Some thoughts on the circus

The recent Senate Confirmation Hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has, if nothing else, showed the extreme level of ideological warring that has crippled the Federal Government. I cannot even describe my horror at the behavior of the leftist Democrats in this whole fiasco.  Senator Feinstein, in particular, has displayed such appalling and callous disregard for human dignity and the rule of law that it literally boggles my mind. Both in leaking the confidential information of Dr. Ford, and waiting so long to do it seems to me a level of betrayal to everyone involved that marks her as, minimally, a dangerous sociopath. If she had brought these concerns to the Senate in July she would have done the right thing. A Senator is required by law to report a crime to the proper authorities. They do not share the confidentiality of a Doctor, Lawyer, or Minister in such matters. But that she held it for so long makes it seem as though she held it purposefully, and released it with vindictive hate when it became clear all other efforts to derail the hearing had failed. Judge Kavanaugh rightly pointed this out. In doing so she betrayed Dr. Ford, who wished to remain anonymous, Judge Kavanaugh, she knew the claim was without any legal merit, and the American People, who deserve better. Worse, she has done serious damage to the hard fought advancement of the woman’s movement. In the end, she has besmirched all women who have battled with abuse, made it harder for them to come forward with their horror stories, and made a mockery of their pain. Hypocritically, the left has called Kavanaugh “evil” while failing to recognize the evil in their own.

That being said, I found Dr. Ford entirely credible. While her story had some mis-steps, all in all I think she is trying to describe a very traumatic event that happened to her, and I believe that if she has points of confusion it is completely understandable. I also found Judge Kavanaugh entirely credible. His heartfelt statement revealed a life devoted to Catholic principals and “doing the right thing.” How is it they can both be telling the truth? Is truth so malleable that it can encompass contradictions as extreme as this? Scott Adams mentioned he saw, in all of this, a glitch in the matrix, and in a way, I agree with him. Some time ago, in commenting on the notion of the “Mandala Effect”, I offered that modern science’s insanely careless toying with the multiverse may well have caused two (or more) timelines to become intertwined. Could it be that we are experiencing two different timelines colliding? I said, at the time, that while some people have spotted small examples of this, we had no way of knowing the extent to which this may be occurring (if it is occurring at all). The standard excuse for these events is “false memories”, and already we see the same old voices offering this explanation now. I find it very unlikely that Judge Kavanaugh was so despicable as a youth, yet somehow became, after this, the man that we see today, supportive of women’s struggle, respectful of them and their ongoing battle for equality. Many woman have risked vilification for supporting him, and yet have still come forward to say he is, in their collective opinions, incapable of this behavior. I also find it highly unlikely that professionals have no way to discern false memories, I don’t really know, but considering all the brouhaha they spew about it, I sincerely hope so. So, we have two completely contradictory histories colliding in a Senate Hearing, in front of the whole world. We all may have just seen the mother of all Mandala Effects.

Censorship

I am not a fan of Alex Jones. He is too loud and often hateful, even when he is right. He and I agree on the problems, just not the solutions. Recently Alex found himself “banned” by the various social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and so on. While Alex certainly has the right of free speech, the Owners of a platform have the right to decide who can be a member. This is going to become more and more of a problem for a free society, and one I posited many years ago. It doesn’t really matter if you have a right to free speech when you are on private property. The fact that marijuana will soon be completely legal is meaningless if you work for a company that decides it’s not appropriate for it’s employees. Corporations, and not the Government, will be the ones dictating behavior. Fortunately, that day isn’t here yet. Alex has other outlets, and there is a shift in attention on the part of viewers to abandon the hard Left posturing of Facebook and Youtube for alternative sites that provide similar services, without the heavy handed control over speech.

The natural right to self-expression can never be “taken”. I will always think what I think, feel what I feel, and it is a very natural extension to add, and make it known to others. There is absolutely no way to stifle expression. It can be repressed, but never silenced. As with any right, it carries with it a responsibility. If you want to have freedom of speech, then you need to speak responsibly. A Church Service may be an inappropriate venue for some topics.

