ONSTORIE?

MEER VRYHEID VAN MENINGSUITING GEE MY...MÉÉR EN MÉÉR...*

*http://mierleeu.blogspot.be/2015/01/dit-is-nou-vryheid-van-meningsuiting.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11399986/Vicar-who-blamed-Israel-for-911-attacks-is-banned-from-writing-about-the-Middle-East.html

Church bans 9/11 Israel conspiracy priest from using social media

The Rev Stephen Sizer banned by Church from using social media or any campaigning on Middle East after sharing 'clearly anti-Semitic' material

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

1:37PM GMT 09 Feb 2015

A vicar who promoted conspiracy theories that Israel was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks on the internet has been banned from speaking, writing, tweeting or blogging on the Middle East by the Church of England.

The Rev Dr Stephen Sizer has also agreed a complete prohibition on using any social media for at least six months. It is believed to be the first ban of its kind issued by the church.

But Dr Sizer will be able to remain as priest in charge of his Christ Church parish in affluent Virginia Water, Surrey, and there are no current plans to defrock him.

The ruling by the new Bishop of Guildford, the Right Reverend Andrew Watson, imposes one of the most sweeping sets of restrictions ever placed on a serving Church of England cleric.

It follows a complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews 10 days ago after Dr Sizer posted a link on his Facebook page to an article entitled “9/11 Israel did it” adding the comment that it “raises so many questions.”

The Board said the posting, just after Holocaust Memorial Day, promoted material which was “unquestionably anti-Semitic” and the Church of England voiced “sorrow and shame” at what he had done.

Dr Sizer, who has a long history of disputes with Jewish community leaders over blog postings and other online activities voicing his strident views on Israel and Zionism.

Last year he infuriated Jewish community leaders by taking part in a conference in Iran which was dubbed an “anti-Semitic hate-fest”.

In 2013 the cleric reached a mediated deal with the Board of Deputies in which agreed to moderate the tone and nature of postings and links on his blog on the subject of Israel and Palestine.

Although Dr Sizer removed the posting after complaints, he initially continued to defend it insisting that he was “encouraging debate” about “serious allegations” – insisting that he could not be sure Israel was not behind the 2001 atrocities in the US.

Speaking from Uganda, where he was travelling at the time, he accused the Board of Deputies of “harassment” and said they had seized on “one little link” in order to “discredit” him.

But just over 24 hours later, by which time he was back in the UK, he issued an apology through the Diocese of Guildford.

Now, under special measures agreed by Bishop Watson, he has signed an agreement to refrain from any public discussion on the Middle East and stay off Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Bishop Watson said Dr Sizer's "strong but increasingly undisciplined anti-Zionist agenda" had become a "liability".

He said that even other Christians who support the Palestinian cause found his strident stance counterproductive.

"Having now met Stephen, in my brand new role as Bishop of Guildford, I do not believe that his motives were antisemitic," he said.

"But I have concluded that, at the very least, he has demonstrated appallingly poor judgment on the material he has chosen to disseminate, particularly via social media, some of which is clearly antisemitic."

The move has been welcomed by the Board of Deputies.

Bishop Watson said it was theoretically still open to someone to trigger formal steps under the Church's disciplinary procedures against Dr Sizer but that the path taken was likely to be much more quick and effective.

"It seemed the right way to go forward," he said.

"We could have gone down a legal, Clergy Discipline Measure route - if we had done that the outcome would have been, actually less certain and it would also have taken a very long time.

"It is my judgment that particularly in the context of the alarming rise of antisemitic crime within our country that it was important for me to be able to hold a press conference quite quickly like this rather than for months and months to have to stand behind [saying] 'I can't comment until the legal process has worked its way through.

"If he is not repentant, if he continues working in this way I've made it very clear that he will go."

Jonathan Arkush, vice president of the Board of Deputies, said: "The Board of Deputies referred these matters regarding Rev Sizer to the Diocese of Guildford who have acted swiftly to resolve them.

"The Board has expressed its full acknowledgment of the undertakings asked of Rev Sizer and their implications and we are grateful that the Church shared our deep concern that Rev Sizer had indeed crossed a line in the offensive materials he was posting and linking to online.

