Sunday, November 30, 2014

WHY FERGUSON MATTERS / MILITARIZATION OF POLICE STATE


Protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. (The News Commenter)

"As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption." Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before he was assassinated.

SWAT teams were created in the 1960s to combat hostage-takings, sniper shootings, and violent unrest. But today they're often used in more controversial police work and with an increased use of military weapons. As Thom Hartmann correctly states ~ "America's police forces have become like occupied armies, hyper-militarized for the benefit of our nation's military industrial complex. All across our country, local cops are kicking in doors, SWAT teams are carrying weapons of war, and warrants are becoming things of the past."


  • An African-American male is sentenced to a prison term that is, on average, 20 to 50 times longer than a white male convicted of the same drug crime.
  • More than 2.3 million men in America are in prison, approximately half of them for drug-related crimes. Seventy percent of all men imprisoned are black or Hispanic. Thirty years ago, before the "War on Drugs" was launched, there were only 300,000 people in the American prison system.
  • There are 2.7 million children whose fathers or mothers are in prison, on probation, or on parole.
  • In many urban areas 80 percent of young men have prison records. These convictions will remain on their records permanently, limiting their voting rights and their ability to find employment. Currently, in all but two states, citizens with felony convictions are permanently or temporarily prohibited from voting. The United States is the only country that permits permanent disenfranchisement of felons even after completion of their sentences.
  • The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, higher than Russia, China, and Iran.
  • White households have six times the wealth of African-American households.

Ferguson matters because St. Louis County prosecutors may have misled the grand jury into believing that Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson was justified in shooting Brown merely because the unarmed black 18-year-old fled from the officer, according to a review of the grand jury documents by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell; "Before Wilson testified to the grand jury on September 16, prosecutors gave grand jurors an outdated statute that said police officers can shoot a suspect that's simply fleeing. This statute was deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1985; the court ruled that a fleeing suspect must, at least in a police officer's reasonable view, pose a dangerous threat to someone or have committed a violent felony to justify a shooting." See article: http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/27216-report-prosecutors-may-have-misled-the-ferguson-grand-jury-about-the-law-for-two-months

Ferguson matters because many black leaders like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, are rightfully troubled because the judicial system is obviously racially flawed ~ "The people of Ferguson, and across the country, are not protesting against white people or police officers, they are protesting against the kind of racism that is so embedded in various social institutions that it’s invisible to all except those it affects. They are protesting a blind faith in any institution when the facts don’t warrant that faith."  See article:  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27220-focus-white-people-feel-targeted-by-the-ferguson-protests-welcome-to-our-world

Ferguson finally matters because the rules are really different for blacks seeking justice and no one understood this better than Martin Luther King Jr whose words in his 1968 speech (The Other America) speaks to all Americans, regardless of their race; "It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."

We have now reached the stage in our Republic where the unheard must be heard.


Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-ferguson-matters-militarization-of.html

 
Spiritual consultant Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com

Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also a featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND A JOYFUL REMINDER THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE


 
 













Click on photos to enlarge
 
A size comparison of the Earth and our neighboring planets with the Sun in our solar star system.

 
Happy Thanksgiving and a joyful reminder that we are but a tiny spec of sand in the known universe but by surrendering to a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness, that exists beyond time and space as well as deepest within ourselves, we will begin to see through different eyes and realize we are all one and most certainly not alone as well as the truth of these words by William Blake ~ We are put on Earth a little space to bear the beams of love: Allen L Roland. Ph.D

 

The basic underlying and uniting force of the universe is a psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness ( the Unified Field ) which lies not only beyond time and space but also beneath our deepest fears and whose principle property is the universal urge to unite: Allen L Roland, Ph.D

 

Carl Sagan once mused, there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth:
 






Now this is where we live within our own Milky Way Galaxy ~

But this is all we will ever see ~

We are in essence mere inhabitants of planet Earth in a solar system which is part of a Milky Way galaxy that is part of thousands and thousands of galaxies, each containing millions of stars, each with their own planets ~ which is part of a Solar Interstellar neighborhood ~ which is part of a local Galactic Group ~ which is part of the Virgo Super cluster ~ which is part of the Local Super clusters ~ which is part of the Observable Universe.

As Dave Stopera, Buzz feed correctly writes "Just a tiny little ant in a giant jar " ~ but I would add a tiny ant with a heart and soul that is capability of loving so deeply that it cannot only feel and glimpse the universal oneness (through love) within this incomprehensible universe but also see its part in this loving plan in action
.


 See Stopera's mindboggling article which features 26 pictures which just may make you re-evaluate your own existence ~ http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-universe-is-scary

 




But let’s think bigger as we get smaller. In JUST this minute section of the sky taken by the Hubble telescope, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies, each containing millions of stars, each with their own planets ~ and many most certainly containing life forms.

