Kid, Inc: Are We Raising Our Nation's Children Like Animals?

It's that time of year -- autumn. The birds have quit twittering and the children have stopped playing. The last couple of years I have noticed a strange thing which I never used to notice. Perhaps, my hearing is more astute, but this sound of absolute silence in the air the week that the kids are herded back into their holding pens and fattened up for slaughter after a few years of corporate corn and antibiotics is nearly like a death.

One doesn't notice the sounds of the children ringing in the air up and down the streets while the robins are training up their young ones until it's gone. I swear I could hear a pin drop from down the street this week. I don't see these children or know them, but somehow, their activity and sound fills the air.

And I wonder, how is it that the very air, nature itself seems to know the children are gone?

A few months ago, when watching Robert Kenner's documentary Food, Inc (http://www.foodincmovie.com/ ) I was struck by the similarities between the way we raise much of our food and the way we raise our children. If it's not humane or healthy to raise chickens in a windowless and crowded shed, then how is it acceptable to treat humans with souls this way?

Food, Inc shows one chicken grower that is broken in spirit because she has been forced out of tobacco farming due to our nation's biases and fears which are reminiscent of those that incited tobacco and alcohol prohibitions earlier in the last century. She now spends her days in the sheds clearing out the bodies of the chickens that die every day. Her sheds had windows in them at the time of filming, but the company she was contracted with was fighting her on this, wanting her to get rid of them. Without sunlight animals die -- so do children.

Where I live we have some formerly beautiful Art Deco schools built in the 1920s and 30s. Even back then, people were concerned about energy use and thus, these schools were specifically designed to absorb as much solar heat as possible and to allow the class rooms to be well-lit because, according to the research of the architects and school system, children learned better with more sunlight.

Not only did the architect want the children to absorb light while in their classrooms, but aesthetic beauty and grandness. The classrooms were designed with very high and beautiful ceilings and fine materials. Back in the old days we knew that Creativity Class is everywhere and in everything, and that inspiration is embedded even in the floors we walk upon and the windows we look out of.

But we have lowered the ceilings, placing false panels in. We have blocked up the grand and beautiful windows, leaving only a few small sections open. Our idea of energy use is one of not using any, rather than of absorbing and using more in wise ways. And as we have hidden the high ceilings that invite children's minds to soar, as we have blocked out the light coming in and the ability to see out, so we have also done to our children -- blocking the light of inspiration from getting in or the ability to see out.

Our children are like those chickens, no longer allowed to run loose in the sun. Those chickens die in the dark, are over crowded and diseased. Those chickens can't stand up on their own legs. They peck at each other and kill each other because they have nothing else to do. And those that raise them have no pride or dignity in what they do because they are told they must do this or loose their contract. How many teachers are in similar situations?

And then, there is a farmer interviewed in Food, Inc, that raises his animals in a more traditional and humane way. He has joy in his eyes even though he works hard and is not rich. His cows and pigs love him when he comes around and he loves them even though he will one day kill them. But think of it, wouldn't you rather the farmer loves his animal and the animal loves him, for when the day of slaughter comes, that farmer is going to make sure this animal is slaughtered as humanely and cleanly as possible, for he respects it and the life it provides for him.

Are we feeding our children the right "food" in school, or only a false and indigestible diet? Are we making them fat and weak, unable to stand with dignity and joy, by penning them in dark sheds and muddy pens? Are we injecting our children with pharmaceutical drugs and treatments because we've overcrowded them, rather than letting them loose on the range?

We don't want our food genetically engineered by giant foreign corporations, nor do we want our livestock and poultry treated inhumanely. So, why is it acceptable to treat our children this way? It's not.

[Note: It is stated in Food, Inc, several times that if Big Tobacco can be beat so can Big GMO companies. Obviously, there is an anti-tobacco bias and some ignorance in the documentary. Those same giant companies that have pushed genetically modified corn and soybeans upon us are the exact same companies that have fought to ban tobacco production and use. Were it not for our ignorance of how exactly important tobacco farmers and tobacco production are to the United States of America's dignity, health, and economic prosperity we would not be spiting the very hand that feeds us in favor of foreign nicotine replacement "therapy" and grains with terminator technology. Every single ban on tobacco adds money and dictatorial control of our country to a giant foreign interest or U.S. corporation with strong links to foreign interests. These foreign corporations have eaten up U.S. corporations and states, and think of U.S. citizens as swine, not as humans.

Most tobacco farmers are very conscious of the land and possess hundreds of years of farming knowledge, which has been erased by the hatred of their main money crop. As illustrated in Food, Inc, most tobacco farmers have been reduced to extreme debt and poverty and now raise animals in a way that turns their stomachs and is anti-American and immoral. Because we have fallen for the fear of propaganda we have gotten rid of one of America's most important crops and allowed foreign corporations to dictate to us and our politicians what we can and can't eat.

Not everyone has to smoke, but everyone has to eat, and banning tobacco is actually affecting the health of our children who are forced to eat the unhealthy crops and unhealthy animals that now replace tobacco. Bring back tobacco farming and we will weaken these giant foreign corporations and their power over our nation's leaders and food supply. Banning tobacco will actually increase cancers and autoimmune disorders in the coming years because the replacement crops are usually genetically engineered (with your tax dollars at the local university for a foreign pharmaceutical or agricultural corporation) with proteins foreign to the human body that cause inflammation of soft tissue (such as lung tissue) over time.]

Nicotine Replacement Therapy Targets Youth and Females in Your Local Store

It's time to start complaining to our local merchants, retailers, and newspapers about the shelf placement and advertising of Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" (NRT) products. Like tobacco products, they should be out of reach of underage users and require an I.D., and advertising should not appeal to youth.

The other night, in the local Wal-Mart I noticed that the NRT aisle was provocatively placed on an edge which everyone has to pass as they go to the toothpaste, deodorant, condoms, vitamins, and tampons. The shelf was under five feet tall -- very low, beneath the eye contact of the average adult, but perfect for a younger person. The location of the patches, gums, and candies was ideal for those making a quick run into the store for those items.

And doesn't nearly everyone brush their teeth, and hair, and buy shampoo and other body cleansing and grooming products? Young women, especially, have to pass by the NRT aisle, because it is they that spend the most money and time grooming and beautifying themselves. Evidently, the shelf placement of NRT is directly aimed at those of the underage female persuasion. The aisle was also conspicuously close to the condoms. Again, this indicates marketing and placement aimed at the youthful and sexually active. Imagine getting it on and pouching a piece of "gum" at the same time! The beauty of it!

This moral and health issue must be remedied. The anti-tobacco groups have lately launched a complaint campaign, asking their niacin deficient pellagrins to complain about in store tobacco advertising and placement. The same must be done with NRT products to protect the children from the health and economic burdens inflicted upon society by addictive and dangerous Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" products.

We cannot allow this social ill to continue. Children are daily exposed to Nicotine Replacement Therapy advertising via school programs, T.V. advertising that directs them to look up sites such as Shardsofglass.com, and are being led to beleive these products are safe and responsible. Even the President of the United States is pushing NRT, offering it to others, saying it's good, with children viewing this unhealthy behavior.

And soon, we will hear more and more of the deaths caused to children that used NRT because it was so easy to buy and because they ignorantly believed it was safe. They will put the trans dermal patch on and die of heart failure, mix the patch with other drugs; or mix the gums and candies with other drugs causing a dangerous reaction. Children are natural little chemists and experimenters. And Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" doesn't work the same way as tobacco on the brain. Much of it is actually a type of ionization process, replacing one thing with another. We must protect our children and our young females and demand that NRT be placed behind the counter and that I.D. be required in order to make a purchase.

Also, taxes need to be raised to make this too expensive for youth to afford and to pay for the health costs caused to society. Most NRT products are imported and don't have to pay tariffs. We need to remedy this issue, and make these Big Ionized Nicotine companies pay up, rather than reaping the money, and addicting an entire generation of youth for life to this habit.

My Town Is Dying

My town is dying. It looks alive, but I can feel it, as if its spirit is drowsy, blurry, and apathetic. My town puts on more makeup and visits the plastic surgeon, but beneath the surface the bones are cracking.

The big houses are standing empty, and all of the big plans for eco friendly green show neighborhoods where everyone lives a sterile and clean life of health, vanity, micro fleece, shiny biking costumes with butt pads and Birkenstocks and beany caps are empty fields on the edge of town. A big scam. Someone sold the idea and got paid for it.

Hundreds of people were made to move from a very nice, green trailer court with mature pines and willows and large lots and good families. Now it's a haven for transients and needle pushers. Many of the mobile homes still remain with their doors and windows hanging loose, the stairs tilting off to the side, the grass tall. And next door is a neighborhood of palaces with moats and giant windows. They probably believed that they would soon be next door to one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the nation with shops, nature trails, and the old flour refinery turned into a microbrewery.

But no. The refinery is still a middle of the night haunt for kids with cans of spray paint and a knowledge of satanic symbolism. It still smells of skunks and the owls still fly out in the dark night. It's still as spooky and dark as when I was a kid.

I knew the eco dreams were false. How could forcing hundreds of people to leave a nice affordable and quiet trailer park work? I knew it was a scam because it was all about vanity and impressing the nation with a first of its kind facade. Really, do people live above their businesses anymore and hang tomatoes out to prove they're sustainable? People want that early 1900's dream, but without the reality and nitty gritty that goes with it. The real living was in the trailer court, but those people didn't matter. And I was right. Rather than making life; these fake, greedy, vain, and self-righteous people created a black hole -- death.

