CHAPTER FOUR. THE INTERNET IS THE NEXT STAGE IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on May 23, 2009 6:13 AM PDT

This essay is dedicated to William Gibson, one of the finest of today's science fiction writers and a visionary of the near future.



When I was young, I used to laugh at the notion that we are still evolving. Drawings on the cover of science fiction dime novels showed future men with swollen brain cases making their heads look vaguely like mushrooms. The effect was as comical as the idea itself. 

I reasoned that if evolution is driven by survival of the fittest, surely our bodies could not be evolving because we had evolved to the point where selective pressures no longer operated. The proof was in longer life expectancy and the defeat of many diseases that had formerly weeded out those with less fortunate genetic endowments.

As I grew older and found my time occupied with more serious studies, I regretfully put aside these fascinating stories of worlds of the future and prepared myself for my personal future. Now, with my formal education long behind me, I find myself reading more about current threats to human survival that make me question my earlier assumption that human evolution has ceased. I have recently realized that this requires an important paradigm shift.

There are many threats to human life on this planet that the less reality challenged among us have begun to face. Chief among these is global climate change. We have depended on the energy of the sun for our growth and survival since before life was merely blue-green algae, a scum formed from the primordial ooze. At that time it covered the Earth’s oceans, deriving our sustenance directly from the sun through the miraculous process of photosynthesis. Lacking minds or souls, we could not imagine that God had looked upon the void and said “Let there be light.”

As life on Earth gradually evolved into its more familiar forms, we now are beginning to realize that our unchecked growth is becoming like a cancer on our mother, Gaia. The ruthless mathematics of exponential growth is causing us to approach what mathematicians call an asymptote. In more familiar terms, human life threatens to reach the stage where if we were still algae, we would soon form an algal bloom. Most of us are familiar with this phenomenon, which results in an apparently clear body of water turning green (or red, depending on the sunlight converting pigment of the particular species) overnight.

This cannot happen with human life. Humans are not capable of unchecked growth forever leading to a sudden limit on further growth in the population. The smooth graphs illustrating exponential growth are but a model and an asymptotic curve eventually rises to infinity at a nearly instantaneous rate. This is but another example of how models fail to reflect reality. 

Unfortunately, this is not simply an intellectually challenging exercise of developing a more complex equation to describe the phenomenon. The failure to grasp the implications of this reality threatens the survival of all advanced forms of life on Earth.

As the population rises, selective pressures again emerge to slow its growth. This has given us some breathing room to solve the problem. Unfortunately, millions have died and will die from disease, pandemic, environmental change, war and pestilence as a result of our neglect of the problem for the decades since it was first recognized. 

I recall reading in my youth that we would by now have developed interstellar travel, which would have allowed us to relieve this pressure by populating other planets, Terraforming them if necessary. Because we have devoted our resources to war and the accumulation of wealth, that time is a long way off. Meanwhile, the population bomb continues to tick.

You may think, what can we do to prevent this apparently inevitable fate? The answer comes in the realization that we have not yet grown as a species beyond our adolescence. Only when humanity begins to function as a single organism, like the algae that once covered the planet, will we be able to avert catastrophe and save ourselves. Despite the prayers of millions, Jesus will not come down from the skies to save us. If God created us, it endowed us with reason and free will so that we might save ourselves from the disasters of our own making that now threaten our survival.

You might ask yourself how we can hasten our evolution and become adults who take responsibility for their actions before it is too late to save ourselves from self-destruction. After all, the more mature among us realize that every action has repercussions that affect others immediately but eventually affect ourselves as well. Unfortunately, too many humans never fully mature morally, a prerequisite for understanding the problem and its solution. 

Intelligence agencies use the term blowback to refer to the predictable consequences of their actions to innocent bystanders. When the consequences of human actions are unexpected and influenced by seemingly random events, we refer to them as being due to the butterfly effect. This is based on the idea that the beating of a butterfly's wings can have an effect on local weather patterns which can have effects that  change weather patterns worldwide. Thus, simple disturbances in the existing order can produce effects that can be as profound as they are unpredictable. 

The butterfly effect explains many things, from the consistent failure of self-interested U.S. meddling in the affairs of other nations to the repeated collapse of the world economy. However, the regular expansion and bursting of bubbles seems to indicate contrary to popular belief, these are not random events, but blowback that Goldman Sachs and its favored associates consider acceptable collateral damage to the American and world economies and to the Peoples who depend on the ability to earn a living wage in an economic environment increasingly hostile to life as we know it. 

