Sunday, July 29, 2012

PULLING UP STAKES




After 30 years of living in the Sonoma Valley, I'm pulling up stakes, saying good bye to friends and moving, lock, stock and barrel to Danville, California with a deep Awareness that it's my next step and I'm completely in sync with my destiny: Allen L Roland

Most people are afraid of dying because they are afraid of the incompleteness of their life ~ whereas I am not afraid of dying because I am in sync with my destiny. My heart-centered work with combat veterans with PTSD has been the most fulfilling work of my life and has moved from mainly serving Vietnam veterans in the North Bay to mostly Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in the East Bay ~ who are also very receptive to both my heart centered once a week 8 week action oriented Band of Brothers groups as well as my individual self healing process.

It is obvious that I need to be physically closer to the East Bay area where most of my work takes place.

Pulling up stakes is both traumatic and yet very exciting because all the lights are green regarding this move ~ but it does demand that I impeccably believe in myself and trust the unknown.

It would be easy to stay in Sonoma Valley and exist with the vineyards, grapes and aging population ~ but I have a great respect for this quote from Jack London ~ " I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

Believe me, packing, moving and pulling up stakes is a drag as well as exciting so here's the perfect music for this occasion ~ the Shreveport, LA band Dirtfoot playing "Pulling Up the Stakes" at Bloom Heavy's Grassy Grumble September 10, 2011 at Arrowhead Campgrounds in Grassy, MO. Video by John Anastas. 4 minute video

Actually I've always wanted to make a profound difference with my heart centered work and that dream has now become a reality. This move is another step in the process of that dream unfolding and reminds me of this wonderful quote from Goethe ~ "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it ~ Boldness has genius and power and magic in it."

As such, I've made a bold decision and I'm taking dramatic action regarding that dream of service and guess what ~ the magic is that the universe is conspiring to make it happen !

More on that magic later ~ I've got to pack !

Allen L Roland


Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations  allen@allenroland.com
  

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net


Thursday, July 19, 2012

LIBORGATE REVEALS GLOBAL FINANCIAL GAME IS RIGGED














Pete Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune

To the global banking elite it’s always heads they win and tails you lose but the recent LIBOR scandal moves that rigged financial game to a global scale which could and should result in multibillion dollar fines ~ unless Obama continues to protect Wall Street abuse: Allen L Roland

Anyone who has worked on Wall Street, as I have, knows that the game has always been rigged but never to the extent that it is now with high frequency trading and trillions of dollars being traded in virtually unregulated derivatives.  

Before Glass–Steagall was dismantled by the Clinton administration, the Wall Street Casino was fairly benign but that soon changed when the Banksters took advantage of the lack of regulations and it was only a matter of time before everything from sub-prime mortgages to commodities to the current LIBOR interest rate conspiracy offered direct evidence of the rigged global financial game.

Here’s your choice ~ you can see and hear Dennis Kucinich explain the LIBOR  scandal / 3 minute video

Or here’s the irreverent quick and dirty explanation of the LIBOR  banking scandal ~ and a look into the nest of the global banking crime syndicate / 4 minute video

Robert Reich calls the LIBOR scandal the Wall Street Scandal of all Wall Street scandals ~ We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.
But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.
That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion – trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look like child’s play by comparison.”  See full story http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/09-5

As of now, twelve global banks publicly linked to the Libor scandal face up to $22 Billion in combined regulatory penalties and damages to investors and counterparties, according to admittedly "crude" Morgan Stanley estimates. The calculation excludes the potential fallout from U.S. and EU cartel investigations, which could result in multibillion-dollar fines. But is the Department of Justice just going through the motions during an election year?