And others are complaining about the old brewery building with its chain link fence around it to protect from falling brick. Half the building is demolished. I used to spend quite a bit of time in that building, as several businesses I had contact with were located there. The neighborhood is upset that the building sits there rotting, neither being torn down or restored. They wish the city would force the owners to follow through with their plans of a big restaurant and new brewery. Hmm. Who would the customers be if it was finished? My town is dying, and a dead entity doesn't go out to sip foamy beers or eat fresh ravioli.

Main Street looks nice with its boutiques and hanging flower baskets. But it has a big hole blown in it where a gas explosion took out part of a block. The owner of one of the bars, now a black hole, was a prime supporter of the smoking ban. At the time he was taking his bar from a famous dive that was so packed patrons stood shoulder to shoulder; changing it into one of those granite-tiled artsy-fartsy places where the doctors and boring people go. He knew his new and trendy bar would not be able to compete any longer if it was the only non-smoking bar on the street. And it didn't. No one went after the remodel and the shiny granite bar with napkins was installed. He destroyed a landmark.

The same bar owner wanted the town to put up millions to build his kid a hockey rink too. This same bar owner has another bar across town where the older and wealthier gather to swing. It looks clean and "safe," but it's not. It's the only bar in town where I've seen a paid cameraman on a regular basis filming the girls. It's the only bar in town with wet t-shirt contests, foam baths, bikini contests with the bikinis supplied by the bar. Meanwhile that cameraman is rolling, and so is every football player's camera phone.

Has anyone ever asked if the bar owner is selling the images of those girls? And it's the only bar in town where it's common for married people to get with married people as if it's nothing. But it's clean and decent and serves pink drinks. All of this goes on below the surface and one has to watch very closely, but if one knows what to look for it's the most immoral place in town. I knew my town was dying when this became a popular location. A few years ago, people had to keep it secret that they went to a phony place. Now, that bar owner, a good upstanding citizen, wants the city to "loan" him money to rebuild his black hole on Main Street. He'll never pay it back.

My town is dying. It has a big new parking garage with business space attached. It was built with Hurricane Katrina relief money although we're nowhere near hurricane country. But it's empty and quiet.

My town is dying. The frat house, a former resident's mansion sits on an entire city block, looking pretty and wasting money since the city bought and refurbished it with tax payer money, rather than selling it to a law firm that would have made it into a property that benefited the community by paying taxes. This historic mansion eats up federal tax dollars. Somehow it managed to get tens of thousands of that Economic Stimulus money for an energy-saving remodel, which will save the taxpayer's on energy costs. Wouldn't it have saved the tax payers to have let a private business own and maintain it? How does it save money to spend taxpayer money? The government is the only entity that can say it's saving money by spending other people's money. When the rest of us spend other people's money we're called trust funders, irresponsible, greedy, and wasteful.

My town is dying. Last October the smoking ban went into effect. Now, on a Friday night the doors of the formerly crowded and bustling bars stand open and silently sad. The pool tables have sticks laying across them rather than in the hands of patrons. It used to be that one had to lay their quarters down and fight for a pool table. No longer. It use to be that one had to jostle and muscle their way to the front of the bar for a drink. It use to be loud and boisterous by 11 o'clock when the drinks began sinking in and the work week wore off. No longer. Now, there is a silent and wary group of tobacco smokers lurking outside the doors, wondering if they should even bother going back in.

Now, the bars are trying to lure people back in for a good time with live bands. But it's still dead most nights, with only a handful of people searching for other people. I use to think it was the music that drew the people, but now, I wonder if the music is the people. Without people there is no music, no laughing, no drunkenness, no joy, no sin, no money. Who do you play for when there is no audience or when the audience keeps walking out for a cigarette in the middle of the song?

My town is dying and people are looking for life. The people think they're going out for drinks and music, but really they are going out to be with others. Now, when a big band comes to town it sells out because everyone knows that everyone else will also be there. Now, the few people out all gather at one location, leaving every other establishment nearly empty. It didn't use to be this way, before the smoking ban. Even when a large event was occurring somewhere else, the crowd was evenly and generously distributed amongst the bars. People knew that even if they didn't go to the big show, they'd still have a good time in a large crowd somewhere else. In fact, it was even nice because certain crowds of people would clear out for the show, leaving an opportunity to meet an entirely new set of people.

I live in a college town famous for selling more beer than any other town west of the Mississippi. I wonder how that statistic is faring these days? Do dead people drink? My state lost about $40 million in tax revenues the first two months of the smoking ban. But of, course, it's saving lives to have a pharmaceutical Nicorette (sucks) monopoly. How is it that when the government says it's saving lives and money it's actually destroying lives and ability to make money? Is that how the rest of us save money, by finding ways of preventing our businesses from having customers and by preventing customers from patronizing favorite business. What an excellent way to cut costs -- get rid of customers and steady revenue. How novel. It's like Nazi eugenics applied to the economy. They saved a lot of money getting rid of millions of business owners and customers. They killed them. My town is dying.

The police force is doubled and the new Taj MaJail is nearly finished. Who will they lock up if the tobacco smokers aren't out drinking? Who will they lock up if no one has money to leave their homes? Someone has to pay the gigantic bill, and this town doesn't have enough crime to foot the bill. They will have to make criminals out of the tax payers and property owners one way or another. Maybe, all red cars will be targeted, or redheads, or people wearing red... Thank goodness, the legislature thought ahead last session and banned those red light cameras. My town had them everywhere and could hardly wait to start fining those sliding across the line on winter roads, or making right hand turns. They're still there, but illegal and can't be used until a special interest pays someone off to repeal the anti-red light camera law.

My town is dying. I can hear it. It's a silent sound and no one wants to hear it. The talk is how our local economy is impervious and strong. Whatever. How can one single town stand alone? It's like saying someone's hand is strong while the rest of the body is dying. Will the hand live without the body? A body can live without the hand, but not vice versa. My town is not the body. It is arrogant and blind. It is Californicated and a pretty little whore. It used to be a rather natural kind of girl with stray hair, cut-off shorts, a fun smile, and old cars; but somewhere she got the idea that guys like ultra-plucked eyebrows, big shiny dangles, and four-inch heels and a snotty attitude. It's not the free and easy place it was only a few years ago. My town is uptight and vain. It's dying and soon won't have a night spot to go to and be seen in. Nor will it have a day spot.

My town is dying. A town is the people. Why are the people so lethargic and unable to exercise their simple constitutional rights? Why are the parts of the body attacking, banning, and regulating the other parts? Isn't each part essential? Are we like a 90 year old body, slowly shutting down? Are we too old? My town is dying.

But somewhere in the night, in the corners are others like me, seeking out the flames, the lit matches, lighters, the spark of life and the scent of a familiar aroma--the sweet smell of recognition. Somewhere others seek communion with like-minded souls, and we will know each other when we meet as long lost family members. The reunion will bring joy and we will take each other's hand and rise above the old and dead parts, although mournful of a time and place now only a memory. My town may be dying, but I am not.

image: Rembrandt, Blinding of Samson

Pharmaceutical Nicotine and the State: Defining and Segregating Sacred

Only atheists, infidels, and barbarians chew Nicorette or suck synthetic coal tar derived nicotine replacement "therapies." Only unhealthy and injured people need therapy.

True believers, those that have seen beyond the veil inhale tobacco, a natural green plant that supplies nicotinic acid the natural way.

If the State Health Departments and the synthetic nicotine manufacturers are going to define tobacco as "sacred," for use only by native peoples, or rather, a few select Indians within each tribe who are deemed by the State as sacred enough to inhale for the rest of their nation; then why would anyone want anything other than the sacred stuff?

By defining tobacco as sacred, when up until recently it has been called "dirty" or the "devil's weed," or "the nation's number one health issue," the pharmaceutical industry, health departments, and religious groups that have fought so hard to make tobacco use illegal are actually saying that tobacco is holy, safe, and natural. How is it that these tobacco haters say tobacco is immoral, evil, and dangerous yet at the same time holy, sacred, and even spiritual?

In describing "sacred tobacco" these groups say it is non addictive, has no toxins, and no nicotine -- as long as it's used by a specific genetic, cultural, and religious group. How is it that tobacco smoke used by Indians, or rather a select government minority within the tribe suffers no addiction, health risk, and gets no nicotine?

And how is it sacred when used by one person or group but not another?

If tobacco is sacred and natural, then synthetic nicotine gums, candies, and patches are the dirty and sinful corruptions of greedy corporations. These products have had all the sacred sucked out of them and may need someone to light a bowl of sacred tobacco over them in order to enrich them with what they are lacking -- spirit.

By defining tobacco as sacred for the select, this confers a high status upon tobacco and implies that synthetic nicotine is for the unwashed masses, the lowly. Everyone wants to be part of the select rather than the secular and anti-people, anti-tobacco gum chewers and lozenge sucking children afraid of smoke signals rising to the heavens.

In saying that tobacco is sacred, this implies that the groups of people standing around with pipes, cigars, and cigarettes are actually initiates into a sacred group. This implies that these people are engaging in a religious gathering, communing with each other and with God. Banning these people from a daily ritual and claiming that only those with the correct genetic markers and cultural heritage may partake, may "pray" and gather peaceably is highly suspicious.

When does a company or the local state get to define which group may worship or gather, or participate in certain rituals? I suppose it does all the time. The U.S. government prohibits certain practices such as polygamy, which it doesn't need to in my opinion, as most men cringe in fear at the thought of more than one wife at a time, and most free women would rather not share their home and other resources with another woman or her children. Sarah sent Hagar out, and Rebekah and Leah weren't pleased with their arrangement either. It doesn't generally work unless a man is a king, and even then it can be a failure.

What if the government told us that only descendants of Brigham Young could practice polygamy because for them it was sacred and not harmful? Or what if the government told us that only genetic Jews or genetic Catholics could drink "sacred wine" at Passover or Easter because it is used differently than for non adherents and isn't harmful? What if bread were banned from the general population, reserved only for Baptists in their "sacred bread" ceremonies?