 
I distinctly remember as a very young child, since I'm a twin and surrendered during my birth trauma, a vague, scary and almost overwhelming prenatal feeling of being part of something so vast and incomprehensible that I felt absolutely miniscule and tiny beyond description. Now I realize, through eyes that have been opened through love and service, that it was evidence of my original fetal or prenatal omniscience ~ a knowledge of events which seem to transcend the sensory and mental capacities of the fetus.

 
This fetal consciousness has most certainly been validated through the work of Dr William Emerson of Petaluma (also a twin) in his evaluation of the memory and consciousness capacities of the prenate through regressions of infants from age two to four in order to determine whether they qualified as experiences of prenatal higher consciousness. The results of the regressions revealed that most of the children had two or the four criteria of higher consciousness and many had three out of four while in utero.

 
There can be little doubt that we, as human beings on this tiny miniscule planet in this vast known universe, are the product of an evolution of love fueled by the urge to unite ~ from single cell to multi-cell ~ and by the third trimester we have reached a place of such complexity consciousness that we are in a joyful and knowing state of soul consciousness within a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness ~ whose principle property is the urge to unite.

 As such, we are all innately emissaries of love on a mission to a planet that is in the process of being born into a universal loving plan. Our task, quite simply, is to fully love and escape our false dark cocoon of ego consciousness as well as claim our authentic role within a loving plan from a place of celebration and service.  

 
So happy thanksgiving and a joyful reminder that the only way we can connect with this immense and unfathomable universe is by surrendering to love and in the process realize that we are most probably not alone ~ a theory that could well become fact during this decade.

 



However, I have always felt that planet Earth is the rogue planet of this solar interstellar neighborhood and until we surrender to love and go beyond our need to control and dominate each other and instead become part of our innate evolutionary need for social cooperation and altruism ~ we may remain alone and not contacted by other life forms in our solar neighborhood who rightfully see us as dangerous and ungrounded in a universal loving plan.

 
Jung's theory of the collective unconscious fit within and support my model of a Unified Field of Love which is a universal and psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness that unites and connects all living beings ~ or as Emerson wrote "The thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite".  We resist this connection at our individual and collective peril.

 
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience ~ we are spiritual beings having a human experience: Teilhard de Chardin

 

Allen L Roland, Ph.D
Spiritual consultant Allen L Roland can be contacted at allen@allenroland.com
 
Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also a featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

Saturday, November 22, 2014

CLIMATE CHANGE OR CLIMATE JUSTICE / WE ARE INTER-RELATED AND INTER-DEPENDENT WITH THE EARTH


Click on photos to enlarge

Prolonged drought has also caused a dramatic drop in Lake Powell's water level. Lake Powell is another Southwestern reservoir that supplies water to millions of homes in Arizona and Utah. These NASA images show the northern part of the lake, which is actually a deep, narrow, meandering reservoir that extends from Arizona upstream into southern Utah. The left image, from 1999, shows water levels near full capacity. The image on the right, taken in May 2014, shows the lake has dropped to 42 percent of capacity.

 
The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.~ Author Unknown

 
Think of the Earth as a 45 year old female body (Gaia - Greek Goddess of Earth) with veins filled with life sustaining water (instead of blood) and you will get the big picture of the slow but sure effects of Climate Change as well as the end result of human progress at all costs. We can no longer ignore our inter-relationship and inter-dependence with Nature ~ for in the end, Nature will survive with or without us: Allen L Roland. Ph.D

In September of 2014, Justin Gillis (NT Times) reported a significant rise in 2013 greenhouse gas emissions ~ "Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, in the latest indication that the world remains far off track in its efforts to control global warming…  In a separate report in early September, the World Meteorological Organization said the level of carbon dioxide in the air in 2013 was 42 percent above the level that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution.

Other important greenhouse gases have gone up as well, with methane increasing 153 percent from the preindustrial level and nitrous oxide by 21 percent. The increase of these and other gases from human activity has caused the planet to warm by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the preindustrial era, which is causing land ice to melt all over the world. The oceans are rising at what appears to be an accelerating pace, and heat waves and torrential rains are intensifying."  See article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/science/earth/scientists-report-global-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html?emc=eta1

Here's what it looks like here in the West ~ Photos Courtesy of Distractify http://news.distractify.com/culture/photos-of-climate-change



Abstract art at Burning Man? Nope, these are empty boat slips protruding from an abandoned dock at Nevada's Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Lake Mead is North America's largest man-made reservoir, storing water for millions of people across seven states. Well, it used to anyway.

 

Firefighters from Stockton, Calif., put out flames off of Hidden Valley Rd. while fighting a wildfire, Friday, May 3, 2013 in Hidden Valley, Calif.

 A dust storm called a haboob ~ which is Arabic for "violent wind" ~ slams Phoenix, Arizona.
Perhaps the only way we can truly grasp the significance of Climate Change is to watch this 35 minute documentary film which reinforces a fact that many of us already know but few practice ~ that we are all deeply connected and inter- dependent with Nature, that we can no longer manipulate or bend nature into service to mankind and we can no longer practice human progress at all costs.