In that regard, Glen Ford writes in ICH that “The Obama Justice Department is in theater mode, again, pretending to threaten the bankster class with criminal penalties – prison time! – for their manipulation of the global economy’s benchmark interest rates. The Justice Department claims to be building criminal and civil cases in the LIBOR scandal, which in sheer scope is the biggest fraud by international capital in history. But that’s all a front, a farce. Barack Obama has spent his entire presidency protecting Wall Street, starting with his rescue of George Bush’s bank bailout bill after it’s initial defeat in Congress, in the last days of Obama’s candidacy. He packed his administration with banksters, passed his own bailout and, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, channeled at least $16 trillion dollars into the accounts of U.S. and even European banks – by far the greatest transfer of capital in the history of the world. Obama has reminded the banksters that it was he who saved them from the “pitchforks” of an outraged public. He pushed through Congress so-called financial reform legislation that left derivatives – the deadly instruments of mass financial destruction that were at the heart of the meltdown – untouched”   See full story ~ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31919.htm

As Naomi Wolf explains in the Guardian last week ~ The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. We're seeing systemic corruption in banking - and systemic collusion.”
Wolf also adds a plausible explanation for Timothy Geithner’s limited actions when he apparently learned in 2008 of "problems" with how interest rates were fixed in London  but did very little about it ~ “ The top headline of the day's news sums up why it is not that simple: "Geithner Tried to Curb Bank's Rate Rigging in 2008". The story reports that when Timothy Geithner, at the time he ran the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, learned of "problems" with how interest rates were fixed in London, the financial center at the heart of the Libor Barclays scandal. He let "top British authorities" know of the issues and wrote an email to his counterparts suggesting reforms. Were his actions ethical, or prudent? A possible interpretation of Geithner's action is that he was "covering his ass", without serious expectation of effecting reform of what he knew to be systemic abuse.”  See article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/12426-focus-this-global-financial-fraud-and-its-gatekeepers

Perhaps the only one who knew the full implications of the corpocracy and the true agenda of the global financial banksters was the late George Carlin ~ who called it the American Dream and said that you had to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin -~ 3 minute video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

Obviously, President Obama is talking through both sides of his mouth regarding his condemnation of Wall Street financial abuse  since his primary role upon being elected in 2008 was maintaining the status quo on Wall Street as well as setting the stage for the New World Order. Obama, as such, personifies Michael Parenti’s vision of the modern day big brother of Orwell’s 1984 ~

"If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed." - Michael Parenti -  Source: "Inventing Reality" (1986)

God help us when reality sets in.


Allen L Roland


Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net

Sunday, July 8, 2012

SEVERE WEATHER / GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE


Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas on April 18, 1935. (photo: NOAA George E. Marsh Album)
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Let’s get this straight, the last 16 years have been the hottest ever which is entirely consistent with global warming and climate change ~ a fact that can no longer be ignored or ridiculed: Allen L Roland

We can no longer ignore the obvious link between our on going severe weather patterns and global warming climate change ~ which may very well be beyond the point of no return.

As Common Dreams reported on July 5th ~ The Dust Bowl that struck the Plains in the 1930s as a result of heat, drought and ecologically devastating agricultural practices left highly eroded lands and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. With the ongoing extreme temperatures as well as a lack of widespread agro ecological approaches, a new dust bowl may indeed be upon us.”  See complete article ~ http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/05-3

Highly respected Amy Goodman of Democracy Now also adds that the forest fires, droughts and deadly storms are just the beginning of more to come ~              

And now scientists are ominously predicting that because of global warming rising sea levels are already unstoppable!
Common Dreams reported on July 2nd ~ “ Scientists at the New Jersey-based Climate Central, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Melbourne claim that even if the most "aggressive" efforts are made to curb atmospheric global warming, ocean levels would continue to rise even as global surface temperatures stabilize. See complete article ~ http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/02-1


But let’s talk about the oppressive heat ~ Even here in Sonoma Valley, California I’ve experienced over 110 degree heat at times over the past few years and believe me, it’s completely debilitating. No one is on the streets and most of us are heading for the coast and the cool breezes. I can not imagine days and weeks of the same ~ which is happening in the mid west.
Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, told Democracy Now: "What we're seeing now is the future. We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heat waves, fires and storms”  And then, he added ~ "This is just the beginning."
So what is the largely oblivious Main Stream Media reporting?  Not much but here is Bill Nye, the science guy, explaining the recent record heat wave on MSNBC’s The Ed Show ~ 5 Minute Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_C1pJGfF8t0