Any Social Media Platform is a business. Indeed, running a web site is a costly venture. But more to the point, the people behind the platform have a responsibility to those who use it. Even if you go to the lowest common denominator, if a Media group is going to pay the bills, they have to attend to what people will pay to see. They make the rules, hopefully based on the needs of their community. This once again raises the issue of allowing Corporations to become so large, they effectively close out any meaningful competition. The answer is the same, don’t support over sized and overbearing Corporations. We cannot hope to force them to grant the freedom of speech. We can refuse to go near them. If you find Youtube’s attack on certain voices disturbing, move on. If and when enough of us move on, these companies will be relics of bad ideas.

James Corbett of https://www.corbettreport.com/

What I find particularly disturbing is the seeming attempt by a group of very powerful media corporations to stifle public discourse. It seems we have forsaken the ability to hear the voices of our fellow citizens. It seems to me that the idea of Right and Left, in the social arena, need to both be heard. The basic rule of the Right is “all laws are bad laws, all government is bad government” and the expression of their absolutes would be anarchy. The Left proposes that laws and government are necessary to provide for the common good, and in the extreme, their thought is very authoritarian, with laws governing everything (what is not required is forbidden). A healthy free society is neither of these, but lies somewhere in the middle, with both voices having found meaningful compromises.

For example, the Left proposes that people can not kill each other. The Right counters with the idea that a person has a right to defend themselves and their family. In the end we have a compromise that both protects the freedom of the individual citizen, and provides for reasonable public safety. The Right and the Left act as powerful checks on excesses and injustice.

I tend to be more aligned with conservative thought, but I do not agree with the current model I am exposed to. I listen to the voices of the Left, and in many ways, they point out the dangers of a society without a compass. Jefferson pointed out that anarchy could only exist in a population of intelligent, moral individuals who will protect the integrity of a free society.

It seems to me that I do not see this so very much, I see two sides fighting a war for supremacy. Neither side listens to the other, and both sides reject any idea coming from the other. This has permeated society to the point where one’s political beliefs can disallow going out in public! The recent affair concerning (Leftist) Maxine Waters contrasts nicely with the treatment of Alex Jones. Ms. Waters has literally called for violence against anyone on the Right. She has gotten an incredible amount of support for her ideas, and in some ways, her ideas have led to an increase in violence, at least indirectly. far from being “censored” her words have been floated to the forefront of the media. She hasn’t been banned from the half dozen largest social media platforms, and yet, her words, and more importantly the utter hate behind her words, are far worse than anything I ever heard Alex Jones say.

Gaia

The alchemist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz talked about two types of knowledge, explicit and implicit. Explicit knowledge is concerned with the world, the material, the facts. it is actually the basis of the Scientific Method. Implicit knowledge is that which we, as individuals, draw up fro the sum total of our experiences. For instance take the sentence

This Statement is false.

Explicitly, it is a group of words that delivers a message. On the other hand, explicitly, it is a paradox, and cannot be resolved. Implicitly, we can see it is a paradox almost immediately, and can disregard the statement as impossible. Now while for a human consciousness this seems simple and obvious, for a machine it is a real problem. They are apparently unable to view the implicit meaning, and the explicit meaning causes them to go into a logic loop. The Mathematician Kurt Gödel proved that the same problem exists in any form of artificial thought (any system sufficiently powerful enough, in his exact terms).

It’s The Economy, stupid!

This is 90 minutes long, but it is well worth the time spent, especially if you are getting tired of wondering how you will pay something every time you turn around. So very few people understand how and why our economy can be so rich, so powerful, so vast, and yet, for the average person, the average family, it is a constant struggle to stay above water.

Somewhere in Time

According to the latest science, the earth is about 4 and a half billion years old, and of that time, it has been relatively inhabitable for about possibly as long as 3 billion years or so. In their book, Forbidden Archaeology, authors Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson present fascinating evidence that life forms capable of tools and technology that dates to incredibly ancient times, as old as the Precambrian Era, 2.8 billion years ago. According to the standard myth, Homo Sapiens appeared about 130,000 years ago, with the oldest civilizations dated to roughly 6,000 years ago. If it takes about 10,000 years to build a civilization, then, time wise, there has been more than sufficient time for 280,000 advanced civilizations to develop on earth.