The pharmaceutical industry and its department of health will say that these are ridiculous examples. There is no second-hand or third-hand danger posed by wine or bread, or other cultural and religious practices such as kosher preparations or dietary restrictions. Everything has so-called second and third hand effects if we want to look hard enough, hate hard enough.

What happens if one day it is decided that corporate gasoline is deadly and the number one health issue in the country because, according to the ethanol industry and health departments funded by them, it causes all the cancer, high blood pressure, strokes, low birth weight babies, and decreases productivity due to drive time? Will the ethanol industry ban gasoline, make it prohibitively expensive, imprison people that use it, and then declare it "sacred gasoline" reserved only for the elect in Washington D.C.?

Either tobacco is sacred and doesn't have nicotine or it is evil and does have nicotine. Perhaps, the tobacco is only as sacred and non toxic as the person smoking it. What the pharmaceutical nicotine industry is saying is that it is the people it hates for not using its synthetic and empty trash. The tobacco user must be banned and hated into using a product so far inferior to tobacco that they never would have voluntarily switched over of their own free will.

This is what happened when Mohammad swept through to force conversion to his new religious product. Under ordinary conditions a people like to convert of their own free will and because they are moved by some unseen spiritual pull. People generally like things as natural and easy-going as they can get it. Ideally, people prefer religions that allow for celebrations, communion with each other such as at potlucks and thanksgivings. People like a perfect mix of tradition that doesn't overwhelm spontaneity and joy. Each of us has a preference in religion which we think superior to all others. Preference is fine, but forced conversion from one religion or product to another is an act of violence and subjugation. And the anti-tobacco movement uses nearly all of the same arguments and reasons as a forceful religious movement.

In Islam, the government does not operate separately from the religious leaders. Our pharmaceutical industry is behaving like an Islamic nation, as if it is the religious head with its scientific clerics declaring what the holy writs say and sending out its terrorist converts to spread hate and fear and hardline law upon the ignorant people and State. The anti-tobacco movement is one of the most religious movements I have ever seen, and may actually be more harmful to American security, sovereignty, and health than radical Islam. If we were to tally the souls harmed by Chantix, job loss and land loss, and loss of 1st Amendment rights, the cost to society and the "pursuit of happiness" would be exorbitant.

The fact that the health departments and pharmaceutical activists are saying tobacco is sacred, says very clearly that this is religious and that the desired goal is not all that different from what radical right Islam seeks: Complete subjugation and annihilation of all adherents to other religions and products.

And tobacco smoke doesn't have any nicotine in it. When tobacco is burned it converts the nicotine to harmless nicotinic acid. This is why sacred tobacco doesn't have nicotine and isn't addictive.

And as far as not inhaling the sacred tobacco is concerned, that is a bunch of State and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation myth and homogenizing of a practice that is unique to each individual and Indian nation. As some churches don't "inhale" the wine by serving up grape juice, some Indians don't inhale the tobacco. Some Indians inhale, some don't. Some Indians smoke outside of the ceremonial use and have for time immemorial. And as there are many Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish denominations and sects, so are there many unique religious practices amongst American Indians across the continent. If an Indian didn't inhale the sacred tobacco either directly from the pipe or in the air they wouldn't know of its smell which is sweet to the Creator.

If Indians are going to allow a few nosy women to line their pockets with so-called non-profit and state "health" department money while telling everyone else how and when to use tobacco, then they will further corrupt and cut the ties with their Father who gave the people tobacco along with other nicotine containing plants, namely potatoes, corn, beans, and tomatoes.

Over and over I see that the pharmaceutical industry claims it's against "corporate tobacco," not "sacred tobacco." They hide nearly nothing. Propaganda never lies, but frames the truth in such a way that it creates a response that is destructive of the audience's own best interests. What the pharmaceutical industry is engaging in is called a coercive monopoly, which is when it engages the government legal process in prohibiting competition from other sources through law. My state runs a "Quit Line" which is designed specifically to profit the pharmaceutical companies by doling out synthetic nicotine currently "marketed as" smoking cessation aids.

Already, Nicorette is changing the marketing of its products as "therapy." Yes, Nicorette wants tobacco users to quit, but it wants the tobacco user stuck on their expensive and empty product. Nicorette is spending $30 million this year, not counting the millions in advertising spent by our state anti-tobacco campaigns, to push its products, especially the new quick-dissolve mini candy lozenge (Laurie Burkitt, "Nicorette puffs $15 Million into Ad Blitz," Forbes.com, 7 Dec. 2009). I would guess that this new product is not the traditional slow-release nicotine, which many find unsatisfactory and sickening, but a rapid-release nicotine more akin to a cigarette. Are these products monitored and taxed the same way as cigarettes? They should be.

Another question I have not researched properly is how the nicotine in nicotine replacement therapies is converted to nicotinic acid, as it's not oxidized through burning. If nicotine is not oxidized or alkalized it can't be freed for use by the neuronal and muscular nicotinic receptors. If nicotine is not oxidised or alkalized it is toxic, which is why the anti-tobacco people can say it's a pesticide, which it is when in its pure nicotine form. All plants have varying degrees of built in pesticide management. According to the research I've seen so far, the nicotine used in nicotine replacement "therapy" is freebase derived from pyridine, an extract of coal tar.

The nicotine replacement companies and anti-smoking campaigns are in reality giant advertising arms of a pharmaceutical monopoly that sees people as money, and has lost nearly all sight of health or cures. Proof that this is not a health issue but a coercive monopoly issue is the outrage against such products as smokeless tobacco, and products such as Camel Dissolvables which are similar to pharmaceutical dissolvables currently "marketed as smoking cessation aids" (Bill Godshall, "Urge FDA to make NRT products more consumer friendly," SmokeFree.net, 15 Aug. 2008)). And that e-cigarette really annoys them because it looks like a cigarette, is inhaled and the vapors are harmless. If this were really a health issue the anti-smoking advocates would love such products and encourage them, rather than pushing their products as the only alternative. Even quitting smoking without using a pharmaceutical nicotine product is not encouraged by these groups.

If these fake pharmaceutical products worked, everyone and their mama would have switched years ago. If these products worked and supplied nicotinic acid in a form that doesn't cause ill side effects the pharmaceutical companies and their non-profit arms wouldn't need laws passed against their competitors. Obviously pharmaceutical nicotine is lacking and our bodies know it. If pharmaceutical nicotine were equivalent to tobacco it would have an effect upon the paranoia and hate within the anti-tobacco movement, reducing its fears of social gatherings and death.

When a person is deficient in nicotinic acid they are prone to dementia and display fear of persecution, and think in terms of apocalypse. Evidently, the nicotine gums these people are chewing aren't healing the deficiency and only causing constant head ache and tension from TMJ. These people are confused and uneducated. They simply can't comprehend anything sacred or unregulated by their monopoly as this quote from Linda Lee of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services illustrates:

"'There is no real reason to use an unregulated product [e-cigarette] that could be dangerous'..[F]DA-approved products such as patches, gum and lozenges are already available, she said" ("Montana health officials discourage use of e-cigarettes to avoid Clean Indoor Air Act," Missoulian, 9 Jan. 2010).

These people don't understand. It's like telling people that there are all kinds of alternatives to good food such as pills and supplements which supply the necessities in food. Why on earth would anyone want to sit down with their friends and family for a good meal when they could swallow a pill, chew gum, or put on a patch? This is how it is with tobacco and the e-cigarette. People want the process, the tradition, the involvement, the experience, and the shared time together. This is why people try to use the e-cigarette, because they are trying to create the image of the original thing that they love.

Take the human desire for communion, thanksgiving, and remembrance away and there is nothing left. Take everything from wine, leaving only the alcohol and not many will want it. There's more to wine or beer and other creations of mankind than "addiction." What are all of the other ingredients to a fine wine that make it desirable? First, there is the love and labor of growing the plant, watching it grow in the sun, worrying about its exposure to bad weather and insects. Then, there is the process of fermentation which I know nothing about. Finally, there is the act of drinking it, which people do for the exact same reasons they smoke tobacco.

People drink wine at Easter, at Passover, at dinners, and other places where opening the channels of relaxation and socialization are desired. People relax alone with a glass of wine, with a book, or even to aid sleep. It is not the wine that makes one an addict. Addiction is something that cannot be defined because it lays in the spirit and soul of a person. Alcohol and other substances that people use are like guns -- benign and only servants of the person using them. If one wants to use a gun or alcohol to harm another they will. It is the person, not the object or substance that is dangerous. A gun can be a weapon used to harm others, or it can be used as a form of defense against evil or to provide food.

Who is behind the cigarette and what are they using it for? Is the tobacco user burning babies or killing people? Or is the tobacco user thinking of ways to make the world better? Who is behind the glass of wine, behind the wheel of a car, behind the science, behind the money, behind the philanthropy? Each of these things is nothing without the person behind them. Money is nothing until a person makes it work for good or for bad.

We each are a force and we each make the objects and foods we consume either holy or cursed. And what is coming out of the pharmaceutical cartels and health departments is cursed because the people behind these entities are like vampires in search of blood to feed upon. These people don't see anything other than money and numbers. They hate freedom, they hate people, they hate people not addicted to evil. These people think that health is a healthy monopoly over the lives of people.

Addiction sells its soul, it doesn't function and think. It sits alone and is dark. Addiction destroys lives. Tobacco users out on the job, in college, filing taxes, buying homes, having children, serving in the military are not addicts. These people are highly functioning individuals that contribute billions of dollars and other assets not counted in monetary terms.

