- When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
- I all alone beweep my outcast state,
- And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
- And look upon myself and curse my fate,
- Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
- Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
- With what I most enjoy contented least,
- Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
- Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
- Like to the lark at break of day arising
- From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate
-
- For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
- That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
-
-
- - William Shakespeare, Sonnet #29
-
-
- Yeah, I know. Love is a cheap word, one that is thrown
around with more disdain for reality, with more ulterior motives, than
perhaps any other. I love Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies. I love "freedom,"
a word larded with control mechanisms if there ever was one. And of course,
I love the Orwellian word "peace," right up there with "democracy"
as a meaningless utterance of thoroughly deflated connotation, constantly
kicked around in the dirt by such rabid butchers as Nixon, Reagan, and
Bush.
-
- And yet as I stand on my porch gazing through the screen
door at the leafy green bounty of my backyard, I take that Shakespearean
sonnet and direct it in my mind to my e-mail list, which perhaps more than
any other thing in my life has convinced me that life is worth living,
that I do love myself, that there are many people in this world with whom
it is an absolute joy to be. Because unlike the tawdry and lamentable deceptions
of savage social life spewed forth by what we numbly call "the media,"
sincere truths shared with two or more people, and the humble, ironic laughter
that usually accompanies such unpretentious gossiping, exemplifies the
shimmering value of life and friendship, the joy of mutual understanding,
without which we would go mad and silent into darkness.
-
- Oh man I'm rambling. To so many I only wish to say: thank
you for inspiring me, for reassuring me in this time of rank superficiality
and discount-store violence, that some people do care about the difference
between gathering trivial toys while ignoring all those dead people in
the desert, and striving to somehow serve the force that has given us our
beautiful lives. Though I possess this knowledge myself, it is great comfort
to me that many others have it as well, and enables me to nurture my own
desperate hope that humanity may yet blossom into something more than the
killer lemmings we see paraded ceaselessly on the TV screens.
-
- The point of this lament is about honesty, about what
we really need, and how to get it.
-
- Is it possible to achieve honesty in this world of ours,
this material cornucopia where deep in the reflexive crannies of people's
behavioral habits, goodness is measured by beauty and worth by wealth?
Where the truly decent people go wanting and see their lives destroyed
because they are unwilling to consign their souls to moneymaking schemes
that cheat others?
-
- And so we come to the fork in the road upon which depends
every decision ever made by humans on this planet. A flash of memory from
forty years ago flits into my mind as the best way to explain this dichotomy.
-
- I was standing in my childhood living room arguing with
my father about the Vietnam war. "We're killing all those people for
nothing, for no good reason," I bellowed, shaking my shaggy adolescent
hair in vibrating rage. My pop looked at me with tender resignation, and
bellowed back (we were bellowers, as if you couldn't have guessed): "You're
thinking about the wrong things! The only thing that counts in this world
is money!"
-
- What followed that collision of ideologies was twenty
years of silence between us, which fortunately for us both, ceased a few
years before he died.
-
- Perhaps that was the defining moment of my life. I always
believed that life was about much more than money, and I guess as a consequence
have never had much of it. It's shocking to contemplate my Social Security
printout and see how little I've made over these four decades of work history.
And yet, still standing firm in that living room of memory, I stand by
my teenage story. "We're killing all those people for no good reason."
-
- And ironic that now I should be talking about those two
things: killing and money. And how they go together, the yin and yang of
civilization, the thing that prevents us from starving but compels us to
keep on killing each other. The witless demonic dance of the predator species.
-
- We can't have peace in the world because we need to make
money and war is the most profitable mode of operation. That could be the
epitaph for our civilization.
-
- Particularly in the area of environmental contemplation,
the argument always runs that we can't protect the nest that's keeping
us alive because we don't have the money to do it. Somewhere down this
road is where we will cash in our chips for good.
-
- The billions of people killed over the millenia since
Oannes first crawled out of the sea and started organized civilization
somewhere in what is now Iraq (according to the historian Berossus) has
all been about money, as our decision now to endorse the same slimy show
in the same strife-torn place is most certainly about cold hard cash.
-
- Money, that root of all evil, both keeps us alive and
keeps us from being human. Unless being human means a lot less than I thought
it always did.
-
- One thing is certain: honesty is an impediment to making
money. Just ask a banker, who fiddles with his derivatives income statement
as he smiles at you and says everything is just dandy, as long as you have
collateral. Just ask any of the principal honest news gatherers and principled
journalists on the web, who try to tell the truth without ulterior motive.