There is certainly no end of evidence of the older civilizations, with the list constantly growing as new finds are made. Even though the mainstream tends to downplay these finds, some are just too big, like Gobekli Tepe, dated at 10,000 years ago. There are also numerous finds that are rock, and thus far impossible to date. Petra is an example of one of these sites. The technology belies the date given to it. Petra is completely carved out of living rock. The ancient civilization seems to do this a lot. With very primitive tools, they carved, transported and placed blocks of stone weighing 200 tons or more, they carve massive chambers out of living rock. They do things that, given their tools, are insane.

I believe it is more likely that they used huge stones, because they could easily quarry, shape, move and place them. Being pragmatic in that way, I don’t think people with bronze tools and no wheel look at a granite cliffs and thought to themselves that a good idea is blocks the size of houses. They had technology we do not know about, or understand. For them to move a 200 ton block into place on a wall with such precision that even today a thin blade cannot be inserted between them was a task well within the limits of their technology.

Stealing a term from Joseph P. Farrell, I call these builders the paleoancients. It isn’t particularly accurate, and it is redundant, but I like the sound of it, and so far science doesn’t seem to give it enough concern to have a name for it. We have almost no data on the Paleoancients. We know they could move huge blocks, we know they were around long before Sumer and Egypt flowered. We know they almost entirely disappeared from the earth. The rest is speculation. The stories from the Vedas point to a memory of a terrible war, one with flying machines and missiles, fought in vastly ancient times (-80,000). I believe the Paleoancients flourished in the time just before our own civilization began, if fact, I believe we are their legacy, a good deal of our myths are memories of the time.

I do not know what destroyed their cultures. I assume there was more than one, since our myths say they fought a war. It is very likely they destroyed themselves, and possibly brought the planet to an extinction event. One reason I believe we do not see more of them is simply we do not look in the right places. It is easy enough to put forward that these people lived during the last ice age, and at that time water levels were entirely different then they are now. Even if there aren’t vast parts of the globe completely decimated, we theorize that water levels were 400 feet (120 meters) lower at the height of the last ice age. The Mediterranean is half its current size, Africa touches Sicily. The Red Sea is almost dry land.

 

In any event, their cultures WERE destroyed, either by war or natural disaster, and all that remained were the few scattered bands of survivors. There are traces of them in legends around the world, as teachers and leaders who brought civilization to the local tribes. There appears to have been a group in Northern Ethiopia, and another in the area between Lake Van and the Caspian Sea (the source of Western Eden Myths). This coincides with Farrell’s description of the cultures of the Paleoancients. He suggests there were three main cultures, The Vedics, The Osirians and The Atlantians. Similar myths exist for China and the Americas, in fact one of the amazing earth facts is that the same myths seem to be everywhere, along with evidence of a similarity of technology and tastes. Considering a bit of time for development, we are looking for some cataclysm at about 10,000 years ago. Otto Muck places the destruction of Atlantis at the point of a asteroidal impact in -8498. Muck also states this impact caused the mid-Atlantic ridge as well as the Carolina Bays. If correct, this may dovetail with another theory by Prof  Charles Hapgood. He proposed that a 15 degree pole shift occurred around -9,600 (approx. 11,600 years ago). The two dates are plus or minus 5% to be the same event, not bad considering we mostly only have myths to work with.

These Paleoancients who walked the earth and taught the indigenous species in the ways of Civilization left their footprints. If Science was interested, we might know a great deal more of them. But Science is not interested, no matter how much evidence comes forward. They will hide, lie, deny and murder the heretics who point to the obvious clues. Nothing shows the strength of Myth in our sciences than this simple fact.

When presented with the evidence that the Sphinx in Egypt was water eroded by a society of geologists, they said, and I am not making this up, that geologists are not allowed to comment on archaeology, it is not their specialty. While I agree that geologist probably don’t know much about archaeology, I am forced to concede they do know about rocks, and erosion, and any rock, be it part of an archaeological find or not, is a rock. When a robot camera explored the shaft of it discovered a door, with metal seals. The exploration of this door has captured the imagination of everyone who has heard of it. But the same exploration found another artifact, a wooden rod. This evidence is gone. it is never mentioned, and unless you use old internet archives, it has even been sterilized from all reports on the robot explorations. Like the pieces of wood and iron found behind a stone in the late 19th century by Vyse and Dixon (and subsequently LOST by the British Museum) it is something that is carefully left out. Wood can be carbon dated. Iron is an anomaly in the official explanation. It almost seems they do not want the truth to be learned.