Whether due to blowback or random events, both war and boom-bust cycles result from the short sighted actions of an economic elite that worships Ayn Rand and regards life’s purpose as the lowly pursuit of personal wealth and pleasure.  It seems that the generals in this game of economic warfare do not consider the possibility of a global economic winter if they implode the American economy.

For those unfamiliar with the malignant teachings of the misguided prophet Ayn Rand, she postulated that it is the nature of every biological organism to pursue naked self -interest in order to further the propagation of its species at the expense of others.  She fostered a movement to justify selfishness that assumed almost religious fervor in the last three decades that have brought the United States and world economies to a virtual collapse as a result of blind faith in the God of greed. 

Among her acolytes was former Fed chief Alan Greenspan, whose faith in the invisible hand of the market caused him to refuse to regulate the derivatives that were at the heart of the global economic meltdown.  The Pnzi scheme of mortgaging houses to high risk buyers was brought down by the first shift of the economic winds like the house of cards that it was.

If we are to solve the many problems threatening human civilization we must understand the danger in accepting her assertion that radical individualism is the way of nature. We cannot accept that the treatment of life as a game won by accumulating the most toys by the time we die is a good and natural thing. I will not bother to cite the many counterexamples that refute Rand's silly assertions. Thom Hartmann has already eloquently addressed this in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. I refer the interested reader to it for a powerful but frightening explanation of the details of what I am attempting to describe. 

We are beginning to grasp the consequences of the actions of the rigid fundamentalists believers in the discredited faith of the free market economy. They have tried to proselytize the tenets of a Satanic religion that worships greed and selfishness. The assumptions Rand made have become part of the collective consciousness of the electronic herd that has driven our economy once more to the brink of its destruction. If we cannot change the perception that it is human nature to think only of ourselves, it seems unlikely that human civilization will survive in a form that we recognize.

The implication of my thesis is that our economy must radically change in order to produce a just world order that will assure the survival of the human race. A fundamentalist Christian fearing Armageddon  might be tempted to imagine that Rand is the Antichrist. Prophets have told us that the world will end in fire andiIt is not hard to imagine that global climate change might be metaphorically described in this way. If Rand's thesis is not challenged, unrestrained greed may lead to a literal Hell on Earth.  


We have to believe that the predicted end of the world is not a promise but a warning. Perhaps if we can come to a new understanding of our relationship to the Earth and to each other, the world will indeed end, only to be replaced by a new and better one. Just as we create our own individual reality in the privacy of our minds, we can consciously create a new reality of the world in the higher mind that is the human collective consciousness, if we so choose.

We have the tool in hand that will assure our survival. It is the Internet. Through this instrument, mankind can rapidly reverse its slide down a slippery slope toward its self-destruction. Like most things, it is not inherently good or evil but a tool that we must individually and collectively decide to use for one or the other. Used for the good of Mankind, it can produce an exponential rate of change in the shared belief system of Mankind for the better, the like of which the world has never seen.

The beauty of the internet is that it has caused a connection of human minds and information around the planet such as never existed before. Used as a tool to manipulate investor greed, it can cause convulsions in the stock market and destroy national economies. Used as a tool to work together to drastically change the power structure by allowing people all over the planet to plan together to end corporate domination in a fascist New World Order, it can be our salvation. 

If the collective consciousness of man is connected through the internet, there is the potential to create a tectonic paradigm shift in human consciousness. If we are approaching asymptotic growth in this process we may see that the End of the World is not a catastrophe but a new beginning for Mankind.

One can think of the Internet as a vast, somewhat disordered mind. As it begins to reach its potential it assumes the nature of an intelligence, bringing together the neurons of our individual brains to form a superbrain, from which arises a collective consciousness which can direct itself toward solving the many problems besetting us. 

New thoughts can propagate at the speed of light, spreading like a wave if the right individuals can be reached. The idea of six degrees of separation can be used to amplify the message by utilizing the interconnectedness of all of us through nodes in the network that are the most highly connected individuals. Such rapid evolution is our best hope of saving ourselves from the threats that at this point appear obvious to most thinking people and unavoidable to those who have already given up hope in the essential goodness of mankind. 

It is not too late to change the course of history if we can learn to abandon the conflict model of change and work together in enlightened self interest to create a better world for our children.

Please go to the International Planned Parenthood website and give generously.






