One Earth Spirit.

Posted on July 31, 2014

by Jerry Alatalo

“They think to order all things wisely; but having rejected Christ they will end by drenching the world with blood.”

– FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKI (1821-1881) Russian novelist The Brothers Karamozov (1880)

Men and women in rapidly increasing numbers around the Earth are now taking action to end the violence in Gaza. Why are millions of men and women concerned about the tragic situation there? Because there is something inside of every human being that brings about feelings of compassion upon witnessing harm and pain experienced by fellow human beings. That “something” is intangible; that which cannot be touched. That something is incorporeal; not consisting of matter; without material body or substance; of spirits or angels.

That something is impalpable; not perceptible to the touch; that cannot be felt, and too slight or subtle to be grasped easily by the mind. That intangible, incorporeal, and impalpable something holds the one route to peace in Gaza and peace on Earth. Through human history philosophers, religious scholars, metaphysicians, and spiritual seekers have voluntarily experienced rituals, studied the world’s religious traditions, and traveled short to great distances on inner journeys to discover that something.

More than enough spiritual wisdom has become discovered, extensively written about and recorded, and available for human beings to end war and large-scale violence on Earth. Beyond all the debates over whose religion is right and whose is wrong, all the words spoken and written about “our” interests and “their” faults and wrongful actions, is existent an eternal and infinite statement of truth that is impossible to disprove: all people, all life, and all things are sacred.

As the years, decades, and centuries have passed, humanity has incrementally approached nearer and nearer to the eventual full awareness of the sacred nature/reality of all people, all life, and all things. Exactly when humanity comes to this highest possible spiritual understanding, organizes societies based upon sacred consciousness, and experiences peace among all people, nations and regions is not predictable, but remains always available as an option.

“The power of love, as the basis of state, has never been tried… There will always be a government of force where men are selfish…”

– RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) American philosopher

For a variety of reasons known and unknown, efforts to bring about global understanding, mutually shared vision, and agreement on steps to guarantee peace on Earth for this and future generations have yet to actualize such an ideal reality.

Corporate news media has failed to deliver on its tremendous potential, and the world’s people are turning away in large numbers. This explains the recent rise of independent news media on the internet, and the profound trend of more people getting their information on world events from their computer screens.

Some benefit could be realized from imagining if one were the owner/major shareholder of one of the world’s largest media corporations and held the authority to make decisions about content of magazines, newspapers, internet, radio, and television programming.

How would you use the communications company you own? Remember you own one of the world’s largest media corporations.

You call the shots, the “buck” stops at your desk, and you make the final decision – give your yes or no – on any programming that winds up presented to your customers/viewers, readers, and listeners. With regard to the current global situation – specifically Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and other war-torn regions – what would be your vision and goals for the business entity you have in your possession?

What percentage of articles, reports, and programs would you devote to arriving at the truth through historical and current facts, experts and well-informed guests from every arena of human activity, and discovery of reality-based factors of cause and effect? Would you decide to provide the men, women, and children who are your customers with information that is less than fully truthful and accurate – which leaves them with an awareness of global events that is less than complete? Would you exclude information which, if published, would result in certain of your largest advertisers deciding to sever business relations with your company, although the excluded information was necessary for your customers’ becoming fully informed?

How many of your company’s articles and programs would you like to see produced with titles such as “Is Middle East Peace Possible?”, “A World Without War”, “Ukraine Solutions”, “Gazan Perspectives”, or “Peacemakers Through History”? In what ways would you use your media company’s resources now to help end – not a ceasefire, but to end – the violence, destruction, injuries, and deaths of Gazans and Israelis? Those who own the world’s largest media corporations control what information they provide to their customers. Sadly, the decisions those owners make too often result in their customers’ receiving extremely biased, partially censored, “spun”, or inaccurate, intentionally misleading information.

Media owners’ decisions too often result in the censoring or omission of important facts. Omission of truth.

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The following video may bring some men and women to tears – perhaps to uncontrollable grief and sorrow. Looking into the eyes of men and women in the film should help lessen the sadness for there is something visible in those eyes. What’s visible is that intangible, incorporeal, and impalpable something.

That one route to peace on Earth.

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Please visit Jewishvoiceforpeace.org

(Thank you to Jewish Voice For Peace at YouTube)

Palestinian Trail Of Tears.

Posted on July 24, 2014

by Jerry Alatalo

Alison Weir was a weekly small-town newspaper editor in America in 2001 when she began researching the Israel-Palestine conflict. She read many books on the issue by respected authors, journalists, and academics, authored books, and written many articles found at the website she started – If Americans Knew. She traveled to Gaza to see for herself the situation there while talking to both Palestinians and Israelis. At the bottom of this post she delivers a fifteen minute talk on what she’s learned, at a speakers conference held in March 2014.

Ms. Weir points out facts that most who’ve done a moderate amount of research into the Israel-Palestine conflict are aware of, although the number of men and women who’ve done that moderate research is not nearly large enough. One would probably be right in saying that Alison Weir finds it strange that her conveying the truth regarding the history of Israel-Palestine-America has become viewed by many as a “courageous act.”

Israel became established through a war of conquest from 1947-49 where 750,000 Palestinian people were forcefully driven  from their homes and land, in a military operation to take land for the new Israeli state. Since that time the Palestinian people have seen the amount of land under their control steadily reduced, until today, where the land is but a small fraction of what it was over 60 years ago. During those over six decades, the United States government has enabled Israel to take more and more land from the Palestinians – then building two-state-solution-destroying settlements on the confiscated land – by providing annual financial and military aid. Israel is the largest of all the world’s recipients of American aid; now around $3.1 billion per year, or $8-10 million per day.

