First Declaration of Occupy New York City.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Four-Armed Lady Gaga Guitar Performance !

Four-Armed Lady Gaga Guitar Performance !

It's things like this that really make life a whole lot more interesting!

Death is Never Easy.

You will be missed,Uncle Earl.

   This morning I sat in front of my computer, weighing my words and thoughts against a very heavy heart. I thought I would be strong today, after hearing last night that my Uncle Earl had succumbed to his long fight with throat cancer. Making that call to all the family members is never easy, neither is receiving the news that a loved one that you were very close to passed on. The emotional roller coaster that it takes you on is pure hell. First the denial, then the anger, the rationalizing, then finally the grief sets in followed by the joy that your loved one is no longer suffering.

   I woke up this morning telling myself  I'll get by; I'll be okay. As my partner Dennis left to go to work, I told him so while trying to choke back the tears,suppress the pain I was feeling on the inside. It was too much and the emotional dam overflowed from deep within. After numerous attempts to get myself under control, I finally succeeded in reining in my sadness. I've been sad before but this was beyond sad...this was primal sadness from deep within the soul. Even sitting here writing this...it is taking me a great amount of energy just to get myself under control.

   Death is never an easy thing to deal with. We go through many rehearsals in our heads;many scenarios to figure out how to deal with the news of a loved one passing away. We take the cool man approach, at times, the "it's-not-going-to break-me" approach where we come off as cold and uncaring to others. Many a funeral and viewing I have gone to that involved a close friend or family member, I have taken this approach so often that my family and friends wonder if I feel anything at all. I never allow myself to be seen publicly grieving, so I do all my grieving privately before everyone arrives. It's out of my system and I can be the rock that I need to be for my family.

   

   On thing I will never understand when it comes to viewings and funerals: Why do we remember their death so much yet we barely recognize the departed while they were living? What was the last thing you did with your loved one before they passed? What memories were shared while they were still among us? How would we like to remember our loved ones other than seeing them in a casket? I was always taught that funerals were suppose to be sad, somber events...no laughing, no funny stories...no humor. If you laughed at a funeral, you were guaranteed to be ostracized from future family events. So we dressed in our finest dark colored outfits, put on our best somber face possible, and paid our respects. I could only imagine what the dearly departed would be thinking right about that time "Oh for heavens sake, stop crying like that! My life wasn't THAT sad!"

   Uncle Earl, I remember, was a very avid hunter and fisher...more hunter than fisher, though. Deer season came up and he was all dressed and ready to go out with his wife and sons to capture that big game. after a long day out in the woods, he would crack open a few brews and regale us with tales of his hunting expedition. I found it fascinating to listen to him talk about how he tracked a deer for miles after he shot it full of holes. To see the sparkle in his eyes and the light of the campfire dancing around in them drew you into the story; made you a part of it. He used to tease me a lot for not getting into the hunt, I was considered a pansy if I didn't at least gut one deer in my lifetime. i was more into fishing and gutting and eating fish than I was hunting. 

   Fishing, we'd take the boat out or fish from the shores, whichever Uncle Earl felt like doing. i recall him telling me about Grandma and Pappy, both avid fishers and hunters. Pappy had a boat that he and Gram would take out on the lake and cast their lines from. Looking over at Earl, he was almost the split image of Pappy, in his flannel jacket, ball cap with the permit attached to it, and his fishing pole. Aunt Becky would help scale the fish and we'd fry it up in the pan over the campfire. I didn't think I'd like eating fresh caught fish, but the way Aunt Becky made it...it made you forget you were eating fish at all. This is what I remember the most about Uncle Earl.

   I think one of my biggest regrets was not spending enough time with him during his final days. Aunt Becky and uncle Earl had planned a big family reunion, which I could not attend at the time. I was in the hospital  having surgery. I recall Mom calling me to tell me about the reunion and kicking myself in the butt because I really wanted to go. I hadn't seen Uncle Earl in several years since I moved to Pittsburgh with Dennis. All the could of's, should of's, would of's don't make a lick of difference now. He's gone...no longer suffering with his cancer, and in heaven. A lot of words left unspoken, he never got to hear how he had an impact on my life.