It is the monopoly pharmaceutical industry that is unsacred and addicted. What they accuse the common person of is not something most of us suffer from. The pharmaceutical industry behaves as a deranged meth addict, destroying the lives of children and family. It robs and murders to get its fix. The largest health issue in America is not tobacco or food, but the giant corporations that create a society so prohibitive and stressful that people die of stress-related disease due to unhappiness. If there are gifts upon this earth that can ameliorate and offer small respites from the stress, sadness and ignorance left for us after the wolves have torn apart our feast, leaving a decrepit and decayed carcass, then these gifts should not be despised or feared.

All tobacco is sacred and traditional. All synthetic pharmaceutical nicotine gums, patches, and candies are freebase and devoid of tradition. These products are anti-American and have tossed out everything good, including joy and happiness; leaving nothing but fear, hatred, poverty, and subjugation.

image: August Macke, Franz Marc, 1910

Arizona's New Law: A Strike Against Slavery and Corporatism?

Several years ago my boss returned from a business trip in sunny California, most of which he spent golfing with a business owner there. The California businessman had a thriving business and didn't have to work much. My boss was impressed by his wealth and by the fact that the man could hire two employees for the wages he had to pay one employee in my state.

I remember standing there with my fellow employee who had run the business while the boss was away, listening as the boss was saying how easy it is in California to hire Asians and Mexicans to work for next to nothing. All of this was to insinuate that we were damn lucky to be getting such good wages. I was irked, but at the same time I understood the boss, a generally great guy.

The boss was barely making it sometimes. He wasn't rich. His house was small and plain, set in one of those new subdivisions where every house is cheaply made and doesn't have a yard. His cars were old, really old. Finally, his wife's little econo car from the 1980s died and he went out to get her a new one, ending up getting himself one too.

And so, it must have hurt a bit and made my boss jealous to see how easily one can hire employees in California, make them work so hard and pay them nothing, and make enough money to golf in the sun all day.

I wonder if this is how those in the 1850s felt when they saw plantation owners living the life while their slaves worked diligently, making the money? Even if one didn't believe in enslaving a fellow man, it must have made them jealous when they saw how small and simple their own life was, how small, and how expensive labor and time was.

We are living in interesting times, a combination of so many other times. The states and politicians are arguing and boycotting in regard to the Mexican worker issue. This doesn't seem entirely dissimilar to the arguments between slave states and free states that began broiling in the 1850s, eventually ending in the Civil War, fought to bring the Confederacy back into the Union.

There is a bit of a difference from the 1850s and 1860s in that the Mexican workers don't seem as afraid or sedate as the slaves of the Confederacy. They don't quite seem to comprehend that they are being used as the frontal assault to fight a battle for their "masters," who send them out to protest and ask for rights, rile them up and send them in to take the blows. The Mexican Marxist movement has no idea that they are slaves. They really believe they are free. If they are so free why don't they stop the drug cartels that make them look so bad, why don't they go home to Mexico?

If the Mexicans are free enough to gather in protest why are they not free enough to gather in protest against the inhumane and dangerous working conditions their fellows often work under? Who exactly are these protesters? Are they who they say they are or do they get paid to protest? I ask this, because, historically in the United States of America slave revolts are rare and are failures. This causes me to question whether these groups of angry Mexicans are Mexican or enslaved at all, or only paid provocateurs.

In the United States of America minority groups don't simply rise up and change culture with anger. It takes time, and is done in a very intelligent, educated, and legal manner. It takes time because the minority group has to break ground, rise above the odds and show that it is part of the culture, not separate, not less entitled, not more entitled. Most importantly, even though each of us is individual and unique, we each are part of this country called America and assimilated to it. All civil rights movements have tried to prove this: that we are all part of the same culture, that we are not separate, not different.

Racism is founded upon the belief that another group of people is different, separate, not assimilated. And here, in our time, we have lost sight of this and of the older civil rights movements. Now, the many groups crying for equal rights in America claim that it is equal rights to not assimilate, not be part of the greater culture, and continue being separate--yet equal. Now, people wear religious costume as badge of pride that tells everyone they are not part of the community, nor do they want to be. And Mexican protesters spout words such as "Latina" and speak in another language to show how separate they are.

Modern civil rights movements actually want "Separate But Equal" laws reinstated. This is an insult to those that worked so hard, who lost their lives to achieve equality and acceptance everywhere based upon individual character and merit, rather than on appearance and religion.

And so I question the honesty of the modern Mexican worker movement. There really are enslaved immigrants in this country. There really are abuses, but I doubt these people have any voice and that they have much to do with any of the current anger in the streets. I doubt the street marchers care too much about the down trodden who have no energy or freedom to march anywhere.

It's as if someone is trying to wind the American watch backwards, back to the beginning before Martin Luther King, Jr, before the Civil War, before the American Revolution. It's as if the fabric, the great patterned and stared and striped fabric of America is being unraveled.

People actually want to be defined as separate, as foreign, as slaves. We are banning certain groups, separating them out as less humans; and then demanding that other groups be given the right to be citizens, yet kept separate. Before the American Revolution British colonists brought slaves into America to work the land because they were easier to deal with than indentured servants who had to be housed and fed, then released, not to mention hard to keep from running away. A black slave was marked as different by skin color, making it hard for them to run away and assimilate into the general population.

In the years leading up to the Civil War when new territory was being settled, the slave question began tearing up the nation because one settler would move in with his family and work the land on his own, while another would come in with his slaves and set up a giant operation and get rich without putting as much into the local economy. The slave owner could make a profit hiring his slave out for wages to another too. But the land owner who owned no slaves had to pay someone to work his land. The settler that owned no slaves and needed extra money or work couldn't find work when it was taken by a slave. It wasn't fair to the settler who owned no slaves. It felt as if he was being stolen from and paying more for everything.

If one has grown up in an area where there is no cheap labor, where there are no slaves, it is very difficult to change that sick and dishonest feeling in one's stomach and buy a slave or to hire someone to work for less-than honest wages. It's not a good feeling knowing that your employee is starving because you don't pay them enough to get by. And so, the northerners moving into the new territories of America couldn't accept slavery because it was not honest and didn't make one proud of themselves as a provider.

Finally, the Civil War broke out because the spineless politicians in Washington had compromised over and over again, not wanting to say one way or the other that slavery was right or wrong. Too afraid to step on Southern toes they had drawn a geographic line, making slavery legal below, and illegal above. They had compromised with the Southern landowners, criminalizing anyone in a free state from aiding runaway slaves as they traveled to Canada. A family caught harboring a slave could lose everything they owned. This is why it was called The Underground Railroad, because it had to go underground to protect the property of the Operators. This law, criminalizing what had formerly been a fairly common and open act, caused an uproar amongst the Free States and lead to the writing and popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. When a person's property and livelihood are threatened it activates people.

There were many factors that lead the Southern states to secede from the Union. One was slavery, but there were other issues too. In a way, it was a war for monetary power. The North was where the money, population, banks, and manufacturing were located. The South was agricultural and old fashioned. The South felt that the Northern money was monopolizing things a bit and wanted out.

Abraham Lincoln eventually declared emancipation for the slaves, although it was more an act of weakening the power base of the Southern plantation owner than anything. The slaves were "free," but had no rights. And instead of being valuable property to an owner, they were now no one's property, and free to be abused by any and all with no loss to anyone other than to loved ones. The competition with Northern powers was broken, and a group of people found themselves indebted sharecroppers, manual labor, factory workers, and strikebreakers. The newly freed slaves were perhaps, more enslaved than before. It took another hundred years for them to be accepted as part of American culture, not separate.

Now, there is a lot of talk about "freeing" the Mexican immigrants and about amnesty, whatever that is. This is talk. President Obama will neither control the border, nor will he give full citizenship to the Mexicans. The reason for this is that his administration is funded and friended by large corporations and others who cannot afford to lose their cheap labor, either to citizenship or deportation. These illegal immigrants must be left in limbo, in a place where they have no rights, but don't leave the country. It's also important to keep the Mexicans in limbo because they make a great bone of contention in this country and keep us riled up against each other.

There are cities such as Los Angeles, California that have boycotted Arizona. And the Catholic priests are riled up, saying this is racism and not different than Nazi Germany. I think, it is actually more similar, at least right now, to the time between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. There is money, not love of mankind, behind much of this rhetoric. What exactly has Arizona done? They have threatened a monetary power base. Arizona's stricter immigration policy may not be perfect, and may lead to abuses, but it may have been a kick in the pants to quite a few greedy and dishonest power interests.

People don't get angry and stirred up until their money and property are threatened. The Catholic church has a large Mexican attendance. If Mexicans leave the state, or the country, so too does the money in the offering plate. Now, why is California threatened by tough immigration laws? And why are they willing to risk money to boycott Arizona? Why is Utah telling Mexicans to stay within it borders where they're "safe" as non citizens? Because these states are "slave" states and Arizona has essentially announced that it's not.

If a Northern state had announced more stringent enforcement against illegal workers this would not be as big an issue. But Arizona is a border state, a corridor for illegal non-citizen workers, as well as an entry for illegal monopoly drug mafias who are the modern slave drivers that push the bodies. The pre-Civil War slave drivers were the lowest of the low, cruel and heartless criminals, and black themselves, which made them more despicable to whites and blacks. The modern slave drivers are generally Hispanic, but the cruelest of the cruel, loving only to destroy the lives of their own people. The slave owners hated their slave drivers, but depended upon them and the fear they instilled in the slaves.

If one has ever traveled in Utah and California they will see that these states rely heavily upon non-citizen workers. These people allow business, state, and corporations to reap huge amounts of money and to keep things looking pretty as a southern plantation. While the giant corporate and government monopolies get rich by using these bodies, the citizens pay taxes into this false economy and get poorer.

