A GREAT BLESSING

Even when we are trying not to buy into the scripted demonization of US "enemies" those of us back home still have to evaluate just how much we have swallowed Mr. Big's pill.

The history of successful demonization of others by our nation is the story of the scientific method put to evil purposes.  Scientists, mental health experts, historians, mathematicians, engineers, anthropologists, media and more have been well paid to help the corporate oligarchy design their greedy plan for control of the people and everything else. They have it down to an art.

In my lifetime I can remember the early former enemies Japan and Germany.  We used to laugh when we were kids that all our cheap plastic toys were "made in Japan."

When we moved to Landscheid, Germany in 1959 I got the up-close and personal view of the former enemy.  We rented the upstairs of a farmhouse in the tiny village near Spangdalem AFB where my stepfather was assigned.  I took a charter bus to the base for our military run school.  But all my other time was spent in the village - the only American family there.  I helped bring in the hay, I helped bring in the cows in the afternoon from the fields overlooking the Eifel (a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium), picked piles of berries, brought in eggs in the morning, and played foosball with the boys in the village.  We dug up potatoes, built fires and roasted them in the fields. We rode cows. I learned to functionally speak German and grew to adore the host farm family (Katryn and Alvis) that rented to us.  We lived in their warm kitchen while the rest of the house was freezing.  Katryn was like a second mother.

One day Katryn asked me to go into her bedroom, and bring her something from her nightstand.  When I went to her bedside I saw a framed photo of Adolph Hitler sitting there.   I knew enough about recent history to know Hitler was the devil.  How could these people that I loved so much still have a photo of Hitler - especially since the war was over and Germany lost? I was in crisis.

I never said a word about it but increased my observations of our German landlords.  I was waiting for them to slip up and reveal that they were spying on us and might try to do something bad to us.  My imagination ran wild.  I would watch them on behalf of America!

But they never slipped up.  Instead they stayed as gentle and loving as ever and my fear of their "betrayal" and such things just washed away.  I learned many good lessons from that experience. (Years later while on a speaking tour of Germany I visited Katryn and Alvis.  They told me that the US Air Force Base at Spangdalem had stopped holding their annual open house where they invited the local villagers onto the base for ice cream and propaganda.  Katryn told me that they were all considered potential terrorists and this was long before 9/11 happened.)

So fast-forward to this story from Iran:

When Iranian schoolteacher Ali Mohammadian (pictured above) noticed that one of his students was being bullied after going bald as a result of a mysterious illness, he decided to show solidarity and shave his own hair. In no time, his entire class shaved their heads and the bullying stopped.

I am tired of all the bullying my country does to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Guam, Philippines, Russia, China........ I won't forget the slave trade or the genocide of the Native Americans. Nor will I forget that the US Pentagon has the largest carbon boot print on the planet.

I am trying to look for the humanity in the people they try to turn us against so we will keep giving $$$$$ to the military machine that Mr. Big uses to control the planet.

Thank you Ali Mohammadian - you are a great blessing to the whole world.