Listen Friends,

I know you don't like to read and that too much of your life is captured by your computer. Me too. I am sorry to add to your load here. I ask you to see if you can kick back and enjoy this very important, brilliant, inspiring, infuriating ezine. The people speaking here have a lot to say, and it can't be said any shorter. This is a chance for us like none we have ever had before. In this ezine is the secret to personal satisfaction and needed social change. I kid you not.

We have arranged this like the Huffington Post now, so you get an overview sentence or two and then click to read the rest. I promise, every God damned stitch of this is worth reading, is as condensed as it can be and is important for all of us. From the outline of the revolution at the beginning to the Christmas wishes at the end, this is the best ezine the radical honesty community has ever produced. I mean, this sonofabitch is good. Read it. Enjoy it. Act on it.

Love, Brad

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES

It has fallen upon us to lead a revolution on two fronts at once: a revolution in human consciousness and a social and economic revolution.

First, we must do what the other fundamentalist terrorists in America and the Middle East have not done, namely; take responsibility for and own our demons of displaced hatred and aggression. This means we can't project our own fundamentalist terrorist thinking onto Cheney and Bush they way Islamic terrorists have-and the way Bush and Cheney have disowned and projected back their hatred in becoming anti-terrorism terrorists. We are all fundamentalists and terrorists. And if we don't transcend and inhibit this tendency in ourselves and stop it from happening with others we are all doomed. This is critical personal psychological work, done with help from friends, and the survival of humanity now depends upon it.

Second, we need social action to bring about critical change to human society. We have to stop both corporate capitalist fascism (state terrorism) and religious terrorism. They sustain each other. It's a cops and robbers game. Cops need robbers and robbers need cops. Do away with either and the other side starts creating its opposite number immediately in order not to lose its job.

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A FESTIVAL OF BRIGHT IDEAS

I went to the Green Festival in D.C. the last week in October to hear Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader and Jim Hightower and others, and to talk with them. One thing very, very consistently agreed upon by these three speakers and particularly underlined by Hightower and Nader, is that the focus on taking back the power of corporations to have the same rights as individuals, then their right to give money to campaigns, their right to lobby, their right to get away with morally reprehensible profit taking, etc. should be the central take back power focus of the people's movement. Ralph said we should take away state charters for corporations and have Federal corporate charters and rules that allow for the revocation of the charters by the people if corporations violate the law. I like this because stockholders would have a vested interest in keeping CEO's under control or else have their stock suddenly be worth nothing.

After hearing Medea summarize all the reasons we have to stop our local home grown fascists, and after they both spoke, Ralph, Jim and I talked. I asked them what they thought about a national strike. Jim had read the recent article in Harper's proposing a nationwide strike and very much liked the idea. Ralph said he thought it was too big a step at one time, but the idea of asking everyone to show up a half hour late for work, could be effective, because a lot of people could do that.

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The PREMISES and the PROMISES:

An Interview with Brad Blanton (brad@radicalhonesty.com)
by Susan Campbell (drsusan@susancampbell.com)

Susan Campbell:In your view, what is the biggest challenge (or one of the biggest challenges) facing humanity today?

Brad Blanton:The integration of personal growth with social change. This must be done soon enough and well enough to save humankind from itself. Some few millions of us are making progress in maturing beyond the standard level of maturation of most of humanity. But if civilization itself is a mental illness, as many of us are coming to believe (with corporate fascism it's terminal disease) we do not have the collective capacity to get over the disease. Our only chance is to manage this disease through deep democracy, which is a real democracy with co-intelligent decision making for the good of the greater collective (including all of humanity, not just the rich ones) and the consequent and necessary regulation of the corporate greed economy so that the well being of people does not depend on how much property or goods they can control. Civilization, the mental illness, is like herpes or diabetes-can't be cured, but might be inhibited and managed effectively to keep it from getting out of hand, so that we are not sick all the time and it doesn't kill us all.

We are all suckered by our culture. Many are just afraid of anything unconventional. Many of us don't do the overruling of the rulers as I have just advocated because we imagine ourselves as someday being successful exploiters for the benefit of our own small family, and to be able rule over others with money as we have been ruled over. Since we know this is true of us we suspect it is true of others and we are not inclined to trust each other enough to transcend this well ingrained training from our culture, which is killing us. So we fall back on habits of comfort and trust in Big Brother for the sake of a hopeful false sense of safety, which is, of course, not safe at all. Thus, we have the (suck my) Dick Cheney/George Bush neo conservative mentality-and mankind killing itself in the name of "free trade."

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Let the People Decide

by Mike Gravel

President Bush is disdained by seven in ten Americans. That's bad enough, but only one in five Americans believe Congress is doing a good job. Most of us believe our government is the best one money can buy, and that it benefits those who spend the most to buy it. We are right.

Campaign finance laws won't fix the problem by limiting political speech. Busting the occasional crooked Senator or Representative isn't making the underlying problem any better. Electing new crooks won't repair government. Is their any hope for putting government back on the right track? Yes, we can put the people in charge. Although politicians always pay lip service to the people being sovereign, there actions speak louder than their words!

If the people were in charge, the drug wars would be ended, personal accounts for Social Security and medical savings would exist, the war in Iraq would be over, the income tax would end and other taxes would be lower.

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MERRY CHRIST MASS