None of them has any money. That's probably the biggest reason the real
story about 9/11 isn't more widely known. The people with money don't want
it known, for one reason or another. And the people who do want it known
don't have the money to adequately publicize it, especially since so many
of those in the media with money are dependent on cashflow from those who
have some reason not to want the story to come out. It is the story of
human history, I think.
-
- When that choice inevitably confronts us, we choose survival
and luxury over sharing and compassion. Who can blame us? There is always
the handy excuse that it's simply too difficult to attempt to do both.
Let those starving fellows go. There are simply too many people on the
planet.
-
- That's the real history. What gets regurgitated to us
through our history books is really quite different.
-
- I've been struck dumb recently reading a book about the
history of our so-called Founding Fathers and their creation of our so-called
Constitution. They sound like a bunch of savage neocons. Democracy was
the farthest thing from their mind. Property ownership was everything.
For purposes of tallying population to proportionalize states' shares of
federal largesse, they counted black people as three-fifths of a person.
-
- And if you think the 2000 election in Florida exuded
the stench of a back-country latrine, you should check out how they ramrodded
a Constitution past a mostly illiterate electorate in 1776. Just like the
way they do politics today: by bribing the wavering opposition, fast-talking
the rest, and rigging the vote. And of course promising those who oppose
the idea that they will have an opportunity to make changes "down
the road." Ah, the ubiquitous promise of tomorrow.
-
- That's where the Bill of Rights came from, you know.
As a reluctant afterthought to the original Constitution, a concession
to those with consciences after the baronial landowners had set the whole
deal up to assure the dominance of merchants and landowners over the common
folk. And it has been the same kind of rigged deal ever since, as you can
clearly see by the nature of public participation today. It takes more
than a few million just to get into the game, just like it was way back
when.
-
- That's why I get a little sad, a little nervous, when
Patriot types rise up and say, "We have to return to our Constitutional
principles." Because it wasn't so good a deal to begin with. The seeds
of empire were sown, and the rest is bloody history.
-
- And honesty? Allegiance to a noble ideal? They teach
us in school to put our hands on our hearts and promise to kill anybody
who gets in the way of the big red, white, and blue machine. We never really
know what they're talking about, but we think it's good and do what they
say. Only later, very much later, do we understand the devil's bargain
we have made. We will kill whomever we choose to get whatever we want.
And from this feral promise, the faithful grow teary-eyed over American
patriotism.
-
- This is about the distance toward enlightenment that
any civilization has ever traveled. And today we sit squarely in this location,
watching the blood-drenched boys brought home in secrecy, and the flag-waving
mothers with brave but glazed eyes waxing eloquently hollow about patriotism
and the sainted Founding Fathers.
-
- But when the tears are dried, and the expendable chess
pieces laid to rest, the eternal question remains: shall we be honest,
or shall we eat well?
-
- And thus we come to yet a further irony, one for which
I am forced to admit my father might have been right.
-
- I made my choice and don't regret it. But I don't eat
well. For the past two years I have been combing every nook and crannie
of cyberspace to try and discover what it is that makes us tick (and sick),
and more precisely, to identify the facile strategies used by so many to
shoot to kill. I understand their way of doing things is very profitable,
and from that standpoint don't really blame them. After all, animal nature
is all about predation, and perhaps they're just behaving naturally..
-
- But somewhere along the line I got a message that humanity
is something more than that. Being blessed/cursed by the knowledge of our
limited time frame instills in us a higher realization. That we are gifted
with the knowledge of mimicking the beauty we have been given, and to not
live up to that responsibility is truly a sin. Most of the population,
regardless of what they say on Sunday, do not do that. Which is why we're
in the fix we're in - facing extinction because we've poisoned the garden
that sustains us.
-
- What I really believe, as many of you know, is that we
are committing suicide as a species because we've never been willing to
confront the terms of the deal we've been given when we are born, and instead
pretend that we are immortal, invent strategies to convince ourselves of
this delusion, and kill others who oppose our methods of achieving this
objective. If we were immortal, that would make us the only thing in the
universe - except the universe itself - that actually WAS immortal. So
how stupid an idea is that?
-
- Still, the question of whether we are immortal - as well
as the one of whether we are honest - need not bear that much on our lives.
As long as you can manifest kindness and compassion, you can pretty much
live up to your human potential. You don't need to follow any silly rules.
You just need to be kind and thoughful, and understand that the other fellow
is in the same boat as you are, no matter what his color or his habits.
-
- So that's why I've tried to point out lies, hypocrisies,
behaviors that hurt others. And, if I may be so bold, that's why you like
to read what I scribble onto this computer screen. I have tried to be honest,
because that's what friends are for.
