species, race, gender, age, status, group affiliation, and income. If dogs possessed the wealth of Bill Gates, for instance, they wouldn’t suffer in medical experiments, just as people who have money don’t work in sweatshops or sell their children into slavery.
That’s the problem with externals: they’re fine until they become the means for enslavement, which unfortunately they do almost immediately. When a paradigm puts external values first, consciousness dimensions are dismissed out of hand.
Small wonder that the potentials of our minds and hearts-and all the values that go with them, e.g., meaning, compassion, justice, or wisdom-go undeveloped. A control paradigm has neither use nor place for them.

NOT EXACTLY WELCOME
Naming paradigms and their power for good or ill isn’t a new insight; it’s as old as philosophy. It is, however, an overlooked insight in an age that can’t seem to shake a materialistic, control-obsessed paradigm-and for good reason. Reflecting on paradigms is the stuff of change, and changing paradigms is the most fundamental and powerful change we can make.
To a paradigm of control, that’s not welcome. The sum total of our experience contingent on something as invisible and changeable as a philosophy? Change by paradigm shifts, which anyone can make? Powers of perception and creativity that defy rigid material boundaries? Humans as beings of immense powers and abilities? Once you let these cats out of the bag, there’s no telling what mindsets and institutions might be made obsolete.
Obsolete is precisely what established institutions of power and control don’t want to be. They learned from the fate of carriage and buggy whip manufacturers when cars came along. Established interests now make sure that questioning the neanderthal paradigm of burning things for energy triggers “War-of-the-Worlds” panic about destabilizing the world economy. Even the call for improved public transit systems borders on subversive.

“MORE TO US” IS THREATENING TO POWER-OVER INSTITUTIONS
Stiff challenges face a paradigm shift on the simple level of out-there technology, frozen at a stage that Captain Picard sometimes finds among the more primitive human civilizations he encounters. What challenges might we face if we embark on a far deeper level of questioning-on redrawing the paradigms that sort out who we are and why we’re here?
Plenty. If the cultural paradigm’s purpose is not to honor human potential but rather to make it an obedient servant to existing social structures, then nothing could be more threatening to the established order than a paradigm shift regarding our self-conceptions. We fit into society as it is now only as long as we don’t remember that we’re more and here for more.

PSYCHOTHERAPY’S PURPOSE
The agenda for traditional psychoanalytic therapy, for instance, isn’t to develop human potential; it’s to keep people functional in established social structures, however miserable their lives may be and however abusive or wrong-headed the social structures. “Well-adjusted” becomes a synonym for mental health.
But if someone is well-adjusted to being an SS officer in Nazi concentration camps, is that person mentally healthy? In Fire In The Soul, psychoneuroimmunologist Joan Borysenko writes of this narrow aim of therapy: “Sigmund Freud…believed that when a person was cured of neurosis the best outcome that could be expected was return ‘to an ordinary state of unhappiness.’” (New York: Warner, 1993, p. 54)
Psychotherapy’s official job is mopping up the mess that social systems make of our lives by convincing us that the mess is our fault, our failing, our screwiness. If we don’t conform, adjust, fit in, and measure up, something must be wrong with us. And psychotherapy has its truth: we may well be frozen in grief or shock and not functioning at our best, but don’t the social systems that shape us deserve equal scrutiny, equal critical analysis?
Thankfully many therapists reject this paradigm and venture forth with their clients on the forbidden territory of meaning and human potential as well as of critiquing social structures, but it’s no easy task persuading insurance companies to come along. Control institutions pay insurance companies to pay health professionals to keep people in their place, serving the established order.

