Of Madness and Consumption

This is America: Blind Consumerism

The psychopathology of consumerism: we have become programmed like robots to spend more than we can afford on things we don't really need. Like sheep headed to the trimmers, we roll out at this time of the year at the bidding of shop-till- you-drop gimmicks while capitalism fleeces us all. The worst part is that the useless junk we buy doesn't benefit the US economy, it benefits China's. Those who control America's shadow government – the real movers and shakers from behind the scenes, not their puppets in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court – have sold out our country to the opposing side and have thus committed treason. The reason most people don't care about or won't even consider this glaring reality is because they can “live so much cheaper” buying the very inexpensively made garbage that China has been dumping on our shores since the 1980's. Cheaper at first, yes, but due to shoddy manufacturing and poor quality Chinese products are notoriously short-lived and invariably cheap imitations of much better quality merchandise that used to be made here in the US. And so we fight and claw for the raw deal at the various suburban box stores offering low wages and no benefits to staff.

So, how much can we save on all these wonderful items? That depends on whether one can afford to pay cash while doing their shopping or not. If one uses plastic that person will end up paying far more in interest, fees and carrying charges than they would have for a comparable higher-ticket item at the finest store in town. How much can we save? Let's ask some more pertinent questions and explore some far more evident realities about this issue. For example, what about the Chinese workers slaving in dangerous non union factories for 1-2 dollars a day? What does the company make off the deal? Who is actually winning? Is it really the mesmerized consumer teary and googly-eyed while giggling gleefully at 30, 40, and 50% off deals? Could it be that the whole stinking thing is rigged from beginning to end? Of course it is, just look at what is being sold and calculate how much it costs to make it. If I look at a can of pork and beans on the grocery shelf and it's priced at 75 cents, it doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that 75 cents is an outrageous markup. The cans are made by the thousands and cost just a couple of pennies each to manufacture in large quantities. The contents of the can usually cost as much or less, and ditto for the label. So we're looking at 2 cents for the can, 2 more for the contents, and maybe an extra penny or two for the label. Add another penny as margin for error and we have 7 cents. Seven cents, and the retail price is 75 cents? So the gross profit is more than ten times the cost, or a markup in excess of 1000%. Or consider a far more expensive item such as the latest I-phone. They sell for about $300-400 dollars plus tax, but there was a posting on the Internet just recently to the effect that it only costs Apple, Inc. about $120.00 to manufacture I-phones because they were being made in China, resulting in a 150-300% markup. So much for “God bless America”.

"Oh," the politicians and talking heads say to us on TV, "it's the American workers. They don't want to work menial jobs like canning pork and beans. And we can't assemble I-phones in America because its workers aren't qualified." Never mind that there are many thousands of recent college graduates who are living with their parents because they are unable to support themselves. There simply are no jobs for these poor young adults, and yet they are expected to repay predatory and exorbitant student loans. The careers for which they have been training have already been out-sourced to the third world during the last 4, 5, or 6 years that these hapless individuals have spent earning their degrees. They have all been robbed of their educations, which have been rendered worthless by the multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex.

Yet we are expected to perform our patriotic duty as well as appropriately celebrate the “holidays” (Never mind that Jesus wasn't even born in December) as we shop till we drop looking for that fantastic deal. We are in the process of being programmed to slave part time at minimum wages and with no health benefits while buying $300,000.00 houses, $70,000.00 cars and trucks plus big screen TV's. While all this is occurring, employees of corporations are lining the pockets of senators, congressmen and supreme-court justices in Washington D.C. while sitting on presidential cabinets making decisions regarding our planet's future, our future, and our children's future. Is it any wonder that the entire world seems to be coming unglued?

Meanwhile our consumerism is devouring the planet into what might soon become more lifeless than the moon or a Wall Street Tycoon. Yet, mesmerized by commercials with intelligence levels less than a jackass after having a brain amputation, we roll blindly into the gates of the shopping centers turned shopping malls turned humongous big box stores. To share with you what brought out this little speech, consider the following release from the Associated Press.

"A shopper in Los Angeles pepper-sprayed her competition for an X-box and scuffles broke out elsewhere around the United States as bargain-hunters crowded malls and big-box stores in an earlier-than-usual start to the madness known as Black Friday. For the first time, chains such as Target, Best Buy and Kohl's opened their doors before midnight on the most anticipated shopping day of the year. Toys R Us opened for the second straight year on Thanksgiving itself. And some shoppers arrived with sharp elbows. On Thanksgiving night, a Walmart in Los Angeles brought out a crate of discounted X-boxes, and as a crowd waited for the video game players to be unwrapped, a woman fired pepper spray at the other shoppers 'in order to get an advantage,' police said. Ten people suffered cuts and bruises in the chaos, and 10 others had minor injuries from the spray, authorities said. The woman got away in the confusion, and it was not immediately clear whether she got an X-box. On Friday morning, police said, two women were injured and a man was charged after a fight broke out at an upstate New York Walmart. And a man was arrested in a scuffle at a jewelry counter at a Walmart in Kissimmee, Fla. In the U.S., Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has taken steps in recent years to control its Black Friday crowds following the 2008 death of one of its workers in a stampede of shoppers. This year, it staggered its door-buster deals instead of offering them all at once."

-- The Associated Press, Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 26, 2011

Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles wrote in the song "Revolution", "you say you want a revolution, well you know, we'd all love to change your head." Yes, it is more than changing Wall Street or who resides in the White House. It is, ultimately, about changing ourselves. If we all really want some serious change, then change must start from within. This Christmas, change how you celebrate. Speak from your heart to your kids about consumerism and how it is affecting the planet as well as our behavior. Help them to understand that it's not about how much we have, but rather how much we contribute. Life is not about how much we own or the value of our possessions, life is all about making a stand for good things like faith, mercy, kindness, and above all, love. Instead of buying your wife a new car and maybe going into debt, take her up on the highest place around where you live, or to some favorite romantic spot, and renew your vows to her. Instead of buying your husband a new bag of golf clubs, give him a night he will never forget. Enjoy each other and be loving to each other. To enjoy is to enjoin, to enjoin is to unite.

