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Saturday, October 08, 2011

The Tea Party and Gandhi

 I've been in Moab the past couple weeks.  
Again, I'm departing from my usual blogging to talk about the world scene and what we can do or not do.

Operation Non-Cooperation-With-Deception

A few blogs ago I posted an "Operation Bank Bust", which turned off some people.  I should have instead renamed it "Operation Non-Cooperation-With-Deception":

On November 5th, 2011, people are encouraged to remove their funds from their bank, close any accounts and throw away credit cards (cut them up first) in order to promote personal independence from the banking system.

In the Spirit of Gandhi, I can say with full certainty that the problem of Wall Street will never, ever end until we stop doing business with Wall Street.  Stop cooperating with anything that we see as evil, both for individual conscience and the health of the whole world.

We must get out of victim mentality and realize the power is in our hands to be free, not in the hands of the banks and corporations.

It's not a fight against anything.  It's a simple refusal to cooperate with what we know to be deceptive and destructive.

Wall Street Occupation

You've likely heard about the Wall Street Occupation by now.  The mainstream media, for some "mysterious" reason, was not reporting it until recently, now that nobody can help not notice it.  

Some have criticized the Wall Street Occupation for not having a specific demand.  But the idea of it is not necessarily calling for reformation of Wall Street - but to draw attention to the total insanity of our banking and corporate system  (Here's Occupy Wall Street's One Demand: Sanity).

What I don't get is that somebody (the corporate media?) is always trying to paint the picture as a battle between Right and Left.  And the Right thinks the media is controlled by the Left, and the Left thinks it's controlled by the Right.  Funny, huh?  But, last I checked, thinkers on both the Right and the Left are coming to the same conclusion: the banking industry has hijacked the economy and to bail it out is criminal.  And, last I checked, non-thinkers on both the Right and the Left don't see that free trade agreements pushed strongly by both democratic and republican presidents have sent production of goods oversees, tanking our economy.  In addition, this has created unbridled multinational corporations outside our borders that don't have to abide by any labor laws or ethics.  Notice how both Republican and Democratic politicians go hush, hush in full agreement, when the Federal Reserve chairman speaks, or when somebody talks about the "need" for more international "free trade."

Can Somebody Tell Me What This "Tea Party" Is?

Maybe I'm an ignoramus, but I can't figure out what the "Tea Party" really is, and it appears people claiming to be Tea Partiers are just as clueless as I.

But let's look at its namesake, the Boston Tea Party, which sparked off the American Revolution, breaking the American colonies' yoke from Britain.

We read in school history books that, on December 16, 1773, American colonists didn't want to pay taxes to Britain, so they trespassed onto three ships and dumped British tea into the harbor. 

But do we ever think what this means?  We don't stop to ponder that this wasn't so much a breaking off from the nation of Britain but the breaking off from the control a multinational corporation, called the East India Company.  The multinational corporation and the nation of Britain had become so intertwined that Britain had become the multinational corporation and vise versa. 

Refusal to do business with the multinational corporation was the birth of the USA.


Now, let's bump ahead a few years to Gandhi (The Struggle For Indian Independence).  A replay of the same game!  India wanted independence from this same British multinational corporation.  Gandhi led the Indians to not use and/or to burn goods from this British multinational Corporation: namely, he led movements to burn British textiles and to have Indians weave their own cloth and produce their own salt. 

This same principle gained both the independence of America and of India.

The Boston Tea Party and Gandhi's Moral of the Story:  Stop Business With Multinational Corporations and Produce Locally 

We see by two examples that it works.  Non-cooperation with what you believe to be evil is the only way to be free from it.  Gandhi 101.  The power to do good is in our hands, not in the hands of banks and corporations.  They cannot be reformed.

All the protests in the world against banks and corporations aren't going to do an iota of good if we do any kind of business with banks and corporations.  All our talk of freedom is nonsense if we do business with them. 

