Dealing With A Shark Attack

 

How do you deal with a shark attack in a swimming pool?

You drain the water and watch the shark suffocate.

The Peace Dividend strategy does exactly that.

It drains the pool of funds which our insane neocon-infested military establishment -- which includes the DOD, NSA, CIA, DHS, Congress, and the White House -- abuses with its never-ending wars and delusional monomaniacal pursuit of world empire.

We take back all of the money they've defrauded us out of for the past 24 years -- we could go back further but two-and-a-half decades is a good start -- then watch them desperately gasp and struggle as they try to persist in their aggressive bullying of the world. 

No money.  No more unnecessary wars. 

No money.  No more boondoggles like the F-35.

No money.  No more senseless waste like the trillion dollar upgrade of our nuclear arsenal.

No money.  America will start waging peace instead of waging war.

Peace is something we can actually afford.

The Peace Dividend, the pool of money totaling $4.82 trillion which was paid in taxes -- by you and I -- under false pretenses, collected on the basis of lies told us by our government  in support of wasteful D.O.D. extravagance and military aggression on no less than eight foreign countries since 1992, is money which will be distributed as a refund to each and every single American citizen.  It is our money, tax dollars paid in good faith by decent hard-working folks who trusted their government to put it to correct and proper use. 

We were fooled.

We were lied to.

We were conned. 

We were defrauded! 

We were callously ripped off!



The Peace Dividend refund comes to $14,952 for each and every living U.S. citizen, paid out over three years.

That comes to almost $60,000 for a family of four.

This is money which should have been ours to spend, and recovering it -- as is completely within our rights in a government of the people, by the people, for the people -- unlike the military madmen, we'll put it to good use.  We can buy some news clothes for the kids, pay down our credit cards, replace that car that's falling apart, take a long overdue vacation.

Am I crazy?

No . . . we are crazy if we don't stick up for ourselves.

We are crazy if we don't stop the abuse of power and hold our government accountable.

We are crazy if we don't reject and reverse this gross misappropriation of our tax dollars.

As victims of the worst crime in history -- the biggest tax rip-off ever -- we deserve full and immediate compensation.

Let's get started.

By the way, if anyone is tempted to ask me how a shark got into the swimming pool, I have a question for you . . .

How did so many homicidal, warmongering sociopaths get into the centers of power in Washington DC?

The Peace Dividend strategy is a direct attack on America’s systemic addiction to war by appealing to the self-interest of its citizens, literally INCENTIVIZING people to redirect their thinking and start WORKING FOR PEACE!

 

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is now available both as an ebook and deluxe paperback at all of the usual outlets . . .

Amazon (Kindle) / US . . . amzn.to/2cpIRfQ
Amazon (Print) / US . . . amzn.to/2cEhnCb
Amazon (Kindle) / UK . . . amzn.to/2cKXFsV
Amazon (Kindle) / Canada . . . amzn.to/2ciZKdl
Amazon (Kindle) / Japan . . . amzn.to/2cbf3TO
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/2cWxvzd
Kobo (Indigo) . . . bit.ly/2cI8cB6
Apple iTunes . . . apple.co/2cqw7an
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/2cb6Cse
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/2c3mJsl

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Dealing With A Shark Attack

VIDEO BLOG: Open up the debates!

I want to throw out a challenge to the participants in the coming presidential debates.

Of course, the fair and democratic thing to do would be to open the debates to Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.

But certainly the Democratic and Republican parties, and the puppets administering the debates, couldn’t care less about fairness or democracy.  They’re in the game for power and it’s winner take all.  Screw the founding fathers, the intent of the Constitution, and all that fancy high-sounding theoretical fluff.  They want to win.  There’s lots of money to be made for their corporate and Wall Street friends.

So I’m not going to talk about values, and none of what I have to say is directed at either the Republican or Democratic leadership, and certainly not the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is just a shill organization, a smokescreen for that same leadership.
I
 am making my appeal first to the candidates, and second to the TV network in charge, CNN.
Donald Trump thinks Jill Stein is a beer mug you can buy at Jillian’s Curios in Topeka, Kansas.  Trump knows what a Johnson is but hasn’t a clue about this Gary guy, or why he should worry about this Gary guy’s peepee.  Besides, Trump shouldn’t care who’s onstage. What is he going to do?  Fine tune the septic swill that spews out of his pie hole?

So I say to you, Donald.  Let’s go for it.  The more the merrier!