Consumerism and the vain pursuit of worldly goods keeps us isolated by gimmicks of sensationalist advertising of strikingly beautiful women, absolutely perfect children and gorgeous, flaming hunks of men that are created off the corporate mold. To put it simply, the corporate mold is a load of BS. And who is being molded in all these advertising gimmicks? You are! For what purpose? To make others rich at your expense. The blue chip corporations have a very good reason for doing all this. As long as they can keep us isolated, we can never be united. Don't go there this year, and keep your money. Find richness in your heart and share that this Christmas instead.

An American Trajedy: Another Labor Union Bites the Dust

Workers Massacred Without a Shot Being Fired

This past week we have witnessed the death of an American icon, Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, Zingers, and other delights for kids of all ages. Hostess has shut its doors in a labor dispute with its workers over pay and benefits cuts, as well as the elimination of their pensions. These workers had already agreed to 2 prior cuts in salary and benefits, but a third cut in each plus the forced liquidation of their retirement pensions proved to be too much. Many of these workers had been paying into their retirements for decades, and so they were furious when the company took them away. Evidently none of the striking workers thought it possible that their entire careers would evaporate before their eyes, but that is exactly what happened.

The Hostess employees were given a choice: Either give up their pensions including the face value of their retirement savings, or give that up plus everything else including their careers. In the end they all wound up losing it all. Not since President Ronald Reagan fired 15,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 – effectively crushing an entire labor union out of existence – has such a terrible blow been dealt to organized labor in America. The infamy of president Reagan's actions against organized labor in the US are still palpable decades later. And so it will be for Hostess Brands, the company that committed suicide rather then pay their workers a living wage (the striking workers would have had to accept pay and benefits cuts averaging 40% each). The average salary of a Hostess worker was reportedly around $40,000; settling the strike would have cut their pay to $25,000 while nearly doubling the cost of their benefits.

So the striking workers had a choice: Lose their pension savings and half their benefits, along with a 40% pay cut, or lose everything. That doesn't sound like much of a choice to begin with. Is it any wonder that they went on strike? If I were in their place I likely would have done the same, or at least given it some serious consideration. If I still had kids at home, I would have to think about that really hard before choosing whether to strike or not, but in the end I think I still would have.

Workers who insist on a living wage is not something peculiar to only American labor unions of the 20^th and 21^st century. This is a tradition that goes all the way back to the time of Moses in the Old Testament, where it is written, “The workman is worth his wages” (quoted by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew) and, “Do not muzzle your oxen when they are treading out the grain”. The modern equivalents of that translation would be, “You can run your horses as hard as you want, provided you give them time to replenish themselves”, or “You can keep on driving your car so long as you remember to add fuel when it needs it.” So it is with workers. If it costs a modern family of four $28,000 to $32,000 dollars annually for their basic essentials such as housing, food, transportation, energy and fuel, and the dad's or mom's employer only pays the breadwinner $23,000 annually, this is obviously a huge problem. If both parents work, they end up spending half of their 2^nd income on child care. That brings me to my point. If any given worker's salary or hourly wage doesn't even meet the cost of their most basic living expenses, then that worker ceases to be an employee because they have become slaves. Am I not on target here? If discovering that you are a slave when you previously thought of yourself as an employee makes you angry and maybe resentful as well, that not only proves you are normal but also that you are functioning on a higher level. It means you have a brain and you're not afraid to use it. That's always a good thing. Hold that thought, please, while I continue.

Everyone who wants to work and earn a paycheck should have the means to do so. To tell someone that they are unneeded or unwanted is demeaning, mean-spirited and can even be threatening. Why are there not enough jobs for people that want one? Because we are working with a 19^th and 20^th century business and economic model in a 21^st century world! What happens when companies that are controlled by their executive officers and are owned by their stockholders can no longer make a profit? The company declares itself bankrupt and gets liquidated through the courts, with all the proceeds going to the stockholders and creditors of the now-defunct company. That is exactly what happened with Hostess Brands. Everything for them and nothing for the workers who built the company and made it profitable. The top 1% gets to eat steak, but it's beans for the rest of us, as if the American people are expected to put up with this untenable situation in the American workplace indefinitely. Hostess is just the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone everywhere, without exception and regardless of their background, is entitled to a livelihood and to a living wage. That's why I've been advocating a $12.00 per hour minimum wage in my writings since 2010 (I started out at $10.00 and just raised it to $12.00 on my website recently). Anyone who can find no suitable work can and should be retrained to learn new skills, and access to higher education is no longer a luxury in the 21^st century, it is a necessity. As such higher education is a basic human right, and to deny anyone access to higher learning or Internet access for purely economic reasons is a civil rights violation of the highest order. Everyone has the right to be able to support and sustain themselves and their families at a reasonable level of success and comfort. Today in America, where 1 in 4 children will depend on SNAP benefits in order to eat, clearly exactly the opposite is occurring. In a country that is alleged to be the richest in the world, this to me is inexcusable.

Of course I can hear our “leaders” in Washington and their “presstitutes” in the main stream media howling with derision already. We have a $16 trillion dollar deficit and I want to give everyone free higher education? “Impossible”, they will retort. Let me spell this out in black and white so everyone understands. If the US military's combined forces took one day's expenditures from the ongoing and increasingly pointless occupation of Afghanistan and deposited that very sum of money into an interest-bearing account of most any kind, the US would have enough cash money to send every American kid to four years of college fully paid for including tuition, books, food, transportation and Internet access. That's every kid from pre-K through seniors in high school. It's not that we don't have the money, it's just that our country's leadership is spending it on all the wrong things.

So, how do we end unemployment, homelessness and poverty for good? A job for everyone who wants one, and paid training for those who don't qualify (yet). According to the US Dept. of Labor, the average employee in the 21^st century will have to change careers up to as many as 8 times during all their combined working years. Does the US Dept. of Education, or the Dept. of Labor for that matter, seriously expect US workers to take on up to 8 student loans and repay them over our lifetimes while still buying cars, houses and boats? What planet are these jokers from anyway? Education is a human right, and equal opportunity for education for all regardless of background or economic status is an American civil rights issue for the 21^st century and beyond. To exclude anyone from higher education for economic reasons is discriminatory and therefore it is a civil rights violation under the law. It is essential that America's middle and working classes join together in unison to stand up to these corporate bullies – the top 1%, and particularly the top .1 percent. Otherwise we will soon find ourselves out in the cold with an uncertain future just like the Hostess workers across the nation. We the 99% must fight back, otherwise we will all be crushed just like the Air Traffic Controller's union was back in 1981.