"The Board of Deputies now hopes that Rev Sizer's unbecoming and inappropriate conduct has now been brought to a close. The Board together with the Diocese of Guildford and the Church of England strongly believe that good community relations are based on mutual respect and trust, which we now hope can be restored after this very unhappy episode."

S.A.B.*

*Suiwer Amerikaanse Bedrog

US Television Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims

By Glenn Greenwald 

December 16, 2014 "ICH" - "The Intercept" - Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.

Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization. That, in turn, is what enables American elites first to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that - despite some isolated and well-intentioned bad acts – they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.” Not having to think about actual human victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime.

That’s the process by which the reliably repellent Tom Friedman seized on the torture report to celebrate America’s unique greatness. “We are a beacon of opportunity and freedom, and also [] these foreigners know in their bones that we do things differently from other big powers in history,” the beloved-by-DC columnist wrote after reading about forced rectal feeding and freezing detainees to death. For the opinion-making class, even America’s savage torture is proof of its superiority and inherent Goodness: “this act of self-examination is not only what keeps our society as a whole healthy, it’s what keeps us a model that others want to emulate, partner with and immigrate to.” Friedman, who himself unleashed one of the most (literally) psychotic defenses of the Iraq War, ended his torture discussion by approvingly quoting John McCain on America’s enduring moral superiority: “Even in the worst of times, ‘we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.’”

This self-glorifying ritual can be sustained only by completely suppressing America’s victims. If you don’t hear from the human beings who are tortured, it’s easy to pretend nothing truly terrible happened. That’s how the War on Terror generally has been “reported” for 13 years and counting: by completely silencing those whose lives are destroyed or ended by U.S. crimes. That’s how the illusion gets sustained.

Thus, we sometimes hear about drones (usually to celebrate the Great Kills) but almost never hear from their victims: the surviving family members of innocents whom the U.S. kills or those forced to live under the traumatizing regime of permanently circling death robots. We periodically hear about the vile regimes the U.S. props up for decades, but almost never from the dissidents and activists imprisoned, tortured and killed by those allied tyrants. Most Americans have heard the words “rendition” and “Guantanamo” but could not name a single person victimized by them, let alone recount what happened to them, because they almost never appear on American television.

It would be incredibly easy, and incredibly effective, for U.S. television outlets to interview America’s torture victims. There is certainly no shortage of them. Groups such as the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights,Reprieve, and CAGE UK represent many of them. Many are incredibly smart and eloquent, and have spent years contemplating what happened to them and navigating the aftermath on their lives.

I’ve written previously about the transformative experience of meeting and hearing directly from the victims of the abuses by your own government. That human interaction converts an injustice from an abstraction into a deeply felt rage and disgust. That’s precisely why the U.S. media doesn’t air those stories directly from the victims themselves: because it would make it impossible to maintain the pleasing fairy tales about “who we really are.”

When I was in Canada in October, I met Maher Arar (pictured above) for the second time, went to his home, had breakfast with his wife (also pictured above) and two children. In 2002, Maher, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who worked as an engineer, was traveling back home to Ottawa when he was abducted by the U.S. Government at JFK Airport, held incommunicado and interrogated for weeks, then “rendered” to Syria where the U.S. arranged to have him brutally tortured by Assad’s regime. He was kept in a coffin-like cell for 10 months and savagely tortured until even his Syrian captors were convinced that he was completely innocent. He was then uncermoniously released back to his life in Canada as though nothing had happened.

When he sued the U.S. government, subservient U.S. courts refused even to hear his case, accepting the Obama DOJ’s claim that it was too secret to safely adjudicate. The Canadian government released the findings of its investigation, publicly apologized for its role, and paid him $9 million. He used some of the money to start a political newspaper, which has since closed. He became an eloquent opponent of both the U.S. War on Terror and the Assad regime which tortured him as part of it.

But all you have to do is spend five minutes talking to him to see that he has never really recovered from being snatched from his own life and savagely tortured at the behest of the U.S. Government that still holds itself out as the Leader of the Free World. Part of him is still back in the torture chamber in Syria, and likely always will be.

