Wake up! We, the people, are the elephants not the rodents!

Friends, the solution to the world’s problems has finally come to me and for it I have to thank the courageous Shoe Thrower.

For some weeks many on this forum have been discussing how we can bring about change in this fraught world. Some have argued that we need to re-educate the masses. As an ex-teacher I have no faith in this option. Their indoctrination is too strong and too difficult to eradicate.

I sense that the best way to affect real change is to bring down the elite who are running the whole world and most of its people for their exclusive benefit. The way to do this need not involve an armed rebellion. The way to go is to expose the elite’s vulnerability, make them feel unsafe, unwelcome, treat them with the contempt they deserve, scorn their power and privilege and possessions.

Look what happened when a courageous journalist from the peasantry threw his shoes at the Commander in Chief. The reverberations went around the world. The story was on everyone’s lips. Someone had challenged authority, treated a high priest in that authority with contempt, with derision, even called him a ‘dog’!

Why do you think Muntader was beaten, had limbs broken and is threatened with a long jail term? Because the powers that be didn’t want the masses getting the wrong idea, didn’t want them thinking that they, the ‘elite’ could be challenged.

Suddenly that act of defiance swept away a million learned, critical articles by intellectuals. A peasant had challenged one of the Kings, had sought to deliver a blow with a leather shoe. It was not a blow that could seriously injure the intended target but what it did was to show how vulnerable the ‘untouchables’ really are. Despite their bodyguards, armored limousines, secure, patrolled mansions and offices, etc, they are all vulnerable.

The image of President George covering behind the lectern was a powerful one, a dangerous one.

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Friends, as a child I clearly remember playing ring around the rosie. As I and three or four others held hands and danced around a tree or some other object we sang the song which went as I recall:

Ring around the rosie,

A pocket full of posies.

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down!

It was a lot of fun and we all laughed and giggled and felt supremely happy especially when we fell down. Of course little did we realize as children that the harmless game could have other meanings, especially the last line. Then, as children, we didn’t realize the meaning of anything or that some things have no meaning!

The brilliant image which I’ve selected shows one interpretation of the final line, a chilling one you’ll agree. But has the artist got it right? Are we as humans going to fall down and never get up again? Will our bones be our only lasting legacy along with the damaged, polluted planet?
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Friends, this is a Palestinian boy who is defiantly throwing stones at an Israeli tank. He must be all of eight or nine or ten and he has lived under brutal occupation his whole life.

The photograph symbolizes the might of Israel and the complete powerlessness of those who live in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The boy’s people have lived with brutal Israeli occupation for sixty years while the world has looked the other way. And the more powerful that Israel has become over that period, the more brutal it has become. And with the brutality has come an arrogance, an arrogance that cares nothing for world opinion or international laws and conventions or human rights or decency.

Israel has acquired nuclear weapons. It did so by stealth and deception. It was probably aided by America and/or Britain though trying to prove it would be difficult. Israel, judged by its actions, is determined to set up a Jew-only State, a large Jew-only State that encroaches upon land belong to its neighbors and takes all the land that belongs to the hapless Palestinians.

Israel will allow nothing to stand in the way of its fanatical ambitions. It has already indicated that it will use nuclear weapons if its stranglehold on Palestine or existence is seriously threatened. It has already threatened to nuke Iran. Why?

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Friends, I was struck by the haunting beauty of this crying girl. Her name is Imam Boudella. Her father was just released from Guantanamo Bay and flown back to Bosnia.

She waited excitedly at Sarajevo Airport to greet him after years of absence. He was escorted off the plane by Bosnian Security officials and driven away in an armoured van to be interrogated. She never saw him.

Sadly, all around the world, children like Imam are crying. They may be starving. They may be in the middle of a war zone or a siege. They may be dying of aids or some other easily preventable disease. They may be victims of incest or radiation from depleted uranium. They may have lost limbs from landmines, or parents. They may be being sexually abused by pedophiles or priests. They may have drunken fathers or mothers. They may be working twelve hours a day in dirty sweat shops, being beaten. Who would know? Who would care?

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Friends, the photograph shows a huge congregation of humans caught up in the rapture of religious belief.  They are being eloquently indoctrinated by Joel Osteen, a man who, like Billy Graham, knows how to push the buttons of the gullible, how to work the crowd.

Look carefully at the faces. They are not the faces of rational people who are carefully and logically thinking about the information being fed to them. They are faces of people who are out of control or, more correctly, are being completely controlled by their emotions AND the cleric!