THE AGENDA FOR SCHOOL SYSTEMS
Nor are school systems committed to developing the more that we are. Schools are an arm of social structures, whether religious, governmental, or economic. According to the paradigm-defined needs of those structures, tapping human potential doesn’t create enough Dilberts to ensure the “efficient” running of corporate, governmental, religious, and educational hierarchies.
In this century, business interests have dictated the structure of schools. Henry Ford quickly noticed that creative genius and intuitive knowing aren’t useful on factory lines. So he pioneered the “modern” school system that inculcates values and skills appropriate for 20th century work life: being punctual, obeying orders, enduring hours, weeks, and years of boring, repetitive tasks, not talking while working, not resting, keeping to the schedule at all costs. Our minds become casualties of industrialization.
Our souls end up casualties as well. Trusting our own judgment, thinking for ourselves, adhering to our values, and having confidence in our innate worth don’t make us good foot soldiers for my-way-or-the-highway bosses. Only people with low self-esteem are sufficiently insecure to tolerate abusive work environments. Insofar as we believe we don’t deserve better, we adjust, becoming the kind of person that’s required to “do the job.”
Obligingly, school systems produce people with precisely the low self-esteem that’s needed for worker “flexibility.” Fears of being wrong, of not making the grade are fears confirmed for 90 percent of the population. That’s the percentage who are required not to get A’s by the bell curve system, guaranteeing that 90 percent of everyone coming out of school believe that they’re incapable of excellence. Schools mirror back to students the mass message that “you’re just not good enough, but if you do what you’re told without question, you may get better and be rewarded.” That’s a handy message to have installed in the psyches of 90 percent of the population-handy for perpetuating corporate, religious, governmental, and professional tyrannies, that is.
All this modern schooling goes against what we know about the human mind and how we learn-and have known for decades. Studies in learning show that we learn best when we’re most relaxed, yet schools maximize stress through fear of failure. Studies show that children learn most easily through cooperative learning, yet schools impose a competitive model. Studies also indicate that students’ beliefs about their own learning abilities affect their performance-if they believe they’re good learners, they learn easily; if not, learning the simplest things becomes difficult-yet schools systematically undermine students’ confidence.
In these and many other ways, school systems perform virtual lobotomies on our psyches, producing graduates who’ve long since lost their joy in learning, who believe they must be right all the time and “know it all” or be condemned to outer darkness, and who experience post-traumatic stress symptoms at the thought of having to learn new things on the job.

CULTURAL NONCOMMITMENT TO HUMAN POTENTIAL
Alice Miller, a champion of the potential we all possess from birth, pulls no punches in her books-For Your Own Good in particular analyzes the social, cultural agenda of shutting down our potential. As she explains, the traditional rules of child-rearing passed down from generation to generation have nothing to do with developing our potential, either emotionally, intuitively, psychologically, or intellectually. Their one agenda is control: control the child as soon as possible by any means, whether it’s by punishment, humiliation, intimidation, beatings, grading, whatever it takes to break the child’s will and autonomy.
The justification for this agenda is that children raised any other way won’t fit into society when they grow up. According to this cultural paradigm-expressed in the rules of child-rearing-learning to forget who we are and to become what others want and expect us to be is the most important survival skill. Our potential as human beings is irrelevant, a side issue, compared to our ability to conform.
Of course we’re supposed to believe that social systems have our best interests at heart and that obeying them is indeed “for our own good.” If we conform properly, our potential will develop accordingly. But is this so? As we’ve seen, schools and therapy - two systems that you’d think would be committed to developing human potential - have no such commitment. In what system or area of the culture might such a commitment exist?

Governments are fully occupied with who has power over whom, who has the biggest budget, where money can be found, who wins which election or vote, etc. Developing the human potential of its citizenry is not a priority. If anything, it’s not on the agenda at all. The insider’s view that “the masses are asses” is music to ambitious politicians’ ears, who then believe it’s their manifest destiny to expand their personal power and become benevolent dictators. Dumb masses are easy to manipulate with slogans and half-truths. For their purposes, the less human potential the better.

As much as we value spiritual teachings, we can’t say that religious organizations have much commitment to developing human potential either, though granted there are exceptions. Adhering to fixed doctrines, building congregations, raising money, meddling in the personal affairs of members, running down sectarian competitors, and using fear and guilt to exact obedience and tithing keep them busy enough.

Businesses and corporations certainly don’t concern themselves with human potential, even though they sometimes pay lip service to it in the hopes of making employees more “productive.” The bottom line is the bottom line, and if human potential comes up at all, it’s considered a frill or luxury-”warm fuzzy stuff” that doesn’t count in the “real world” of business except to mollify disgruntled workers or help them adjust to higher levels of stress.

Scanning the culture, we frankly can’t find any system that’s consistently committed to exploring human potential. If anything, our social systems regard human potential as an impediment, an annoying feature of human beings that gums up the systems’ otherwise efficient workings. If people would just learn their roles and stick to them, everything would work so much better.
If we didn’t know the paradigm behind these systems, we may find this lack of interest in human potential odd. Developing human potential seems crucial to keeping human civilizations vital and evolving, up to speed with the challenges that continually arise. Technology per se can’t save us, since we’re not using the alternative technology we already have to remedy social and environmental ills. What we lack is the the wisdom and foresight, the honesty, the sense of meaning, justice, integrity, and the good to manage human affairs well. These aren’t technology issues but paradigm ones. Wisdom and foresight are precisely the potentials that a paradigm geared to domination and control factors out of us.