Of The Bullies, By The Bullies, and For The Bullies by Rev. Paul J. Bern (excerpt from chapter 5 of his book, "Occupying America: We Shall Overcome") Perhaps the most ominous sign regarding the true nature of economic discrimination and class warfare against the middle class and the poor, which invariably includes people of color, is that of bullying, intimidation and similar forms of abuse directed at employees in the workplace. Although I'm certain that everybody who reads this can think of an example of having a really bad boss, the following alarming example of abusive management in the third world is the best (or worst) example I have found. The question is, could this “method” of management be coming to America's shores next? Worse yet, is it already here? More than a decade ago, shoe giant Nike came under fire for its use of sweatshop labor in the production of its products. Most of the criticism focused on its Indonesian workforce, where workers, largely young women, were forced to labor under harsh conditions and abusive supervisors. In 1997, filmmaker Michael Moore made Nike abuses a subject of his film "The Big One", and met with Nike CEO Phil Knight. Knight explained that the reason his company was using low-wage labor in Indonesia is allegedly because "Americans don't want to make shoes". At the Taiwanese-operated Pou Chen Group factory in Sukabumi, Indonesia, which makes Converse shoes for Nike, and PT Amara Footwear factory in Jakarta, workers alleged that they are paid ultra-low wages, regularly verbally and physically abused, and even fired for the act of taking sick leave. The 10,000 mostly female workers at the Taiwanese-operated Pou Chen plant make around 50 cents an hour. That’s enough, for food and bunkhouse-type lodging, but little else. Some workers interviewed by the AP in March and April described being hit or scratched in the arm — one man until he bled. An internal Nike report released to the AP found that 'nearly two-thirds of 168 factories making Converse products worldwide fail to meet Nike's own standards for contract manufacturers. Meanwhile, in 2010, Nike CEO Mark Parker received an 84 percent hike in his annual compensation, raking in $13.1 million, an amount many of the workers in Sukabumi and Jakarta can only dream of. If the top 1% has their way, these kinds of workplace abuses and sweatshop conditions will be making their way to your workplace. Here in Georgia where I live (plus several other states, mostly in the Southeastern US) we have what are called “right to work” laws. Basically what it means is that anyone can be terminated for any reason, or sometimes for no reason at all. So no matter where you work, there is always this cloud of uncertainty hanging overhead, knowing that you can get canned without warning, even if you are doing everything right. Imagine what Jesus would say about this if He came back today! Would he be pleased? Absolutely not! So I would say that being forced to work in what amounts to a hostile work environment is just one more reason for us all to rise up against the top 1% and take back all that they have stolen from us. Our dignity, our human rights and our governmental, economic and political systems will be taken and confiscated from the rich no matter how long it takes. The fact of the matter is that this type of brute-force management has lately spread from much of America's professional life over into our personal lives, with the most obvious examples being the militarization of our police departments combined with the lost cause known as the “war on drugs”. In so doing, those who used to be sworn to protect and to serve have become those who harass and intimidate. They have become the lackeys of the top 1%, with some in law enforcement chomping at the bit for an opportunity to lock up a few people and bloody a few heads, if not worse. However, I also believe that there is no small number in the law enforcement community who realize that they are actually part of the 99%. When they do, and especially when they realize that they are just pawns for the 1%, they will join us in droves, coming over to our side having realized that they were only being contemptuously used to guard what the 1% has hoarded at the expense of all the rest of us, including themselves. The police arms race has very clearly spread well beyond the urban borders of the only cities to actually be targeted by foreign terrorists. Now, police officers routinely walk the beat armed with assault rifles and garbed in black full-battle uniforms. The extent of this weapon “inflation” does not stop with high-powered rifles, either. In recent years, police departments both large and small have acquired bazookas, machine guns, and even armored vehicles and tanks for use in domestic police work. The most serious consequence of the rapid militarization of American police forces, however, is the subtle evolution in the mentality of the "men in blue" from peace officer to soldier. This development is absolutely critical and represents a fundamental change in the nature of law enforcement. The primary mission of a police officer traditionally has been to keep the peace. Those whom an officer suspects to have committed a crime are treated as just that -- suspects. Police officers are expected, under the rule of law, to protect the civil liberties of all citizens, even the bad guys. For domestic law enforcement, a suspect in custody remains innocent until proven guilty. Moreover, police officers operate among a largely friendly population and have traditionally been trained to solve problems using a complex legal system; the deployment of lethal violence is an absolute last resort. Soldiers, on the other hand, are trained to identify and kill the enemy. This is a problem. Cops are increasingly seeing the citizens they’re hired to protect as “the enemy.” This is in part how nonviolent protesters end up tear-gassed and shot at. This is part of why violence is so often the first resort of cops dealing with any sort of tricky situation, rather than the last. The idea that we need our cops to be the heavily armed soldiers of the streets — instead of, say, social workers and peacekeepers with the power to arrest — leads to bad recruiting, bad training, unnecessary deaths, mass distrust of the police by vulnerable communities, and the contemptuous feeling of many cops that they themselves are above the law. The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It actually began in the early 1980s, as the Reagan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs." Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war-related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country. A bill passed in 1988 authorized the National Guard to aid local police in drug interdiction, a law that resulted in National Guard troops conducting drug raids on city streets and using helicopters to survey rural areas for pot farms. In 1989, President George H. Bush enacted a new policy creating regional task forces within the Pentagon to work with local police agencies on anti-drug efforts. Since then, a number of other bills and policies have carved out more ways for the military and domestic police to cooperate in the government's ongoing campaign to prevent Americans from getting high. Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney declared in 1989, "The detection and countering of the production, trafficking and use of illegal drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense." The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy, while cops are charged with keeping the peace and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two. That distinction is why the U.S. Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing. The September 11 attacks provided a new and seemingly urgent justification for further militarization of America's police departments: the need to protect the country from terrorism. Within months of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Office of National Drug Control Policy began laying the groundwork with a series of ads tying recreational drug use to support for terrorism. Terrorism became the new reason to arm American cops as if they were soldiers, but drug offenders would still be their primary targets. In a particularly egregious example comparable to going duck hunting with a bazooka, the seven police officers who serve the town of Jasper, Florida -- which has all of 2,000 people and hadn’t had a murder in more than a decade -- were each given a military-grade M-16 machine gun from the Pentagon transfer program, leading one Florida paper to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.” In 2006 alone, the Department of Defense distributed vehicles worth $15.4 million, aircraft worth $8.9 million, boats worth $6.7 million, weapons worth $1 million and “other” items worth $110.6 million to local police agencies. After 9/11, police departments in some cities, including Washington, D.C., also switched to battle dress uniforms (BDUs) instead the traditional police uniform. Critics say even subtle changes like a more militarized uniform can change both public perception of the police and how police see their own role in the community. One such critic, retired police sergeant Bill Donelly, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, "One tends to throw caution to the wind when wearing ‘commando-chic’ regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word ‘POLICE’ emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed with high tech weaponry." Departments in places like Indianapolis and some Chicago suburbs also began acquiring machine guns from the military in the name of fighting terror. The September 11 attacks enabled a new source of funding for military-grade equipment in the Department of Homeland Security. In recent years, the agency has given anti-terrorism grants to police agencies across the country. The DHS grants are typically used to purchase items such as the Lenco Bearcat, a modified armored personnel carrier that sells for $200,000 to $300,000. The vehicle has become something of a status symbol in some police departments, who often put out press releases with photos of the purchase, along with posing police officers clad in camouflage or battle dress uniforms. The post-September 11 era has also seen the role of SWAT teams and paramilitary police units expand to enforce nonviolent crimes beyond even the drug war. The total number of SWAT deployments per year in the U.S. may now top 60,000, or more than 160 per day. SWAT teams have been used to break up neighborhood poker games, sent into bars and fraternities suspected of allowing underage drinking, and even to enforce alcohol and occupational licensing regulations. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed. Never mind the collateral damage! Earlier this year, the Department of Education even sent its SWAT team to the home of someone suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program. In so doing, the inability to repay one's student loan has now become criminalized. This is why we are occupying and will continue to occupy America. Being poor and broke is not a crime. We the American people will not stand idly by while poverty becomes criminalized. Enough is enough! Class warfare has been declared upon us all by the top 1%, and the main assault against the remainder of us has already commenced. Starting with the Occupy Movement in September 2011, and the 'We Are the 99%' Movement at about the same time, the counterattack by the 99% against the elitist 1% has begun in earnest. In so doing, although a second American Civil War has been started by the wealthy elitists, it is we the people – the 99% – who comprise the overwhelming majority of America, and it is we who will finish it. I