Rick Staggenborg, MD


Coos Bay, Oregon

CHAPTER TEN. THEOLOGY 101: WHY DESPAIR IS A SIN

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Jun 26, 2009 7:07 AM PDT

This essay is dedicated to Eric Shinseki, a soldier's soldier who stood up to Rumseld in telling Congress that the projected fighting strength Rummy was preparing to deploy to invade Iraq was grossly inadequate. 

Unlike political generals, the men and women who served under him were not mere cannon fodder for the politicians working for the international corporate terrorists who started that war and planned the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. As a military man, he knew better than the chicken hawks in the White House what would have been necessary to give our military a fighting chance of success at carrying their mission out. 



It has been customary for centuries to pray to God when preparing for battle, hoping that God will favor our cause. We inevitably believe that our forces fight for justice, and we pray that God agrees. The battle for a single payer health care system and the larger war against the corporate assault on democracy is one cause whose righteousness no one can doubt. Therefore, it is a moral imperative that as we engage in this battle, our confidence must not falter. When the fate of our children depends on our success, we cannot worry about our chances of success, because failure is not an option.

Human progress depends on the vision of those who dream of a better world and have faith in their own ability to create it. To lose hope in the sight of difficulties is to abandon that faith and to risk  leaving future generations to the vagaries of fate. 

According to the second law of thermodynamics, the natural tendency of things is to decay. Humanity must continue to resist entropy in order to survive and to thrive in the Universe. We must learn from our mistakes and constantly devise new strategies to ensure human progress, even as threats to our survival and vitality multiply in number and dangerousness.

As we stand at the edge of the opportunity to bring a single payer health care system to America, we also have an opportunity to strike a blow at the heart of one of the most dangerous enemies of freedom. The insurance industry is one of the corporate forces which have thwarted the democratic will in America since 1889, when the Supreme Court granted corporations human rights under the Fourteenth amendment clause assuring that the Bill of Rights applies to all “persons.” 

In a blatant reactionary response to Teddy Roosevelt’s attempts to rein in the dangerous power of corporate monopolists, these counter-Revolutionary “justices” used this precedent to systematically grant human rights to these legally fictitious “persons.” Ignoring the fact that a corporate “person” cannot be imprisoned or executed for the crimes it commits in the name of free enterprise and the pursuit of profit over human need, the court gave them the same constitutional protections that you and I enjoyed until they began to be stripped from us under the guise of a “war” on terror.

Belief in progress is not naïve. Self styled “realists” will tell you that human nature is such that moral compromise is always necessary and will inevitably lead us to accommodate individual self interest in any personal or governmental decision. This assumes that men and women are not capable of governing themselves either individually or collectively. Thus, those who hold this view essentially reject the core assumption necessary to believe that democracy can work.  Why do these people hate America so much?

Religious conservatives take it as an article of faith that we are all “sinners.” While it may be true that we all fall short of the Christian ideal, this should not stop us from making every effort to follow Christ’s example, rather than allowing this to become an excuse for our willful moral failings. Abraham Lincoln pointed out that we must strive to become a "more perfect" union so that the American experiment in democracy would not fail and the hope for freedom in the world would be ended for generations, if not forever.

Just as striving for perfection is a moral issue on a personal level, so does the manner in which a nation addresses social justice issues determine the character of its soul. The fight to assure that medical care is available to all when needed is one of the great social justice issues of our time.

If the United States is truly a nation whose people believe in the principle that all humans have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness then we must ensure that all citizens have the right to physical and emotional health. We must preserve life in order to use our liberty to pursue the means of happiness.  

It is a sick society in which the murder of those who regretfully terminate potential lives is condoned and even encouraged by men and women who call themselves "Christians." The majority of the morally twisted individuals who approve of this form of murder in the name of God are typically willing to callously abandon children once born, in the delusional belief that individual responsibility is the defining feature of the American character. Those who reject the idea of social responsibilty ignore the fact thar our collective well being is also the responsibility of each of us. Those who choose to be willfully ignorant of this truth commit the gravest sin of all.

As Reverend Martin Luther King observed, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. When we allow injustice to be done to one of us, democracy is endangered. Those who care only about accumulating wealth and power would use our divisions to conquer us all. We have to recognize that the  well being of each of us is intimately dependent on assuring the well being of all of us.