Nobody could listen to Maher Arar speak and feel anything but disgust and outrage toward the U.S. Government – not just the Bush administration which kidnapped him and sent him to be tortured, but the Obama administration which protected them and blocked him from receiving justice, and the American media that turned a blind eye toward it, and the majority of the American public that supports this. But that’s exactly why we don’t hear from him: he isn’t on CNN or Meet the Press or Morning Joe to make clear what Michael Hayden and John Yoo really did and what the U.S. government under a Democratic president continues to shield.

There are hundreds if not thousands of Maher Arars the U.S. media could easily and powerfully interview. McClatchy this week detailed the story of Khalid al Masri, a German citizen whom the U.S. Government abducted in Macedonia, tortured, and then dumped on a road when they decided he wasn’t guilty of anything (US courts also refused to hear his case on secrecy grounds). The detainees held without charges, tortured, and then unceremoniously released from Guantanamo and Bagram are rarely if ever heard from on U.S. television, even when the U.S. Government is forced to admit that they were guilty of nothing.

This is not to say that merely putting these victims on television would fundamentally change how these issues are perceived. Many Americans would look at the largely non-white and foreign faces recounting their abuses, or take note of their demonized religion and ethnicity, and react for that reason with indifference or even support for what was done to them.

And one could easily imagine such interviews quickly degenerating into a blame-the-victim spectacle. When Fareed Zakaria this week interviewed former Guantanamo detainee (and current detainee rights advocate) Moazzem Begg, Zakaria demanded that Begg condemn ISIS even though Begg kept explaining that he was “abused cruelly, inhumanely and degradingly” by the U.S. Government, that “pictures of my children are waved in front of me while I’m being beaten and tortured and abused by people who claimed to be the bastions of freedom and democracy and human rights,” and that “whatever the situation was, the Taliban and the ISIS, they didn’t torture me. They didn’t put me into dungeons. They didn’t beat me. They didn’t threaten to, you know, abuse my family. They didn’t do that to me. So I can only talk to my experience.”

What this glaring omission in coverage does more than anything else is conclusively expose the utter fraud of the U.S. media’s claims to “objectivity” and “neutrality.” Outlets like The Washington Post and NPR still justify their refusal to call these torture tactics “torture” by invoking precepts of “neutrality”: we have to show all views, we can’t take sides, etc.

But that’s pure deceit. They don’t show all sides. They systematically and quite deliberately exclude the victims of the very policies of the U.S. Government they pretend to cover. And they do that because including those victims would be too informative, would provide too much information, would be too enlightening. It would, for many people, shatter the myths of American Goodness and the conceit that even when Americans do heinous things, they do it with Goodness and Freedom in their hearts, with a guaranteed and permanent status as superior. At the very least, it would make it impossible for many people to deny to themselves the utter savagery and sadism carried out in their names.

Keeping those victims silenced and invisible is the biggest favor the U.S. television media could do for the government over which they claim to act as watchdogs. So that’s what they do: dutifully, eagerly and with very rare exception.

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com

GRIEKSE DEMOKRASIE WAS NOG ALTYD 'N TRAGEDIE EN 'N ILLUSIE

Is Democracy Dead In The West?

By Paul Craig Roberts

January 29, 2015 "ICH" -  We will find out the answer to the question posed in the title in the outcome of the contest between the new Greek government, formed by the political party Syriza, and the ECB and the private banks, with whose interests the EU and Washington align against Greece.

The Spartans, whose red cloaks and military prowess struck fear into the hearts of both foreign invaders and Greek opponents in the city-states, are no more. Athens itself is a ruin of its historical self. The Greeks, who were once to be contended with, who were able with 300 Spartans, supplemented with a few thousand Corinthians, Thebans, and other warriors, to stop a one hundred thousand man Persian army at Thermopylae, with the final outcome being the defeat of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Salamis and the defeat of the Persian army in the Battle of Plataea, are no more.

The Greeks of history have become a people of legend. Not even the Romans were able to conquer Persia, but little more than a handful of Greeks stopped the attempted Persian conquest of Greece.

But the Greeks, despite their glorious history, could not stop their conquest by the EU and a handful of German and Dutch banks. If the Greece of history still existed, the EU and the private banks would be cowering in fear, because the EU and the private banks have ruthlessly exploited the Greek people and represent the same threat to Greek sovereignty as Persia did.