Clinton is the problem.  I don’t think she relishes having someone like Jill Stein on that debate stage.  Jill is more intelligent, better informed, has integrity, knows what America really needs, speaks for the priorities and values of the vast majority, and is honest.  Whew!  That could be a real problem.
See, Hillary and the Donald are bullshitters of the highest order.  Hillary is in her comfort zone in a pile of shit.  She figures she can hold her own against even the tsunami of the stinky stuff Trump will barrage her with.

But Jill Stein?  Big problem there.

So my challenge is to you, Hillary.  You claim to be the Iron Lady of America, with all the right stuff to be the first female prez in our history.  Show us you’re not afraid of some real competition.  Do you have the brass cajones, the bulked up ovaries, to go head-to-head with someone who actually has something to say?  Who has a real program for rescuing America from the likes of hypocrites like you?  Are you up for it?

I think not.  But Hillary, this is your chance to prove me wrong.  Let’s see some courage.  Show some guts.  You can still laugh that hyena laugh, even faint, have convulsions, or cough your way through the performance.  Jill Stein won’t crimp your style.  She’ll just put some substance on the table.
Like I said, I doubt if Hillary is up to it.  I expect her to refuse to allow Stein and Johnson in the debates.  While Johnson poses no threat, Hillary is DEATHLY AFRAID OF JILL STEIN!

Alright!  NOW it’s time for you folks over at CNN to listen up.  Come on, guys.  Let’s put on your thinking caps.

I’m not talking public duty, responsible broadcasting, patriotism, or anything of the like here.

I’m talking money!

Big clue . . . Hillary turns down debating Jill Stein.  Why?  Because it’ll be a bloodbath.  Stein will chop up Clinton like those table chefs at Benihana.  Then she’ll turn to Trump and vaporize the moronic egomaniac.  Trump won’t know it because he’s oblivious to everything except his own self-aggrandizing blasts of noxious self-adulation.  But the audience will know!

Do you see what’s at stake here?  You guys want a cage fight and you’re counting on a real battle of the bloviators from Clinton and Trump.  But what about the midget who comes out of the audience and pile drives both of them into a mat soaked with the blood of their disgusting egos.  THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE REALLY LOOKING FOR!

You’ll make good money on that first debate.  But after Stein turns Hillary and Donald into hog sausage, the next debate will be the windfall of windfalls!  The second debate will get so many viewers, it’ll make the Superbowl look like a 4 am public service announcement.

So wake up, CNN!  When Hillary refuses, get all righteous on her.  Start talking about inclusiveness and the right of the voting public to have real choice.  Tell Hillary that public duty requires you to put both Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in the debates.

Then send me a fat check for putting you on to the greatest cash cow in the history of politics.  Call the second debate . . . 

“The Fiercest Bloodiest No-Holds-Barred Death Match Presidential Debate in History”

Blood and guts!  It’s what sells.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

VIDEO BLOG: Open up the debates!

It’s not easy being infallible . . .

 

In case you didn't hear President Obama's historic speech at the Hiroshima Peace Park this past May 27th, let me sum it up for you.  Paraphrasing . . .

"It's very sad.  War is nasty.  Shit happens."

There is broad consensus among reputable historians -- who don't filter everything through the brainwashing lens of American exceptionalism -- that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was entirely unnecessary.

There is concrete evidence -- I've seen the U.S. government documents on display at the Hiroshima Peace Museum myself -- that dropping the bombs was an experiment.  These two Japanese cities, both of relatively marginal importance in terms of the war effort, were the petri dishes, the Japanese were the bacteria.  The nuclear scientists who had developed a deployable nuclear weapon wanted to see how people and dwellings would hold up in the 10,830º fireball.  You think I'm exaggerating about any of this?  The bombs didn't target factories or military installations.  The epicenter of the Hiroshima explosion was directly over a medical clinic, for chrissakes!

With those two heinous war crimes, of course, America was just getting warmed up.

Next came Korea, or more specifically North Korea.  In what was considered a savage and one-sided genocidal attack, over 20% of the population -- by some estimates close to 1.4 million people -- mostly civilians were killed by the U.S. campaign.  North Korea was reduced to rubble.  At the end of the carpet bombing, planes were returning with all of their bombs, with the pilots complaining there was nothing left to bomb.  Why did North Korea deserve such genocide?  They were demanding that as promised at the end of World War II, when they were finally liberated from the oppressive rule of the Japanese, that the country be unified and free democratic elections be held.  You think I'm making this up?  If you can go beyond the facile fairy tales of our high school history texts and do some reading, you'll find this right in the historical record.