FIGHTING BACK
But no paradigm, even one that’s used to having the last word, is the last word. The human spirit, being what it is, doesn’t take kindly to soul-lobotomies and develops all sorts of responses. One is to join the lobotomizing dominators: do it to others before any more can be done to you. Another is to adopt roles and play along, to accept one’s lobotomized lot in life.
Addictions make both responses easier. We can lay off 5,000 employees and numb the pain with a 15 million dollar bonus. Or we can take drugs to make it through the day in our Dilbertesque cubicles. Either way, numbing ourselves with addictions of process (money and power) or of substance (drugs and alcohol) makes us forget the pain of living in a control paradigm culture.
By numbing us, addictions serve the established paradigm well: insofar as we forget pain, we don’t confront its causes. Lobotomizing systems go unchallenged, as long as we find ways to cope with being lobotomized.
That’s why recovery from addictions begins with recognizing pain. Acknowledging what we feel in social systems is the first subversive step toward a cultural paradigm shift. A paradigm of control through externals unravels when we affirm the importance of what’s going on within. When pain counts with us-when we refuse to ignore it, “to put up and shut up”-the days are numbered for the paradigm that’s causing us pain.

NEW WORLD VIEWS BRING NEW WORLDS
Refusing to be trapped by dominating institutions on one hand and on the other claiming our essence, who we are in the big picture-what’s called the “soul” until a better term comes along-we foment revolution of the most constructive, effective, and powerful sort. Each of us in our own ways participates in creating new worldviews, which in turn create new worlds within and without. ————————————–
Denise Breton and Christopher Largent
2019 Delaware Avenue, Wilmington, Delaware 19806
Tel. (302) 571-9570 Fax. (302) 571-9615
e-mail: mjbreton@aol.com

NOTE OF INTRODUCTION  (by Ingo Swann)
Denise Breton and Chris Largent, a husband-wife team, have been teaching and writing together for twenty years. They each have backgrounds in religion and philosophy (Chris from Dickinson College and the University of Delaware; Denise from Boston University, the University of Delaware, and Yale University.)
They have taught half-time in the University of Delaware’s Philosophy Department for over twenty years.
Their debut book, THE SOUL OF ECONOMICS: SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION GOES TO THE MARKETPLACE (1991), was hailed by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY as “perhaps the clearest, best written book in that newest of genres, religion/business.”
Their second book, THE PARADIGM CONSPIRACY: HOW OUR SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT, CHURCH, SCHOOL, AND CULTURE VIOLATE OUR HUMAN POTENTIALS (Hazelden, 1996), insightfully focuses on how worldviews can cause or end suffering.
This extremely important book examines many paradigms that run our social systems, what kinds of “worlds” they create, how they affect us personally, and how we can create new models to replace dysfunctional paradigms. In an extremely clear, non-antagonistic presentation, the book overall provides a workable model for individuals to claim their power to change social systems by changing the paradigms on which they are founded.SOURCE:  http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/paradcon.htm#Denise

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I just came upon this excerpt on another blog. The author of that blog seemed to be getting it, and stated emphatically “force doesn’t work.” Um, yeah, bingo. But the irony is this person appeared to be quite devoted to religion — apparently oblivious to the fact that organized religion is one of the most controlling systems in our world, one of the most insidious in our lives.

So here’s the excerpt, on the issue of abortion and clear indication that allowing people their “god-given” right to freedom and not fearful control is what actually works.  Go figure :)

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ROME, Oct. 11 — A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it. The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher InstituteIn Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe. “In the past we didn’t have this kind of data to draw on,” Ms. Camp said. “Contraception is often the missing element” where abortion rates are high, she said.

source: www.nytimes.com
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And because of all of our controlling systems (parents, schooling, church, governments), we feel powerless, suffocated — it’s slowly killing us. We are beings that were meant to be free, to govern our own lives without constant interference from others. It comes to mind how some animals will die in captivity, others will chew off their own foot to become free of their entrapment. “Give me liberty or give me death” says Patrick Henry. Life without freedom is intolerable, and the intrusions and control of the government in our lives now is unconscionable. We are no longer respected as “the People” and have clearly become the slaves. We aren’t respected for the power that all human beings have within them. We all balk at being controlled. Some much more strongly than others, but we all have that anti-control thing. It goes against our nature to be controlled. And yet in this mega-controlling society, we have all come to be very controlling people, many (many) “control freaks.”