California is like one of those American territories where one person earns and sweats for everything they have, while the guy next door has a perfect and easy life because he has 50 slaves out doing the work for nothing. Contrary, to what people say, California government makes a "profit" off of non-citizens. Each non-citizen equals a new Social service worker, new teacher, new bureaucracy that needs more money. The government keeps itself busy with all these bodies, never really doing anything to help them, and pockets the taxes taken from the citizens. It's a transfer of wealth, from the citizens to the State.

California needs non-citizens to work the fields, service industry, and whatever else. The State needs them for employment. If every Mexican was made a citizen and properly educated in English, the language that the laws and Constitution are written in, California and its corporations would soon be in trouble. They already are. The other solution is to send the non-citizens home and close the border. Mexicans are big business in California and Utah.

Why do you think California and other states don't teach Mexican students in English? It's not because they care about the students. It is actually to prevent them from becoming assimilated to American culture and from being able to learn their rights as American citizens. It's extremely important to read and write in the language of one's country. Before the Civil War there were laws on the books preventing slaves from reading, and especially from learning to write. This kept the slaves separate and unable to realize their power as humans. In America of the early 1900s there were a great deal of children born to foreign immigrants that never spoke English until their first year of school, and somehow, they caught on quickly with barely a problem.

It is wrong to prevent people from speaking their native language, but it is also wrong to keep them ignorant of the common language of the land, which is the language of laws and business and rights and literature. All people need to know how to get along with and understand the culture they live in or be outcasts and despised. It would be disrespectful to move to Japan or Russia and never learn the language or the social rules of the culture. Language is power.

Arizona has provoked a kind of war, a first shot. And the opposition is sending out the troops--the very people they enslave, because those with the power are too good to dirty or bloody themselves. And so, they make movies like "Machete" to invoke the slave troops into violence against the "enemy." And they pay a few loud voices to rally the troops, telling them to pick up their hoes, shovels, toilet brushes, and hamburger flippers and revolt.

There are only two solutions, neither perfect. Give the Mexican workers full citizenship, or prohibit them from working in the country. Arizona could not give them citizenship, and so made it a law that they cannot work without proper proof of permission. I'm not sure this is a solution either. Those in the slave states and in the federal government may make it easier to get papers. And how will this be enforced? Perhaps, it is the message that matters more than the actual enforcement.

What Arizona has done is similar to what Abraham Lincoln did when he freed the slaves. He pulled the rug out from underneath the power structure of the Southern land owners. Arizona has threatened the power structure of the neighboring states and business. Soon, we will see more states choosing sides in the same manner as Southern secession. Instead of seceding to be a slave state, the states will "secede" to be Free States. And like the slaves during and after the Civil War, the average Mexican will be caught in the middle. Do they go back to their slave master in Mexico, which has essentially hired them out to the U.S.?

I myself, am inclined to make most Mexican workers full citizens and encourage assimilation into the culture. If their country would rather hire them out, and gain corporate payoffs, then I'd rather cut Mexico off from its source of income. If I could prohibit money from going back into Mexico I would. And if I could cut off Mexican trucking, drivers, dirty diesel, and untrained drivers I'd do that too. But there is no easy solution, and it will take more than Arizona's law to solve this. I hope we don't have to go through another Civil War.

At any rate, this is contentious, and I hope that Americans can see past the mobs and that this is like North versus South, American money versus giant Corporate and State money. Perhaps, America could have avoided the Civil War by allowing escaped slaves to be full citizens in Free States, until the South was completely cleaned out of cheap/free labor. Compromising, being neither hot nor cold, leads to war and death of innocent people.

Tolkien, Tobacco, Censorship, and Liberty

I recently received a very nice hard back edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a gift. I last read this work when I was 13 years old and have wanted to read it since the film versions came out, but never got around to it.

I like to do a little research upon an author following a reading of them. It is helpful to understand a little of the private interests and passions of an author to understand why they care so much about their literary creations, and work so hard upon them.

I found it interesting that Wikipedia's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien had to use a picture of him from 1916 in military uniform, when he was an unknown and only 24 years old. The only other picture of him on the Wikipedia bio was of Tolkien in 1911, when he was 19.

The probable reason that Wikipedia could not, or would not use a more appropriate picture of J.R.R. Tolkien, one that showed him during the time he became known to the world outside of the University of Oxford for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is because there aren't many close-up photos of him without a tobacco pipe in or near his mouth.

Usually, a Wikipedia entry displays, or should display the first defining photo as the one that shows the person as they are most known and recognized by the world, not as they looked in childhood or as a teen. The childhood photos, should be relegated to the section pertaining to childhood. If the bio is describing Bette Davis or some movie star known for her good looks, the defining picture should be one that shows her at her peak, not one that shows her as an old hag. A picture of the youthful Albert Einstein would not be the defining image the world has. It would look out of place and odd when we all know he had unkempt white hair. Perhaps, Einstein carried his pipe a bit lower than Tolkien which allowed for the illusion that he was a tobacco-free thinker.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892 and died in 1973, which means he lived to be 81 years old. If he hadn't smoked he would've lived forever and The Lord of the Rings would look quite different (although, in the literary world one's creation is considered to make one immortal). I wonder if writing about Hobbits smoking tobacco qualifies as 2nd or 3rd hand smoke? And why does he look so much happier with the pipe than without it? He's probably glad he's not stuck on a piece of our modern PhrankenPharma nicotine gum.

Unlike the film version, which depicts the victorious Hobbits returning to their peaceful and untouched home in the Shire, the book shows an entirely different picture. Tolkien shows that the last battle is the one closest to home.

In the final chapters of the book, the Hobbits; Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry return home to the Shire after having gone to Hell and back, saving the earth from the dark evil of Sauron by tossing the Ring of power into the depths, forever cutting Sauron off.

The Hobbits return home to find gates across the roads, Rules which dictate the lives of the Shire; preventing the inhabitants from lighting fires, freely travelling, sharing food or home with strangers; and that beer and tobacco are no longer allowed for use amongst the common folk, being reserved only for the few who lord over them. Anyone that breaks a rule or speaks up is confined in the Lockholes by the Shirriffs who enforce the Rules.

There is general poverty amongst the people and the land. The homes have been burned down and ugly row houses line the road where once beautiful trees grew. The gardens have gone to weed, and the new mill belches out dirt that pollutes the river and air. The wizard, Saruman, has decided to set up a monopoly over the lives of the Shire Hobbits, which began innocently enough with a prohibition upon beer, but escalated to every aspect of life.

Merry wonders "What's the matter with this place?" ("The Scouring of the Shire," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

One of the native Hobbits explains: "We grows a lot of food, but we don't rightly know what becomes of it. It's all these 'gatherers' and 'sharers', I reckon, going round and counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"[O]n every wall there was a notice and a list of Rules. Pippin tore them down. There was no beer and very little food, but with what the travellers brought and shared out they had a fair meal; and Pippin broke Rule 4 by putting most of next day's allowance of wood on the fire.
"'Well now, what about a smoke, while you tell us what has been happening in the Shire?' he said.
"'There isn't no pipe-weed now,' said Hob; 'at least only for the Chief's men. All the stocks seem to have gone.....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'No welcome, no beer, no smoke, and lots of rules....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'There's hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

Sounds a bit like my town and the rest of the country. The bigger the jails, the larger the police force the more criminals are invented. In the United States of America one is lucky if they have never been arrested or jailed. At least, 1 out of every 25 people is jailed in their lifetime, far exceeding Russia or China.

Many good people are sitting in our jails and prisons at this moment, some for traffic or parking tickets. In a jail not far from me sits a grandfather who loves his grandchildren and became their guardian when the children's mother (his daughter) became a neglectful drug addict. He protested Social Services constant and intrusive visits to his house to make sure he was taking care of the children and was arrested for standing up for his rights and family. He committed no crime other than doing the right thing and for telling Social Services to stop coming to his house.

"'So things went from bad to worse. There wasn't no smoke left, save for the Men; and the Chief didn't hold with beer, save for his Men, and closed all the inns; and everything except for Rules got shorter and shorter, unless one could hide a bit of one's own when the ruffians went round gathering stuff up 'for fair distribution': which meant they got it and we didn't....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

The four Hobbits, returned from battles, set about "raising the Shire," and waking the inhabitants from their sleep and powerless condition. They route out Saruman's thugs, although not without some loss of life. The Shire was ready to overthrow the Rules and those that forced them to live in a world "fair" only to the greedy. When we hear the words "fair" and "unfair" we need to ask what exactly is meant by these words, for most often they are employed by mean misfits of society.

After freeing the captives from the Lockholes, Frodo is appointed Deputy Mayor until the Mayor is properly recovered from his time in prison. Frodo promptly lays off the majority of Rule enforcement:

"The only thing that he did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers" ("The Grey Havens," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

Not only did the Hobbits save the earth from Sauron, an equivalent to our Satan, but they introduced Middle-Earth to tobacco smoking. The Prologue of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings details a bit of the history of this "art" in the section entitled "Concerning Pipe-weed":

"There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed, or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or 'art' as the Hobbits preferred to call it....

"And certainly it was from Bree that the art of smoking the genuine weed spread in recent centuries among Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The home and centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The Prancing Pony....

"Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did. Though one Wizard that I knew took up the art long ago, and became as skilful in it as in all other things that he put his mind to."

How much longer before this book is banned for its universal message of liberty and of overcoming evil? How much longer before it is censored and conveniently forgotten, along with so many other great works of literature? Will our children and grandchildren find this book, complete and as its author wrote it? Already, its author's image is being censored, in a way typical of Soviet Russia, when it commonly erased images of those no longer politically correct. And pipe-weed is nearly banned in favor of Saruman's Phake Pharma Nicotine monopoly of patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers, and other patented "therapies" for those that enjoy life too much.

images: J.R.R. Tolkien

Why Taverns Are Dangerous To The United States of Pharma

If I had a church it would be Sheila Martin's Top Hat Tavern in Hutchinson, Kansas. And I'd get something in return for my tithes: Holy Communion with my brothers and sisters.