A society that does not care for the least among it is a dying society. Strong citizens build strong governments and will fight any attempt to undermine the foundations of democracy through the authoritarian rhetoric of self-interested power-mongers. They believe they have a divine right to rule over the rest of us. This is the greatest threat to our democratic Republic, which is founded on the principle that every citizen has the right and duty to help make decisions that affect all of us.

Rick Staggenborg, MD


Ketchikan, Alaska

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE. WORLD WAR III: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Nov 17, 2009 7:13 AM PST

This essay is dedicated to General George Marshall, the chief architect of the plan to rebuild Europe and Japan as democracies from the ashes left by the war between the fascists and their democratic and communist opponents. He proved that when the country unites to peacefully and generously encourage democracy and freedom, America can be a powerful force working on behalf of the people of the world. Let us hope that Europe and Japan remember that Americans are at heart good people, and that our 30 year dalliance with fascism was an aberration, not an expression of our true national character. We will need their help if we are to restore democracy to America.

We are in the midst of a global war, one that promises to truly be the war to end all wars. This is a war between the international corporatists who nearly claimed victory in the struggle for global dominance of the people of the Earth and patriots throughout the world who struggle now to save us from these malign forces of unenlightened “self-interest.” 

It is our task to awaken the sleeping giant in America that is a people inflamed by the righteous anger at the perversion of the American ideal in the name of American exceptionalism. Neither this country nor the world can afford to tolerate any longer this naïve worldview that threatens the continuation of human society. The kings and kingmakers are now lined up like dominoes, and we are at the tipping point where victory is assured if we are wise and humble enough to work together toward this final goal.

Big Brother, the voice of the machine, has announced the beginning of its own downfall when it let slip the news that Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, capitulated to the forces of democracy in Connecticut. In introducing a bill that would strip the Fed of most of its power outside of determining monetary policy, he has pointed the finger at the ultimate villains, each of whom deludes himself that he would be King of the world. These are the Princes of the New World Order envisioned by Poppie Bush and friends.

It does not matter that other professed “Democrats” will spike the bill. What is important is the acknowledgement by a powerful Senator that he is afraid enough of the anger of his constituents to speak up for the American people and risk the wrath of the Puppetmasters of the financial industry that constitutes several heads of the international cabal that I have labeled “The Hydra” in a previous chapter. 

This is an issue that resonates with conservatives as much as liberals, more so even than the desperate need to establish a sustainable system of universal health care by taking out the bloodsucking leeches of the medical insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate medical provider industries.

It is time to go beyond praying that Christ will come and save us through the power of our belief that good is stronger than evil. Christ has come and gone to his reward, leaving us the secret that will allow us to save ourselves if we are wise enough to understand, strong enough to act and love peace enough to do what must be done without bringing physical harm to our tormentors. 

The secret is that love alone conquers all. We must learn to love all our brothers and sisters as we would like to love ourselves if we are to become the Doctors who will Heal the Ourselves and the teachers who will educate a new generation to take us beyond this pale version of reality and to the stars.

The Revolution will not succeed if we repeat the error of the victors in WWI, punishing the misguided “patriots” who thought that the zero-sum game was the only one in town and acted accordingly, telling themselves it was for the love of God and Country. In the new world order to come, all nations will be free and equal, as the Cheney regime, through its official spokesperson Dubbya, claimed to want when they spoke of “democracy and freedom” as the aims of the wars of choice planned to establish American dominance of the Mideast oil supply.

Our victory depends on our steadfastly resolving to respect and even love each other, so that we might work together for the salvation of mankind. The religious fundamentalists are not wrong when they point out that the Four Horsemen are riding among us. They are just too frightened to think rationally about how to defeat the malign forces of war, famine, disease and pestilence. 

Shiva will not destroy this world. He only dances to the music that we collectively direct. If the rumor that the Dalai Lama is the last incarnation of Buddha is true, then the End of Days is indeed upon us. Abraham brought together the twelve tribes of Israel, but some tribes were lost. As Muhammed reminded us, all the believers in the great Western religions are People of the Book. Together, let us find the lost and return them to the comfort of Abraham’s bosom, in which dwells the true heart of humanity.

I believe that there is significance in the fact that a number of physically and temporally separated societies predicted the end of the world in 2012. That is precisely two American election cycles away. Think of the world as it will be when we defeat sufficient numbers of the meat puppets currently wasting space and time in our Congress: If the will of God is to ensure the continued survival of humanity and its continued struggle toward self-perfection, all it takes for the kingdom to come is that His/Her will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

In the memorable words of Faces Small:




Over bridge of sighs
to rest my eyes in shades of green.
Under dreamin' spires
to Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been.


