Working
for the common cause is never easy. To begin, you are constantly challenged
by those who have no comprehension and who remain hostile to anything
beyond their own confines.
The common
cause is what most people reach out for and towards when all else is
snatched from them. In such circumstances and beyond the bottle and
other similar perspective wrecking distractions, thoughtful contemplation
and meditation will lead to the awareness of the common cause. Meditation
is the art of relaxation.
Sanctification
and protection of the common cause is what enables people to go about
their daily lives without having to immerse themselves in fighting
for that common cause. How many of us give deliberate thought to the
solidity of the foundations of the homes in which we live until something
occurs to make us focus on those foundations?
The questions
then become numerous. Who designed those foundations, who worked upon
and put them in place? What, if any, is our own role in the presence
of those foundations?
By default,
those who work for radio, television and the newspaper industries are
in the front line of promoting and standing up for the common cause.
How they acknowledge and comply with their respective positions depends
much more upon professional training than on personal volition. The
danger preceding failure is in wearing an outward cloak of respectability
whilst failing to meet the demands. Feeding the populace pap might
fatten personal bank accounts but that is in reality all it will achieve.
Those who
watch the news reports currently emanating from western journalists
in the Middle East should listen carefully to and analyse the perspective
of those reports.
We might
not all be in a position to work for the common cause as actively as
others might. Yet pause a moment to ponder that but not for the common
cause, none of us would have the education nor the time nor the freedom
to even ponder in such fashion.
It might
also be valid to ponder the worth of the individual within the common
cause and whether any common cause could ever exist where the intrinsic
worth of any individual is devalued.
A
Quiet Corner We live in a dangerous
world—dangerous because men and women
alike shirk from the responsibility of being humble.
This sonnet epitomises the gift of humility.
God
Grant me the Serenity to accept
the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can and
Wisdom to know the difference,
Living one day at a time — enjoying one~
moment at a time
Accepting hardships as the pathway of Peace
Taking as He did this sinful world as it is —
and not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right —
if I surrender to His Will
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy in the next world
“When a society lives in fear, when it is poor and hungry,
it brings out pathologically sick leaders and society itself becomes
sick.” Bosnian survivor of the Bosnia war.
“The US government is being asked to provide a
$700 billion blank cheque to bail out the finance houses. This follows
a
series of other bailouts in recent weeks – amounting to another
$400 billion. To put those figures into perspective, simply compare
how this money could be used to solve world hunger. Each night 850
million people go to bed hungry. If the $700 billion blank cheque had
gone to them rather than the finance houses, this dire level of hunger
would be wiped out. If the combined package of more than a trillion
dollars had been used, the 2 billion of the world’s 6 billion
people could be lifted out of chronic poverty. In brief, the trillion
which is being handed out to the speculators could have wiped out malnutrition
and extreme poverty in the world for ever.” Kieran Allen
Friday,
3 July, 2009
Ireland, the EU and Lison Back
in 1996, Ireland stood poised on the brink of one of the most remarkable success
stories of the century. It had risen from being an exceptionally poor state to
one that suddenly found itself swimming in money.
The
streets became filled with 4x4s, one car was deemed insufficient
so people bought two, and all across the country property developers
began throwing up shopping and housing estates by the score.
Banks
began lending money practically to anyone who asked and to some who
even didn’t—as if they were printing it themselves. But
then the bubble burst. And the bottom of the bucket simply fell out.
The
collapse happened not because of the global recession, although of
course that had an effect. The straw that broke the celtic tiger’s
back was plain and simple greed on a massive scale. Those elected
into office to run the country and manage its finances did so to
benefit themselves and no-one else.
There
was no long-term view than incorporated the future. It was a case
of get rich as much and as quickly as possible and the disease of
greed was rampant.
The
ordinary citizen was swept up in the melee. Indeed there was no-one
to shine a guiding light as to how to adapt to suddenly having a
deluge of cash instead of the shortage that the people of Ireland
had known for so long.
Now,
instead of providing a lesson to the world on how to build and maintain
a country’s wealth and success, quite the opposite is apparent.
Now
the country is being urged to vote to ratify the Lisbon Treaty in
a second referendum to be held later this year. The reality of that
is that politicians, who have screwed up and wasted the nation’s
finances, and the cash hungry conglomerates are looking to be bailed
out by the EU. And yet it was EU cash that launched Ireland on its
prosperity trail a decade ago.