Now we see the same pattern in the USA as happened to Britain way back when.  It has become so intertwined with multinational corporations that the USA has become a multinational corporation, doing to the rest of the world what Britain did to the American colonies and to India.

Will the real Tea Partiers please stand up?

Now what do you think?  Are the"Tea Partiers" true Tea Partiers?  Would they or would they not consider cutting off all business to banks and multinational corporations, including throwing corporate goods into a bonfire?  We know by example of both the Boston Tea Party and Gandhi's movement that this is the only way independence can come.  Would the "Tea Partiers" consider it an act of terrorism to destroy corporate goods?  Did or did not both the Boston Tea Partiers and Gandhi destroy corporate property? Go ahead, challenge the Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, and Michelle Bachmanns on this.  To whom are their ultimate loyalties, corporations or people?  Will the real Tea Partiers please stand up?

Both thinkers on the Right and on the Left are coming to these same conclusions.  But somebody is letting labels divide. 



See also on the website: 
Is Banking Criminal? What the World's Ancient Philosophers & Religions Say







51 comments:

  1. I wish there was a way to sum this up on a bumper sticker. I went to the Occupy protest today. I carried a sign that just said 99%. I wished I could summarize something snappier than that.

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  2. You, my friend, are clearest thinker I know.

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  3. You wanted to know where in the Bible it is written that whoever does not want to work is not allowed to eat; it's Thessalonians 2 ch 3 verse 10.

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  4. I am not implying that you don't work - I just remember someone else bringing it up, and you questioning its presence in the Bible.

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  5. But in my opinion it does not matter if you have nothing to eat. You can live on water alone.

    On topic, I am not sure I see the advantage of using a credit union instead of a bank, and it is not practical (and often out of the question) to work with paper money for paying bills and receiving payments (eg. job or social security). I think I would have to go the whole way or not at all with money and banking.

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  6. It takes physical work in order to forage for food and dumpster dive and to hunt small game. So this man has every righ tto eat. Instead of working for money to get food. He works and gets the food directly.

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  7. Bravo, Suelo! I absolutely empathize with the occupy wall street movement and I am glad to see real Americans get out and revolt against something, which is sadly missing in our country.

    On the same token though, I agree with you wholeheartedly. If you don't like banks, don't get credit cards, don't finance houses, cars, or educations. That is one of the reasons people are so strapped, because they feel like they have to do those things to be productive members of society.

    I still haven't convinced my husband to quit the bank for paying our bills and only use cash (still working on that one) but I did get a land deal with some nice people without a bank involved and we have a paid for rv...so no banks there.

    I tend to wonder if people had to build houses without mortgages if we would start bridging a gap between so called poor and middle class. People can't maintain a false sense of wealth if they can't finance everything they own. That would be a humbling experience for many I would imagine.

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  8. HEre's my dilemma today: rabbits are eating my garden. I need to fence them out. So I have to go to lowe's and buy corporate hex netting, in order to produce my own food!

    Ok, I could just scatter seed around of plants they don't like and eat those. But I need land to do that on, and to keep this land, I have to pay my property taxes.

    So it seems impossible to divorce yourself entirely from the corporate world, even or especially if you are producing things for yourself.

    To get back to Gandhi: I did a lot of spinning yesterday (wool not cotton). On a spinning wheel, which I did not make. I can make hand spindles, bu the wheel is faster. Also, I had the rabbit fur I was using carded with some wool, and I had to buy the wool.

    I am working toward using less money, but using money carefully to help yourself produce things like food and clothing seems ok to me.

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  9. If I get the guts, I'm going to "soap box" at the Occupy Asheville meeting today and quote you, Daniel :D I am also going to cut up my bank cards in front of everyone. w00t! We camped on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building last night. Good times... thanks for the post!

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  10. Shannon, I hear ya. I'm a spinner too;) Sometimes we feel like we haven't got a choice and it is overwhelming. I try to focus on the things I can choose. Since this is about Wall Street and banks I think that to just not deal with banks or finance anything with credit is a huge step in the right direction.