What did you do there?
I got high!
What did you feel there?
Well, I cried!
But why the tears there?
I'll tell you why:


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful.


I feel inclined to blow my mind,
get hung up feed the ducks with a bun.
They all come out to groove about,
be nice and have fun in the sun.


Tell you what I'll do (what will you do?):
I'd like to go there now with you.
You can miss out school (won't that be cool).
Why go to learn the words of fools?


What will we do there?
We'll get high!
What will we touch there?
We'll touch the sky!
But why the tears then?
I'll tell you why:


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful.


I feel inclined to blow my mind,
get hung up feed the ducks with a bun.
They all come out to groove about,
be nice and have fun in the sun.


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
Ha! It's all too beautiful.




Note to the reader: Please do not feed the ducks with bread. It damages their feathers. We all deserve to fly, if we can.




Rick Staggenborg, MD


Coos Bay, OR (near the duck pond at Mingus Park)

CHAPTER EIGHTY THREE. DEFANGING TEHRANYSAURUS REX

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Apr 18, 2010 3:06 PM PDT

This essay is dedicated to Azar Nifisi, whose brilliant Reading Lolita in Tehran revealed to the average American the painful experience of losing hard-won freedoms. In this poignant book, she helps the empathetic person understand the pain of being subject to the whims of men who wanted to control the thoughts and actions of others. Her undaunted courage shines through in her account of the resistance of a small group of women to those who invoke moral authority that they themselves cannot comprehend.

When I was attending Portland State University in the late 70s, the school was populated by a large segment of Iranian students sent there by the then-secular government or by their oil-rich parents. The latter could be recognized by the beefy Trans-Ams they invariably drove to impress American girls who were looking for excitement and a generous date who would provide a taste of the good life that many could not otherwise experience and with which the ads in the Western corporate media tantalized them.

The other group of Iranian students was comprised of those who were trying to understand and take home the more important lessons that living in a democracy could teach them. They hoped to better their lives and those of their families and friends upon their return home. Among them was a brilliant and studious young woman who I met when we were both tutoring other students. In my loneliness I worshipped this beautiful, idealistic patriot and lover of freedom.

In the more tolerant United States at that time, I and any young man or woman who wanted to attend college could do so because education was commonly understood to have a value to society. The corporations that had begun to seize power in America had not yet succeeded in crippling our system of higher education in their effort to squeeze the last public dollar for their profit instead of the needs of the People.

In the days before Reagan rose to power with the help of the corporatocracy, the American people maintained the fiction first challenged during the Vietnam era that we are all one people who had each risen through hard work in a society that understood the concept of a level playing field. This was our reward for freeing the world from the grip of Fascist tyranny at the cost of hundreds of thousands of young American lives. The so-called Greatest Generation had reaped the benefits that they and their children then enjoyed. We were the products of the resulting baby boom and innocently expected that we would continue America’s proud tradition of taking care of its workers and their families forever.

Events moved swiftly in those days. The Iranian students began demonstrating regularly at PSU. I watched with curiosity as these determined men and woman agitated for the American people to understand that the government of Reza Shah Pahlevi was a puppet of the CIA that had put the cowardly Shah into power. Pahlavi maintained his grip on the forcibly secularized Iran through a repressive regime backed by the Gestapo-like Savak. The universities flourished in the new society, which was secularized and allowed woman such as Nifiski to not only learn but to teach other young men and women.

The CIA had installed the Shah to assure the control of the Iranian oil supply for the benefit of their masters, the economic elite in the US and the oil rich countries of the Mideast. These were the nations that formed OPEC, the great little tool that American, British and French-based transnational oil corporations found so useful to maximize profits from oil by manipulating supply. Iran had made the mistake of nationalizing the rich oil fields that this criminal cabal considered its own. Among these allies were Goldman-Sachs and its friends in the IMF and the WTO. Also profiting from this arrangement were the various corporations internationally that comprised the military-industrial complex.

This arrangement was convenient for everybody concerned, except the citizens of the nations involved. Among them, only Americans as a whole failed to worry about the growing power of these international corporations and the increasing irrelevance of nations. They failed to recognize that 1984 was just around the corner. The Hydra that is the cabal of international criminals thus busied itself unencumbered in the task of enslaving the world.