This scene is being replicated all over the world: in synagogues, in mosques, in churches, in cathedrals, in temples. Billions of people across the planet are fervent believers in a multitude of different Gods and theological systems. To question why there are so many differing religions all with wildly different claims never occurs to them. They run their lives and their family’s lives to fit their particular beliefs. Some even sacrifice their own lives for their beliefs. Why?

The bottom line is that all religions promise eternal life after death. That is the big appeal, one that plays on the fear of death that is natural to human beings.

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This blog would like to offer the highest possible praise to the Iraqi journalist who took off both his shoes and hurled them at George W Bush. His brave action spoke for most people around the world although some would’ve probably chosen a more potent missile.

The photograph shows Bush ducking one of the missiles which the journalist accompanied with some well-chosen words: “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, DOG,” he said in Arabic.  Nouri al-Maliki, an American stooge,  is looking on disapprovingly.

To throw shoes at someone in Muslim society is regarded as a high insult as is calling someone a dog. If I were a dog, I would be insulted if I were to be compared to George W Bush.

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Friends, I have gathered together two artistic views of humankind for your consideration. Double click each one to enlarge.

Of course there are many views from many periods represented by paintings and sculptures which can be found in major museums and art galleries around the world but these two seem to fairly represent what might best be described as opposite views.

The photo on the right shows a marble Roman copy of a lost Greek statue, one that was probably originally cast in bronze. It shows the beauty of the human body and portrays nobility and grace and hints at unlimited promise, even immortality. Of course Greek statues, marvellously crafted, featured athletes, goddesses, philosophers, playwrights, all the things they valued.

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Friends, the time has come for me, DavidG,  to reveal myself, at least part of me, the important part, the thinking part.

I do hope you won’t be too disappointed but some say I’m quite impressive. Some say I’m obviously having a ball! Some say I have an eye for the future while others say I have an eye for the ladies, a wicked one at that. I wonder which eye they mean?

Yes, I know you’re asking just how I manage to write my posts and reply to comments. It’s not easy I grant you but I have very mobile lips and, with a chopstick I can do wonders. No ladies, I’m not available on Saturday night or any other night. My wife would kill me!

I realize you think I can see the future. Well, even though my horizons are very limited,  I can. After all, I watch Faux News. And CNN. What more does anyone need to know?

What do I see? The future looks bleak.

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Friends, it’s interesting to watch the responses that are occurring around the world regarding ailing car industries. It exposes the curious way humans think (or, more correctly, how desperately they try to adjust their conditioned responses to fit a new reality).

The fact is that global warming experts tell us clearly that we shouldn’t be burning fossil fuels if we want our planet to survive. Fossil fuels include coal and petroleum. Yet this fact, backed up by many scientific studies, is being largely ignored because humans can’t get their tiny minds around the fact that their current lifestyle is unsustainable. Why? Because of their conditioning.

For example, gas-guzzling vehicles, which for many are a symbol of their imagined status, have reached their use-by date. Bigger and faster cars are no longer better and are in fact killing our planet. Do we stop making or using cars? No! Why? Because, like Pavlov’s dog (which was conditioned to salivate when a bell was rung), we have been conditioned to believe that they are essential!

Now of course I too have been conditioned like everyone else. We were brought up to think that cars were important, a status symbol. The marketing industry turned this belief into an art form.  In our teenage years we ached to get our first set of wheels, to impress the girls, to show off to our mates. Early cars had small engines and couldn’t go very fast which was lucky otherwise I’d have killed myself.

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Friends, I don’t know if you caught this news which was reported yesterday on Reuters, but their sources are saying that Obama has agreed to provide some kind of ‘nuclear umbrella’ for Israel to prevent it being attacked by Iran. It also appears that if Iran attacks Israel, America will respond in kind. Wow! What a blast!

So this means that the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East, the one which got its weapons by deception, the one that has been oppressing and occupying and brutalizing the Palestinians for decades and stealing their land, the one that has fought wars with most of its neighbours,  the one that is driven by a fanatical, anachronistic, elitist theology, the one that has the strongest military in the region, etc, is going to get both a missile shield and a guarantee of American military support (the nuclear kind) should a war develop with Iran, another Muslim country.

My reaction to this news is one of deep anger and frustration. America is alienated from most countries in the world already. Its attacks on Muslim countries have already created deep hatred for Americans across the world.

The whole world was relieved and happy when Obama won and they offered profuse congratulations and most believed what he said about bringing change. And what does he do?

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