Of The Bullies, By The Bullies, and For The Bullies

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

(excerpt from chapter 5 of my book, "Occupying America: We Shall Overcome")

Perhaps the most ominous sign regarding the true nature of economic discrimination and class warfare against the middle class and the poor, which invariably includes people of color, is that of bullying, intimidation and similar forms of abuse directed at employees in the workplace. Although I'm certain that everybody who reads this can think of an example of having a really bad boss, the following alarming example of abusive management in the third world is the best (or worst) example I have found. The question is, could this “method” of management be coming to America's shores next? Worse yet, is it already here?

More than a decade ago, shoe giant Nike came under fire for its use of sweatshop labor in the production of its products. Most of the criticism focused on its Indonesian workforce, where workers, largely young women, were forced to labor under harsh conditions and abusive supervisors. In 1997, filmmaker Michael Moore made Nike abuses a subject of his film "The Big One", and met with Nike CEO Phil Knight. Knight explained that the reason his company was using low-wage labor in Indonesia is allegedly because "Americans don't want to make shoes".

At the Taiwanese-operated Pou Chen Group factory in Sukabumi, Indonesia, which makes Converse shoes for Nike, and PT Amara Footwear factory in Jakarta, workers alleged that they are paid ultra-low wages, regularly verbally and physically abused, and even fired for the act of taking sick leave. The 10,000 mostly female workers at the Taiwanese-operated Pou Chen plant make around 50 cents an hour. That’s enough, for food and bunkhouse-type lodging, but little else. Some workers interviewed by the AP in March and April described being hit or scratched in the arm ― one man until he bled.

An internal Nike report released to the AP found that 'nearly two-thirds of 168 factories making Converse products worldwide fail to meet Nike's own standards for contract manufacturers. Meanwhile, in 2010, Nike CEO Mark Parker received an 84 percent hike in his annual compensation, raking in $13.1 million, an amount many of the workers in Sukabumi and Jakarta can only dream of.

If the top 1% has their way, these kinds of workplace abuses and sweatshop conditions will be making their way to your workplace. Here in Georgia where I live (plus several other states, mostly in the Southeastern US) we have what are called “right to work” laws. Basically what it means is that anyone can be terminated for any reason, or sometimes for no reason at all. So no matter where you work, there is always this cloud of uncertainty hanging overhead, knowing that you can get canned without warning, even if you are doing everything right. Imagine what Jesus would say about this if He came back today! Would he be pleased? Absolutely not! So I would say that being forced to work in what amounts to a hostile work environment is just one more reason for us all to rise up against the top 1% and take back all that they have stolen from us. Our dignity, our human rights and our governmental, economic and political systems will be taken and confiscated from the rich no matter how long it takes.

The fact of the matter is that this type of brute-force management has lately spread from much of America's professional life over into our personal lives, with the most obvious examples being the militarization of our police departments combined with the lost cause known as the “war on drugs”. In so doing, those who used to be sworn to protect and to serve have become those who harass and intimidate. They have become the lackeys of the top 1%, with some in law enforcement chomping at the bit for an opportunity to lock up a few people and bloody a few heads, if not worse. However, I also believe that there is no small number in the law enforcement community who realize that they are actually part of the 99%. When they do, and especially when they realize that they are just pawns for the 1%, they will join us in droves, coming over to our side having realized that they were only being contemptuously used to guard what the 1% has hoarded at the expense of all the rest of us, including themselves. 