 

After taking a little breather, the U.S. moved on to Vietnam.  What was the problem there?  These misguided gooks might go communist and we couldn't let that happen!  Of course, Vietnam is now a communist country.  I've been there.  It's a pretty decent place.  No one tried to shoot me.  I practically never saw any police.  The food is spicy.  Amazingly, I was treated with courtesy and kindness.  Why was I amazed?  Because we slaughtered between 1.3 and 3.9 million Vietnamese in that war, again mostly civilians.  We sprayed them and their farmland with lethal chemicals that are still causing horrible birth defects.  In fact, America dropped twice as many bombs on this tiny country as was dropped by all sides in every theater of World War II! 

Try to wrap your head around that.

Of course, just because we were at war with Vietnam didn't mean we would confine our destruction and carnage to that country, in losing the war.  We also mercilessly bombed Cambodia and Laos.  In Cambodia -- a country we weren't at war with -- America dropped a half million tons of bombs killing 100,000 innocent people. 

But that was child's play compared to Laos, again a country which was neutral not in any way participating in the Vietnam conflict.  Laos has the chilling distinction of being per capita the most bombed country in the history of the world!  Yes, we really cut loose on this tiny, impoverished nation by dropping 2,000,000 TONS OF EXPLOSIVES on them!

And how bad does America feel about the death and destruction it inflicted on tiny Laos?  Never one to let an opportunity for cynical irony go ignored, Obama in his public relations swing through Southeast Asia stopped by to do some glad-handing.  While when it comes to countries we've abused Obama prefers to leave the past behind, to look ahead toward a bright, harmonious future -- in particular one controlled by the corporate totalitarian regime of TPP -- he did give a nod to a little problem that 2,000,000 tons of explosives had left scattered across the landscape of Laos: that of unexploded ordnance.  He was in such a generous mood that he committed $90 million to help clean up the mess before more children lost their arms and legs.  $90 million for 2 million tons of explosives only four-and-a-half decades late.  What a guy!

I could go on but we'd be looking at a book.  A very depressing one at that.

The point is the bombing and the wars just keep on going and in parallel we are treated to a never-ending barrage of self-righteous deceptions and exceptionalist demagoguery.

The only difference now is that the rhetoric is more vitriolic and audaciously deceitful.

Since hopefully many of you like myself may not be amused by Obama's infinite capacity for expectorating America-first drivel, let me spare you from listening to this narcissistic ideologue and sum up his recent speech before the United Nations.  I read between the lines a bit, and here's the gist of this remarkable gust of self-congratulatory hot air:

"We know if you repeat a lie often enough, it will stick.  We are also firmly committed to never admitting a mistake, and no matter how implausible, always finding someone else to blame for what goes wrong.  Finally, the United States of America never apologizes."

For the final UN speech of his celebrated 8 years as president, I think Obama has done an excellent job of clarifying exactly where the U.S. stands, and sealing his place in the history books after the U.S. inevitably implodes, as one of the most myopic of our chief executives.

Having said that, I'm still for offering a balanced view.  Though we often get caught up in quibbling about the details, let's look at the big picture and give credit where credit is due.

Do you think keeping track of the torrent of destructive but spellbinding lies dumped on the American public and the rest of the world is easy?

Can you fathom how thoroughly exhausting it must be to relentlessly embrace and nurture such intemperate arrogance, such malignant hubris, such shameless moral insensitivity, how draining it is to keep feeding the rhetorical river of buttery self-congratulations and slimy bombast?

What about having to unrelentingly deny facts, obfuscate and hide the truth?  What about the colossal task of constructing an alternative and patently false reality to keep American citizens from waking up to the horror their leaders are visiting on the rest of the world?  You're going to tell me this is not incredibly grueling work?

In a nutshell . . .

Do you think it's easy being infallible?

Maybe we should ask President Obama at his next news conference.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



It’s not easy being infallible . . .

A Look At Some Other Numbers

 

On July 20th, I created The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign.  This included setting up petitions at four reputable petition campaign sites to keep track of the number of participants.  Off to an encouraging start, I got signatures on the very first day.