Greece, stripped of its independence by its EU membership and acceptance of the euro as its currency, has lost is sovereignty. Without control over its own money, Greece cannot finance itself. Greece must rely on private banks from other countries. In the 21st century European private banks are not allowed to lose money simply because they are incompetent and over-lent to EU member countries. This is not considered to be the fault of the banks, but of the borrower governments and populations.

According to reports, the American bankster firm, Goldman Sachs, sometimes known as Gold Sacks, hid Greek debt from view in order that banks would extend more credit to Greece, thus setting the Greek people up for looting.

The EU’s disingenuous argument is that this bankster trickery benefitted the Greek people. The people enjoyed the resources from these loans. Therefore, the Greek people must pay back the loans through reductions in old age pensions, through unemployment, through lower wages, and through the sale of Greek national assets.

This is the austerity that has been imposed on ordinary Greek people by the EU and Greece’s creditors.

Greece is prostrate. Greeks are actually committing suicide, because Greeks cannot provide for themselves in the depressed conditions that the EU and the private banks have created for them for no other reason than that the private banks must not have to write down the loans.

So, one result from “democracy” in Greece is suicide. With enough democracy, we can control world population and halt the destruction of nature’s capital. All we have to do is to enable the banksters to loot the entire world.

What can Syriza do?

Without Spartans, very little.

The party’s intentions and that of its leaders are honest and deserve our respect. Syriza is a people’s party, and that is what marks it for doom. The voice of the people is no longer permitted to affect politics in the Western world. The powerful rich interest groups that rule the West could not care less about the people over whom they rule.

No sooner was Syriza in office than Bloomberg, a business news service, conveyed to the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, that Syriza needs to play by the creditors’ rules.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-28/tsipras-plans-to-avert-catastrophe-as-greek-markets-sink-further

Tsipras stated that the new Greek government does not intend a “catastrophic clash” with its creditors, only an acceptable amelioration of the unreasonable conditions imposed on Greece, in order that Greece can give some satisfaction to its private bank creditors and also avoid social, political and economic instability in Greece.

Against this reasonable statement, Bloomberg reports that the new Greek cabinet contains communists who favor closer ties with Russia. To remind the newly elected Greek government of the whip that is held over Greek financial markets, Greek bond and stock prices were assaulted and driven down.

The warning from the EU and Wall Street is clear: Defy us and we will destroy you.

The punishment of the new Greek government was instant.

 This from Bloomberg:

“Greek stocks and bonds slumped for a third day, after new ministers said they will cease the sale of some state assets and increase the minimum wage. Yields on three-year bonds rose 2.66 percentage points to 16.69 percent. The benchmark Athens General Index decreased 9.2 percent to its lowest level since 2012, led by a collapse in the value of banks.”

Does Tsipras understand that Greek financial institutions will continue to be punished if they stand behind his government? Bloomberg makes it clear: “Germany warned the Mediterranean nation against abandoning prior agreements on aid, after analysts said that setting Greece on a collision course with its European peers might lead to its exit from the euro region.”

Statements of newly appointed ministers “imply confrontation and tense negotiations in the near future,” Vangelis Karanikas, head of research at Athens-based Euroxx Securities, wrote in a note to clients.”

What is Syriza’s “collision course”? The new government wants to moderate the agreements made by previous Greek governments that sold out the Greek people. The new government wants to stop giving away at bargain prices Greek public assets to clients of its creditors, and the new Greek government wants to raise the Greek minimum wage so that the Greek people have enough bread and water on which to live.

However, for the private bank creditors, for Merkel’s Germany that stands behind the banks, for Washington which could care less about the Greeks, for the Greek elites who see themselves as “part of Europe,” Syriza is something to be rid of.

And so the Greek bonds are attacked, the Greek stocks are attacked, threats are issued that arouse fear in that part of the Greek population that is propagandized into the belief that Greece must be part of the euro and the EU or be bypassed by history.

What it boils down to is that the Greek people, like the Americans, are insouciant. Only about 37% of the voters voted for Syriza. That is far more votes than any rival party received, but it is not enough to show Washington, the EU and creditors that Greeks stand behind their government.

Instead it shows that the new party had to form a government with another party that money, perhaps, can buy off. It shows that Syriza can be demonized in the Western media and presented to the Greek public as a threat to Greece.

