America's Rebellion Against The Corporation: Independence From Dependence.

"....America has grown rich at the Expence, & not to the Advantage of G. Britain; that the northern Americans in particular are rather Rivals in our Trade than Merchants in it, and if a considerable Reduction take Place in the Strength & opulence of America, it will render her the longer dependent upon G. Britain. The Americans have quarelled with the old System, while they grew rich & powerful under it as to bid us Defiance; for which Reason we may justly quarel with it too, and insist upon another, which will bring them, & keep them when brought, into a closer Union & Dependence with the Parent State" (Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General William Howe, New York, 2 Sep. 1776).

Never in the Bard's education was he taught that the American Revolution, or more correctly The War for Independence, was in fact a battle against monopoly interests. Nor was he taught that it was a civil war.

The Bard was taught that the American Revolution was about Independence from British rule. He never learned that the Colonists loved Britain and considered themselves loyal British subjects. He never learned that the American colonists often tried to abolish slavery, but that the mother country, Britain, would rather defend the monetary interests of the traders and merchants than the value of human life.

A great many of the colonist slave owners lamented that they had not chosen to own slaves, but had inherited them from preceding generations, and because of British law they could not free them. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place; fighting against enslavement to monopoly interests while owning slaves. Several colonist slave owners hoped that the American War for Independence would change this situation and allow for them to free their slaves into a land safe for them to prosper without fear of being kidnapped and sent off to British plantations in the West Indies.

If the American Colonists had been allowed freedom from monopoly interests there would have been no slavery, or very little of it, at the time of the Revolutionary War for Independence, and probably none after the Constitutional Convention. There may not have been an American Civil War in the 1860s. When people are left alone, they more often do what is right, rather than what is wrong. Freedom is not an escape from danger, but allowance to face it as a single individual.

And the Bard wonders to himself, is there any war that is not about monopoly interests? Are many of the wars fought actually several monopolies vying for control of monetary interests? Is there ever a just war?

The only just war the Bard knows of at this time with his limited knowledge is the American War for Independence. This was a war of many individuals against the large monopoly, more than against Britain. This was a war for the rights of people to compete in every way possible. The Revolutionaries believed in competition of ideas, religion, speech, trade, time, and that it was the right of each person to defend these rights.

"They will not fight at any Rate, unless they are sure of Retreat. Their army is the strangest that ever was collected: Old men of 60, Boys of 14, and Blacks of all ages, and ragged for the most part, compose the motley Crew, who are to give the Law to G. Britain and tyrannize over His Majesty's Subjects in America" (Ambrose Serle, New York, 2 Sep. 1776).

How is an army of ragged old men and young boys a tyranny? Because they dare stand against enslavement and submission to unnatural laws? Isn't it interesting that old men and young boys evoked such a threat to supposedly superior powers? These "tyrants" were individual citizens, not an army in the general sense, not a corporation.

"Her [Great Britain] Fondness for Conquest as a Warlike Nation, her Lust of Dominion as an Ambitious one, and her Thirst for a gainful Monopoly as a Commercial one, (none of them legitimate Causes of War) will all join to hide from her Eyes every view of her true Interests; and continually goad her in these ruinous distant Expeditions, so destructive both of Lives and Treasure, that must prove as pernicious to her in the End as the Croisades formerly were to most of the Nations of Europe....

"....your Lordship makes it painful to me to see you engag'd in conducting a War, the great Ground of which as expressed in your Letter, is, 'the necessity of preventing the American Trade from passing into foreign Channels.' To me it seems that neither the obtaining or retaining of any Trade, how valuable soever, is an Object for which Men may justly Spill each others Blood; and that the true and sure means of extending and securing Commerce is the goodness and cheapness of Commodities; and that the profits of no Trade can ever be equal to the Expence of compelling it, and of holding it, by Fleets and Armies" (Benjamin Franklin to Lord Howe, 20 July 1776, emphasis added).

And so, we must stand back and ask ourselves have we been deceived by our modern expeditions and wars? Is it possible, that we are not at war in distant countries for righteous reasons, but for reasons of corporate interest?

Have we been made dependant upon the corporate monopolies and upon the Government which acts upon their behest? Is it possible that most laws are not there to protect us but to protect a giant corporation's interests? Are we still independent citizens?

It cannot be denied that there are radical Islamic factions that have endangered lives across the world, but are they really Islamic, or are they something else hiding under the robes and headdress of religion? If we lift the head dress and look a little closer we see something else, the religion of greed.

Look, at what we're fighting. Are we fighting against ragged old men and young boys? I hope not.

Look at the Taliban. Are they really any different than our own governments? They require large taxes and protection fees from the villages. They control traffic, monitor all aspects of life. They prevent competition. And they profit from the West's war, rather than being harmed by it. Every contract for construction also includes a hefty fee and agreements with the Taliban. The Western world knows this, but won't speak of it.

The Taliban not only makes giant sums of money from the Western world in all kinds of hidden fees, but makes agreements to allow the projects, such as bridges to be finished so that the engineering firms will be paid by western governments who know that the project will be destroyed by the Taliban not long after completion. The Taliban doesn't care about the welfare of the citizens, which should lead us to question if the Taliban are citizens themselves or a front group (much like TobaccoFree and Co.)for an unknown corporate monopoly.

What gives the Western world the right to fight against the Taliban on moral or just grounds, or to call them terrorists when the Western world practices the same atrocities upon its own populations?

Rather than fighting the corporate Taliban, we should send in the Samuel Adams and the George Washingtons to go in and bolster the morale and courage of the individual citizen. We should empower the citizens in every way possible so that they know who they are and of their self-worth, not as radicals or members of mobs, but as intelligent and industrious people endowed with the right to life, liberty, and property. Then, let those old men and their grandsons go out and get the job done of cleaning out those radical front groups for foreign corporations.