 

The police arms race has very clearly spread well beyond the urban borders of the only cities to actually be targeted by foreign terrorists. Now, police officers routinely walk the beat armed with assault rifles and garbed in black full-battle uniforms. The extent of this weapon “inflation” does not stop with high-powered rifles, either. In recent years, police departments both large and small have acquired bazookas, machine guns, and even armored vehicles and tanks for use in domestic police work.

The most serious consequence of the rapid militarization of American police forces, however, is the subtle evolution in the mentality of the "men in blue" from peace officer to soldier. This development is absolutely critical and represents a fundamental change in the nature of law enforcement. The primary mission of a police officer traditionally has been to keep the peace. Those whom an officer suspects to have committed a crime are treated as just that -- suspects. Police officers are expected, under the rule of law, to protect the civil liberties of all citizens, even the bad guys. For domestic law enforcement, a suspect in custody remains innocent until proven guilty. Moreover, police officers operate among a largely friendly population and have traditionally been trained to solve problems using a complex legal system; the deployment of lethal violence is an absolute last resort.

Soldiers, on the other hand, are trained to identify and kill the enemy. This is a problem. Cops are increasingly seeing the citizens they池e hired to protect as 鍍he enemy.�This is in part how nonviolent protesters end up tear-gassed and shot at. This is part of why violence is so often the first resort of cops dealing with any sort of tricky situation, rather than the last. The idea that we need our cops to be the heavily armed soldiers of the streets �instead of, say, social workers and peacekeepers with the power to arrest �leads to bad recruiting, bad training, unnecessary deaths, mass distrust of the police by vulnerable communities, and the contemptuous feeling of many cops that they themselves are above the law.

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It actually began in the early 1980s, as the Reagan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs." Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war-related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

A bill passed in 1988 authorized the National Guard to aid local police in drug interdiction, a law that resulted in National Guard troops conducting drug raids on city streets and using helicopters to survey rural areas for pot farms. In 1989, President George H. Bush enacted a new policy creating regional task forces within the Pentagon to work with local police agencies on anti-drug efforts. Since then, a number of other bills and policies have carved out more ways for the military and domestic police to cooperate in the government's ongoing campaign to prevent Americans from getting high. Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney declared in 1989, "The detection and countering of the production, trafficking and use of illegal drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense." The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy, while cops are charged with keeping the peace and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two. That distinction is why the U.S. Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

The September 11 attacks provided a new and seemingly urgent justification for further militarization of America's police departments: the need to protect the country from terrorism. Within months of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Office of National Drug Control Policy began laying the groundwork with a series of ads tying recreational drug use to support for terrorism. Terrorism became the new reason to arm American cops as if they were soldiers, but drug offenders would still be their primary targets. In a particularly egregious example comparable to going duck hunting with a bazooka, the seven police officers who serve the town of Jasper, Florida -- which has all of 2,000 people and hadn’t had a murder in more than a decade -- were each given a military-grade M-16 machine gun from the Pentagon transfer program, leading one Florida paper to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.”

In 2006 alone, the Department of Defense distributed vehicles worth $15.4 million, aircraft worth $8.9 million, boats worth $6.7 million, weapons worth $1 million and “other” items worth $110.6 million to local police agencies. After 9/11, police departments in some cities, including Washington, D.C., also switched to battle dress uniforms (BDUs) instead the traditional police uniform. Critics say even subtle changes like a more militarized uniform can change both public perception of the police and how police see their own role in the community. One such critic, retired police sergeant Bill Donelly, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, "One tends to throw caution to the wind when wearing ‘commando-chic’ regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word ‘POLICE’ emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed with high tech weaponry." Departments in places like Indianapolis and some Chicago suburbs also began acquiring machine guns from the military in the name of fighting terror.

The September 11 attacks enabled a new source of funding for military-grade equipment in the Department of Homeland Security. In recent years, the agency has given anti-terrorism grants to police agencies across the country. The DHS grants are typically used to purchase items such as the Lenco Bearcat, a modified armored personnel carrier that sells for $200,000 to $300,000. The vehicle has become something of a status symbol in some police departments, who often put out press releases with photos of the purchase, along with posing police officers clad in camouflage or battle dress uniforms. The post-September 11 era has also seen the role of SWAT teams and paramilitary police units expand to enforce nonviolent crimes beyond even the drug war. The total number of SWAT deployments per year in the U.S. may now top 60,000, or more than 160 per day. SWAT teams have been used to break up neighborhood poker games, sent into bars and fraternities suspected of allowing underage drinking, and even to enforce alcohol and occupational licensing regulations. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed. Never mind the collateral damage! Earlier this year, the Department of Education even sent its SWAT team to the home of someone suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program. In so doing, the inability to repay one's student loan has now become criminalized. This is why we are occupying and will continue to occupy America. Being poor and broke is not a crime. We the American people will not stand idly by while poverty becomes criminalized. Enough is enough!

Class warfare has been declared upon us all by the top 1%, and the main assault against the remainder of us has already commenced. Starting with the Occupy Movement in September 2011, and the 'We Are the 99%' Movement at about the same time, the counterattack by the 99% against the elitist 1% has begun in earnest. In so doing, although a second American Civil War has been started by the wealthy elitists, it is we the people – the 99% – who comprise the overwhelming majority of America, and it is we who will finish it. In fact, this counterattack has already begun, it's just that it wasn't that apparent at first. It wasn't supposed to be. In the next chapter I will shed as much light as I can on how this is occurring, and highlight a few methods about how this can be accomplished in as peaceful a manner as possible.

America Isn't Done Yet -- Not By a Long Shot!

America Reinvented, Mankind Revived

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

(excerpt from chapter 8 of my book, "Occupying America: We shall Overcome")

Old-style authoritarianism and hierarchical management have worked well throughout history because of restrictive educational methods that taught the masses how to be workers, while teaching leadership skills to only an elite few. But by the present-day early 21^st century, computer technology plus the Internet and other modern scientific advancements have both equalized and greatly accelerated educational opportunities, while evaporating 19^th and 20^th century racial and economic barriers. Internet-based distribution of educational resources will make re-education throughout one’s life a fundamental right – as it should be – instead of the luxury it is now.