And that makes sense, we have been controlled since birth, and there’s our training to control others. And this insatiable desire, seeming need, we have to control others is all rooted in fear, something we live and breathe to our great detriment.

But my original point here — freedom works, rigid control doesn’t. Why that hasn’t become abundantly obvious confounds me. Have our religion-based laws reduced the “crime,” has it gotten our world under control? How’s that “war on drugs” workin’ for us? How ’bout that prohibition thing? Have we dramatically put a cap on prostitution? Did our former abortion laws stop women from getting abortions? No, it just ensured the deaths or suffering of a lot of women. Again, human beings will not be successfully controlled — ever. Either freedom or death will come first. Even as the “sheeple” we have allowed ourselves to become, we are still very powerful beings, we will always push back (in one form or another) upon being pushed.

Dove

======================  Quotes  ======================

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all laws into contempt.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Plato

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule.
Albert Einstein

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Abraham Lincoln

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
Thomas Jefferson

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
Malcolm X

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Insanity.  Un-frickin’-believable.  Here’s an excerpt from the article.

Corporate Greed, Intellectual Property Laws and the Destruction of Human Civilization  (newstarget.com)

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Did you know that if you have children you are an international criminal? You have violated intellectual property laws by infringing on the copyrights of companies that have been granted patents on the human genome. You have replicated that gene sequence by having children without the permission of the owners of those gene sequences. As bizarre as it sounds, it’s absolutely true: having children is a violation of patent law.

This has come about because those at the U.S. Patent Office seem to have lost their collective minds. They have allowed companies and individuals to gain ownership of intellectual property that should never have been granted to a private organization or individual. Some things belong to nature — like the gene sequence of a human being. Man didn’t create it. There’s no Einstein who created the human gene sequence, put together some DNA and made human beings. People are not an invention; they are a creation.

Intellectual property, and patents in particular, are intended to cover inventions; things that we were the first to create, not something we stumbled across because we have the right equipment to detect them in the natural world. Clearly, genes are already in existence. We did not invent them; nature did. And yet, people and organizations have been granted patents on seeds from nature.

No patents on seeds

Those of you familiar with the subject know I’m talking about basmati rice, a type of rice native to India. It has been harvested for centuries throughout India and Southeast Asia. But a few years ago, a U.S. company filed for a patent on basmati rice and the U.S. Patent Office said, “Sure enough, you own it.” That company then proceeded to try to shut down the harvesting and farming of basmati rice in India. They said, in effect, “All you farmers out there? You owe us a royalty now. We own the patent on this seed.” Luckily, the Indian government intervened and thwarted the patent by having the rice listed under the European Commission’s regulations that protect regional foods.

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 Read the whole article here http://www.newstarget.com/022096.html

 
“Steps” by Dove, September 2007

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After reading on a blog yesterday…people talking about a woman’s body like they have the right to control it, to control her, her life, her life choices…it angers me and it saddens me how readily women accept this.  We’ve been taught, brainwashed into believing (powerful) that men are above us — they believe it and we believe it.  And that creates a wicked reality, a reality where women can’t even say that their own body is their own…it would seem it is government property.

It came to me to endeavor to get the answer in a unique way for me.  I decided to ask before I did a pic on MS Paint.  When I do these pics, or any by hand, I never have a plan to paint anything in particular.  I just allow my “intuition/creativity” to flow through me.

So I asked before painting, “How do we re-empower women?”  And then I simply began to paint as I felt spurred to do so. 

As I was doing this pic, I heard, “Re-connect,” and when I was almost done, I heard, “Steps.”  I turned my head to the side and saw that what I had created kinda did look like steps.  I honed them up a bit and put the sprinkly footprints on them.  Note, it’s easy to follow one’s intuition in situations where there’s little to no potential for fear, ya’ simply do what ya’ FEEL like doing :)  It’s generally fear that mucks things up, and makes it difficult to know what we are feeling drawn to do (a further complication is that there are times when fear is justified and reflective of a our intuition). 

What I’m taking from this pic is that the answer to my question (and I’m sure it includes men as well), is that women will be re-empowered via the steps to “re-connect” with that powerful spiritual/creative part of them…that which we are.  (Note, I’m not speaking of religion here with the word “spiritual.”)  And I’m getting that it is a matter of steps — that is, it won’t happen over night.  I also often see multiple meaning in symbolic messages, and here I also feel that these steps represent the outer steps that we will need to take — but only once the inner ones have been achieved are we likely to take those outer steps…to self-empowerment and true freedom. 