-
- But as I said, and have learned repeatedly over these
chaotic years of the late 20th century, to be honest is to be poor, because
honesty doesn't sell well. Honesty does not lend itself well to markups
and fire sales, and if we all were honest in this disease called usury
that has enveloped world society like a poisoned fog, perhaps we'd all
be broke. Perhaps I have been wrong about everything I've said.
-
- However, not having a boss, a corporate watchdog, censoring
my thoughts and limiting my suggestions has enabled me to cut right to
the chase on so many issues without fear of alienating advertisers or offending
politicians who might be providing legal advantages that enable my employer
to cut corners and increase profits. No, what you get from me is the whole
story as much as I can comprehend it, with no restrictions due to so-called
commercial or political realities.
-
- During this almost two-year run on the Internet, I have
written 107 essays, usually about the 9/11 coverup, but also about other
subjects, foremost of which is probably the fetid scam known as religion.
About a year ago I collected the first 27 of these into a book and called
it, only half-flippantly, "America's Autopsy Report." Good fortune
and public interest have enabled me to sell about 800 of these books, mostly
on my own, without the help of public relations geeks or an interested
publisher.
-
- More recently, I cobbled together a pamphlet titled "The
Day America Died," a tight roundup about the provable lies of 9/11.
To date I've sold about 1,600 of those, making either $3 singly or $2 for
bulk on each. These two projects, plus numerous gifts from a small circle
of well-wishers, have enabled me to stay alive and keep writing.
-
- I had hoped profits from these first two publications
would make me enough money to fund a second collection of essays titled
"The Perfect Enemy," which consist of many of the pieces you've
already read, and many of you have written me about, both pro and con.
-
- About three months ago it would have been very timely,
and it still is, though conscious writers like Michel Chossudovsky and
others have begun to flesh out the theme of my title essay that the worldwide
terror network called al-Qaeda is actually the brainchild conceived and
operated through deep cover strategems by the CIA and the Mossad.
-
- But it hasn't worked out that way. Though I live very
frugally, the cost of existing has simply eaten away my profits, and the
new book, while ready to roll, sits on my hard drive, awaiting a turn of
fortune that will enable its publication, and from whose profits I would
likely be able to financially survive the rest of the year, which given
the state of affairs these days, is about as far as any of us can afford
to look ahead.
-
- So, the ultimate irony of this piece about honesty and
money being the crucial dichotomy of thought that is tearing both human
society and the natural world apart at this time in our history is that
if I am to continue to do what I do - and if this is any value to you -
I would ask that you contribute to sustaining my ability to comment on
the complex deceptions of the world.
-
- In a valid way, it is you who are responsible for my
modest past successes in penetrating the slimy curtain of deceit that well-paid
media types drape over the events of recent years, twisting their meaning
and disguising the villains in the warped confabulations of corporate concealment.
Because had I not had such a positive response from so many, I would not
have continued belaboring these same points that I think are vital toward
rehabilitating our social structure from profit-oriented poisons and rescuing
our souls from the treacherous lies that result in so many needless deaths.
-
- It has been a great feeling to know the people I work
for want only the best and most honest information I can filch from the
clutches of those who seek to restrict our freedom and stunt our growth,
and I have endeavored to produce items of relevance that will enable us
to fix or at least forestall our worsening predicament.
-
- For many of you, I know from your letters that you are
not in a position to help, because the waterline of pennilessness has risen
as close to your nose as it has to mine, and we're all likely to be submerged
sometime soon.
-
- Nevertheless, in order to continue my quixotic quest,
I must, like the musician at the train station, ask your help once again
in allowing me to continue nipping at the bastards' heels. If what you
have read by me has been of value to you, kindly toss a few coins into
my violin case as you pass by.
-
- Should that case fill up to some extent, I will publish
my second collection of essays and sell that at the same price as the first.
-
- From the perspective of fortune and men's eyes, I am
a financial failure, because the price of truth is cheap. In fact, most
of the time it costs you nothing if you know where to look for it.
-
- But as you can plainly perceive, the cost of the lies
that ensnare us in this decaying marketplace we now observe as an increasingly
enslaved human society will continue to increase to the point where no
price will be too high to pay for truth, because you won't be able to get
it anywhere.
-
- In any case, thank you for your kind attention. Just
because my voice may be stilled because I couldn't find a way to profitably
package what I published does not mean that your voice cannot find a way
to help to build a world that we can proud of instead of one we are afraid
of.
-
-
-
- John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy
Report," a collection of his Internet essays that have appeared on
hundreds of websites around the world, and "The Day America Died:
Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Version
- of What Happened on September 11, 2001," a 48-page
booklet designed to be read by those who continue to trust what the U.S.
government is saying. For information about both, go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/
The planned publication of a second collection of his essays, titled "The
Perfect Enemy," is currently on hold.
|