The new government is aware of its weakness. The new prime minister says that he does not want confrontation, but that the new government cannot continue the kowtowing of previous Greek governments. A reasonable accommodation must be reached.

Accommodation is unlikely to occur, because a reasonable accommodation is not the desire of Washington, the EU, or of Greece’s creditors.

A purpose of the “Greek financial crisis” is to establish that EU members are not sovereign countries and that banks that lend to these non-sovereign entities are not responsible for any losses with regard to the loans. The population of the indebted countries are the responsible parties. And these populations must accept the reduction of their living standards in order to ensure that the banks do not lose any money.

This is the “New Democracy.” It is a resurrection of the old feudal order. A few super-rich aristocrats and everyone else serfs obliged to support the ruling order. The looting that began in Greece has spread into Ukraine, and who knows who is next?

With only 37% of the vote, does Syriza have the clout to stand up for Greece against the looters?

Can Greece escape from a situation comparable to the European Dark Ages when populations were ravaged by marauding raiders? Perhaps if Greece realigns with Russia and gains financing from BRICS.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

ILLUSIES MOET VERDRYF WORD

Greece, London, Scotland and Europe

by craig on January 26, 2015 in Uncategorized

The entire purpose of this blog is to ask you to think outside the box. It therefore cuts across the lines of dogma of any group, and is formed purely by my own independent thought. As I have frequently stated, if anybody agrees with every point I make, something is wrong.

This is going to annoy both left on Greece and right on banks, and my own party on the SNP and Labour. Here goes.

The citizens of the United Kingdom gave 45,000 pounds each, every man woman and child of them, direct to the bankers in bailouts. We will be paying off that money in taxes – with vast sums in interest to the same bankers, from whom we borrowed virtual money they did not have, to give to them as real money – for generations to come. Quantitive easing gives yet more money to the bankers, cash in place of risky bonds they wish to dump.

When you add it all together including interest, every man, woman and child in the UK will pay over 100,000 pounds each to the bankers, to bail out the bankers from the mess their own extreme greed had created. Indeed it is possible to argue rationally that the payment will be infinite, as the debt incurred will never be repaid but continually rolled over, and interest payments continue.

We did not have to do this. We could have let the bad banks go bust, started new ones, and boosted the economy by spending just 20% of the money we have given the banks on crucially needed public infrastructure works – railways, renewable energy, housing, insulation, hospitals, schools etc. But Gordon Brown and New Labour decided just to give money to the bankers instead.

In Greece, the people have actually given much less to the bankers for bailout than people in the UK. It is important to acknowledge that the causes of the Greek financial collapse are different. Greece was rather a recipient of bad lending, a country which received loans it could not possibly afford. Due to corrupt networks of elite collusion embracing both government and private sector, much of this money was simply siphoned out of the country into overseas accounts in London and Cyprus. The British people are suffering from the banking collapse through being forced to bail out the bankers. Greece is more in the position of somebody in a huge house who could not afford the mortgage – except for the vital distinction that all the people in Greece were paying the mortgage, but the large majority living in sheds behind the mansion.

I welcome Syriza’s victory as an indication that people are not content just to accept the narrative given them by the mainstream media and the parties in the pocket of corporations. I hope that they negotiate hard and force the banks to take a huge haircut on Greek sovereign debt. I acknowledge their commitment to social justice. But I do hope they will be realistic with both themselves and their people on the amount of blood, sweat and tears that is going to need to go in to building a productive Greek economy. An example of Keynesian stimulus is much needed by the rest of Europe.

Gordon Brown’s bank bailout was probably the biggest single gift any politician has ever given his corporate masters in the entire history of the world. It is worth reminding ourselves just how very right wing the Red Tories are. Not to mention the fact their front bench remains littered with war criminals. I therefore have grave reservations about Nicola Sturgeon’s weekend interview indication that the People of Scotland want a Labour Government with SNP support. I don’t. I am not going to elect somebody to represent me as chief bag carrier to a war criminal.

The SNP leadership remain infected by managerialism. It is easy to convince yourself you are doing good things while not changing anything fundamental, and at the same time building a very well paid career and a personal powerbase. I don’t want devo-max, I don’t want more powers, I don’t want something “as close to federalism as possible”. I want freedom for my country. I want independence. I want to live in a country which does not illegally invade other countries, collude in torture, carry out mass surveillance of its citizens, or possess nuclear weapons. The idea of running the Union a little bit better, making it a teeny bit more humane and competent, does not interest me. Nor does dulling the edge of austerity, when it is going to behead us anyway.

