Three Anniversaries. Common Ground Saves Hundreds Homes; A Fall and Helpful Strangers; and a Call to Take Over Bansk-- First Half of 'Becoming Our Government, Makng the Future Our Own'
Common Ground; Compassionate Strangers; and the first part of 'Becoming Our Government, Making the Future Our Own'
Common Ground Volunteers Save Hundreds of Homes
January 11 is for me an Anniversary of three years’ events.
January 11, 2006 I arrived in New Orleans to work with the Common Ground Collective / Common Ground Relief.
Please see below the Poster-Image that another volunteer, Christopher Cardinale of Brooklyn, New York, created later that month, an Image that served Common Ground for Postcards and T-shirts delivered to the cascading flood of 2760 volunteers (most of them College Students on Spring Break) that our yeoman and yeowoman Site-Coordinators hosted in New Orleans’s Upper 9th Ward and Gert Town neighborhoods during the following March.
Those mostly collegian Volunteers and the untirng Coordinators somehow gutted 232 Houses, four Schools, and one Church of New Orleans in that month. Their total number we counted from their Busloads and Vans and variegated cars and trucks at 2862 persons. 220 Colleges, all 50 States, and eight Nations, they represented. They saved New Orleans’ residents who wanted return to their homes more than $1 million in costs by their work in that month alone. We felt then about them—and about the sleep-starved Coordinators who fed and shepherded these hundreds and thousands of compassionate, unpaid workers—like ABC News that month: “A very remarkable group of Americans who just might save New Orleans.”
Please check out Pages 150-151 in my Animals Are Always Making Music book for more about Common Ground in its first seven-or-so months, September 2005 into April 2006.
For me C G efforts were all great and good. They more than repaid the six days that my five dogs (Spark, ZaZoom, Karinne, Boomer and Matilsa) in our weightily enlarged 1974 Dodge Camper-Van had spent in slow-going from the San Francisco Bay Area (“Just rolling along in my Old Caboose / Goes faster than a Crawdad, / Slower than a Moose / […] ” was one song that I made up while steering Eastward over the “mighty long line” of Interstate 10) to New Orleans in that January of 2006.
You can learn much more about Common Ground over on the Big-Trunk website also know as We Are Revolutions and You Are Here to Shine!
Strangers Stop to Aid a Broken-Hipped Cripple in the Cold Dark
January 11, 2024, one year ago to the day, I tipped sideways off my hybrid (thank you again, Ivan of the Pedal Shop in Gretna) Cannondale road-bicycle onto cold Neutrual Ground on the West Bank of outer Algiers, New Orleans, where Herald Street and Somerset Boulevard intersect. My left pedal had caught the Curb and down I fell. “Oow!” Standing up in anger, I collapsed face-first when the sudden weight-bearing fractured my already injured left hip.
Over the next hour of pretty complete and painful immobility, five passers-by stopped on that coolish evening and offered their help. One was a skateboard who twice brought blankets. Two were Nurses, a Black man and White Woman, who discovered that they were neighbors nearby. Two were women in SUVs. A NOPD cop, “Big Mike” Robinson, blocked one lane of MacArthur Boulevard protectively as I grew to shivering. Then an Acadian Ambulance bundled me off to West Jefferson Hospital.
Two days and rounds of intravenous pain-killers later I received the further gift of hip-replacemet surgery from the excellent Dr. Wesley Clark. The stirrup-and-post of Titanium, named “Packy” for its constant and definitely unbending companionship, is part what I do feel was a Lucky Break. Being helpless and then aided by strangers is a good lesson to learn … about needing humanity.
Students at the F.E.P.E. were among those who sent their well-wishes
‘Becoming Our Government, Making the Future Our Own’— First Half of the Piece to be Continued with Podcast and Video Tomorrow
January 11, 2009, 16 years ago, was about the Date of my publishing a Piece that I’d like to share again: ‘Becoming Our Government and Making the Future Our Own’.
A lot of the Thefts rearing around us in January 2009, as the second Bush and the first Obama Administration combined in Bail-Outs to supranational Bettor/Debtor Banks that then already exceeded $8.5 BILLION .. are plain as the Crimes we’ve seen over the past five years. Remedies through our own empowerment are the same, too, I think.
‘Becoming Our Government, Making the Future Our Own’, January 2009
‘Sometimes a people must defend themselves.