This whole effort addresses what I consider to be the primary obstacle to Jill Stein getting elected.  That is, it offers a mechanism to work around the predictable fears that most voters have that if they vote third-party, they will "throw their vote away" and even worse, end up electing one of the major party candidates who they abhor.  Those who voted for Ralph Nader -- I was one of them -- were wrongly accused of throwing the election to George W. Bush.  Though this is easily established as false, the idea of the "spoiler vote" continues to persist and serve the agenda of the two-party monopoly, preventing any real challenge from either the progressive left, the libertarian right, or any party for that matter functioning outside the narrow, tightly choreographed corporate mainstream.

The success of my campaign to unite potential Jill Stein voters into a bloc, essentially by "pre-polling" the voting public, was predicated on ascertaining in advance that there were sufficient voters to elect her.  Ascertaining that meant voters could comfortably vote for her without fear of wasting their votes, perhaps inadvertently electing Donald or Hillary, whichever might be judged worse -- though in my book it's a toss-up. 

The target was 50 million or more voter signatures, which I determined would be enough, if distributed appropriately in important swing states, to put her in the White House.

The key to getting that many signatures was the power of an exponential multiplier, or as I euphemistically dubbed it, the power of numbers.  If each person who signed the petition -- and in doing so agreed to participate in the program -- told only two others, instructing them to each likewise tell two others, in less than 30 days we could have over 67 million people signed up, more than enough to eradicate all anxiety about voting for Jill Stein.

So how did we do?

On September 9th, we finally hit 5,000 signatures across all four petition sites.

That is, we managed to get 5,000 well-meaning folks -- and judging from the comments very passionate supporters of Jill Stein -- to jump on board, and it only took 52 days.

Mind you, I didn't just sit back and twiddle my thumbs.  In fact from the day I started the campaign till now, I've sent out over a thousand tweets, posted it on over ninety Facebook pages, posted it as comments on some fifty plus political media sites, posted it on Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Blogger, Delicious, and Live Journal.

Which suggests that assuming I don't suffer from dwindling returns for my effort -- highly doubtful since the "low fruit" gets used up quickly -- to get to 50 million signature, I would only need to keep doing what I've been doing for the next 1,424 years. 

What do you think?  Should I keep going?

Alright . . . what happened?

That is perhaps the easiest question in the world.

People didn't recruit anyone else.  Despite their personal enthusiasm for Jill Stein, despite many of them -- judging from the enthusiastic praise I got for the idea -- thinking it was a highly ingenious way to make her a viable candidate in the eyes of a fearful voting public, despite them making a firm pledge when they signed the petition which committed them to the action which was the critical core of the strategy . . .

"I will now contact two other people who I respect and trust, let them know there is a real alternative to the Clinton vs. Trump political spectacle, explain that if we frustrated voters join together, we don’t have to throw our votes away, we can elect a great president, America’s first female president no less."

. . . they just couldn't bring themselves to talk to and convince others that this was a necessary and worthwhile project.

Am I surprised?  Of course not.  Disappointed but not surprised.

As citizens we have become paralyzed by our own timidity and fear of failure, intimidated and rendered dysfunctional by the dysfunction all around us.  We've become disengaged and numb from the constant trumpeting of counter-productive memes, false narratives, the insultingly banal media coverage of politics, the disinformation and propaganda that bombards us 24/7/365.  We have been made cynical and immersed in despair by endless violations of the public trust by our leaders, by the condescending and cavalier lies we are constantly told by our politicians and other puppet-masters in the pulpits of power.  Most tragically, we have become afraid, afraid of the police, afraid of the government, afraid of one another, afraid to act.  We're just too afraid to turn to a couple other people and say:  "Hey, look at this.  I think it's a great idea!"

But here is the problem . . .

No matter how hopeless and difficult it seems, we must act.  We must get involved.  Time is running out on democracy.  There still remains some small hope that we as citizens can make a difference.  

But that hope is shrinking fast.

What probably the majority of citizens apparently fail to understand -- or if possible avoid thinking about -- is that in our current social and political environment, under the "rules of the game", we have no choice but to participate.  Just being a citizen means you are intrinsically a functional "activist" in a system which determines everything that is happening now and will happen in the future.

There is widespread reluctance to recognize and embrace a simple fact:  The future is still ours for the taking.

The numbers are with us across the board -- on many key issues, on outrage and contempt for Congress, on collective revulsion for the choice we are being waterboarded with via the two major party presidential candidates.

What is lacking?

Courage.  The courage to just reach out to others and say:

"I've had it!  I'm not playing this game anymore."