It is my belief that a good deal of that was left to us by the Paleoancients is quite beyond our comprehension in those very ancient times. It lies buried in myths and misinterpreted texts, it lies hidden in secret teaching. It is taboo now, as it has always been, to look to these secrets. Indeed, in the fringes of science, we find researchers looking to these obscure texts, long thought meaningless or imagination, and finding clues to the cutting edge of our search.

 

 

 

Stanley Meyers and his Water Fuel Cell

Stanley Meyers built a water cell, or so he said. Oddly enough, since the patents on his cell are now public domain, one would imagine that if they worked we would see them everywhere. But we do not. I have not heard of anyone trying to commercially produce one. The whole idea of using water as a power source seems, at first glance, a silly idea. I mean, REALLY? But here’s the thing. Stan was a big deal. He said he had a car that ran on water (currently owned by someone in Canada). He was the star of a documentary by Arthur C. Clark. He worked for NASA. He is a martyr of the alternative energy crowd.

Why a martyr? Well, the story goes that he met with two “Belgian” business men in a restaurant for reasons unknown. His brother Stephen tells the story:

Stephen Meyer recalls the events of that evening — “Stanley took a sip of cranberry juice. Then he grabbed his neck, bolted out the door, dropped to his knees and vomited violently. I ran outside and asked him, “What’s wrong?’ ” Stephen recalled. “He shouted, ‘They poisoned me!’ That was his dying declaration.”

The autopsy report says he died of a brain aneurysm. I don’t know, but I do not think this sort of death gives one a whole lot of time to make declarations, run around, throw up, or much of anything else, I believe, as they say, you are dead before you hit the floor. Certainly the police had doubts:

Meyer’s death was laced with all sorts of stories of conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger stories,” said Grove City Police Lt. Steve Robinette, lead detective on the case.

And additionally, Stephen had this to say about telling the “Belgians”:

If Stephen Meyer was shocked at his twin brother’s collapse and death, he was equally amazed at the Belgians’ response the next day.“I told them that Stan had died and they never said a word,” he recalled, “absolutely nothing, no condolences, no questions. I never, ever had a trust of those two men ever again.”

All quite strange. Was Stanley murdered for what he had discovered? More to the point, what happened to his work? Where are the proof of concept vids on Youtube? I mean, alternative energy is a big thing right now. And Stan is considered right about up there  with Tesla. Stan left everything anyone who cared to try needed to continue his work. So, all things considered, why is no one continuing his work? My guess is, of course, they are. Imagine if you had a way to produce energy from water. You would be wealthy and famous beyond measure. My guess is a LOT of people are.

My point is, this information is clearly out there, you would have to be a fool to think it isn’t. But it is being kept from the public, from society. It is just tossed into the same bucket as “conspiracy theories” and not talked about, hoping no one will notice.

For what it’s worth, here’s my piece on Stan’s work. He talked about the importance of resonance and vibration in the making of his cell. Unlike the usual electric division of water into Hydrogen and Oxygen through typical electrolysis, Meyers’ engine uses rapid pulsing of power to fracture the atoms, which was supposed to account for a yield that surpassed the input energy requirements.

The Anomalous Piri Reis Map

In 1513 Piri Reis, an Ottoman admiral, compiled a map. Today, about 1/3 of it remains. He admitted compiling it from other, older maps he had laying around. When he heard the news that Columbus had “found” the Indies, considering his source maps, I doubt he was very surprised. Clearly, he was already aware of something lying to the west. And to the south. This map is  certainly anomalous, showing South America and Africa in proper longitude to within a few parts of a single degree.

But there’s more! According to Charles Hapgood and his students, it also shows Antarctica, free of ice. While showing proper longitude 300 years before the invention of a reliable way to actually measure longitude, it is still explainable through the wise use of mathematics and a good knowledge of latitude, which has existed since the time of the Sumerians. An ice free Antarctica presents a different problem. The source for this map could be traced to a time when the region was free of ice, which we, with all our scientific expertise, have determined was about 34 Million years ago. So, either someone mapped Antarctica 34 Million years ago, or we are wrong about our estimates of exactly when the miles of ice currently covering it came to be. Either way, in 1513 no one had a clue Antarctica was there at all, ice covered or otherwise. The first modern sighting of Antarctica occurred on November 18, 1820.