Besides which I am absolutely convinced the Tories will win the election, which will make all this jostling for position look rather foolish.

NIE NET DIE TYD MOET VERDRYF WORD NIE

The 6 Grand Illusions That Keep Us Enslaved to the Matrix

Sigmund Fraud, Staff Writer
Waking Times

“In prison, illusions can offer comfort.” – Nelson Mandela

For a magician to fool his audience his deceit must go unseen, and to this end he crafts an illusion to avert attention from reality. While the audience is entranced, the deceptive act is committed, and for the fool, reality then becomes inexplicably built upon on a lie. That is, until the fool wakes up and recognizes the truth in the fact that he has been duped.

Maintaining the suspension of disbelief in the illusion, however, is often more comforting than acknowledging the magician’s secrets.

We live in a world of illusion. So many of the concerns that occupy the mind and the tasks that fill the calendar arise from planted impulses to become someone or something that we are not. This is no accident. As we are indoctrinated into this authoritarian-corporate-consumer culture that now dominates the human race, we are trained that certain aspects of our society are untouchable truths, and that particular ways of being and behaving are preferred. 

Psychopaths disempower people in this way. They blind us with never ceasing barrages of suggestions and absolutes that are aimed at shattering self-confidence and confidence in the future. 

Bansky, the revered and elusive revolutionary street artist, once commented:

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.” 

Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg. When we look further we see that the overall organization of life is centered around the pursuit of illusions and automatic obedience to institutions and ideas which are not at all what they seem. We are in a very real sense enslaved. Many call this somewhat intangible feeling of oppression ‘the matrix,’ a system of total control that invades the mind, programming individuals to pattern themselves in accordance with a mainstream conformist version of reality, no matter how wicked it gets.

The grandest of the illusions which keep us enslaved to the matrix, the ones that have so many of us still entranced, are outlined below for your consideration.

1. The Illusion of Law, Order and Authority

For so many of us, following the law is considered a moral obligation, and many of us gladly do so even though corruption, scandal, and wickedness repeatedly demonstrate that the law is plenty flexible for those who have the muscle to bend it. Police brutality and police criminality is rampant in the US, the courts favor the wealthy, and we can longer even lead our lives privately thanks to the intrusion of state surveillance. And all the while the illegal and immoral Orwellian permanent war rages on in the background of life, murdering and destroying whole nations and cultures.

The social order is not what it seems, for it is entirely predicated on conformity, obedience and acquiescence which are enforced by fear of violence. History teaches us again and again that the law is just as often as not used as an instrument of oppression, social control and plunder, and any so-called authority in this regard is false, hypocritical, and unjust.

When the law itself does not follow the law, there is no law, there is no order, and there is no justice. The pomp and trappings of authority are merely a concealment of the truth that the current world order is predicated on control, not consent.

2. The Illusion of Prosperity and Happiness

Adorning oneself in expensive clothes and trinkets, and amassing collections of material possessions that would be the envy of any 19th century monarch has become a substitute for genuine prosperity. Maintaining the illusion of prosperity, though, is critical to our economy as it is, because its foundation is built on consumption, fraud, credit and debt. The banking system itself has been engineered from the top down to create unlimited wealth for some while taxing the eternity out of the rest of us.

True prosperity is a vibrant environment and an abundance of health, happiness, love, and relationships. As more people come to perceive material goods as the form of self-identification in this culture, we slip farther and farther away from the experience of true prosperity.

3. The Illusion of Choice and Freedom

Read between the lines and look at the fine print, we are not free, not by any intelligent standard. Freedom is about having choice, yet in today’s world, choice has come to mean a selection between available options, always from within the confines of a corrupt legal and taxation system and within the boundaries of culturally accepted and enforced norms.

Just look no further than the phony institution of modern democracy to find a shining example of false choices appearing real. Two entrenched, corrupt, archaic political parties are paraded as the pride and hope of the nation, yet third party and independent voices are intentionally blocked, ridiculed and plowed under.