    I have a family for instance and I can't go cash free like Suelo but I feel that by using cash only instead of invisible money to pay for things that I can make better choices and leave the banks out of it!

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  11. I hope these protests continue to grow in popularity and spring up in every major city and mid size town in the u.s. of a. and throughout the world at large.

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  12. Hi Suelo, I've been reading a lot on economics since this crisis erupted two years ago, but I still check in with you whenever you post.

    First to answer your question, who are the Tea Partiers? I would advise you to stop trying to find parity with these people. The modern Tea Party are simply the disgruntled remnants of a white america that wants to blame the crisis on those who are worse off than they are. The right has co-opted these poor, deluded, mostly senior and retired white people and channeled their anger toward immigrants, unemployed, "freeloaders" (like you) who they see as taking away from their share of the pie. It's the politics of ressentiment. The Tea Party is now on board with the oligarchs who say it is wrong for the government to tax the rich, cause they create the jobs. Its the poor who want a free lunch, even if it comes out of a dumpster, who are destroying the american way of life. I don't understand why you would think there is an equivalence between the left and the right. Forget about what the politicians are doing. There is little difference between the Republicans and Democrats in office because they are both beholden to the corporations and their lobbyists. We don't have any "left" in government. Its just right and extreme right. They have successfully demonized the poor and protesters on the street as "dirty fucking hippies", just as many of your readers come here to demonize you.

    Secondly, the disenfranchised OWS crowd is not going to overturn the economic system we have (in other words - money). It's simply a matter of making the system more fair and making government work for the broader population rather than for the privileged few. Read Paul Krugman's blog if you want a better understanding of how money works in a global economy and how it has been gamed by the modern financial institutions. Most people don't reject corporations and technology (while you don't reject the latter, rejecting the former makes your personal lifestyle unapproachable to most, including your supporters). A money economy is, for better or worse, what we have settled on. You can be for capitalism or you can be for socialism, but it seems the system relies on this thing called money as a proxy for many social values.

    I read an interesting quote, which many people could relate to these days. "Money is like manure. Spread it around and it helps things grow. Pile it up in one place and it just stinks".

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  13. I for one, really can't solely blame the banks for this predicament. The consumers have a hand in it as well. Part of the problem is that the more credit you have, the more credit you have. Now you find yourself in quicksand. No one forced you to purchase something on credit. If you can't afford it now, you can't afford it now. It's simple, you will have to wait. Your own lack of self-discipline has gotten you in this financial dilemma, not the banks. Just like most everything, credit is a tool. If you abuse it, it won't work for you anymore. Credit should only be used as a parachute in an emergency. Not for restaurants, movie theaters, groceries, etc. Another part of the problem is not taking responsibility for your own actions. Your financial distress is of your own making, not a bank. Stop blaming others for your mistakes.

    Nowadays we live in a world of blame....

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  14. ME AM LIVE IN CAVE!! ME HIT RABBIT ON HEAD AND EAT IN IN CAVE!!

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  15. Suelo, you sound ruffled. Your response time indicates that you now have wifi in your cave.

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  16. I am as ruffled as a potato chip, and no I dont have wifi. I can connect to the internet with my mind becuase I am a cyborg.

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  17. A cyborg that has slipped a cog.

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  18. Sue, I hope you don't mind If I want to travel with you a bit in the next few years.

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  19. I think the biggest source of deception is our own greed. As Shannon noted, we can try and be as 'pure' as we can as far as the system goes, but we will always still use the things it created. Material things are 'unrighteous mammon' but how and why we use it is what makes the difference. Some systems are better, but they all lead to the same place.

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  20. Thanks for the comments amigos, both critical & supportive.

