The Activist: The Financial System

The Financial System is a Machine That Destroys Our Souls

In Capitalism, Consumerism, Debt Prison, IMF-WorldBank-Wall Street- Complex, The Financial System on August 21, 2011at 11:28 pm

How do we take our lives back from the hands of the bankers and bondholders? We must fight for our own minds. We must fight for our own visions, we must fight for authenticity, for freedom in every form and fashion. We must fight against the forces of stability, the vampirism of a financial system based on usurping our hopes and passions. We must fight against the ignorant cycling of capital on the back of human misery. We must fight for our lives back, we must break the exploitive contract, we do not want your house, we do not want your false dreams. We want freedom, we want justice, we want to feed the starving children.

We do not want your luxurious cars or your mansions, we do not want your false hopes, we want basic rights for every individual on earth. We want basic justice for every human being on this planet.

We do not want your weapons programs funded by our very tax money. We do not want your images plastered on the television.

Down with injustice, down with a mass media that sugarcoats the heinous truth. Down with a psychological environment which turns human beings into silent consumers of their inner self.

We have mortgaged our lives and now we sit and wait for our lives to improve, we must stop waiting and take our lives back. We must extract our hearts and souls out of the mass media machine. We must extricate our very being out of the cycles of capital which are meant to distract us, consume us and reduce us to wanton beasts.

Gertrude Taylor

The Activists: The Truth About The System

We are not a Part of the System,

We are Merely Exploited by the System

In Capitalism, Democracy, Oppression on August 19, 2011 at 2:08 pm

We slave away from day to night. We wash the dishes. We drive to work, we pay our taxes, we serve our time, but are we part of the system?

The answer is an explicit no. We are merely the work horses, the laborers, but the agenda is always dictated from above. The social ‘truths’ are all formulated in the think tanks of the rich. The elite mass media which thinks of the masses as nothing more than a piece of dough, to be kneaded and kneaded until the message is clear.

Thus, we, the masses, the form, the people, have been rendered as nothing more than a reflexive, reactive audience. We, the generation of apolitical children, have been stuffed in movie theatres so that we may have Mr. Spielberg dream on our behalf.

We have lost touch with our inner selves, we have been formulated and reformulated so many times that we have grown tired and insecure. We shelter ourselves inside of our manufactured personas. We tuck our feelings inside of the day to day. We try to escape through the television screens, but we are stuck as a non-entity still.

No, we are not part of the system. In fact, the system deliberately chooses to ignore us when it cannot explicitly formulate our psyche. The system bullies us, the system crushes our self-esteem. When we rise, they call us hooligans. When we protest, they labels us as existential trouble markers.

No, we are not part of this system, and the dream is not our dream. Our manufactured consumer reality is not even our reality. We are ghosts within the industrial machine, our voices are nothing more than allusions to a primal voice that can exist in this culture no more.

No, we are not part of any system, we are merely the oil used to lubricate; the cheap labor used to increase profitability; the beasts of burden used to lug around the guilts of the rich and the vanities of the famous.

Michael Schaefer

The fruit from the Bong tree....

So that's what a Bong fruit is! Ooops.... Heh. ;p

What is an activist?

It's been almost five years since I took to activism. Often, I am asked by the uninitiated (or the apathetic) what an activist is. What do they do? Where do they do it? How is it done? And of course, why do they do it? They all expect uncomplicated answers. Like cereal straight out of the box. If only it was that easy.

There's a point where anyone can become an activist. I mean, you see something so wrong. And you have to act on it. To the more radical extremist elements, this means even if it leads to the end of you.

In the early days, although I had an uneasy time explaining the complexities associated with this occupation, it did not deter me from obliging as I harbored hopes that it will touch, move or inspire others 'to take up arms', per se. I never ceased trying to illuminate injustices or atrocities that are so well hidden from the general population by 'the System'. However, as time passed along, cynicism manifested and overtook my way of being. Facing such questions and defining an answer now bordered on the point of being an inconvenience. So while I look forward to extending my days as a 'troublemaker' (Yes, that's what governments and corporate bigwigs will have others think of people such as us) to a full decade, this posting is my reply to the subject matter one more time.

Now scoot and leave me alone, all of you! Heh. ;p

Tonight I can write the saddest lines....

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is shattered, 
And the blue stars shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes? 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. 
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. 
And the verse falls to the soul, like dew to the pasture. 

What does it matter that my love could not keep her?
The night is shattered and she is not with me. 

This is all. 
In the distance, someone is singing. In the distance. 
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her. 
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. 
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. 
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. 
Love is so short, forgetting is so long. 

Because through the nights like this one, I held her in my arms.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. 

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.   

~ Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973)

The Activist: The Creed

The Revolution is Our Only Hope

In Activism, Democracy, The Revolution on August 21, 2011 at 1:19 am

It is time for humanity to act upon the oppression. It is time for us to push back against the waves of injustice. No child should die of hunger. No economy should be allowed to expand by squeezing out the poor. No mass culture should be justified as it deceives the people.

The revolution is the only way to clear the clouds of misery that hover above the human condition. Capitalism is a lie. Economic growth is a myth, the wealth of the people is being siphoned as we speak. The governments are nothing more than charades.

It is time for the people to rise, the frenetic energy of the crowds to manifest itself in every fashion possible.

The revolution is the only way in which we can free ourselves from 400 years of capitalist bondage and accumulation. The revolution is the only way to wipe out the remnants of slavery that will otherwise remain a part of our psychology forever.

Anyone who is afraid of the revolution has something to hide. Anyone who questions the rationale of the revolution is complicit in the injustices that continue to grow as stock market indices skyrocket.

We are the people, we are the ones, we are the voice and it is our duty to resist. It is our obligation to rebel against those who insist on subduing human freedom. It is our responsibility to ourselves and to future generations to do away with the corporate schemes, with the military-industrial machines, with greedy entities that are bent on destroying humanity.

Fear is their weapon, it is not ours. Fear is the instrument that they surgically put into our chests. We are afraid of nothing, we stand together, the collective, the people, the ones who have nothing to hide, the ones who have no desire to hoard the resources of the world.

Our asset is our will power. Our hope lies in our political consciousness. Our freedom is the only air that we need to breathe.

Gertrude Taylor

What the heck are Bong trees???

I want to go to the land where the Bong tree grows......

春夜喜雨 Welcome Rain on a Spring Night

Touched and moved by this....

好雨知时节 The good rain knows its season,

当春乃发生 When spring arrives, it brings life.

随风潜入夜 It follows the wind secretly into the night,

润物细无声 And moistens all things softly, without sound.

野径云俱黑 On the country road, the clouds are all black,

江船火独明 On the riverboat, a single fire bright.

晓看红湿处 At dawn one sees this place now red and wet,

花重锦官城 The flowers are heavy in the brocade city.

~ A poem by 杜甫 Du Fu (712-770)