The illusion of choice and freedom is a powerful oppressor because it fools us into accepting chains and short leashes as though they were the hallmarks of liberty.

Multiple choice is different than freedom, it is easy servitude.

4. The Illusion of Truth

Truth has become a touchy subject in our culture, and we’ve been programmed to believe that ‘the‘ truth comes from the demigods of media, celebrity, and government. If the TV declares something to be true, then we are heretics to believe otherwise.

In order to maintain order, the powers that be depend our acquiescence to their version of the truth. While independent thinkers and journalists continually blow holes in the official versions of reality, the illusion of truth is so very powerful that it takes a serious personal upheaval to shun the cognitive dissonance needed to function in a society that openly chases false realities.

5. The Illusion of Time

They say that time is money, but this is a lie. Time is your life. Your life is an ever-evolving manifestation of the now. Looking beyond the five sense world, where we have been trained to move in accordance with the clock and the calendar, we find that the spirit is eternal, and that the each individual soul is part of this eternity.

The big deception here is the reinforcement of the idea that the present moment is of little to no value, that the past is something we cannot undo or ever forget, and that the future is intrinsically more important than both the past and the present. This carries our attention away from what is actually happening right now and directs it toward the future. Once completely focused on what is to come rather than what is, we are easy prey to advertisers and fear-pimps who muddy our vision of the future with every possible worry and concern imaginable.

We are happiest when life doesn’t box us in, when spontaneity and randomness gives us the chance to find out more about ourselves. Forfeiting the present moment in order to fantasize about the future is a trap. The immense, timeless moments of spiritual joy that are found in quiet meditation are proof that time is a construct of the mind of humankind, and not necessarily mandatory for the human experience.

If time is money, then life can be measured in dollars. When dollars are worth less, so is life. This is total deception, because life is, in truth, absolutely priceless.

6. The Illusion of Separateness

On a strategic level, the tactic of divide and conquer is standard operating procedure for authoritarians and invading armies, but the illusion of separateness runs even deeper than this.

We are programmed to believe that as individuals we are in competition with everyone and everything around us, including our neighbors and even mother nature. Us vs. them to the extreme. This flatly denies the truth that life on this planet is infinitely inter-connected. Without clean air, clean water, healthy soil, and a vibrant global sense of community we cannot survive here.

While the illusion of separateness comforts us by gratifying the ego and and offering a sense of control, in reality it only serves to enslave and isolate us.

Conclusion

The grand illusions mentioned here have been staged before us as a campaign to encourage blind acquiescence to the machinations of the matrix. In an attempt to dis-empower us, they demand our conformity and obedience, but we must not forget that all of this is merely an elaborate sales pitch. They can’t sell what we don’t care to buy.

Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for mankind.

TYD MOET VERDRYF WORD

Thinking Outside the Hourglass 

Thursday, November 21, 2013 22:59

by Zen Gardner 

This imposed artificial time constraint is a very subtle one, especially when you realize everything depends on perspective. We’re clearly experiencing a manipulated, illusory cycle of time with parameters that make us feel contained, limited. And that’s the intent. Closing in on your prey is an ingrained predatory behavior. If the subjects feel there’s no escape, compliant behavior will eventually follow.

 That’s pretty clever on the part of the controllers, but it’s only effective when you’re not awake to what’s going on.

 Perceived containment has been proven time and again in even popular science to produce certain behaviors. Time is only one factor, but an important one as it is one of the more subtle ways they exert control and amplify fear. We cannot succumb to any of these false paradigms. Humanity is running to and fro in an effort to find solutions, but only within the confines they’ve been cleverly restricted to. It’s a closed system with clearly defined limitations. We look within their constructed time-framed and otherwise controlled system for solutions when there are none to be found. And again, it’s all by design.

 The only true solution lies in conscious, transcendent awareness of the true big picture.

 Playing By the Rules

 Herein lies the big “catch”. Similar to the obvious political right-left paradigm, we’ve been injected into a much more complex set of confining rules and regulations. They are adopted by assumption from the parameters we’ve been given. It’s not possible to objectively discern our condition when we think we have all the information we need to make right decisions…when in reality we don’t.

 We have to find out for ourselves what the real facts and truths are. And even those need constant re-examination and regular conscious, aware assessment.