"Well, I'll tell you what you need to do if you think something's everywhere: start on your block. Start at your house. And spread out and get it stopped" (Sheila Martin).

Does Eating Genetically Engineered Food Make One A Cannibal?

I've been musing a bit, wondering.

Does eating food genetically engineered with human proteins/genes make one a cannibal?

Who did the proteins in genetically engineered plants with human proteins come from?

Does eating food genetically engineered with insect or animal genes mean that a vegetarian may be eating animal or insect?

Is it wrong for a Jew or Muslim to eat food with porcine or insect proteins engineered into it?

Should vegetarians and/or those of certain religions be given the freedom of choice over their bodies and what they put into them, or is patented genetic food more important than this individual right?

Hmm. This gives an interesting new meaning to that proverbial "abomination of desolation" people speak of, often meaning swine in the temple. Our body is a temple too. Perhaps, the abomination is within us, not in a building of stone. We are what we eat--corn-fed, processed, pink, and shot full of preservatives. Mmm mmm.

"Soylent Green is people!"

Tobacco Bans, Genetics, Big Pharma, Religion, and Native Peoples

Think a smoking ban is about health? Think again. It's all about genetic cleansing and Big Pharma monopoly and federal control. If it were really about health the Food and Drug Administration, a State agency, would not be mandating that manufactured cigarettes be coated in a toxic carcinogen under the guise of "fire safe." This is purposeful poisoning of those who smoke tobacco and those who choose to love and befriend them.

The U.S. government deliberately poisoned alcohol used for bootleg production during Prohibition, causing the deaths of tens of thousands. This poisoning was intended to frighten people from drinking. What it really accomplished was the killing off of those in the lower socioeconomic strata, those who could not afford to purchase high quality alcohol. And no one cares about this group, unless there is profit to be made off of them in the name of philanthropy and special interests.

What Prohibition accomplished was the eradicating of countless small and local breweries, taverns, and other businesses that worked in a symbiotic relationship. These were local citizens, families that worked and lived in their local community. Prohibition accomplished the establishment of monopoly over alcohol production and distribution (Mafia). Those who knew that Prohibition would one day end swooped in and bought the bankrupt family breweries for small change, then made out like bandits when Prohibition was lifted. There is even growing speculation that Prohibition may have helped lead to the Great Depression by putting many out of home and business, thus causing less tax revenue and consumer activity amongst this silent group of new poor.

The past few years have seen a dramatic reduction in tobacco farms, and tobacco use as a result of the federal and Big Pharma-backed war on tobacco use (even the CIA/Battelle Memorial Institute are funding the anti-tobacco movement!). Like many of the family operated breweries before Prohibition, many of these tobacco farmers have been operating for several generations and proud of their product. But with tobacco prohibition rising, the State is paying them to quit in the U.S. and Canada. Now the State is ramping up its attack on Indian reservations, many of whom produce and/or sell tobacco products. The tribes of the north east in Canada and the U.S. are seeing an increase in restrictions, freedoms, and even troops threatening them.

Quite a few of the Indian reservations have been infiltrated by Marxist/Socialist ideologies, racism, and New Age corruptions of their spiritual beliefs, and elected officials more beholden to special interest money than to the people. There is also an influx of gang recruiting occurring upon the reservations. These are all purposeful strategies for weakening what may actually turn out to be the last stand against complete State and Big Pharma/Chemical control of the entire North American continent. (Note: Philip Morris, now Altria, is part of this attack on small tobacco producers, conducting a campaign against the tobacco manufacturers of New York's reservations at this very moment. Evidently, they believe they are too big to fail, and that betraying smaller tobacco producers will somehow make them look good.).

If tobacco bans are not repeats of hate movements and genetic cleansing, then why are they resorting to the same language and tactics used by these movements?

"The ugly truth is that smokers are not anything like junkies or alcoholics or prostitutes or anyone else who feels powerless over a hideous addiction. They are far worse.

"Smokers are alone the degenerates of society in that they share their poison with everyone within breathing vicinity" (Andrea Peyser, "Cancer Sticking It To Whining Nico-Fiends," 31 March 2003, emphasis added)

Why does my local Tobacco Free movement display a cartoon depicting a tobacco smoker shot dead by three gun-toting zealots because "he was packing"?

Why does the local Big State and Big Pharma funded highschool brownshirt group have T.V. commercials with dour-faced do-gooders holding pictures of camels with contorted lips and grasshoppers while their little voices say "I am not your grasshopper," and "I don't spit"? These are tried and true tactics used to subliminally tap into mankind's tendency to think of certain groups as less human, sub human, not human. Depicting a tobacco chewer as a plague insect, such as a grasshopper implies that these are only insects with no soul which should be crushed underfoot. In days past, Jews, Blacks, Tutsi, and Indians were shown as less human, more animal. It wasn't right then, and it's not right now. It's heinous and disgusting.

And speaking of spitting and contorted lips and faces. I've seen more non-tobacco users spitting and contorting than tobacco users. Yes, another sign of the past rising its ugly head. I've been spit upon, called names, and given looks of death because I am tainting the purity of the gene pool by existing. They said that about about other groups in the past too.

If tobacco bans are not about genetic cleansing then why has the local Tobacco Free site recently changed its wording for the word "group" to "cluster," a word used to describe a genetic group of people in scientific circles?

The local anti-Tobacco/pro Pharma nicotine group is pushing for an outdoor ban on tobacco chewers and smokers.

"Arguments for [non smoking] policy: Changes the social norms around tobacco use by eliminating highly visible 'clusters' of smokers....."

"Clusters," not people freely congregating and socializing. "Smokers," not people, but things that cluster and smoke. Not human.

The word "cluster" is very specific to genetics research as a way to discuss distinct groups of people who share genetic commonalities. It also has a distinctly malignant sound to it, as of disease.

There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of researchers funded by tax dollars and Big Pharma trying to pinpoint and prove a genetic marker that defines those who use coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. This is barely a justifiable use of tax payer money which should not be confiscated from hard working people for such useless purposes.

When reading these "objective" and "scientific" pieces of paper one must read them as if reading a twisted form of metaphor. The geneticists have spent much time and discussion formulating their language in order to hide what it is they really are saying in order to confuse and deceive new students and older "clusters" who remember history.

It is a bit difficult to see modern racism because it does not always seem clearly defined or focused upon external traits such as skin color or religion. From a superficial level a ban upon those who use tobacco may look benign and as if it has nothing to do with a particular phylogenetic group. But the truth is that racism has moved to a microscopic, molecular, and internal level. Instead of the yellow armbands with a Star of David marking people, the markers are internal strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is divided into units called genes, which are unique to each of us.

Rather than using the word "People," or "Black," or "Blonde Haired" the words "genotype," "phylogenetic," and "cluster" are now used. Most people have the same genes/alleles, but differences/polymorphisms in the way the genetic sequences are organised. It is a language like any other, and like a language with a few basic letters and sounds, can be organised in many distinct ways. Thus, all of those with a shared allele sequence/polymorphism are a phylogenetic group, much the same way a person from a particular geographic region shares a distinct pronunciation and slang. Molecular genetics seeks to find the distinct polymorphisms for each phylogenetic group.

The language is highly suggestive of racism. The variations of sequence polymorphisms are called restriction length polymorphisms (RFLPs). The molecular biologists are busy trying to piece together these restriction polymorphisms in order to link them to particular phenotypes/families/people. When a restriction polymorphism is definitively linked to a particular trait, such as eye color, or disease it is called a restriction marker. It is claimed that identifying these "restriction markers" will help in diagnosing disease and in "isolating" genes, id. est., people.

This is exactly what went on in the first part of the 1900s. The strange science of racial purity flourished with the aid of universities and States. And the States did not merely want to rid the earth of a few diseased individuals, but also of those carrying supposedly tainted (restrictive) genetic markers. Germany and the U.S. (the U.S. was quieter, but no less avid) decided who carried the "restriction markers," which barred these people entry into society. Germany "isolated" the genes, the people in ghettos, IG Farben/Auschwitz, sanitariums, veterans homes, and hospitals.

One may believe they are safe because they are perfect -- don't drink, don't smoke, don't drink coffee, and don't eat the "wrong" foods. One may believe they are perfect because they go to church, don't waste energy, don't have the wrong skin color, vote for the correct political representatives, or whatever else. One may be perfect, but be carrying "restriction markers" all over within the secret little cells of their body.

What science doesn't tell us is that simply having a particular genetic sequence does not mean a person will die from it, or be an addict. There is such a thing as free choice, which we forget exists. Free choice is a genetic marker that each and everyone of us carries. It's the worst polymorphism of all to despots.

The direction that our wonderful science, which has been corrupted into a religion, is going is backwards. There will be no cure for cancer or other diseases. The scientists of Nazi Germany had a war on cancer, but the cure was death for millions. And in all these many, many years of scientific progress we have gotten no further than they. Our "cures" are exactly the same. Bans, blaming heredity, isolating the unwanted individuals. There will be no cure for cancer, only "therapies," which profit large corporations and the State.

There was not much cancer before the 1900s. But people have been drinking for thousands of years. People have been eating for thousands of years. People have been smoking for thousands of years, and hundreds in the Old World and Asia. People have ingested coffee for thousands of years. Why is it that a Japanese man may smoke and never get cancer, but an American man can't?