They happily made war, subjugated the poor people of the Mideast and fed money to keep well-oiled the Israeli war machine that they thought could alone ensure the security of their joint enterprise. They pumped just enough oil to soak Europe of its wealth and subsidize the fat and happy middle class in the US. The Puppet Masters of the Senate used cheap oil in America to keep the middle class complacent and willfully ignorant through the skillful manipulation of the corporate media.

The media had become drunk with their success in revealing the threat to democracy of Watergate and CIA spying in America. In its stupor the Hydra grew stronger, feeding off the suffering of millions throughout the world. The media have not yet awaken, nor have the American people who depended on its integrity to understand the workings of its government, the former leaders of which had slunk off into the shadows.

It is amazing how fast the Puppetmasters of the fascist shadow government walked back from the dark side where the shadows dwelt and into the light of day. The vanguard of the re-emerging international Army of the Night was led by such traitors as Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy. Both had either belonged to or worked hand in hand with the CIA and other minions of the Hydra to undermine democracy in America. These latter-day Benedict Arnolds were rewarded for their roles in the October surprise and Watergate with national radio shows.

The more deluded among the Greatest Generation listened to their confused rantings with rapt attention. They lionized the traitor North and nod their heads when Liddy told them to “shoot for the head” when gummint agents come to take their guns that they use them to rape their daughters under the guise of “religious freedom.” Individual freedom uber alles, they silently thought. The powerful just naturally have the right to treat the powerless as possessions, don’t they? They have earned it by servicing the nation and its Puppetmasters, after all.

The silent majority stayed silent while the counter-Revolutionaries proceeded to undermine the intent of the Founding Fathers and those who died to establish our inalienable right to self-determination. The traitorous psychopaths who were the principle owners of these international corporations set about acquiring and consolidating the mass media and brainwashing the eager youth of the far right into accepting the false doctrine of original intent. The more farsighted among them knew that in the end, the plan was to hand all power to the corporate traitors who established the Heritage Foundation, the Heritage Institution, “Liberty” University and the think tanks and law schools from whose dark halls sprang the likes of John Yoo, Bybee, Scalia, Alito, Roberts and the simple-minded sharecropper’s son, Uncle Thomas.

Others merely joined in the effort for profit, not realizing that they were not buying America but selling it out. This is the inevitable fate of a society that forgets that a democratic government is established only by the just consent of the governed and its purpose is to serve the people, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare in order to secure the blessings of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights were once recognized to be the God-given and therefore inalienable right of men and women. In the cult of greed that arose around the false prophet Reagan, all this was forgotten and then lost.

Meanwhile, back in Iran the power of the people prevailed. The CIA puppet Shah Rezi Pahlavi fell to forces led by the Muslim Fundamentalists who the CIA had deliberately brainwashed into thinking that democracy was evil. Here in Portland, rich and poor Iranians alike cheered. Thank Allah almighty, they were free at last. Little did they know that they had let loose a force that would lead the nation to the brink of self-destruction. In an act of sheer madness, the Ayatollah’s men kidnapped 50 Americans under diplomatic protection. This was how these deluded pseudo-Muslim Fundamentalists slapped the face of the Great Satan whose face they clearly saw, while most Americans did not.

The result was that to save face after this colossal blunder, the Ayatollah made a deal with the devil that sealed their fate. They helped North, Poindexter and other traitors subvert the American government. Unsubtly manipulating the price of oil, OPEC colluded to bring about the recession that put Reagan into power in the stead of James Earl Carter, the peace monger.

Carter was and is a devout Christian who understands the need to eliminate America’s dependence on foreign oil through conservation. Arms were traded for hostages, money was exchanged and the wheels of injustice being properly oiled, the deed was done. The corporate media aided and abetted this coup by ridiculing Carter’s conservation efforts and promoting Reagan’s false promises of making the United States the “shining city on the hill.”

Congress failed to fulfill its responsibility to oversee an out of control CIA after North admitted his treason. Poindexter’s implausible denial of a central CIA role in the coup was accepted by the politicians in charge who feared that the people would be more upset by undergoing the ordeal of another impeachment trial so soon after Watergate than by the subversion of their government by the CIA on behalf of international corporations. Unfortunately they were right, or so proclaimed the corporate media.

Even more incredibly, the American people failed to take to the streets to Take Back America after the hunting of President Clinton produced a monkey trial that even they refused to buy into. It is astounding that even after demonstrating his willingness to compromise with the coup regime the persecution did not stop.