    Again & again I repeat: I'm not calling for everybody to stop using money now, not calling for the impossible. I'd love it if everybody could, but I'm saying for money-users to use money ethically. Stop business with banks, buy locally. Very simple & manageable. The very nature of interest banking is deception, so there can be no honest business with a bank. If it's impossible to live without, then deception is god, honesty is the slave of deception, & all our ancient faiths are meaningless. If you must, transfer your $ to a local credit union instead.

    @Shannonstoney: We can do anything if we're a little creative! Buy local or buy nothing. How to buy nothing? There's freecycle on the internet! Borrow & lend with neighbors! These things take human interaction, which is the whole point. If we can't share what already exists, then what are we alive for? And check out abundance going into dumpsters right now! Borrow neighbor's yards or talk to your city about public community gardens. I know people everywhere in towns & cities who WANT people to garden their yards! People are doing it right now!

    Yes, Raj, we're going to make mistakes & do things imperfectly, & things will fail. So we could ask, why get out of bed? Or we can get stronger & wiser & do our best to encourage rather than discourage by nay-saying.

    @altram - you might want to read the blog post again. Do you think you missed the point? I'd recommend reading G. Edward Griffin ("The Creature from Jekyl Island"), from the "right" & reading anything by William Greider, from the "left", and determine for yourself if both are talking the same principle.

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  21. I figured out later that I could build a wall around my garden with the stone in the creek. But that's a long term project: for now I'm using chicken wire. I joined a freecycle list for when I'm in Houston.

    The dumpsters around here are locked down, and some are actually guarded. The dump where I take my trash is guarded by a guy in a shed. There is often some fencing wire there. I might be able to sneak off with it. I will check tomorrow.

    I have had no luck at all foraging in the grocery store dumpsters. They all seem impenetrable and high tech. Some actually have little chimneys so that the methane can get out. The one behind Kroger is a trash compactor as well as a dumpster. I also looked behind Walmart and couldn't find anything. The smaller grocery stores even have locked-up, fortress-like dumpsters. I am having a hard time understanding how people find food in dumpsters. Maybe it used to be easier.

    Luckily I have found a lot of food around the neighborhood: persimmons, walnuts, mushrooms, greens, and yesterday, a deer (road kill). I told a neighbor about it who knows how to cut up deer, but he said he didn't have time.

    I"m leaving for Houston soon and planning to plant some things when I get there. Winter is the best time to grow food in Houston. Reading a book about dryland rain harvesting. It has been very dry in Houston, but it rained today I think. I have access to some land there to plant on. Also I joined a CSA to get local veggies.

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  22. Thank you for clearing that up about the Tea Party.

    I hated that the 'no taxes' puppets co-opted and bent such a good concept.

    Tea, anyone? (Home grown, of course.)

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  23. Shannon, it sounds like you've been checking larger grocery stores. These usually have compactors. Smaller or medium sized grocery stores are often very good sources of dumpster food.

    As far as what I said before. Suelo, I'm not saying to not do anything. What I'm saying is to do something for love and to not worry too much about doing something religiously pure in economic terms. I agre with most of your actions, but targeting the banks seems like the wrong tree to bark up. Some greed is more obvious but it all leads to oppression.

    Anything purchasable is unrighteousness, we can't buy or not buy our economic purity. We're all guilty, including you Suelo as you also use the tools of the system.

    However, I'm not saying that to condemn you. I really appreciate what you say and do, but I feel like your focus has lost some of It's clarity recently. It's easy to blame the system and call for a better one, but that's a materialistic mind set. I think what we need to do is focus on loving PEOPLE and out of that love will come the right system. It just doesn't work the other way around. Trying it the other way around has lead to where we are currently at.

    You ask for the real tea party. Well the real one started the American revolution. Yes, they freed themselves from British imperialsim, but they ended up starting their own. The same is true of every other revolution that has ever been carried out in the name of liberty or justice or fairness and equality. They ALL ended up with oppresive systems. History proves that humans overthrowing the system just brings about newer more creative ways of oppression.