The film compares the Earth to a 45 year old female (Gaia) where in the first 10 minutes Teilhard's law of complexity/Consciousness rules as the universal urge to unite propels this living being from single cell to multicellular organisms to amphibians and finally human beings and where she is now at age 45 (4.5 Billion years)

One minute ago the Industrial Revolution began and the last 60 seconds summarizes our rapid ascent to our current extremely perilous human situation where we can no longer bend nature to our will.  Must see 35 minute Video ~  http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/all-things-are-connected/

 





 

"We shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man." Lynn White Jr (Author of The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis)

 

Allen L Roland, Ph.D



Spiritual consultant Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com

Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also a featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

Sunday, November 16, 2014

VETERANS OF OAKLEY / DEDICATED TO SERVICE


 Nestled in the San Francisco East Bay hills and Valleys is the City of Oakley ~ a city that is celebrating its 15th year of incorporation as well as local control of its community's destiny. That includes leasing its Seniors the old city Firehouse and then encouraging them to adopt the newly formed Veterans of Oakley and supporting them to join the Seniors in service to each other as well as the community: Allen L Roland, Ph.D



 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Click on all photos to enlarge

Veterans of Oakley president Randy Smith celebrates with fellow veteran Clint Rehak (Iraq Vet) as they move into and share the Old Oakley Firehouse site with the Oakley Senior Citizens.

 


Joseph Camacho District Representative from California Senator Mark DeSaulnier's office, Randy Smith, President Veterans of Oakley, Kevin Romick, City of Oakley Council member, Shirley Darling President of Oakley Senior Citizens and Jennifer Quallick, Field Representative from Contra Costa County Supervisor Mary Piepho's office greeting all the veterans and thanking them for their service to our country.

The driving force of the wedding of these two precious resources was and continues to be Shirley Darling, President of the Oakley Senior Citizens and Randy Smith, U.S Army Veteran and President of Veterans of Oakley.

But Veterans of Oakley is not just dedicated  to serving its own veterans but is also dedicated to serving the community as well as other Veteran organizations.


Veterans of Oakley members Emil Ramirez, US Army and Tim Barton, USMC, volunteering and serving coffee and donuts as well as good will to veterans at the Martinez Vets Clinic.

 

And every Monday morning at 930 AM Veterans of Oakley share coffee together at the Local Black Bear diner (where this whole idea was hatched several months ago) ~ whose proud Manager Jimmy Damico is shown here on the left with a few of these dedicated Veterans, which includes myself.


Veterans and seniors celebrate dinner together within the old Oakley firehouse

But the heart and soul of this story is Seniors and Veterans working together to make the Oakley community stronger and in the process serving as a model for other communities to emulate their success and dedication to service.

Being in Service is a way of life for the Veterans of Oakley but now it's service to their community where it once was their country. The nationwide average age of a veteran is 64 years old so this marriage has obvious mutual benefits to both veterans and seniors ~ whose military family ties are both many and varied as to a war and service. This is a win, win for both organizations with the full and enthusiastic blessings of the city of Oakley.

"I'm delighted to work with the Veterans and make a home for both of us" Shirley Darling, President of Oakley Senior Citizens

 The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Allen L Roland, Ph.D
U.S Naval Aviator 1957-1964
Veterans of Oakley, California
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/veterans-of-oakley-dedicated-to-service.html

Spiritual consultant Allen L Roland can be contacted at allen@allenroland.com

Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also a featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Friday, November 7, 2014

ON BEING A VETERAN


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


On Being a Veteran

 
Being a Veteran is being in service

 
First of all to our country and next to our

 
fellow Veterans.

 
Every Veteran has a story and it's always

 
a story of sacrifice ~ for all of us have

 
sacrificed two, four or in my case seven years in

 
order to protect the fleet, our mission or our homeland and


those years are forever gone.

 
But those years are also filled with memories

 
Memories of camaraderie,

 
Memories of close friendships,

 
Memories of shared bonding in battle, in carrier operations or

 
under attack.

 
Many of us have been to the dark side and never returned to

 
the light.

 
Many of us cannot forget the horror of war and the memories


still haunt us.

 
Each of us, as Veterans, are proud we served our country and


we welcome the respect and care we receive at our VA clinics


and know, at the deepest level, that we are all brothers and


sisters ~ joined by a common bond of


sacrifice and service.

 

It’s an intangible bond but it's there and I feel it strongly when

 

I meet another Veteran ~ particularly a disabled one.

 

It's a sense of knowing and acknowledgement that goes beyond

 

words but resonates in the soul ~

 

We Served.



 

 







Allen L Roland, Ph.D
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/on-being-veteran.html
 

US Naval Aviator 1957-1964

Veterans of Oakley, California