Contrast the industrial revolution with the early 21^st century, where vast quantities of data and information that were formerly only available to the best educated are now available to everyone instantaneously and equally, and at nominal cost. I believe that the ultimate outcome from virtual education in the workplace of the 21^st century will be that every worker will have virtual management capability with direct participation in overall enterprise operation, and with unconditional equality. However, unconditional equality must be pursued as a genuine reform that is both the law of the land plus mandatory primary and secondary school curriculum in order to succeed. Otherwise equality becomes little more than an abstract concept of philosophical debate, being part of our world yet outside of the mainstream of life. Because, with social equality comes economic equality, and that is the part that the well off (not to mention dictators and racist hate-mongers) have a big problem with. The rich and powerful, who have twisted around the original reasons for the existence of capitalism to fit their own financial objectives, are unwilling to give up the unfair advantage they have taken from the rest of us working Americans. It appears that we will have to take back our equality through mass civil unrest, economic boycotts and other related protests and disruptions by any means at our disposal if the economic playing field is to be leveled in 21^st century America. Power, a famous man once said, is never relinquished voluntarily – it must be taken by force.

Furthermore, traditional authority has lost its credibility because so much breach of trust on the part of established authority exists in America today. The backlash from all of this fraud and breach of trust among our leaders will be that, in place of traditional authority, small groups of multitasking worker-managers will replace large and inefficient public corporations with a lateral authority of peers connected via the Internet. Most modern companies will have to give traditional manager-worker relationships an extreme makeover as they permanently eliminate many layers of government bureaucracy and corporate management while making American business far leaner and much more agile in the new 21^st century global business environment.

Only by slashing entire layers of management within companies and governments, and then replacing it with an Internet-based virtual command structure where every employee takes the initiative and has an equal part – including employee ownership – can American businesses survive the 21^st century. Instead of waiting for orders from on high in a 20^th century style bureaucratic workplace, workers in America’s new virtual economy would work from home or from small businesses, organizing themselves on their own initiative into specialized teams or micro-businesses that will be connected through the world wide web. Modern American workers will decide collectively rather than bureaucratically how any given company is going to be managed, with authority and administration being delegated laterally in a team environment so that every employee or contractor can have equal access and mutual input.

Organized civil disobedience to further the cause of and to re-establish the American middle and working classes can be initiated by setting up a web-based “virtual management” business and government model that competes with (or maybe even runs in spite of) the present hierarchical brick-and-mortar governmental and management structure. Okay, so how do we disrupt the wealthy power establishment’s bureaucratic chain of command with one that is omni-dimensional? From my vantage point, this should be accomplished with a group or team command structure that distributes instructions laterally and equally to a group of peers via the Internet and social media, satisfying the needs of citizens and clients by giving governments and companies infinite flexibility while remaining lean and profitable. So very lean, in fact, that the era of big blue-chip corporations, not to mention colossal bureaucratic governments, is likely at its end. In its place, the golden age of multitudes of small e-businesses organized as a honeycomb of many interconnected virtual cottage industries is already well underway, as the growth history of the Internet and e-commerce continues to prove. The days of authoritarian, bureaucratic bullying that enforces the management of populations through mass manipulation and control is finally and mercifully coming to an end. Virtual management does away with often-abusive and unnecessary authoritarian enforcement by replacing it with an Internet-based management model that equalizes opportunity by equalizing access to employment, to education, to health care and to the management process.

Besides learning new and better ways of management, allocation and sharing of resources, and decentralization, we will also need to completely rethink our educational systems from pre-K to post-graduate. Instead of our children being coerced into thinking and acting similarly as is currently the case in America’s schools, I envision an Internet-based educational system of infinite dimensions. Let new virtual courses be made available free of charge that teach clean-burning energy generation technologies, as well as new communication, robotic and computer technologies. These and other complex courses should be made available even at the elementary school level, including computer-based courses in environmental conservation and reconstruction as well as the new vocational trades of the 21^st century. I think we very much need to expose our children to a space-based curriculum, including such things as new aerospace technologies, new propulsion systems, new robotic technologies and other new ways to explore the universe. Understand that the colonization of space is mankind’s new frontier, and so the United States should be a world leader by becoming the world’s teacher regarding space-based education and technology.

Liberal education being equally and unconditionally available to everyone causes all citizens to become peers and equals, with little or no social distinction between incomes, classes and occupations. Formal or vocational education that becomes equally available to all without cost via the Internet eliminates social, class and economic barriers that have existed for centuries. Unconditional social and economic equality in the 21^st century includes the death of hierarchy and bureaucracy as we have known them, with the added benefit of putting the final nail in the coffin of dictatorship. With every US citizen being able to obtain advanced education repeatedly and at will regardless of economic status, the need for close employee supervision and for tiered company management within large bureaucracies will fade into history.

How do we eliminate class disparity and racial, social and economic inequality? What new weapon can the USA forge against foreign competition for American jobs, for the manufacturing of American products here at home, and to correct the current and dangerous American foreign trade deficit? How can we give working Americans better opportunities for advancement while closing the gap between the wealthy and the less fortunate? By having equal access to Internet-based education for every citizen for their entire lifetime regardless of race or color, social or economic status, gender, religion, age, disability, marital status or sexual orientation, and all without having to leave home – that’s how! I am advocating no less than every American citizen having lifetime access to a free web-based public education system, with a curriculum that can be changed instantly in order to stay abreast of market changes, and that does away with transportation issues. Equally accessible education for an entire lifetime not only restores the global US leadership position in quality education, it will make American workers more skilled than any others by allowing us all the chance to obtain multiple degrees, diplomas or professional certifications over a lifetime. Although we Americans can never work as cheaply as workers in Asian or Latin-American sweatshops, American workers and managers can and should harness the power of the Internet in such a way as to be so much better educated compared to those overseas that it will cause US business leaders to think twice about outsourcing and off-shoring American jobs or closing American factories.