    I don't believe our system is any less oppresive than Roman imperialsim. It's just that we're able to move the oppressed out of sight most of the time.

    One definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

    Btw, I don't have a bank account.

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  24. Suelo: Good post. I am not too concerned about the tea party because it is just one more little movement that will go nowhere due to poor leadership and the strength of its followers is already waning. The tea party folks are already selling out and running on the republican ticket. So basically, tea party candidates are just republicans with fancy buses and strong rhetoric. No immigration, no social programs (except "don't touch my social security and medicare"), no pork barrel spending, Obama is the devil, and the root of all evil is socialism. This movement is going nowhere fast. (For the record I am not republican or democrat...I am simply a "good idea-ist" Good ideas come from all over)

    I agree that banks and corporations in general are getting out of hand. However, they are only producing and selling what we are all buying or wanting to buy. The demand is there so someone will fill it. It is a shame that they hijacked holidays (coke), marriages (de beers), and the american dream (mortgage companies and banks). So like you say...the only way to stop it all is boycott. It is more effective then protests that appear unorganized to onlookers plus most people are not keen on sleeping in the park and getting arrested. Keep pushing boycott of specific products, Suelo, and things can change.

    Come on people...Let's just buy local and re-use as much as we can. Let's keep our wants and needs in balance and stay away from debt for things that cannot satisfy. When we get into debt pay it off as fast as possible. There is no need for extremism in anything we do...let's just float towards the middle/balance, for starters, and see what happens. There are not too many things that are inherently bad...things become bad because of how they are used. Moderation is the key.

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  25. Money is only in our head, we make it real. I see some that have made it more real and convinced others that it is the game you have to play, and the rules are not fair, because the idea of the game is to conger up more money out of thin air,have the power to make the rules in there faveor and make every one think its real, and be indeited to the money holders. however, this only devalues what we already agree upon as having value. So in the end every one loses.
    Read (Check out) Small is beautiful, E.F. Schumacher.

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  26. @Shannon - yeah, dumpstering is getting harder. Our society has a hard time even letting go of waste.

    @Raj - Maybe you're right & Jesus and Gandhi were wrong. Maybe Jesus lost sight of love and "targeted" moneylenders and merchants, wielding a whip & overturning their tables when he should have focused on being nice? After all, it *seems* not to have done any good: it got him crucified & there are still bankers & merchants corrupting in the name of God today.

    Maybe the American abolitionists & Moses lost sight of love when they "targeted" slavery, demanding the masses walk away from it? Naysayers here warned our economy would collapse if slavery ended. Israelite naysayers complained slavery under Egypt was better. Maybe targeting slavery was wrong?

    In India, I spoke with loyalist Indians who thought British oppression before Gandhi was better than India now. Maybe they were right?

    Maybe wiping our butt is not targeting the real issue, since we often can't wipe it all off anyway and poop will come back again tomorrow? Maybe we should just prevent poop in the first place - not get out of bed, not eat.

    I feel passionate about this. People everywhere are feeling passion to overcome powerlessness. Life is Passion for justice, our very divine nature, and naysayers squelching our very nature, acquiescing to corruption, is not love.

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  27. The one thing everybody seems to overlook is the fact that it's government waste and greed that ruins freedom and destroys everything in it's path. Corporations are at least accountable to their shareholders. If you want to protest, then protest the government !!!!!
    The government is screwing us far worse than Wall Street DUH!!!!!!!!!!

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  28. "I feel passionate about this. People everywhere are feeling passion to overcome powerlessness. Life is Passion for justice, our very divine nature, and naysayers squelching our very nature, acquiescing to corruption, is not love."

    Well said Suelo. Any attempt to make this a better world is a start and it's nice to see that people are rising up. People telling us to just accept how things are and do nothing about it is in itself not loving in the least bit.