Clinton’s gift to the shadow government after the coup was signing on to the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Apparently, the man from Hope had lost hope that Americans would rise up and take re-establish democracy. Having thrown in his lot with the counter-Revolutionaries, he discovered that the corporate elite did not take kindly to having the Office of the President occupied by someone who had struggled up on his own and who wanted to represent the People. He was not fully appreciative of their important role in ruling the nation by virtue of birthright. It was out of a sense of duty as much as self-interest that the moneyed elite thought it necessary to destroy the Presidency of this aspiring leader of the ostensibly free world.

Perhaps Clinton’s mistake was that in his naiveté, he challenged the privilege of the medical-industrial complex without fully appreciating the extent to which the traitors now in control of the government also controlled the corporate media. Having allowed him to win the election, they set about tightening their control of the media in preparation for their final assault on democracy.

Now the stage is set for what Christians call Armageddon. According to the Mayans and Nostradamus, this outcome was so obvious that it was foreseeable thousands of years ago. It would appear that the End of the World as we Know it was destined to come about from the beginning of time, in a manner of speaking.

However, others believe that the prophecy of Armageddon was not a promise but a warning, one that Mohammed clearly described in the fourth to the last Sura. Humankind was created with free will and we may collectively choose to determine that the End of the World as we Know it will be a wonderful thing. If we can shift the collective human consciousness from survival of the fittest to survival and spiritual growth of all, it will be as if Heaven and Earth will have become one.

Those who live for wealth and power are headed for a fiery death. Whether it is the one that they expect to happen here on Earth or whether it will be in another dimension of existence, their end is near. Soldiers For Peace throughout the world outnumber them one million to one and we are not going to allow them to impose their design of worldwide slavery while we are alive to stop them.

We operate in cyberspace, where the Matrix is seen for the illusion that it is. We cannot be detected by those who lack the vision to see the world as we do. The world as it is teetering on the balance between stability and self-destruction. We do not choose for those who we love to die for the cause of allowing the apparently powerful to destroy humanity.

The easy way to avoid the war between Iran and Israel that both governments seem to be itching for is to establish an international consortium consisting of the United States, Israel, Russia, Germany and France. This group would under inspection build and launch a geosynchronous communications satellite above Tehran. The hardliners in the Iranian government can scream bloody murder, but if they shoot it down they will have to evacuate Tehran first or murder even more innocents than they are already doing. This would merely hasten the fall of the government of Iran and the Ayatollah, hereafter referred to as Tehranysaurus Rex, the King of Tyrants in our beleoved Persia. The will of today's Iranian students will not be defied if the US and Israel truly want peace.

ATT may cry foul at the thought of providing anyone with free Internet services, especially since the FCC recently approved the illegal merger of this behemouth with Comcast. The oil inndustry may whimper that if a free Iran opts out of OPEC, their splendid little arrangement will fall apart when Chavez joins in the effort to undermine their control of world oil prices. How, they will ask, can we justify never-ending war if neither oil nor terrorism can be used as an excuse?

Oh, well. No one ever promised them that they could rule the earth for a thousand years after Armageddon. Jesus is not coming down on a white horse with a flaming sword to slay the bad guys and save the faithful who only wait and do not save themselves. The last Jihad will be the first, a peaceful one in which the death of the ego is complete and the Eternal One becomes a stable entity of peace and harmony throughout the Universe.

In the words of REM (which also is a dream state):

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane.

Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn.

World serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs.

Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no.

Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height.

Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site.

Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furiesbreathing down your neck.

Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tetheredcrop.

Look at that low plane! Fine then.

Uh oh, overflow, population,common group, but it'll do.

Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed.

Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right.

You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, brightlight, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower.

Slash and burn,return, listen to yourself churn.

Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting.

Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.

Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down.

Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,this means no fear - cavalier.

Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies.

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide.

Mount St. Edelite.Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.

Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,slam, but neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...

Rick Staggenborg, MD
Portland, Oregon

NOTE: It was pointed out to me after this was written that the anti-government forces in Iran are not all opposed to theocracy or the oppression of the religious leaders who run the country in their own interests. 

The US promotes "freedom" in Iran but the corporatocracy that owns Congress simply wants to work with the economic elite in Iran to make a profit at the expense of the people. It supports not democracy but fascism, as do these burgoise "reformers" in Iran. 


Here is an excellent article on the subject.