But perhaps Thom Hartman nails the real culprits of global warming climate change when he wrote ~ “ Hundreds of thousands of people are still without power around the nation's capital - and left to deal with a record breaking heat wave alone. Fueled by all-time temperature highs on Friday, a massive freak storm ripped across the Mid-Atlantic Friday night - killing at least 15 people and knocking out power to more than three million. West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Washington, DC have all declared states of emergency… So here we have massive wildfires, catastrophic storms, and rising oceans ~ welcome to the new normal ~ brought to us by transnational oil barons and the politicians they own. “

Amen, Thom ~ the summer storms, heat waves and droughts have also exposed a crumbling U.S infrastructure ~ whereas we spent over 60 billion dollars in Iraq on infrastructure and electricity between 2003 -2006 while our own infrastructure has obviously crumbled.

In other words, we are destroying and rebuilding countries, like Iraq, worldwide, as our own nation crumbles and no where else is this more obvious than in our nation’s  capital ~ Washington, DC.

5 minute Video:


In a time of universal deceit ~ telling the truth is a revolutionary act: George Orwell

Allen L Roland


Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net

Monday, July 2, 2012

AMERIKA'S LAST INDEPENDENCE DAY



2012 could well mark the last celebration of our once brave and free Republic whose firm moral bearings have slowly been eroded by a cancerous military industrial complex and the sinister emergence of a fascist corpocracy: Allen L Roland

Enjoy this fourth of July; watch the patriotic parades and fireworks, wave your flags and stuff yourself with hamburgers and hotdogs ~ but beware, this could well be Amerika’s last independence day. The moral pillars of our Republic have almost disintegrated and beneath the ruins lay a rapidly blooming fascist corpocracy.

Mark Twain once wrote that true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time and loyalty to the Government ONLY when it deserves it. Our present corporate welfare state government does not deserve our loyalty for it has not only hijacked democracy but we have become a fascist corpocracy in the process. A fascist state seeks to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.

The Obama administration not only represents corporate welfare you can believe in but, in the process, we have moved from a democracy toward a fascist corpocracy ~ which millions of Americans patriotically annually celebrate while still being manipulated by false threats, false promises and manufactured nightmares. President Obama's once formidable Main Street base has now been totally replaced by Wall Street's financial elite and an arrogant and greedy corpocracy.










No where is this greed as obvious as the great middle class swindle ~ Obamacare.
As Mike Adams writes in Natural News ~ “ Obama got the middle class to support his legislation by promising it was NOT a tax, and by promising it would LOWER health insurance costs. In reality, however, it RAISES health insurance costs, it IS a tax, and the majority of that tax burden falls squarely on the very same middle-class voters who put Obama into office under false pretenses. That's a swindle, by any definition.

By the year 2016, the Obamacare "penalty" tax will reach roughly $2,000 per year for a two-person household. According to Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, 75% of the financial burden of Obamacare's new taxes will fall onto Americans making less than $120,000 a year
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036361_Obamacare_tax_swindle.html#ixzz1zRc1Ok8B


Manufactured fear, corporate welfare and false patriotism are also among the 14 key characteristics of a fascist state. Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each ~ and America has virtually all of them;

1.    Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.
2.    Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need."
3.    Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe.
4.    Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5.    Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.
6.    Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and corporate executives.
7.    Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8.    Religion and Government are intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion.
9.    Corporate Power is protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media.

Are our present active duty military fighting illegal occupations for our nation, a democracy, or an increasingly fascist government corpocracy?

As the Rev Michael Piazza writes in Liberating Word ~ “When war is profitable, it becomes too tempting to resist. We cloak our attitudes in terms of patriotism and supporting our troops, but the truth is, if war wasn't so profitable our troops might not be so endangered. Is it pure coincidence that the South, which is most economically dependent on military expenditures, is also the region where support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the greatest? Will we ever make truly ethical choices between war and peace if war is so profitable?”

How can Amerika be the home of the brave when our cowardly and illegal drone attacks are killing thousands of innocent civilians every day - many falsely counted as "combatants", "militants" or "terrorists" ~  while at the same time more of our troops commit suicide every year than get killed in action? 

