Wake up and be the Revolution
In a society where wealthy and powerful forces are trying to keep us asleep, confused, passive, and weak it is very difficult to convey with enough passion, force, and emphasis what serious trouble our world is in and how little time we have to create the broad sweeping changes that will need to happen to avert further horror. In the United States we are all subject to the farce of government, the joke of freedom, the puppet show of a citizen empowered nation, and the lie of democracy.
Despite the growing dissent among an increasingly impoverished and abused populace, people are unwilling to take action, to realize that they are a part of the machine that is spreading death, destruction, environmental negligence, resource depletion, and abuse of people and animals all in the name of profit and greed. While we stand by worrying about cheaply made and vapid consumerism, television programs, and orchestrated/ meaningless political bickering, horrific and sweeping crimes are being perpetrated by corrupt corporations and governments, often using the general populace as a tool.
Tired of it? Well so am I. Here are some books to help you learn what is really going on and what you can do to help.
Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges
"If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman
In this fierce and fact laden book journalist Chris Hedges denounces the "liberal class" for doing nothing in the face of continuous war, the creation of a permanent underclass, and rampant corruption. He shows that the elected politicians have consciously sold out the working class for corporate money.
" Corporations have thirty-five thousand lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation.... The financial sector, for example, spent more then $5 billion on political campaigns, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown, and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury....Obama lies as cravenly if not as crudely as George W. Bush. He promised that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer following the financial crisis. It did not. He told us he would withdraw troops from Iraq, close Guantanamo Bay detention camp, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus, pass a health-care bill with a robust public option, and create new jobs. He has not."
He interviews dozens of people inside of the government, press, military, and corporate machines. The media, Hollywood, the news, our senate, congress, and president are all controlled by a tiny sliver of people all seeking profit above integrity, humanity, truth and justice. This book will make you question everything, and should be required reading for everyone.
Healing Cancer from the Inside Out by Mike Anderson
"During the past fifty years scientists experimenting with thousands of animals have found 700 ways of causing cancer. But they have not discovered one way of curing the disease." -J. F. Brailsford, M.D.
The first part of the book examines the failure of conventional cancer treatments and provides a shocking portrait of just how unsuccessful these treatments are. Looking closely at our broken health care system and how drug companies hide the truth of how misguided we are in our "battle" against cancer the book shows money motivated corruption and a continuous turning away from the data of success rates of inexpensive diet and lifestyle based treatments. Our current methods to treat the majority of cancers (there are exceptions, such as prostate and some childhood cancers) are ineffective at best (fatal at worst) and extremely profitable. The same can be said for heart disease and diabetes. Yet these treatments are touted as the only option, and doctors and patients finding success out side of these industries are mocked and silenced.
The second part of the book provides an explanation of how cancer can be reversed naturally through diet and lifestyle changes, giving many real life stories of successful outcomes. The diet laid out is a vegan and mainly raw food diet. I found this book a bit fanatical in sections, and some of the data seemed a bit "loose", but despite some of Anderson's broad sweeping statements, ie "All Cancer can be cured through diet alone." I believe the majority of the information is accurate, unreported in the mass media and very important. Just the corporate control that large meat and dairy industries have in our government alone is eye opening and frightening. When you tie that greed to the multi trillion dollar "fight against cancer" the health care industry has been touting for 70 years, with such poor results, the picture is very disturbing indeed.
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
"Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience." - Howard Zinn
This history text is a time line of our countries founding through the eyes of the common people, rather than the elite. It is a fairly well known and revered book, by a man who is today, after his death, respected and celebrated for his honesty and bravery. During his life, due to his outspokenness and content of his work, he was tracked by the FBI and labeled a security threat, despite never having committed a crime. Many historians dismissed him for breaking from the status quo.
Make sure you get the complete, unabridged copy of this book. My first taste of The People's History, was an abridged audio version, read by Matt Damon. I assumed the work was paltry, weak, and redundant, till I read the complete text sans Matt Damon twittering away like an imbecile in my ear, and realized it was informative, meticulously researched and extremely interesting. Coming from the public school system of 1980s-90s it was almost comical (in a darkly ironic and tragic manner)l how the celebrated events I was taught about in the classroom were revealed as having a flip side saturated in deceit, injustice, murder, and maltreatment of the masses. Our heroes are manufactured, polished, and sometimes completely rebuilt to suit our clean and glossy self image as a country, when in reality, many of these figures were criminals.
The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson
"We do not think of these overseas deployments as a form of empire; in fact, most Americans do not give them any thought at all until something truly shocking, such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, brings them to our attention. But the people living next door to these bases and dealing with the swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape their women certainly think of them as imperial enclaves, just as the people of ancient Iberia or nineteenth-century India knew that they were victims of foreign colonization." -Chalmers Johnson, referring to our 725 military bases on foreign soil.
Most Americans do not recognize—or do not want to recognize—that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, they are often ignorant of the fact that their government garrisons the globe. They do not realize that a vast network of American military bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire. Jonson lays down the facts, giving actual numbers for how many bases we maintain, how much they cost, the cost of our wars, and the real death tolls from these wars. The numbers are staggering. While politicians argue about welfare costs we are dumping over half our federal budget into a military system, whose spending is mostly unreported and unaccounted for. This is the second of a three part series by old Chalmers, the first being Blowback and the last Nemesis, all are worth checking out.
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We have an obligation as thinking and feeling human beings to seek the truth. I consider it my life's work to read and learn everything I can, to gather information and make my own decisions about the world around me. When we as a people are faced with injustice, corruption, and evil we must act. I hope you find these books as powerful and informative as I did. I hope you will feel compelled to learn more and to disengage from our culture of hedonism, spectacle, preoccupation with self, and greed. We can transform our world, but we need to be engaged and active, moving forward with integrity and honesty.
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