Yes, many are saying this but only to themselves.  Until the American public hears a loud roar and a thunderous chant, and each and all realize they are not alone, they individually will again buckle to their fear, and be afraid of a simple act like reaching out to just two others -- even two others of like mind and thinking -- and talking, just being open and honest about issues that confront all of us but from which we retreat like cowards.

Recognize this . . .

Being paralyzed by fear and hopelessness is a form of "citizen participation".

As is surrender or any other form of capitulation or acknowledging defeat.

It's self-sabotaging but participation no less.

To not act is counter-intuitively an act.

Because to not act is a choice.

And all choices have their consequences.

We will live or die by what those consequences look like.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



A Look At Some Other Numbers

The Peace Dividend Concept . . . Now A Book

 

We each do what we can do.  That's all we can do.

As anyone who is familiar with my writings knows, for the past four years I've expressed my alarm at the systematic disempowerment of everyday citizens -- the 99% -- and the destruction of our democracy.  I'm never content to merely identify a problem without trying to identify a solution.  Thus my books Candidate Contracts: Taking Back Our Democracy (June 2015) and Fighting for the Democracy We Deserve (September 2015) focused on ways to address these critical challenges, even given the shredding of our personal liberties and the sabotaging of normal mechanisms for implementing reform.

In developing the ideas for these books, at some point I realized that the militarization of our domestic police forces, our communities, our media, our foreign policy, in fact, just about every aspect of our lives and everything America now collectively does, was central to the control the oligarchy now has over the country and its citizens.  This militarization finds its most obvious expression in the constant wars and the insertion of U.S. troops all over the world, the open-ended and ubiquitous War on Terror, and the pursuit of world domination by any means necessary, all of which are steadily driving the country to its own cataclysmic unraveling.

But it also occurred to me that not only was this militarization the main mechanism for reshaping America into an imperial autocracy, it offered at the same time a phenomenal opportunity for its citizens to reclaim their country.  I believe that the war machine is its own Achilles heel -- at least until voting has been outlawed and we're all locked away in work slave camps -- in that its abuse of power is so ham-fisted, at core so contrary to the best social and political traditions of our nation, once the majority of citizens understand what is going on, the whole destructive regime of the warmongers can be taken down and replaced with one that serves the greater interests of all Americans.  Of course, the major challenge is finding a way to communicate it in a way that makes sense and guarantees a significant number of people will pay attention to it. 

This unfolds as my Peace Dividend concept, a historical and political analysis of endemic institutional corruption and abuse in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the NSA and other national security agencies, Congress and the White House, offering a strategy for challenging and ending the egregious violations of public trust.

The Peace Dividend concept originally appeared and is explored in summary form in both of the two books mentioned above.  With the publication of my new book, it now has its own dedicated volume with full explication, justification, and documentation . . . 

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World.

Here's the premise:  With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, American citizens were promised a "peace dividend", i.e. less money for war, more for peace and a good life for all. The U.S. military under misguided leadership has attacked eight countries since then. The defense budget has exploded, buying a lot of junk that doesn't work and military hardware we don't need.

American citizens have been grossly deceived about the real purpose and agenda of our military exploits throughout the world.  As I incontrovertibly establish, we have had over $4.82 trillion of our hard-earned tax dollars taken under false pretenses and wasted with cavalier abandon on unnecessary wars and unneeded weapons.  This transparent fraud on the American people has been perpetrated for two-and-a-half decades.

It's time to change all of that.  It's time for a fresh new narrative, and a vibrant national conversation.  It's time to start thinking and talking about peace again.  This book explains why and exactly how we begin.

The Peace Dividend strategy is a direct attack on America’s systemic addiction to war by appealing to the self-interest of its citizens, literally INCENTIVIZING citizens to redirect their thinking and start WORKING FOR PEACE!

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is now available both as an ebook and deluxe paperback at many of the usual outlets . . .

Amazon (Kindle) / US . . . amzn.to/2cpIRfQ
Amazon (Print) / US . . . amzn.to/2cEhnCb
Amazon (Kindle) / UK . . . amzn.to/2cKXFsV
Amazon (Kindle) / Canada . . . amzn.to/2ciZKdl
Amazon (Kindle) / Japan . . . amzn.to/2cbf3TO
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/2cWxvzd
Kobo (Indigo) . . . bit.ly/2cI8cB6
Apple iTunes . . . apple.co/2cqw7an
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/2cb6Cse
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/2c3mJsl


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



The Peace Dividend Concept . . . Now A Book