In Pakistan (an American "ally") alone, through mid-August last year as many
as 2,956 people were killed and another 1,158 injured by U.S. drone attacks.
Many were labeled "militants", but the death toll includes at least 175
children and as many as 781 verified civilians.  Despite all this collateral
damage, no more than 150 "named militants" were killed.  And again, these statistics are for Pakistan alone. President Obama has embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in.  It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials ~ unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

In perhaps the most unconstitutional power grab by the Obama administration to date the constitutional rights of Freedom of Press and Freedom of speech have now been suspended under the false premise that the "human rights violations" in Syria and Iran constitute a "national emergency".

President Obama issued an executive order declaring Syria a national emergency and outlaws reporting on terrorist rebel activities ~ once again validating the wise words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin; "All wars are follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones."

4 minute Video: The case Against Moving Forward With War


And what are the moral effects of our unjust occupations and military killing machine?

It is impossible, given the paucity of current data, to determine
the suicide rate among veterans with any accuracy.  However, the VA
estimates that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes.  Moreover,
although only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, former
service members represent 20 percent of suicides in the United States."

For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves
(468) than died in combat (462). 'If you... know the one thing that causes
people to commit suicide, please let us know,' General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, 'because we don't know.'  Suicide is a tragic but
predictable human reaction to being asked to kill as well as watch your friends
be killed - particularly when it's for a war or occupation based on lies." See article ~  http://tinyurl.com/6zdf6cy

There's lots of talk about government debt, but very little talk about how much of that debt comes into being as well as the ongoing diabolical partnership we have between crooked banks and corrupt politicians ~ both here and abroad. John Perkins pulls back the curtain on how countries get in over their heads... 2 minute Video: http://www.realecontv.com/page/6314.html


This Independence day we must face the fact that we are neither the land of the free nor the home of the brave ~ but instead have given away our precious birthright to the military/industrial complex and a fascist corpocracy

Former US President and Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter rightly says that “ the United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights “

In that regard, I am reminded of Milton Mayer’s classic “They Thought They Were Free  (The Germans 1933 – 1945).
For German exceptionalism in the 1930’s was really not too different, in many ways, than American exceptionalism in the last decade and very likely headed for the same disastrous fate.

Mayer’s book describes the slow but sure seduction of the people as their liberties, freedoms and moral values were gradually stripped away by Hitler’s fascist government while waving the flag of national security and patriotism;

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE – Pg. 166 / 167

But Then It Was Too Late ~ What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it … this separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”
Apathy sets in with each step, as it most certainly has in America, and Mayer knowingly describes the consequences for Germany in the early 1930’s~

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE – Pg 171

“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D ~ and one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you.
The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in ~ your nation, your people ~ are not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way… You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined … Suddenly it all comes down, all at once.
You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing) You remember the occasions in which maybe if you had stood others would have stood too. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair." 


And that is Mayer’s main point ~ it is the spirit that dramatically changes when we accept if not condone the disintegration of our national moral values through illegal wars and occupations as well as crimes against humanity such as torture, secret renditions as well as intrusive full body scans and pat downs, which will soon be extended to trains, boats, schools and court houses.
On this Independence day 2012 , let us remember the clouds of glory in our infancy and the words of Thomas Paine;

Never had a country so many openings to happiness as this.
Her setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was unclouded and promising.
Her cause was good.
Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm.
Her conduct regulated by the nicest steps, and
Everything about her wore the mark of honor.
It is not every country that can boast so fair an origin.”

And then let us truly reflect on what we have indeed become as the world’s largest supplier of arms, the supporter of inhumane dictatorships throughout the world with the blood of millions of innocent people on our hands as the result of our imperialistic war machine ~ and reflect on the words of our famous poet Carl Sandburg;

“ For we know when a country goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found, they forgot where they came from ~ they lost sight of what brought them along”

I finish my Independence Day requiem with this four minute Bill Moyers reflection on Independence Day where Moyers reminds us that “Thomas Jefferson got it right when he wrote about "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as the core of our human aspirations. But he lived it wrong, denying to others the rights he claimed for himself. And that's how Jefferson came to embody the oldest and longest war of all ~ the war between the self and the truth, between what we know and how we live.”


And that quite simply is America’s on going current war ~ between what we choose to believe and the truth and what we know in our hearts and how we live.

Allen L Roland


Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net