To admit the horrible truth would harm the giant monopolies and our governments who have committed crimes and made mistakes which they would rather not own up to. It is better to blame the individual for their cancer, blame their genetics and choices, better to call them "burdens" upon society than admit that there is more to cancer and its causes.

And now, that we have moved into the era of health care for all, this war on cancer, which is really a war on the individual will be ramped up. The large corporations and the State will place "restrictive markers" on as many "clusters" as they can because there is no way they will spend our money on us if they can help it. If an individual doesn't profit the State monopoly and Big Pharma, then they are a cancer and not worthy of life. Isolated. Banned.

And this is why 2nd and 3rd hand smoke were invented. There is barely a person alive that can say they have never been exposed to 2nd hand smoke, and 3rd hand smoke can be "caught" anywhere, from anyone. This creates the myth of the person who chooses to use tobacco as a virus, spreading cancer around like a flu. Thus, no matter what, the tobacco user will be the cause of all cancer, the scapegoat that must bear the sins of the people. And those who are caught anywhere near a tobacco user will be seen as carriers of the disease.

The harsh reality is that a tobacco user (or a coffee drinker or an alcoholic behind the wheel) is incapable of wiping out humanity the same way that Big Pharma and despotic states are. These people, if they ever do kill another, do it in dribs and drabs and feel extreme guilt for what they do. But large masses of "righteous" people kill large masses of innocents and feel no guilt. They tend to believe they are God's chosen and thus, have a command to kill. Somehow, the masses continually mistake Molech for God, and forget the story of Jesus and that it was a mob and the State that crucified Him.

It's easy to identify a person that smokes by sight and smell, much as if they were a group with a different skin color than the majority, or as if they were tattooed with a number. This makes them easy to hate and blame. No one cares because they're all poor and broken.

But the cause of cancer will not be eradicated by banning those who use tobacco. In fact, a new, but obvious group will have to be found, then another, and another. This will be the cure for our ignorance and will keep us distracted with hate and fear while feeling righteous and moral.

The truth is that cancer is a sad, sad disease and no one deserves to die of it or for it. It has many causes and most of them are linked to things we are unaware of, and nearly powerless over. Most causes of cancer can be attributed to our way of life the past hundred years, our addictions to things we have never considered addictions or dependencies, and issues that are too emotional to tackle.

In the 1950s and beyond, millions of Baby Boomers were given the life-saving polio vaccine which was grown on simian monkey kidneys which transferred a cancer-causing virus called SV-40 to those who received the vaccine. SV-40 lays dormant for many years until triggered for one reason or other, then may cause cancers of the soft tissues--lung cancer, skin cancer and others. SV-40 can be spread from one person to the next much like AIDs.

Many vaccines have been found to lead to cancer. A vaccine should be good, and they have stemmed many sicknesses, but there are often future ramifications which one does not find out until many years later.

Then there is radon, an invisible gas, which is in many homes. This too, causes lung cancer.

Exhaust from our automobiles contains many carcinogens.

Our jobs in certain industries which require exposure to chemicals and toxins may cause lung cancers.

Radiation exposure, such as via a full body scanner, or an X-ray machine can cause cancer.

Kissing someone with the HPV virus can cause cancer. In fact, all forms of warts are actually cancer viruses.

The use of immunosupressant drugs, such as are used by organ transplant patients, or by AIDs patients, or for arthritis leads to cancer.

Being born and living may lead to cancer and or death.

With the increased Chemical/Pharmaceutical push for genetically engineered grains cancer will increase even more. These genetically engineered foods usually contain an animal or human protein in them. Our bodies instinctively know when a foreign body has entered and this incites our immune system to be rid of it, the same way an organ transplant patient's body knows a foreign organ has been introduced into it.

Genetically engineered food will cause our immune systems to overreact, which will wear the body down, which will lead to more patients in the doctor's office asking for immunosupressents and allergy meds, which will lead to cancer.

Not only will genetically engineered crops harm our immunity, but they will cross breed with other crops and destroy them, putting small farmers out of business, giving the Chemical/Pharmaceutical corporations a monopoly over what we eat. The same corporate monopolies that are behind the smoking bans are also behind genetically engineered foods. They'll feed us from the cradle to the grave on their cancerous foods and their "therapies" for the sickness they have given us. But the tobacco users and others will reap the blame. And the people will be blamed for destroying the environment, while the genetically modified pollen spreads its disease to our land and farmers right under our noses.

We don't have to return to the stone age or eschew modern conveniences, but we must be more aware of what our modern and thoughtless addictions have led to. We are a nation of addicts. We think that a pill will solve our problems and that mixing unlike things, such as human with plant will give us health and nutrition. We think we can ban cancer by banning people.

It is nearly impossible to give up our lotions, foods, jobs, medicines, fertilizers, pesticides and cars. We don't have to, but we can find other ways, even if our friends and neighbors deride us and wonder if we are crazy. This author is going to try to the best of his ability to put his money where his mouth is, and also how to do without certain products. But time is running out. Once a group is banned, once a university's "pharmaceutical" grain crop sends its pollen out into the surrounding regions, once a cancer-causing virus contaminates a vaccine it is nearly too late to stop the spread of cancer upon our souls and society.

This is why I take a stand against tobacco bans. It seems that this one wall is what stands between everyone and complete monopoly over every aspect of our lives. Believe it or not, the tobacco companies devoted much time and money to combating the forces of Big Chemical and Big Pharma. According to the anti-tobacco propaganda, the tobacco companies saw the World Health Organization and the Big UN as their biggest threat, as their biggest "competition," and worked hard to keep them from implementing domination. We may never know exactly how important tobacco users and their money were in keeping America and the rest of the world free. And now, they are banned and hated by the very people they may have protected. Isn't that the way of the world.

Or, we will see how important and generous tobacco users were/are, but continue treading down the wrong road. Already, in my state, only a few short months after a smoking ban in the hospitality industry, the state has lost millions in revenue. The bars are having to lay off bartenders, most of whom are single mothers. In turn, these single mothers will lose homes, cars, nice clothes, money for their children's dance or sport activities, or tutoring, nights out with friends, etc, etc. In turn, this money may have flowed back to the fathers paying the child support. These single mothers will end up in government subsidised housing and on welfare, and the fathers will be punished by the State with fines, jail, confiscated driver's licences for not paying up. How does that save the tax payers money? A smoking ban effects the entire economy because the money doesn't merely stay in the bar or the casino. It goes out into the community, even benefiting those that hate tobacco users. Tobacco users can be highly generous and loving people, but not if their company isn't good enough for the community.

A ban on tobacco hurts our health in so many different ways. And Big Pharma Nicotine "therapy" will not save any of us in health costs because these products cause cancer, ulcers, diabetes, heart attack, brain death, and other wonders of medical madness.

I recently read a comment suggesting that the non profit status of churches be revoked to make up for lost revenue due to the tobacco bans. At the moment, this seems a plausible solution, as these groups (Christian, Jew, Muslim) quit being answerable to God by joining with the State and Big Pharma to push for the bans--at least where I live. There is no separation of Church, Corporation, and State. They're the same. They want our money to save the world, yet won't give anything back unless one sells their soul to them. And always, they blame illness upon some evil committed by the individual, thus claiming exemption from mercy or forgiveness.


The smoke of the saints. Good enough for God. Banned on earth.

image: Caravaggio, David and Goliath

Albert Jay Nock: The State of Conquest

"Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little left to learn" (Albert Jay Nock, "The Criminality of the State," The American Mercury, March, 1939)

I have discovered that American prophet, that typical hermit in the desert, Albert Jay Nock. Reading him makes one understand why the prophets of old were hunted down and hated by the rulers and the masses. What he says is not what we want to hear because it's what we know is true, but would rather not put into words. We would rather continue blaming everything outside of ourselves, and think betterment comes from without too. We would rather finger-point, and find innocent scapegoats to lay upon the alter. Even quoting Nock feels dangerous, which makes me wonder if free speech really exists.

The following quotes are all from Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State, first published in 1935, which can be read online at Mises.org:

"What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in collectivism running off into military despotism of a severe type. Closer centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing, the State in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labour. Then at some point in this progress, a collision of State interests, at least as general and as violent as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to the 'rusty death of machinery,' and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution will be supreme" (206).

"[T]here is actually no such thing as a 'labour problem,' for no encroachment on the rights of either labour or capital can possibly take place until all natural resources within reach have been preempted. What we call the 'problem of the unemployed' is in no sense a problem, but a direct consequence of State-created monopoly" (107)

"expropriation must precede exploitation" (Nock).

"After the conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State" (104).

"This regime was established by a coup d'Etat of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis-Napoleon's, or by terrorism, like Mussolini's, but by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d'Etat. Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with public money; and as appeared most conspicuously in the elections of November, 1934, the consolidation of the coup d'Etat was effected by the same means; corresponding functions in the smaller units were reduced under the personal control of the Executive" (11-12).

The following is interesting, because things have changed a bit:

"Whenever economic exploitation has been for any reason either impracticable or unprofitable, the State has never come into existence; the government has existed, but the State, never. The American hunting tribes, for example, whose organization so puzzled our observers, never formed a State, for there is no way to reduce a hunter to economic dependence and make him hunt for you. Conquest and confiscation were no doubt practicable, but no economic gain would be got by it, for confiscation would give the aggressors but little beyond what they already had; the most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of feud" (57-58).

In the case of the native peoples of America, the State did an interesting thing. It placed the people on confined pieces of land, nearly forcing them to become little states which they became attached to. Then, in this weakened and prone condition, resting after being chased and massacred across the countryside, the state came in with its religious and scientific arms to take the only thing the native wanderers had left: family.

The children, for their own good (!), were taken from their parents and boarded in institutions which could provide for the children's upbringing "better" than their old fashioned and ignorant parents. In these State and religious institutions they were removed from their history and health. In Canada, they are still excavating the bone yards of the children accidentally killed by the wonderfully caring and effective authorities, then secretly buried around the grounds until fairly recently.