Peace,
Dove

 “It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

This tasering of the Florida student/kid brings to mind another freedom issue that is strongly representative of the fact that when we are complacent, it simply gets worse and worse.  Our fraudulent tax system…  But look at this!!  Woohoo, for this lawyer!!  Yessssss!!

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THE POWER TO DESTROY

IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability

Lawyer is acquitted after arguing income levy lacks legal foundation

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“We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.” ~ William Reece Smith, Jr.

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“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.” ~ Pericles

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“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. ~ Thomas Brackett Reed

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What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long. ~ Thomas Sowell

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“To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.” ~ Elizabeth Cody Stanton

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“The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws.” ~ Cornelius Tacitus

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“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.” ~ James Madison

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“We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

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“Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn’t stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband — it creeps up insidiously… step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone.” ~ Baron Lane

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“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.” ~ Lyndon Johnson

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“Freedom can not be bought for nothing. If you hold her precious, you must hold all else of little value.” ~ Lucius Seneca - Epistolae Morales (c. 60 A.D.)

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“If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.” ~ Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

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“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

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“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.” ~ Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756)

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“There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

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“The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.” ~ Erwin Griswold - (Dean, Harvard Law School - 1960)

I’ve already posted about this once…  But this disturbs me so much, I gotta get some more of this outta my system.  I was just reading a random site after googling this topic (Florida student tasered for asking the wrong question), and came upon this statement… 

“The student is 100% in the wrong. Whether he had done anything wrong in the first place is irrelevant to the taser incident. You can not resist arrest just because you think you “didn’t do anything wrong”. If this were allowed, then everyone could resist arrest. From the video, it is obvious that the police tried to escort him out and he fought them. he apparently thought he was “too good” to be arrested. He learned the hard way.”

Ya’ see this is the sort of moronic, sheeple mentality that is so frightening.  It’s like, babe, you don’t mess with “the law,” you are just a peon-regular-human-being person, they’re “the law.”  Bow down and take your licks no matter what (it would seem). 

I think Job One here should be to try and get people educated about the law and OUR FREEDOM, so here’s an excerpt from the excellent article that I provided a link to in my original post on this.

 (Also, here’s a great blog on this topic.  I posted a silly tongue-in-cheek response.  I kinda snapped after having read one too many posts expressing pleasure at what happened to this kid.  It was either get silly, or tell a certain guy on this blog that he’s a blithering idiot.)

———————–
It is every citizen’s duty to resist false arrest

There is no such crime as “resisting arrest.” This is a fictitious crime dreamed up by law enforcement to accuse a citizen of a crime when they refuse to surrender to the illegal demands of the police.

U.S. courts have ruled on numerous occasions that resisting a false arrest is not merely a citizen’s right, but his duty! In fact, courts have gone so far as to rule that if a law enforcement officer is killed as a result of actions stemming from a citizen’s attempts to defend themselves against a false arrest, it is the fault of the officer, not the citizen.

Here’s a short collection of relevant court rulings on false arrest and resisting arrest:

“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed, he is justified.” Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.

“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence.” Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” (State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

In other words, Andrew Meyer would have been justified in using whatever reasonable means necessary to defend his life against his assailants. The gang of six individuals who assaulted Meyer, regardless of what clothing and badges they were wearing, were threatening his safety and his life. They assaulted him with a dangerous and potentially deadly weapon, and they kidnapped him by forcefully removing him from the room against his will.

Was Meyer being annoying to others by taking up air time at the microphone? Perhaps so. But being annoying is not a crime. If it were, John Kerry, President Bush and practically elected official in the country should be arrested. They’re all far more annoying than Meyer.

Additional information from the courts:

“Each person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such a case, the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and may be resisted by the use of force, as in self- defense.” (State v. Mobley, 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100).

Source:  Newstarget.com

This is inconceivable to me… If you watch the video (link included in this article), there’s one guy — looks like he’s laughing.  How could these people simply sit around and watch this abuse of power, this young person being attacked and his freedom being trampled.  The guy did absolutely nothing that warranted such treatment.  I think the most horrifying aspect of it is that NO ONE – including Kerry (who could have stopped it and knew how wrong it was) did or said anything as this happened, that they just readily accepted it…accepted that it was a crime to say the wrong thing to, um, King Kerry?

Police state USA: Student assaulted and tasered by police for asking John Kerry the wrong question