   I remember a song that came out  several years ago that I can relate to now. The song, entitled "In the Living Years", written and sung by  a former member of the band Genesis, talks about the death of father and all the things he wished he had told him while he was still alive. The message being that we should never wait until a loved one has left us to finally realize all the words and thoughts;hopes and fears we could have spoken to them. Never hesitate to say how much you love  someone, or how much they have made a difference in your life. To not spend that time is to rob yourself of that moment that we take so much for granted. Never pass up an opportunity to share...

Think Hate Doesn't Hurt?

Think Hate Doesn't Hurt?:

'via Blog this'

What's LOVE got to do with it?

 

 

 

   A church sign posted in front of a Wilmington,North Carolina church is creating quite a stir, according to WECT in North Carolina. The signmaker, Anna Benson, says this about the sign:   

 

"I love gays, I love everybody, I love people. I am a sinner. And I had to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior."

 

The pastor of this small church, David Heuring, gives this in defense of the sign:

   "That sign is to let the people know what a sin is. Because the majority of people don't really know what the sins of the Bible are. We are going to teach the entire Word,and we are going to tell the entire truth. And I'll take the heat for it."

 

 

    As I have posted earlier in a comment to this article, why is it that the only people singled out for this "warning" are people in the G.L.B.T community? It has come to my attention, in the many articles I have read of this nature that the Gay and Lesbian community has now become the "NEW BLACK". 

   Now wait, before any of you go off on me and say how dare I compare the black plight with gays and lesbians, let me explain my reasoning. As you know, African Americans(Blacks) have jumped through many hoops to gain their equality in education, housing,employment, and marital rights. It wasn't too far off in our past that Blacks struggled just as hard, if not harder, to gain the respect of white America. And with a black man running our state of affairs, it sends an even clearer message to the black community that YES you too, can become something more than what you are. 

    However, let's just suppose, for a moment, that THAT had never happened...blacks were still struggling, or for that matter any other culture that is inherently different than white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Evangelical(W.A.S.P's, for short). And you were driving down the road and you came upon this same sign...same church...only the sign read something like this:

GOD LOVES N****RS. BUT HE HATES THEIR BABY POPPING,DRUG DEALING,GANG BANGING LIFESTYLE! ROMANS 1:26,27...

TURN OR BURN!!!

   Now tell me honestly,Anna Benson, how many black people would be descending down upon your church, with pitchforks and guns in hand, demanding that you come out and face them and say what you posted on that board to their face? And Pastor Heuring,really...seriously, how would you defend that to the people, especially to the thousand of angry black men and women  who you managed to piss off royally? Is this message truly about love? Or is there something a bit more sinister in that message? All you would have to do is replace the word Gay and add just about any other race, creed,religion, or sexuality and the message is the same: "Either be like us or suffer our wrath!" Oh wait...not YOUR wrath...GOD'S WRATH!" But still, just the THREAT of using God's name in vain is enough to send any non-believer screaming to the altar, right?

   Just as a reminder to Pastor Heuring, I took it upon myself to do a bit of research on what the Bible REALLY says about love and how his people should love one another as he has loved them. In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians,(Paul wrote two letters to them because, I suppose, he felt it was important to repeat his sermon to them twice) he devoted a WHOLE chapter, Chapter 13 to be precise, on the true definition of what love is:

 

I Corinthians 13:1-13.

1.If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, [1] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [2] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 

Emphasis are all mine.

 

 

 

 

 

| Disinformation and Misinformation - Becoming Educated About the New Apostolic Reformation

| Disinformation and Misinformation - Becoming Educated About the New Apostolic Reformation