 These same self-imposed authorities dictate our limitations within which we’re to find solutions, when they very well know there are no solutions but theirs within those confines, whichever directed “side” people choose. To snap out of this hypnotic, severely limiting mind set is our first priority.

 So Where Are We?

It’s hard to say exactly. We can only describe the conditions and our awakened understandings as they surface. When we put those realizations into effect in our lives a wonderful spiritual detachment takes place and we see more clearly by the day. Taking living action on these realizations precipitates the most radical transformations in our own lives as well as in those we influence. Those who don’t take action are missing out, and that is the biggest travesty of mankind.

 All while the imposed hourglass lets its ticking sands of time drop into a mirrored, carefully contained paradigm.

 Our solution is really quite simple. Disengage, disconnect, and stop listening to their sirens of propaganda. It’s much like getting off of a mind-numbing medication to where you can think clearly again. It takes time and some simple commitment. Your resolution becomes wanting to wake up, so you do what needs to be done, come what may.

 Our current condition appears quite tenuous. We can go with the flow of lies and hunker down and just take it, or we can rise to the occasion. Rising means becoming individually what each of us is meant to be. Alive, awake, aware, conscious and activated and no longer stupefied by circumstances and false information. That may sound simplistic or ethereal but without that break each of us is doomed to repeat after them and their dictates. We’ll follow, react, or as so many have done just give up and acquiesce in confusion and despair.

 The world condition continues to deteriorate so rapidly that it’s forcing just such unconscious decisions. Like it or not, imposed circumstances are herding the hive mindset into various corners of defensiveness – the patriots, the libertarians, the anarchists, the survivalists, and on and on, and most of all the clinging system adherents.

 Don’t get caught up in their game of false paradigms.

 Our Opposition Is Spiritual

It’s more important than ever to choose our battles wisely. Our challenge is spiritual first and foremost. What we’re up against manifests and lives in the minds of men as an implanted psychotropic manipulative mindset. It’s ugly, it’s completely controller-serving and it’s artificial. Yet it grows as if it’s organic.

 It’s not. Clearly all (of creation) is some kind of vibrational wave-form or another, but what we call evil apparently is a very conscious anti-organic life form. It seems to exist to destroy and manipulate to its own satisfaction for whatever anti-creative reason. Granted, an all-wonderful Universe has certainly taken all of this into consideration. A good example is the human body with its anti-bodies and amazing immune system. A microcosm of the macrocosm. 

The nano and genetic manipulations, and the techno, geo-engineering and mind control technologies are further evidence of this invasive force. These are mind derived, albeit composed of Universal components. Recognizing what we’re up against is most of the problem.

 It’s Time for No Paradigm

There’s no pat, blanket answer for everyone when it comes to knowing what to do. The matrix gives itself away by offering “group plans” and locked in behavioral boxes to resort to for comfort and security. Awakening souls naturally rebel against such confines on our spirits but this engineered “group option plan” is pretty well bought by most of humanity, sad to say.

 I’ve seen a lot of proposals for new world systems, and to be honest none of them appeal to me. They all smack of the same old control paradigm, but with new people and rehashed religiously inclined belief systems in charge. Some of these might seem nice in the short term but where would they lead us? My inclination is to believe it will be more of the same. Just like the encroaching new world order “big idea”, they generally smell like more “hope and change” solutions that only signify more sophisticated control.

 I can’t even say what exactly it is I do champion. That’s why my conviction has always been along the lines of personal awakening. When we get there we’ll understand. Right now, people are generally fighting in the dark. And it makes no sense to make unconscious decisions without the full light of truth.

 Go Local

As I see it, information sharing and strenthening local community are our best bet. Creating this evolving revolution of loving interaction from the ground up is the manifestation of our new reality. Literally. Get back to the land. Work locally in not just community gardening and cooperation, but to change minds and structural mindsets around us. It’s the solution at hand.

 That, and continuing to dissolve this world of lies via passionate dissemination of enlightened information. And that I’m happy to report is happening at an accelerating rate, as is the growth of indigenous, caring communities.

 As the old dissolves, truth based reality evolves.

 Let go of the old and be part of the new emergence. 

Truth will not be suppressed. 

We truly are the solution we’ve been waiting for.

 Love always, Zen 

ZenGardner.com