An excellent perspective and well written article, however, one must get beyond the proper use and misspelling of: “leaf, border, and propaganda”, in order to realize the intent of the author.
Information Clearinghouse – by Anthony Evans
After reading a large number of well expressed and passionately motivated comments relating to the subject of war and the injustices and atrocities happening on a daily bases, an analogy I once heard of a sick and dying tree always comes to mind.
The people in the village where the tree was located adored the tree, it was a holy tree and they couldn’t understand why the leaves were starting to turn yellow and fall to the ground. As the villagers knew very little about trees they worked with what little knowledge they had and they diagnosed the tree’s problem as coming from the yellow turning leaves. So following this reasoning they started to treat the sick leaves and the braches they were connected to in hope of stopping the disease from spreading, and this practice went on until nearly all the leaves had fallen to the ground.
Fortunately, a wise traveller was passing through the village that knew something about trees and assessed that the problem was not coming from the individual leave and branches but from the root of the tree, which he proceeded to treat. In a short time the tree recovered and the villagers were wiser for the experience.
Sometimes when I hear or read well educated and articulate people publically analysing issues relating to the collapse of society, the struggling economy, and the perpetuation of war, I can’t help but think of the villagers diagnosing the tree’s problem by looking at the individual leaves for the cause.
One of the more powerful commentaries on war in our society, which presents a convincing argument on how war is used by our world leaders, comes from one of the most controversial books of the last millennium, The Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, where it states
“Although war is “used” as an instrument of national and social policy, the fact that a society is organized for any degree of readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure. War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today.
Once this is correctly understood, the true magnitude of the problems entailed in a transition to peace—itself a social system, but without precedent except in a few simple preindustrial societies—becomes apparent”.
The report goes onto say;
“It must be emphasized that the precedence of a society’s war-making potential over its other characteristics is not the result of the “threat” presumed to exist at any one time from other societies. This is the reverse of the basic situation; “threat” against the “national interest” are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system.
Regardless of the controversy surrounding the report’s authenticity, I believe the document has accomplished what the wise old traveller had archived in our analogy, diagnosed the root cause of the problem. The above quoted report uncovers one of the most obvious, and most sinister facts of our time; the global war system dominates our social and economic systems, not the other way around, and that none of our world leaders with any weight to their status, are trying to change this situation.
Leadership establishes the culture of an organisation or enterprise, and as I had found out when I consulted for companies implementing risk management systems into their general management structure. If the most senior person at the top of a company had a big appetite for risk and a low regard for safety, then that is the culture that would prevail throughout all levels of the organisation, regardless of the systems or training they had in place. If Government leaders, as with corporate leaders establishes and maintains the culture of a country, it raises the question, why do our leaders continue to promote a global system based on war?
If we accept the concept that we live in a world dictated by the system of war, and that leadership decisions made on a daily bases have their foundations in securing dominance within this system, then what we see and hear on a daily bases with regards to the war machine makes perfect sense. If this situation is to change we need to stop focussing on the symptoms of this global military disease and go to the root of the problem, LEADERSHIP. However, to change from a war culture to a peace culture would require a radical shift in the attitude of our present global oligarchy and the economic powers that support, and often dictate global activities to our elected leaders. The only other alternative in securing support from our global commanders for a shift away from a dominant war system to a peace system would be major global leadership change, which at this stage seems highly unlikely.
If our current leaders use the constant pretence of a threat to our nation’s boarders for staging war, we really need to start questioning this concept we have towards ‘Defence’ and ‘Boarders’, and have a good look at what boarders truly represent.
Putting it simply; boarders represent the enclosure of land, and securing ownership/control over anything inside these enclosures. Inside these boarders we have a lot of other smaller enclosures that are surrounded with fences and other boundary markers. The British monarchy has a long history of Enclosure dating back to the early 11th century, and is also the policy they enforced in most countries they colonised.
We are constantly brainwashed by our trusted leaders with the illusions of freedom. This illusion is fed to us every day by corporate media, and we lap it up, knowing full well that the managers of these enclosures, our governments, can take our freedom and possessions away from us anytime they want. Their ability to exercise this executive power is increased tenfold during times of boarder disputes and conflicts.
If you look at Google Earth and look down on a country like the USA, and then zoom in past the country’s boarders, and past the state and city boarders, right down to the suburban white picket fence….. Now remove the illusion of freedom, ownership, human rights, freedom of speech from the picture and it starts to look very much like any other cattle or a sheep farm, where the human cattle, the sheeple occupants are being fed and fattened on an unnatural diet of lies and proper gander.
The question should not be why we are fighting wars to protect our boarders and this illusion of freedom, but why we have these boarders at all, and why do the majority of our worlds most powerful political and economic leaders wish to maintain these boundaries, military institutions, and these human farms they call countries?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37122.htm
“If Government leaders, as with corporate leaders establishes and maintains the culture of a country, it raises the question, why do our leaders continue to promote a global system based on war?”
To keep the people in fear, to feed the military/industrial complex (and Zionism), and most of all, to stay in power.
“The only other alternative in securing support from our global commanders for a shift away from a dominant war system to a peace system would be major global leadership change, which at this stage seems highly unlikely.”
Highly unlikely or not, it’s the ONLY option we have.
“This illusion is fed to us every day by corporate media, and we lap it up, knowing full well that the managers of these enclosures, our governments, can take our freedom and possessions away from us anytime they want.”
Uh, THAT would apply to those stupid enough to give up their guns.
Good use of the Iron Mountain report.