Those
who shoulder the guilt for the nation’s demise are now seeking
to apportion the blame anywhere but upon themselves.
r
Ronnie Biggs—a vindictive decision Forty-six
years ago a gang of men robbed £2.5million from a Post Office
train travelling between Glasgow and London. A few short weeks later
Ronnie Biggs, one of those taking part was arrested, along with others
involved in the robbery. It is on record that politicians
and other high ranking government officials discussed
the
case in
private
member's
only
clubs in London before the men were sentenced for their parts in the
crime.
The majority of those convicted of the robbery received 30 years
jail—an
unprecedented sentence for such an offence in the UK.
Fifteen months later Biggs escaped and fled to Brazil, where he lived
for 30 years before voluntarilly handing himself in to the British authorities
in 2001.
Now, eight years on and aged 79, Biggs is said to be seriously ill
and close
to
death. The UP prison's parole board recommended that he be released on parole.
That recommendation was ignored by Home Secretary Jack Straw who
commented that Biggs would “still be a threat” to the public of released.
Flying as it does in the face of the parole board's recommendations,
whose very job it is to weight up such risk assessments, Straw’s decision can
only be viewed as vindictive and without compassion. It reveals how much unfettered
power UK politcians hold in the process of serving not the public but their own
selfish
interests.
r
Lisbon
Treaty–the Great Swindle
When
the time comes for those in Ireland to vote in the country’s
second Lisbon referendum later this year, the question arises—will
they be casting their own vote or will they be merely reflecting
the wishes of pro or anti Lisbon Treaty factions?
The fact that there is a second referendum being held on the issue
is
ludicrous
enough in itself. In 2008, the people of Ireland voted to reject ratification
of the Treaty. In a blatant show of political hypocrisy, the Irish government
refused to accept the electorate's vote and almost before the ballot papers were
dry those who wished to see the Treaty ratified were condemning and criticising
the voters and calling for another referendum.
The Irish public’s decision also irked EU bureaucrats who had successfully
forced the majority of EU states to ratify the Treaty without any say by the
general populace of those states.
The Treaty is good news for conglomerate businesses but is of no
significant value to the average person, who is being conned into believing that
it is in fact the best thing to happen to them.
r
Born under the Law of Slavery
Every day, millions of people around the world will unwittingly live
a life of pretence while also unwittingly defending their right to
be not free, but slaves.
Slavery is the bedrock of modern society, not freedom, as we are misled
to believe. To understand such a contradiction it is helpful to understand
George Orwell’s novel concept of doublespeak – where something
is made out to be the exact opposite of what it really is.
Convince someone that something they are doing is completely right
and you can lead those people to kill others, or you can bleed their
services dry.
Those born into the modern structure of society are immediately born
into slavery, although most will vehemently deny that it is so. To
be born into such a society is to be born into a carefully contrived
system of education that will brainwash each individual from the age
of five years to 11 – the intellectually formative years of youth
- into a particular way of thinking.
Up until the age of five, individuals are exposed to the thought structure
of their peers – a structure put there by the same system that
will then take over the child’s mental processes with the coming
of school age.
The existing system is doomed to failure as its core emphasis is built
on commercial profiteering.
Any government or authoritative body that restricts freedom
of speech or expression does so to protect its own edifice of lies.
When I first met and interviewed Tony Blair in 1994, I encountered a man driven
by fanaticism who looked straight through me as if I was not there and whose
gaze was focused on some distant objective.
That objective seemed far more to do with his own personal career
and lust for power than it had anything to do with a better world for those in
the UK.
That fanaticism again came to the fore in recent revelations that
Blair had attempted to pressurise Gorden Brown into holding the Iraq war inquiry
in secret, as he feared that he would become the target of ridicule in a “media
circus”
should he be called to give public evidence at an open inquiry.
The plain fact is that if his actions as Prime Minister were above
board, there would be nothing to be concerned about,
His actions however give substance to the reality of the fanatical
Great
Blair
Lie.
r
Contributed
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“Who
overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.”
John
Milton
“Those
who deny the truth must first learn how to befriend themselves.”
Theki
Rashir
“Man
was always destroying things, and beautiful things.
At the time they wouldn’t seem beautiful.
It was only afterwards that men felt pity for the things their hands
had destroyed.”
Walter
Macken — The Scorching Wind
A
Quiet Corner 
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