What Nock neglects is that the State can confiscate more than material property. It can confiscate souls, hold them prisoner, making it very difficult for the owner to free it and realize that they are a person.

And here we are, not seeing that what happened to those beautiful little children born of weary parents is happening right here every day to those off of the reservation too. And every day, the parents willingly, unquestioningly, submissively drop their children off at the institution. Nock has some words about American education too, which I haven't read, although it should be interesting as he was not formally educated, which explains a bit about his unformal beliefs.

Anyway, Nock has me thinking and musing on a few things these days.

Where We Are Now: Pearl Harbor II

"How did a nation such as Germany, with a history rich in the cultural achievements of the individual man, succumb to the Nazi wave of despotism and murderous superstition? We cannot here search for first causes, but surely it will be written that liberty and decency in Germany were the victims of a collapse of leadership. Jurists, doctors, professors, civil officials, business magnates--in Germany most honored of all--generals, alike proved insensitive to or flinched before the warning signals of approaching tyranny and crime, and sold themselves, their callings, and their country into slavery" (Chief Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials, Telford Taylor, Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich).

Is our leadership selling us to the highest bidder? The problem is that after we are sold we won't see a penny, and will be the ones paying to be slaves.

Do our elected representatives represent the voters or rather, those with the biggest wallets? And if these representatives are so spineless and easily tempted by money and manipulation, then what good are they?

Do our local hospitals and health representatives represent what is best for us, or instead sell themselves to the highest bidder?

In the Bard's little corner of the world, the hospital has become a towering temple on a hill overlooking the cemetery. It grows exponentially every year and wants to create a commune neighborhood in which everyone lives like sterile little slaves.

The Bard has been perusing Dr. Matthias Rath's Health Foundation site the past couple days and is currently reading one of the historical books listed there, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America by E. Richard Brown. It, along with several of the other books and documents posted on Rath's site are fantastic and highly enlightening.

So far, this Bard finds there is more to like than not at Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

The Bard does feel bad for Rath because he really did believe that a coup was going to ocurr during the last presidential election that would prevent our current president from gaining the White House and implementing the hope and change that Rath so dearly wished for. Who knows, maybe, Rath's theory of a coup was correct, but not in the way he thought. So much for hope and change, and here's to a bigger dose of more of the same.

I've noticed lately, that those who saw and warned of the dangers of the Bush administration are now silent on the present administration. I suppose, many of them were somehow deceived and really did want so dearly to put their faith in one person as savior, that they cannot believe that what they thought was good is not. I would surmise that they are silent because they are still hoping, waiting for a sign to confirm their waning faith, hoping that it's not more of the same. It must be a bit embarrassing and sad.

In a way, the electing of the latest president was one of the smartest moves ever pulled off. It essentially silenced and paralyzed certain groups of people who once fought so hard against the previous administration and were aware of its unsavory moves and motives. These people are now in a state of stasis, of silent watchfulness, no longer fighting--exactly at the moment when they should be the most active. This Bard has often pondered upon this observation.

The Bard is only over a hundred pages into Rockefeller Medicine Men, but he has learned quite a wonderful amount of history in this easy-reading book. He has learned that medicine and education as we know them were developed by the great industrialists as a way to create a workforce compliant and cheaply kept under giant industry control. These giant corporations and their philanthropies think of us as cattle.

When the people stand up for themselves and demand a little more, the corporations get frightened and agree to concede to more humane treatment. These giant corporations are deathly afraid of losing their power and of a class structure that is not highly stratified.

But it must be wondered, when the people unify into unions and other groups and demand such things as more pay, fewer hours, better treatment are they really moving up in the world? Sure, one can demand more pay and other benefits, but they're still working for the company and dependent upon them--still feeding the monopoly which lobbies elected officials who pass laws against the people.

Wouldn't it be better if instead of unions who rally for false rights (as if the company or government is God and can give us anything!), who want humane treatment, if people demanded human treatment and freedom to work when and where they wanted?

The Bard's perfect little utopia is one that looks a bit rough and unpainted, but has lots of old men and women sitting around watching, smoking pipes, reading, and talking; and where children run around in the dust at their feet playing in the sun with holes in the knees of their pants, rather than in a daycare with a bunch of other little snotty-nosed and unloved little inmates.

The Bard's perfect world isn't a commune or higher pay. His world is one that accepts that the Joneses aren't worth wasting time to keep up with, and where people compete fairly with each other. The Bard's world is one of farmers, small businesses, shops, free time, compassion for the sick, and lots of healthy arguing and disagreeing; and again, children out and about rather than hidden away "off-the-streets" in those industrial mills we call public schools. The Bard's utopia looks a bit like the United State before and after the Revolutionary War, but with washing machines, and telephones.

I think, we forget that our rights, our lives are not granted by a government or a corporation. We are born with them, and as we grow, these entities take our inborn rights away and train us in a false idea of freedom and rights in order to keep us quiet and paralyzed. It has been so long since we have known what freedom feels like that we cannot even imagine surviving in a world in which benefits and rights are not supplied by our workplace or the state. How would one support them self without a job?

In our current time it is nearly impossible to imagine not working for another. We are compelled to it because we are slaves. If a slave doesn't produce, doesn't work, he is beaten and punished. A slave will lose their home, wife, children, and owe back taxes and be locked away if they don't benefit the master. If a slave tries to work for themself, they will find that there are rules against it, such as neighborhood covenants, county and city zoning, permits, hearings, regulations and other prohibitions.

During Prohibition it was not illegal to drink alcohol. It was illegal to buy it or possess it. Our modern system of self-sufficiency is nearly this way. It's not illegal to work for one's self, but it's prohibitive to obtain land and the right to commence upon such an endeavor. We have been purposely forced to work for others, for large companies who use the money made off of us to get laws passed to make it harder for us. It is nearly a crime to not have a job in the United States of America.

It shouldn't be a crime not to have a job that creates a constant flow of cash. The Bard has figured out that he could actually live fairly comfortably on a minimal amount of money if he were not compelled to pay such high property taxes. The Bard would actually have time to find out what he could do on his own if he wasn't worried about the taxes.

More and more the Bard sees what amazingly advanced people those crazy American colonists were. They saw what we won't see. They petitioned their government for years and went unheeded and unrepresented, much as we do now. They saw that the root of their problems was monopoly interests who held more sway with Parliament than they because of a mixing of state and corporate power interests. And so, they attacked the root of the problem, the corporation.

The American colonists boycotted East India tea even though it was actually cheaper, patronizing instead the Dutch black market. They tossed the tea overboard. The colonists boycotted other British business interests even though it cost them more money. They knew that the large corporations only care about money and power. The colonists cared more about liberty and were willing to sacrifice their money to prove a point. Of course, this boycott of business couldn't be permitted and Britain sent in the troops to shut Boston down until they begged for mercy and material goods. And because those outside of Boston stood by their brothers, pledging to supply them with food and aid in their time of suffering, we now have this wonderful country--the only threat to evil that exists.

This Bard was recently reading Bernard Bernstein's report to the Kilgore Committee in 1945, which is highly interesting in light of what we see occurring in this country at the moment. In Bernstein's report he details how the giant group of chemical and pharmaceutical companies under IG Farben were the actual root behind the Nazi's power. It is interesting to note that IG Farben's plan for world domination back in the 1930s and 1940s mirrors identically what we see carrying out in forced health care and other strange laws. IG Farben/Rockefeller still exist and are hard at work against us at our universities, state capitals, and the White House.

"It is significant to note that in all those preparations for war I.G. Farben did more than merely comply with orders and requests of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Government agencies. It functioned, in fact, as though it were a research organization of the German Government...." (Bernard Bernstein, Kilgore Committee, p.31)

"The immediate objective of the document[IG Farben's Neuordnung ("New Order")]was to insure the full cooperation of the chemical companies of the conquered countries in producing for the Wehrmacht. The second objective invisaged the complete incorporation of the chemical industries of Europe, including the British Empire [can you say EU?!], within the framework of Hitler's 'New Order.' The third objective was to eliminate U.S. competition in the world market [move industry, production off shore, ban America's backbone--tobacco, auto, independence]. Finally, Farben was preparing to utilize again its vaunted economic warfare weapons, cartels, capital investments and know-how, in anticipation of a possible conflict between Germany and the U.S.A" (Bernstein, 35).

"Farben's economic blitzkrieg of the United States was specially planned" (Bernstein,36).

"The proposition must be recognized that giant industry, throwing all its weight behind despotic government, actually holds the balance of power in the conduct of successful warfare" (Bernstein, 44)

"'I.G. [Farben] is largely responsible for Hitler's policy'" (Dr. von Schnitzler qtd. in Bernstein, 44)

"These schedules thus assured that all imports would be from Germany [now China] and virtually prohibited importation from the United States" (Bernstein, 44).

It looks as if World War II never ended and IG Farben continued with the Neuordnung and got further this time than last. Last time, we woke up when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, hurtling its pilots down in suicide flames. Hitler was making moves on Britain, but we moved like the sleepy giant we are and staunched the wound.

This time, Britain's been taken. This time Hawaii and Pearl Harbor are in the Capitol. This time Toyota of Japan is committing a gentle and submissive self sacrifice rather than a Kamikaze pilot's Hawaiian crash. This time we are the Kamikaze pilots behind the wheel, crashing the last competition. This time the Neuordnung is literally touching the White House and has its hands around Lady Liberty's white neck and is about to lean over as it seduces her before sucking her blood.

We've been drugged. We're addicts laying in a stupor. Oh, my dear, precious lover, my lady, America. Wake up, wake up and weep for yourself!