Set up the Committees of Correspondence between the villages, meet under the Liberty Trees, and find that 25% of the population willing to defend life for everyone else. Don't offer to pay the corporate Taliban off, force them out. And the same needs to be done around the world. It can be done. It has been done, although very rarely.

"[I] always took them for a people, whose very horrid figure had a greater effect on their enemy than any courage they possessed, as their cruel turn often assured me they could not be brave, Humanity & pity for misfortunes of the wretched, being invariably the constant companions of true courage; theirs is savage and will never steadily look on danger" (William Digby, British, observations of the Native Indians who fought alongside the British troops, 1777).

Digby's comments on the Native Indians during the American Revolution could now be used to apply to a great number of modern savages, who wear intimidating costumes, and perform cruel acts upon innocent people.

Digby was on the wrong side of the War for Independence against State enforced Monopoly, but his comment is one that ought to encourage each of us as it reminds us of what true courage and bravery look like. It looks like me and it looks like you. It looks like old men and young boys, the light of life flaming in their eyes.

image:Gustave Dore, Death of Samson

Incendiary of One

"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" (Samuel Adams, letter to John Pitts, 21 Jan 1776)

"It does not require a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen to set brush fires in people's minds" (Samuel Adams)note-I could not source this, and due to its tone am a bit doubtful that it originates from Adams.

One is not the loneliest number. The larger the number the higher the loneliness rating. Were it not for all of the other numbers, One would not be lonely. One does not arrest himself, and force himself to work in a gulag, nor does One dictate to a nation. It takes a large number of fractions combined to make a unity of so-called "Ones" to make the One feel lonely.

But One may be the largest, most intimidating and powerful number. One is the number that frightens the other numbers who believe in a fractional/decimal system in which no single individual is able to function without the crutch of others. These little fractions are afraid of the Whole Ones who have no regard for shattered parts which must be glued together to look like anything, and even then, the vessel of parts is leaky and dysfunctional, only good for looking at--from a blurry distance.

One of the United States of America's mottoes is E pluribus unum, "out of many, one." This simple little phrase is actually very tricky and could be read any which way. It's like one of those drawings that looks like an old hag one way, and a young beauty turned the other way.

Traditionally, E pluribus unum is understood to mean that out of many people one nation is made. This seems a good and true meaning. But to the Fractions, this means that no one is complete until they are part of a greater crowd.

This Bard would like to add a bit of his own meaning to the phrase E pluribus unum. The Bard believes that One is complete in itself and that each One of us is a wonderful little universe walking around amongst other little universes. This Bard has often looked upon genealogy charts and marvelled upon the hundreds of people it took to get to the point that made him. The Bard is a virtual nation of saints, sinners, ethnicities, explorers, colonists, criminals, vagrants, preachers, soldiers, and dreamers. Out of these many and diverse people One person was made. The Bard is complete and has his own riot swimming around in every cell of his body.

If these many contributors can get along within the internal parts of one body, why can we not get along with the many on the external parts of the body? Why do we believe that everything has to be material and external to make us complete when each of us is already complete?

One is not the loneliest number. It is when One is beaten, ignored, and derided by the Fractions that One is lonely. The loneliness comes not from being One, but from being surrounded by so many others and not one, not a single one will act as One and extend a hand of love or a voice of support.

A single One can affect more good than one crowd. It is the One who sits next to the sick, the one who creates the masterpiece, one that defends the defenseless against the crowd of combined fractions.

One can also affect great evil, but only if the fractions believe they are not whole without following the evil one. It takes a crowd of fractions to follow and enact evil. No dictator, king, czar, or plantation owner has any power unless a large group of people who believe the lie of incompleteness submit to degradation, and hatred caused by fear.

It only takes one domino to topple the other dominoes, one spark to set a forest on fire, and one chromosome to alter a life's expression, and one empty cave to change time.

One rogue cancer cell uncaught by the immune system can wreak havoc on a body if unchecked, if the immune system is suppressed. And an immune system that is overly zealous, that acts as an angry mob is called an autoimmune disorder. There will always be small inflammations and offenses to the system, but when the system behaves as Nazi Socialists it is similar to an over active immune system. It would have been better for the body to have reacted less angrily and aggressively.

And it is not the cancer cell that is so dangerous, but the suppressed immune system that is too tired and blind to catch the problem before it spreads to other organs. Each of us has cancer cells in our body and every day, if our body is doing its job it quietly negates them. In a way, it is the helpless mass, the large numbers in the body that are to blame for the cancer's growth, rather than the little cancer itself. If each cell saw itself as whole and independently powerful, it would be able to confront the single cancer cell when it came across it as it wandered along its epic journey.

In a way, our modern society is only an external and material acting out of what happens to each of us as One person every day on an internal and unseen level. Our fear and hatred is much like an over active immune system that does not understand that negatives exist within the system, that inflammation occurs, but that in due time it will clear up with a more gentle and calm approach.

Our internal body and external life are a delicate balancing act which require much thought, consideration, love, and strength to keep from falling off the tightrope.

And Samuel Adams represents a whole One, a fighter cell that also bolsters and invigorates those around him, which is why I have included his quotes here. Were it not for him, I would never have delved into this subject. And I hope I've made him a little proud to know that his One voice has reached through the generations and encouraged this little One.

"It is not infrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor or their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty--to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves" (Samuel Adams, The Advertiser, 1748)

"Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature" (Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists, 20 Nov 1772)

"Did the protection we received annul our rights as men, and lay us under an obligation of being miserable? Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in infancy? 'Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as reward for a defense of our property a surrender of those inestimable privileges, to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone give value to that very property" Samuel Adams, Speech at the Philadelphia State House, 1 Aug 1776).