A flexible, scalable Internet-based curriculum that can be accessed from any world-wide-web connection without cost, and that can be edited on-the-fly by any publisher so as to keep up with market changes and scientific advancements, has advantages that 20^th-century-style paper textbooks cannot begin to compete with. Having an adult population that can quickly reeducate itself at will in any subject combined with a web-based, interactive educational system that grades our kids on the same grade-point-average system that colleges use, will guarantee that the entire US public school system will regain its top ranking as the educational standard bearer of the entire planet. If Americans want to stop the outsourcing of our careers overseas, we can best accomplish this with a lifelong educational system that boasts a curriculum that can be changed as fast or faster than any market condition or any competitor’s strategy anytime, anywhere. It is from this all-new flexible, scalable and virtual educational system that tomorrow’s space conquerors and medical miracle makers will come from.

The real truth is that the needs of America’s job market are changing so rapidly that a system of continuous Internet-based education for America’s entire work force and their children, one whose curriculum can be edited at will and one that can be accessed from home or work, will be essential to maintaining and enhancing the standard of living for 21^st century Americans. Going to college and getting a four year degree doesn’t work like it used to, mainly because the vocation that one may be training oneself to perform may be off-shored or right-sized to the third world for only pennies per hour within four years or less from today. On the other hand, various accredited courses dedicated to relatively short-term Internet-based vocational education where American workers and their children can get a new degree, diploma or professional certification in only months instead of years will be far more useful than the antiquated educational system that we are all currently stuck with. Workers and managers both need to have an ongoing and continuous national education system available to them at will and without cost so that they may compete on a global scale for jobs in the global economy of the 21^st century.

So now it's time to put all this together. If we truly want to renew our country and improve American society, we are going to have to start with the way we are being educated. What direction should 21^st century education take? If we're going to teach our kids what they will need to know when they grow up, then teach them about how we can explore outer space. That's the new frontier, and that's where mankind's future lies. The time has come to renew and reinvigorate our country’s space program, and to directly link this space program renewal to all public and private education. When I think of the Apollo missions of the 1960’s and 1970’s, I think first of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, and of those dozen other astronauts who came after him, all of whom positively inspired generations. Technologies previously unheard of were developed that will continue to benefit mankind into the foreseeable future. Tens of thousands of high-quality jobs were created by the moon missions and more recently by the space shuttle missions. A new, vigorous manned space program may be very expensive, but it would create well over 300,000 new white-collar jobs, plus at least 300,000 more blue-collar and contract employment opportunities. Doing without one will be infinitely more expensive. After all, how does one calculate lost potential? Look around and you will notice we are drifting as a nation. What are we doing that is clearly impressive? We fight wars that stimulate massive transfers of wealth to tiny minorities of people via conquest, downsizing, outsourcing and right-sizing. We waste time in moronic meetings that produce nothing. I think it is high freakin’ time that we start producing again, how about you? A new space initiative will ultimately turn the weak jobs recovery of 2012 and the threat of another economic recession into something far more tangible and robust. If we are going to have meetings, then we will meet to discuss a new plan on how to build mankind’s first colony on the moon, a colony that will be the jumping-off point for exploring the solar system. Our great nation is surely capable of such an accomplishment, we urgently need this and other related new space industries, and space-based education is what our children must learn in order to secure the future of all mankind.

People are complaining that America lacks jobs. Part of the reason is that so many middle class jobs were outsourced overseas over the last 10 to 20 years. But we have within ourselves the power to turn this situation around by creating new and better ones. Space travel, exploration, and tourism are the new growth industries of the 21^st century. According to space.com, we will go from several space shuttle flights each year over the last ten years to several orbital launches per day by the end of this decade. We will need space ship builders, people to service and maintain them, and people to fly them. Lots of them – so many, in fact, that there will be hundreds of thousands employed by this shiny, new American industry, and America will continue to be the technology leader so long as we apply ourselves in our vocations, exercising all due diligence, to maintain our position of leadership.

Where will all these new astronauts come from? If we start teaching this to our kids now, they'll be ready by the time they grow up, and the technology will be ready for them as well. The international space station currently in orbit above the earth will have to be replaced sometime after the year 2020. As I wrote earlier, we will have the option of putting the next generation space station into earth orbit, or to build a permanent one on the moon. The time to start training people is now. Plus there's all the other new industries I mentioned earlier in this chapter – such as robotics and clean energy generation – and others I have not, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, stem cell research, and the ongoing advances in computer science and medicine. All together, it's going to be a brave new world whether we are all ready for it or not, because it's already arriving.

Reject materialism and vanity. Embrace peace and tranquil coexistence among us all. Reject excessive profit and the social imbalance it creates. Let's beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Let's melt down all the guns and make metal housing units for the homeless. Feed the hungry children, house the homeless, be a volunteer. Together we can all make the world a better place.

Natural Disasters Have a Silver Lining

How Disasters Can Strengthen Your Faith

By now everyone knows about the disastrous mega-storm named Sandy and its aftermath. This has been without a doubt the worst natural disaster since the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan earlier this year. We were luckier than the Japanese since the US death toll stands at just over 100 individuals compared to tens of thousands in the Japan disaster, but the damage has been at least twice as much as Japan's. With a tidal wave of insurance claims by Japanese home owners and business owners exceeding $100 billion in US dollars, the triple disasters of an earthquake, a tsunami and what we now know was a meltdown of 3 nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan are the worst Japanese disaster since World War Two. However, hurricane Sandy's damage will easily cost 3-5 times as much.

Earlier this year we had a series of tornadoes sweep across the mid-western and southern US from Alabama and Georgia all the way up to Ohio and Indiana, claiming 31 lives and causing many millions of dollars in damages. During times like these many wonder why God allows such disasters to occur. It seems to those who lack any faith that if God were the all-loving and all-powerful God that He is, that such disasters would never happen in the first place. I completely disagree with this idea, which from my vantage point is based on insufficient or incorrect teaching and misguided or dumbed-down secular education. God takes us through hard times and allows us to go through all kinds of trials and hardship – even persecution within supposedly “Christian” churches such as I have previously experienced – to build and strengthen our character and our minds, and to teach us resolve and fortitude. St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that “persecution builds character, and strong character builds hope, and hope builds patience.” So, to go through hardship is to be in growth and to engage in personal enrichment. That is why, in times like these, many people find comfort in their faith.