While Israel has received well over $100 billion in American taxpayer support, Palestinians have increasingly suffered under a more intense version of apartheid as experienced by black South Africans – until organized worldwide pressure led to the dismantling of the racist South African system. Alison Weir suggests at the end of her talk that Americans need to demand an end to Israeli aid transfers as a leverage for resolving the conflict once and for all.

The Middle East region may offer the best example on Earth when thinking about the biblical passage: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” The history of Middle East wars does not coincide with what some describe as “those people have warred for thousands of years, and nothing can be done to stop it”, but the wars have been fought over natural resources, land, and corporation owners’ profits. There was no such thing as Middle East “terrorism” before Israel’s establishment in the late 1940’s, when American/western corporations began pushing for control of resources in the Middle East nations.

Those national governments which decide to emulate the universally admired Egyptian President Nasser’s model of Pan-Arabism – that directs resource profits to the people instead of outside entities and powers – soon find a military target on them. With regard to Syria – which has been the scene of an over three-year war over natural gas pipeline routes, a banking system outside of western private-central bank control, and perhaps large newly discovered Syrian natural gas deposits to rival Qatar’s enormous deposits – over 100,000 Syrians have died and millions have become refugees in what is now the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In a matter of days recently, 700 Syrians died in attacks by paid mercenaries from over 80 countries around the world.

Since the 1953 CIA coup/overthrow of democratically elected Iranian President Mossadegh after he nationalized Iran’s oil resources, the Middle East has been the scene of war after war, all over energy resources. The 2003 War in Iraq – which destroyed that nation – killed 500,000 to 1 million Iraqis, 5,000 Americans, was pre-planned by Bush officials and oil corporations (complete with charts pointing out division of oil fields), cost American taxpayers trillions; based on the lies of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and other assorted war criminals.

The world’s people need to start demanding that war criminals be punished just like people convicted of murdering one person. Providing deadly weapons to mercenaries needs to become punished just as when an individual provides to others the murder weapons. In other words, the world can no longer allow wars of aggression facilitators to act with impunity. Crime is crime, and no person is above the law, no matter if he or she is the leader of a nation, a multi-billionaire banker, or oligarch owner of a corporation.

The paths walked by Native Americans starting over 500 years ago, the Palestinian people since 1947, the people of Africa, and indigenous people in nations and regions around the Earth share many aspects. Through history all indigenous people at some point came into contact with people coming from outside their lands, frequently leading to experiences of extreme suffering from methods used by the “newcomers” to take land, natural resources and – when talking about slavery from hundreds of years ago to today’s sex trade/worker slaves – human beings.

Coming up with an analytical, reasoned explanation for history’s many examples of man’s inhumanity to his fellow-man is certainly no small task, yet any efforts which intend to decrease man’s inhumanity are worth entering into. In the United States, Native Americans were forcefully removed from the land of their ancestors and onto reservations where the land was poor for growing food and raising animals; on foot in inhuman marches that have fallen under the umbrella term “trail of tears.”

All people through history who’ve been on the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man have essentially walked the “trail of tears”, and today the people of Palestine are the world’s most publicized example of those still walking that trail. The thing about man’s continuing inhumanity to man is that men and women who are out of the line of fire experience the trail in a less intense form. Many who receive their information of world events on a superficial level from the corporate media – through the lens of its owners – are unaware of the true extent of inhumanity’s presence.

Men and women around the world, although not present in Gaza and personally witnessing the tragic events there, experience various levels of empathy, compassion, indignation, and heartache depending on the amount of accurate information they’ve seen or read. The current violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict has led to a global recognition of the need to get the differences and concerns finally resolved. In common terms, people are more and more demanding an end to the nightmare; the continued prison-like living conditions, senseless wars, killing and injury (physical and psychological).

Those who’ve viewed the Academy Award winning film “Dances With Wolves” may agree the most powerful scene in the production came near the end, when the Kevin Costner character (John Dunbar) and his white, native-adopted wife Stands With A Fist (played by Mary McDonnell) were leaving their indigenous friends to protect them from the Army. American troops were coming over the mountains after Dunbar, closing in to eventually kill the natives, and Dunbar’s native friend Wind In His Hair (played by Rodney A. Grant) is seen on a cliff-top on his horse.

Wind In His Hair would come to call Dunbar “loo-ten-tent”, he senses a possibility of never seeing friends Dunbar and Stands With A Fist again, and perhaps senses his own imminent death. Alone on the mountain cliff, Wind In His Hair yells to the Great Spirit, “John Dunbar is my friend! John Dunbar is my friend forever!” – in one of the most memorable, artistic, emotionally moving dramatic film scenes of all time.

“Dances With Wolves” is a film that tells about another example of people on the “trail of tears” – man’s inhumanity to man – and in that powerful closing scene suggests another way of living. One wonders what went through the minds of those who died in Palestine as they lived out their last moments on this Earth. Were there intense thoughts about love shared with husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and family, joyful laughter with friends and neighbors, and feelings of lost chances to develop lasting peace, friendship, and brotherhood between Palestine’s people and the people of Israel?

Man’s inhumanity to man has become no longer acceptable for a rapidly increasing number of men and women around the world, and solving the Israel-Palestine conflict would mark the beginning of the end for humanity’s “trail of tears.” Then soon, the human race will no longer shed tears of physical, psychological, and spiritual pain – but tears of joy from seeing every man or woman one meets as “my friend forever!”

Mankind’s greatest challenge and promise lies in taking actions which close the “trail of tears” – man’s inhumanity to man – forever.

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