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  29. Maybe it's because I don't live in Ameica so I don't know all the issues. Though I can see, Suelo, that you are feeling very strongly about this.

    Just one correction on Jesus. The money lenders didn't crucify Jesus, it was the religious establishment which crucified Jesus. It's very clear in the gospels that the Jesus exposed a lot of hypocrisy in the religious establishment, including it's greed and that's why they killed him.

    However, Jesus also showed some kind of non-judgment towards tax collectors which were the direct arm of oppression for Roman imperialism. Of course, at least one of these tax collectors was so inspired by this new message of love that they renounced their work and gave their money away. Jesus didn't need to denounce Roman imperialism in order to nearly overthrow it, he just offered and alternative. He even praised Centurions (Roman soldiers) for their faith. That would be like an Iraqi religious leader praising an American soldier for their faith. Talk about non-partiality! I think Jesus saw way beyond politics and challenged the heart of the system rather than its ever changing mask.

    The Israelites didn't target the system of slavery. They wanted their own emancipation, but the Jews still took slaves after their own emancipation. Albeit they also included clauses to free their own slaves after some time.

    And yes I think you made a good point recognizing that Gandhi's liberation from the British birthed another nuclear weapons producing oppressive nation. No, Gandhi didn't have the solution. He showed amazing strength in non-violent resistance. He was an amazing man. He was able to give some Indians a piece of the World Superpower cake.

    I just feel when you target the heart of oppression, greed in all its forms, then you bring about the collapse of the system by having replaced it from underneath.

    Well, being inspired to change political causes can bring about good results in changing those policies. Best of luck to you.

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  30. I must concede & actually agree with you here, Raj! If we look at Gandhi's teaching, we see his goal wasn't primarily liberation from Britain, it was spiritual liberation, & that message continues even as India fell back to corruption. But Indian political liberation was his object lesson, a bonus, & got the world's attention, and I probably wouldn't know about Gandhi's deeper message without it.

    You're right, there isn't record of Jesus being concerned with Rome's business or Israel's liberation. He was a Jew focused on his own people, the Jews. It is when banking and marketing infected the Jewish temple that he did his activism. And, here I might disagree with you: according to Mark's account, this was when the religious authorities started trying to kill him. But the religious authorities were afraid their "religion and nation" would collapse if people followed Jesus.

    Self-proclaimed Christians here are not only serving banks & corporations, but thinking it is an act of faith to do so, condemning anybody who questions their unwavering faith in Mammon and its prophet, Fox News. Money wizards are in the temple. So, perhaps, I ought to focus on those of my own culture's faith to boycott corruption, and the rest will follow? The idea of Jews preaching "to the Jew first, and *also* to the Greek" is focusing on our own people & backyard, the rest happens simultaneously. Love our neighbor & we also love all humanity. I would love to see world banking collapse, but it would be useless if we still have credit/debt slavery in our hearts.

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  31. "I would love to see world banking collapse, but it would be useless if we still have credit/debt slavery in our hearts."

    Exactly! There has to be a paradigm shift in man's collective consciousness in order for things to really improve.

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  32. @ uncle Cracker -
    Here I must disagree with you. The problem is there is no difference between Wall Street & the government, just as there was no difference between British government & East India Company. Wall Street is the government and there's no democracy any more. It's way obvious. Democracy died here. But we still have power to not do business with corporations, then "Greedy Government" will end.

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  33. Suelo, the reason your "activist" posts don't go over well is that you tend to be incoherent. I missed the point? OK, tell me again. Where do you get this idea that the right and the left espouse the same "principle"? You think the colonial Tea Party somehow clarifies what today's Tea Party is saying? Sure, I can find a conservative author who I might agree with. But who can look at the political right in this country and not understand that its just the mouthpiece for the corporate elite and the financially privileged? Even you know this, having spent 10 minutes listening to Fox News at your parents.