For me it comes down to this, at some point there was a being walking the earth, smart enough to engage in cartography, at a time when there was no ice on the coast of Antarctica. There is absolutely no record of when, how, or why this was done, in fact, there is no reason to assume that is was done in any historical time, since modern history begins in about 6,000 BC, and by that time the ice was very thick, and we have absolutely no record of any technology capable of penetrating the ice shelf until the 20th Century.

This, to me, is clearly an artifact of what John Farrell calls the paleoancient civilization. I like that word, Mr. Farrell, and will happily steal it. It has a wonderful redundancy and wry sarcasm inherent in it that just suits me. By paleoancient I mean, before the most ancient civilizations we know of, before the Sumerians, before we have any real records, a time, which for us, is only a myth now.

How Flat My Earth

Hey, I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone else. JFK was assassinated by Alien Russian Nazi Transsexual Ocelots working for the mob? I’m in. The moon landing was faked by Stanley Kubrick? Let’s put on the tinfoil and take the ride! The Queen of England is a Lizard Alien? Gimme the details! The earth is flat? Su…..wait…WHAT?????

The earth is FLAT?

This guy, one *Mad* Mike Hughes, launched himself to the starting height of 1,800 feet to…ahem…*prove* the earth is flat. You know, I am not a big fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, my normal opinion of him being *even a stopped watch is right twice a day.* But this must be once of his times a day to be right, cuz,  I totally agree with him on this one. Mad Mike has had too many mushrooms on his pizza. Mike isn’t alone in his determination to prove the earth is flat, as it turns out, there are quite a few people with their tinfoil wrapped just a little too tight. Thousands, maybe millions, if their PR is to be believed, of our brothers and sisters do indeed believe the earth is flat. They are not agreed on whether or not it has a dome over it, or if it is located on the back of a turtle, but they are agreed on this one point…earth is a frisbee in space.

It seems to me that we have actually known…”believed”…the earth is more or less roundish for quite some time, in fact, I would propose that one of the very first acts of any technological society is to determine that very basic size and shape of their home planet. As it turns out, I am probably right, since there is plenty of evidence that the Sumerians were aware of the notion of a spherical planet. The Pyramid Builders seem to have had the same idea. The Greeks were the first to actually write about it. Eratosthenes (-276 to -195) estimated the circumference as 25,000 miles, pretty close.

The fact is, it is fairly easy to discern that the earth is at least curved. Standing on the shore of any suitable body of water will show distant objects “sinking” into the horizon. In some cases, a bit of basic math will allow a small determination of its size.

Here is a picture of the Toronto Tower, taken from Niagara on The Lake, about 30 miles away. Clearly the entire tower isn’t visible. Next to it is a picture of the complete tower. Using simple trigonometry I am sure one can actually figure out the curve of the surface of the lake. I am also quite sure one will arrive at the same answer as the Greeks did, some 2300 years ago.

What is more of a concern to me is the fact that since Science has sold itself out to corporate interests, big money and the current mythology, no one trusts it anymore, it no longer provides us with what we expect from it, accurate data on our existence. I do not see this in a few extraordinary thoughts, I see it permeating society at all levels. Everywhere, data is discredited in favor of impressions, feelings, and emotional attachments to popular mythologies.

Second Amendment Follies

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” -Bill of Rights

The first two rights in the American Bill of Rights are what I call *natural rights*. By this I mean they belong to everyone, and can never be denied to anyone for any reason. Any reasonable interpretation of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” by definition, acknowledges the existence of these natural rights. The first is the right to thoughts, feelings and opinions, and the ability to express them. It is impossible to even contrive a method of controlling what a person thinks and feels, and should, in my opinion, be considered torture to even try. Most of psychology actually exists because of repression of these thoughts, feelings and opinions. The second is the right to defend one’s self and one’s family from danger. “Self Defense” is a permissible defense for almost any level of action towards an attacker.