Whenever disasters like this occur, I go back to the Bible to the First Book of Kings. Elijah, in despair over the situation in Israel, runs to the desert and back to Mt. Sinai to find the God of the Revelation to Moses. "And lo, the Lord God passed by. There was a mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. There was an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake." To me, that is the key: the Lord was not in the earthquake in Japan. He wasn't in Hurricane Sandy's mighty winds either, although it is easy to see why many would disagree. Natural disasters are usually acts of nature, not acts of God, although the Bible does list a fair number of exceptions. But God cares about the eternal well-being of all people while mother nature is blind and an equal-opportunity destroyer. Where and when is God present in the hardest hit areas of the US mid-Atlantic and New England region today? Where is God in the leftover environmental and collateral damage of Fukushima? Where was He in last Spring's tornadoes in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia?

He is present in the courage and resolve of people to carry on their lives after these tragedies, and in the resilience of those whose lives have been destroyed who vow to rebuild, whose loved ones have been swept away and whose homes were destroyed. God is present in the goodness, kindness and generosity from people all over the world who reach out and help strangers who live far from them, to contribute aid and to pray for them (a lot!). How can people do such things if God were not at work in them to lend a counterweight to the impact of a natural disaster? He is present in the human empathy and compassion of the thousands of volunteers who are helping with the cleanup in the greater New York area alone, not counting all the other places from Maine down to North Carolina where selfless people working without any expectation of compensation are currently laboring to help these most unfortunate people, the majority of whom are in dire straits.

For believers and non-believers alike there is no satisfactory answer for why we suffer. Each person has to come to grips with that fact of life in their own way. It’s not as if some magic answer can be found within humanity. But the idea of God suffering along with us while possessing unfathomable sympathy and endless love for us all can be very helpful to say the least. Christians like myself believe that God became human in the form of Jesus Christ, who suffered unimaginably extreme pain and then died on the cross, only to rise from the dead on the morning of the third day. At the moment of death, Jesus on the cross cried, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” Christians do not worship an aloof and impersonal God, but a God who understands what it means to suffer. People can relate more easily to a God who understands them, and whose suffering 2 thousand years ago on the cross makes the suffering from any natural disaster seem like child's play.

Where is God right now? God is right there in the midst of people who are grieving and sorrowful. In my own life, when I have felt great sorrow I have trusted that God is with me in this and that I’m not facing my struggles alone. Oftentimes people become much closer to Jesus in times of sorrow or tragedy. They find that they are able to meet Him in new ways. Why? Because when our defenses are down and we’re more vulnerable, God can open up our hearts more easily. It’s not that God gets closer to us, it’s that we become more open so that we are drawn closer to him.

These natural disasters have become the collective responsibility of all mankind to mobilize our compassion and resources to ease the pain of the people who have suffered. These disasters are not the result of any sins of those who were victims, although there are those who disagree. I don't care to address that issue, but I want to be clear that none of these victims “deserved” these disasters because of anything they said or did. Rather, I see these kinds of tragedies as a test from God. I firmly believe that God tests those He loves, and these tragedies also serve as a reminder to the rest of us to remain grateful to God for all our blessings and be cognizant of the fact that we have a moral obligation to support those in need. These kinds of calamities should (hopefully) motivate us to act in positive ways. They should strengthen our faith in God and in his goodness, particularly when we see evidence of Him in the rebuilding efforts that are already underway, not to mention all the volunteers and donations that are pouring in. We attribute the things we don’t understand to his limitless wisdom and comfort ourselves that He is with us and He loves us, so there must be some meaning in what has happened, even if it is beyond our comprehension here at this time.

We are trained by life and by our faith in Christ that every suffering, whether big or small, brings us closer to God’s love, his mercy and forgiveness, to the extent that Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”. So you can clearly see that those who are the most dispirited by these natural disasters and related misfortune will always wind up being the most blessed because of it. That's how God works. These times of suffering give us an opportunity to demonstrate our generosity, patience and faith and therefore become closer to God. Every natural disaster we experience challenges us as God’s trustees on this Earth, showing us that we should continue to study and explore ways of safeguarding humankind from being subjected to this kind of devastation. It is the collective duty of all humankind to put resources into this and advance our understanding of how to respond to these disasters in a scientific way while constantly maintaining our Spiritual connections with Christ.

As we contemplate the great number of people who have suffered and died in these tragedies, we may feel very strongly that a part of ourselves has also died due to our family ties and interconnectedness. The pain of one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind for all who worship Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe. The human species and the planet Earth are one body comprising one living environment. What happens to one part of humanity happens to the whole of humanity. Events such as these remind us of the temporary nature of our lives. It helps us remember that what’s most important is to love God first and then to love each other, to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive. This is the best that we can do for those who have died. We can live in such a way that they are continuing to live in us but more mindfully, more profoundly, more beautifully, savoring every minute of life available to us on their behalf as well as our own. Anyone claiming to be a Christian, but who is unaffected by or laughs at the misfortune of others, is as phony as a $3.00 bill, and deep down inside they know it too. We don't have much time left. The second coming of Christ is likely imminent. When He returns, the first thing we will be asked has nothing to do with religious beliefs of any faith. Jesus will first ask us, “What did you do for others, and how did you go about it?”. We will all be commanded to give an account of ourselves, how we lived our lives, and particularly how we treated others. Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”, and that is perfectly applicable to natural disasters and how well we serve those victims.

I don’t believe God wanted any of these disasters to happen. I don’t think this was ever God’s intention at all. We know that there are going to be storms in life, and anyone believing otherwise is only fooling themselves. No matter what happens we need to keep our faith and trust in almighty God. And I want the people of Japan, the United States and all the rest of the world to know that God hasn’t forgotten them, that God does care for them and that He most definitely loves them. We care and God cares, and we’re standing by you all. And we will use these experiences to practice that which strengthens us most, which is human compassion and empathy. As the human population continues to grow throughout most of the world, it is our responsibility as believers in Jesus to begin making sure that there is enough to go around for everybody if we share our natural and human resources wisely. Taking care of disaster victims, or donating whatever one can spare if they are unable to be there in person, is a very good place to start.