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  34. What I failed to make clear is that if you want to kill a snake you should probably chop off the head first!
    And secondly, as you say we can chose not to do business with corporations, no such luck with the bloated festering cesspool of government. So instead of wasting time protesting corporations, why don't we eliminate the government that allows all this crap first !!!!

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  35. Suelo, thanks for your words. I'm very inspired that you understand what I was getting at. Sometimes I feel like no one understands me or my posts, but each time I start to feel like that you'll say something which indicates the opposite.

    I favour the solution coming from within, from the underground up. Living by the way of the ancient sages causes us to challenge the system on all fronts at the same time and offers and alternative at the same time. Much love.

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  36. @altram - now come on... do you really think this blog post is about agreeing with today's self-proclaimed "Tea Party"? Did you really read it?

    UC: I agree, we shouldn't waste time protesting corporations & banks (which ARE the government), we must simply not do business with them, not cooperate. What other way do you suggest to end the "government"? This is the point of the above blog post. Stop business with the multinational corporation (East India Company) & gain independence from oppressive government (Britain). History shows us this worked beautifully for both the US & India. If we do business with the corporation/government, we are the body of the snake, and we deserve to die with the head. If we live simply and cleanly as individuals, all else will follow - which is Raj's point.

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  37. Lovely post! Kinda ironic because similar things have been running through my thoughts lately as apart of me strongly felt like going to Occupy & being apart of that, but deep down there was apart of me that didn't agree with some things. Maybe not agree as much as didn't feel... kosher.
    I went to a local Occupy & it was interesting & peoples intention were good. But I felt that mainly what can be done, at least here, is simply raising awareness & putting up the facts, & even then facts in the face of greed are irrational & ignorantly thrown to the side (thanks to ego).
    Ultimately I felt that by being apart of this I was some what acknowledging that the banks have power over me...thats not me. & I also didn't like the blame game, I can acknowledge that I have funded the crooks on wall st. I know that each & every individual has a collective responsibility, regardless of wether they are conscious of that or not, & the best way I can "fight" the banks is to live the change I want to see. To relinquish their power over me. & thus my life becomes "activism" actual active activism. But I can't call it activism because essentially it is not, I just use the term for sake of conversation.
    All that said however I do agree with many points of the Occupy movement, such as focusing on the corrupt banks & corporations. I think this is the beginning of very interesting times. People are starting to be alive & feel again & thats where it starts, perhaps this is human collective evolution in action.

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  38. Suelo, somehow we are talking past each other. I didn't take from your post that you are agreeing with the Tea Party. But you are claiming that voices on the right and the left have converged on the same message. Where do you glean that the right is for anything but a rigged economic system in favor of the moneyed class? Where?

    Meanwhile you agree with uncle crackpot, that we should overthrow the government! Seriously, what you are advocating is pretty much a collapse of the modern socioeconomic structure. In favor of what exactly? Living "simply and cleanly" like you? I'll bet you and uncle crackpot also agree that you should arm yourselves to the hilt to protect against marauding gangs in your anarchist utopia.

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  39. @ altram: no matter what I say you interpret it as you wish.
    Anybody else interpreting what I say as altram does?

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  40. Nah, I'm not interpreting what you're saying in any way similar to altram. I get what you're saying, which is that the system has become puppets for the banks on all sides of the political spectrum. I would tend to say that the system, both political and economical, is destined to fail due to individual human greed which turns collective when institutionalized. That's why I advocate small scale individual reform, though I can appreciate that some important changes have been made to society through some large scale reforms.

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  41. Yes, Raj. Again, repeating what we both are saying: I feel that if all of us as individuals did what we know is just, living simply, without even the motive of the system collapsing (especially not trying to "overthrow" it), that the system as we know it would automatically collapse. No need to fight the dragon... just stop feeding it.