Sometimes the citizens of a republic, the workers of a State, the parents responsible for children and elderly, the agencies charged with just enforcement of laws and protection of a nation, and the young men and women who are called to the front ranks of con!icts, the very Armed Forces of a State, must see that their Government and its dominant institutions no longer represent their interests.
Such a time is now.
Sometimes a people must take control of their futures and create their own destinies. Sometimes a people must create their own means of exchange, their ownlines of sustenance, and their own remedies and innovations.
Sometimes a people must declare themselves more vital and important than Corporations, whether the Corporation be the British East India Company, Banks of Rothschild brothers, or JP Morgan Chase and the American International Group (AIG)
Sometimes a people must take charge of their money-supply and food-supply.
Such a time is now.
Sometimes a people must turn from unresponsive representation and unfair taxation. Sometimes a people must act to protect themselves from gross theft, un-Constitutional and otherwise illegal repression, and threats to their livelihoods andeven their existence.
Sometimes a people must fight to uphold or preserve the Rights or which their ancestors battled. Sometimes a people must fight to save their children from certain miseries.
Such a time is now.
Over the past five years and more, the Federal Government of the United States hasshown itself to be less concerned with its people's health and democratic wishes than with the preservation of Corporations and institutions that are robbing the people of this nation of both our present and our future.
Despite strong majorities that oppose these courses of the United States' Federal Government, violations of the people's democratic will continue.
The occupation and war in Iraq proceed. Schools and roads and hospitals and vehicles remain unimproved.
Subsidies for cartels in the food (agriculture), drug (pharmaceuticals), weapons-making (defense), and financial (Banks and other bettor/debtor speculators) businesses have increased over the past five years to gigantic and assuredly disastrous dimensions.
The country, in short, is being wrecked.
With increasing swiftness and savageness the economic and military capacities ofthe United States are being gutted.
As if by a coldly calculating plan, a plan that intends nothing rational except the debilitation and disarmament of hundreds of millions of people, our ability to resist tyranny under technology is reduced by gross measures.
And nothing but a scant amount of surviving rhetoric in the incoming Adminstration--headed by Barack Obama, the youngest and most articulate President the United States has seen in almost 50 years, but filled with CabinetSecretaries and other executives from the Clinton, Reagan, and two BushAdministrations--points to anything changing for the better in the broad strokes that will be delivered by the Federal Government in 2009.
With the blessings and urgings of Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, Hillary Clintonand John McCain in the U.S. Senate, the "bail-out bill" of $850 billion dollars for bad debts of Banks and other bettor/debtor Corporations passed on October 3, 2008.
Amounts allocated through the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury for the bettor/debtor speculating institutions has since grown to an AMOUNT OVER 10 TIMES more than the October 3 " 'bail-out' ".
That is, the AMOUNT has grown to more than 8.5 TRILLION DOLLARS--an AMOUNT more than half the total value of ALL GOODS PRODUCED in this nation in the year 2007.
And the AMOUNT has grown without any review and check by the U.S. Congress, much less a consultation with the more than 300 million citizens of this nation. More than 2/3 of US, you may remember, opposed the original "bail-out bill" for more than 10 TIMES LESS an AMOUNT than the current 8.5 TRILLION DOLLARS.
We must therefore see, as we enter 2009, the harsh truth that we the people of the United States are meant to be more made the unheard host of a parasite that'sdevouring us.
This parasite of our life and wealth has two heads and bodies that are joined at the hip and elsewhere. One head and body of this coupled parasite is named Government. The other half of the coupled parasite we may call Corporations.
Government/Corporations; Corporations/Government. United and Indivisible and far, far from for US all.
Corporations through Government feast on the United States and all the Western world. We've come to live to feed them.
In a letter of November 21, 1864 President Abraham Lincoln wrote: 'I see in thenear future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed.'
In the year 2005 the United States' Federal Government spent $76 billion for Education, $26.6 billion for Natural Resources and the Environment, and $69.1billion on benefits for Armed Forces' veterans--a total of $181.7 BILLION.
In this same fiscal year of 2005 U.S. tax-payers contributed $927 BILLION to the Internal Revenue Service. Of this $927 BILLION from tax-payers, $352 BILLION was paid toward interest on United States' National Debt, a National Debt that's accumulated over the 95 years since a Ruse giving exclusive power to private Cartel of Banks, slyly guised as the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, took control of the United States' money-supply.
The FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM was created by and for for the Ruling Few in 1913, one year before institution of the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE.
The F.R.S.' lead Bank is the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK.
Every working-day, the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK either expands or contracts the United States' money-supply by buying or selling U.S. Treasury bills ... that the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM has ITSELF LOANED AND PRINTED, with a Fee for INTEREST, to the United States' Government.
We may pause in shock. We may pause to be astounded at this obviously unreasonable relationship. The great United States must borrow for its livelihood from a private cartel of Banks!
A cartel that likely is controlled by older, ampler, money-lending institutions based in the current European Union!
So, as we survey prospects for 2009, we may further pause to understand steps of the process that has for decades defrauded We the People of the United States of our wealth, powers and possibilities.
This robbery is at the root of our material predicaments. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Federal Reserve System and indeed ALL commercial Banks WIITH the Federal Reserve System accomplish their money-creation through no more than accounting-entries--through no more labor than several keystrokes on a computer--and at no more cost to themselves than 4 cents per Federal Reserve Note, if such bills are even printed.
The F.R.S. Banks are then permitted to loan at INTEREST the amounts of 'money' their accounting has created. They are further permitted through 'Fractional Reserve Lending' to gain and loan at FURTHER INTEREST a multiple NINE TIMES MORE THAN THE THAN AMOUNTS their Accounting Sleights-of-Hand, their 21st-century Digital Keystrokes, has created!
Do you wonder than commercial Banks occupy the biggest Buildings in almost all cities and towns of the United States and indeed all of the Americas?
In 1997 two Banks, the then Citibank and the then Chase Manhattan Bank, held between them 52.84% of the 19,752,655 Shares of OWNERSHIP for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York--again, please remember that the F.R.B. of New York is a private, money-making institution, though it and the WHOLE of the Ruling Few's F.R.S. is funded and insured and in fact wholly sustained by tax-payers of the United States.
You may remember that in the fiscal year 2005 $352 BILLION from U.S. tax-payers went to the F.R,S. as INTEREST on the Debt that this private cartel has charged the United States Government over 95 years ... INTEREST charged so that WE may enjoy the privilege of empowering and sustaining F.R.S. with our wealth ... so that these Banks can then lend to us in AMOUNTS OVER NINE TIMES MORE than our Taxes and Government has provided these Banks.
In November 2008 Citigroup, the Corporation that was formed by Citibank's merger with Traveler's Insurance in 2000, received from the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury assurance that at least $304 BILLION would go to IT among the $8.6-TRILLION-AND-MOUNT that's been given out to fundamentally bankrupt bettor/ debtor Corporations over the past three months.
Let us pause to contemplate this single fact for its meaning and enormity and inequity. To one Bank, Citigroup, now is to go a bail-out of $304 billion, an amount more than $122 billion more than the TOTAL of $182 BILLION that U.S. Government spent in 2005 for its and our Department of Education, for our Natural Resources and the Environment, and for Benefis to Veterans of our Armed Forces!
We can no longer abide such inequities.
We can no longer stand such thievery.
We can no longer sustain such a sapping of ourselves. As Congressperson Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania, a banker himself, told his colleagues in 1934 about the Federal Reserve System: 'There was no national emergency here when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office excepting the bankruptcy of the Fed--a bankruptcy which hasbeen going on under cover for several years ... '
Louis T. McFadden went on to say in 1934: 'Under cover, the predatory International Bankers have been stealthily transferring the burden of the Fed debts to the people's treasury and to the people themselves. They took the farms and the homes of the United States to pay for their thievery! ... '
McFadden concluded his 1934 speech by reasonably urging: 'Mr. Chairman, I am in favor of compelling the Fed to pay their own debts. I see no reason why the general public should be forced to pay the gambling debts of the International Bankers.'
We hear from Congressperson McFadden more echoes to our present. 1934 was one year among many in a Depression that was itself primarily caused by the Federal Reserve System's contraction of credit between 1929 and 1933. The Great Depression across the United States and Britain ended, we may remember, only with the second World War.'
Second Half of ‘Becoming Our Government, Making the Future Our Own’ will be delivered as Text and Podcast, along with the Video “Why Resistance Is Essential” by Bill Jablonski of PuppetGov.com, tomorrow, January 12, 2025.