There is quite a bit of brouhaha in America these days about both these natural rights, and it would be comical to watch the contortions various tyrants are going thorough to try and deny them to some other group of society if it were not so fucking sad. Of course, as Michael so accurately noted in Stranger in a Strange Land:

“I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.” – Michael Valentine Smith

So, today I want to say a few things about the Second Amendment. The attacks on the right to defend ourselves have reached a level where I actually fear it will cause society to engage in a possible needful exercise demonstrating the natural right of defense, in common parlance, a war.

Bump Stocks, Trigger Cranks, Assault Weapons, and so much more are vain attempts to nibble away at this right, even as the world so vastly shows us how futile such endeavors are. The right to defend is a NATURAL RIGHT, it cannot be denied, it is impossible, insane and tyrannical to even try. And look around. Do rebel groups have any trouble getting arms? Nope. Not a bit of trouble. How about criminals? Nope. In Australia, they have a fucking “new crime” where someone has a gun, and uses it not to hurt, but merely to threaten. Removing, or attempting to remove, the right of defense leads to tyranny, either by individuals (criminals) or institutions.

And now we have “ghost guns.” Anyone with about 2,000 USD can make countless fully functional firearms, in their office, basement or garage. All that is needed is a computer (it doesn’t even need to be a very good one, an old IBM 386 will serve quite well), some drafting software and a CNC machining center and/or 3D printer. To add insult to injury, if you will, there is a whole community built around the development and sharing of software to build these weapons as open source programs (which are protected by not the second amendment, but the first amendment). No one, ever, for the rest of time, can be denied access to a firearm. Technology is a wonderful thing.

Admittedly, the one can currently make are…rough and unrefined. (I am reminded of the FP-45 Liberator of WW2.) But, as with any technology, they won’t be for long. In only a few years, grenade launchers, SAM’s, name it. If you can design it you can build it. I spent a long time in manufacturing, and I can tell you, it is not IF it is WHEN. No government, no individual, no amount of repression can stop it, or even slow it. I have pondered before, and I ponder now, could it be that 3D printers are the beginnings of what will in 100 years be the “replicators” of Star Trek fame? Will we one day make all our “needs” directly from the Universal Source? Consider where this technology has already brought us, BOTH natural rights are now irrevocable. First, we received the network, where everyone can have their say, and now, self defense. It isn’t hard to see where this is going. 3D printers can already print “food” of a sort, and transportation and housing. Further, science is coming slowly to the point of beginning to understand the infinite energies that lie waiting all around us, and their very intimate relationships with existence.

So where does that leave us? Well, I will offer this. We could begin trying to find other ways to deal with each other. Perhaps bullying people to accept our needs, or putting our needs above theirs isn’t a great way to run a society. I am reminded of Gandhi, who over threw the British Rule in India with peaceful resistance, or Martin Luther King, who brought huge advances to race relations with peaceful demonstrations. We have little choice now. Everyone is armed, any one can and will defend themselves if forced to. Equality.

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity.” -Gandhi

Said another way: “You will get more with a kind word, and a gun, than with just a kind word.” I see this as a huge step forward for liberty and a free society. The absolute and irrevocable guarantee of the security that comes with self defense allows a free society to consider other issues. Tyrants and bullies, predators in general, have lost most, if not all, of their power over us. It has been well demonstrated countless times that societies that have come to terms with the inevitable truth of a natural right actually have a freer life, in many ways. Certainly, less crime, but more to the point, bullies and tyrants cannot exercise any power over the individual, and for the most part, without that power, most of them are sad and hurt individuals who can now be healed by the community. The sources of their pain can be addressed in peaceful and loving ways. Compromises that attend to the needs of every individual can be sought, consensus reached, instead of the repression and violence that bullies and tyrants rely upon to force their will on others.

In closing, one last quote:

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” – attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.

Words for the day

“I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man’s life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate’s parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life–for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners, and patriotic sayings… We’ve institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two… It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts… You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate it unchanged to the situation today… I hate it when they say,”He gave his life for his country.”Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.” — Admiral Gene LaRocque

*You must give yourself to love,
If love is what you’re after.”– Kate Wolf