    @ altram: With 100% certainty I can say some voices on what people consider the "right" & "left" have come to the same conclusions about the monetary system & the colonial war machine it feeds. Ron Paul and G. Edward Griffin (I mentioned above) on the "right", Ralph Nader & William Greider (mentioned above) on the "left". Don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself! I have little trust for the mentality that won't listen to the "opposing side". The right which refuses to listen to the left is fascist (eg Nazism) & the left which refuses to listen to the right is totalitarian (eg USSR). Go far enough right or left on a circle & they become one, both in the bad or the good.

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  42. I refuse to buy into the false left-right paradigm that the establishment would have us do. Sounds to me you feel the same way Suelo.

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  43. The right which refuses to listen to the left is fascist (eg Nazism) & the left which refuses to listen to the right is totalitarian (eg USSR). Go far enough right or left on a circle & they become one, both in the bad or the good.

    Ding, Ding, Ding, we have a winner !!!! Stop participating in the system !!!! Kill your TV, Grow something, make something, create something. Live free even if you die young !!!

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  44. It saddens me when people who appreciate the Occupiers depreciate the Tea Partiers... and vice versa.

    As a former Tea Partier myself, I can say for certain that at least at the very beginning, the movement was the expression of ordinary individuals' anger. When the economy crashed, I worked for a bank--the first, most notorious bank that closed--and I decided to find out why it happened. What I learned opened my eyes to our corporatocracy... and I thought of revolution. I thought of one of the few revolutions in recorded history that didn't eat its own country alive... our first American revolution.

    Of course, the Tea Party was co-opted, but you do yourself a disservice if you believe that all conservatives fit the "caveman" profile that has been handed to you on corporate-sponsored television and radio. It's the same as saying that all OWS people are violent, unwashed hippies on welfare. And do you suppose that OWS is immune to co-opting? I went to the "Seattle riots" when they came to DC ten years ago, and I promise you that they were well-organized.

    Before I was a Christian, I was a pagan. Before I worked for a bank, I was a hippie. After I worked for a bank, I was unemployed and trying hard not to need charity. I go to a very conservative church because the people there are old-fashioned, yet great in their faith... and then I hang out with hedonistic hippies shortly afterward. I've turned on, tuned in, tuned out, dropped in, dropped out, and done the hokey-pokey and turned myself about. From all that, I've learned that the more you learn, the less you know about what's really going on in your politics, your country or your neighbor's head.

    As previous commenters said, Christ looked beyond class. So did Ghandi. Priest or prostitute, rich or poor, sick or well, young or old... Christ loved them all. Do you think that He's going to look at your party affiliation before He forgives you? Do you think that everyone that disagrees with you is without intelligence, historical knowledge or compassion?

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  45. I was reading your blog, Suelo, for a few weeks wondering where is the current affairs section and here it is. I am a bit disappointed but it also gets kind of exciting:) so I'll keep reading.
    I think I've learnt a lot from you, your words are very inspiring but IMHO you don't have to tap into this idea of fighting with banks and greed.

    Lidia

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  46. Here are the numbers that reveal both Jesus and the carnage that Suelo is passionately trying to change. This is now on many national news sources lately including CNN.

    Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
    http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_wilkinson.html

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  47. Great comments.
    @Lidia: Thanks, a valid criticism. A part of me feels as you do about this.

    @Michael: I liked your video link so much I just posted it on fb, adding my own comment about it:
    "Funny we've become so hard-hearted we need numbers to prove what every human on earth instinctively knows but pretends not to know. But, now, at last, here are the numbers! Now we have 2 agreeing witnesses against us: (1) our very own hearts and (2) hard data."

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  48. There wouldn't be all these Occupy Wall street protests popping up all across the country and the world if the people en mass weren't waking up to the fact that economic inequality is growing and that it's creating a society of extreme haves and extreme have nots. It's not working for the betterment of society at large. People aren't as dumb as the global elites would like to think.

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  49. Suelo, if you're on Facebook that might be a reason for me re-activate my account. : ) I think I'll wait a couple months though and see if I can accomplish some more things.

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