“Let this be her legend, let this be her voice,
let this be her vision, let this be her choice. To remain as we knew her, strong and poised,
as the one we love.”
- Katie Reider, Her Song
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I invite all of my readers to watch this video made by my good friend Kiersten. It’s a brief look back at her life— filled to the brim with love, friends, and family.
After you finish the video, please visit 500Kin365.org, where you can download 9 of Katie’s songs for only $1 (of course you can always donate more if you wish.) All proceeds benefit Katie’s partner Karen and their two sons, who were left with massive medical bills not covered by insurance.
If you want to do even more for Katie and her family — tell 3 of your friends about Katie’s music, send a quick email with a link to 500Kin365.org. Through your message, her music and spirit will remain with us forever.
Also, a memorial service for Katie Reider will be held at 11am this Saturday (July 26th) at Crossroads Church, 3500 Madison Road, Cincinnati, Ohio. Hope to see you there.
Katie Reider 1978-2008
A friend and favorite musician of mine (and many of my friends) passed away this morning after a courageous two-year battle with a mysterious illness called a Myofibroblastic Inflammatory Tumor.
It’s about the saddest ending one could conceive of for one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. Everyone knew Katie. She made us all feel like her close friends. Everyone would swear when she was singing, she was looking right at them and nobody else.
But it’s not her ending we must remember, it’s her life and her spirit. She touched sooooo many people’s lives. So many friends from different parts of my life were connected through her music. It’s amazing what one person can do.
There will be a candlelight vigil for her tonight at 9pm at the Goodale Park Gazebo. I hope some of you read this in time and can join us.
I just got in from D.C., back from the Ron Paul Revolution March. My inbox is overflowing and the RSS updates are in the thousands. But PeaceChicken.com comes first!
I saw him at the Delaware County Parade (I was marching with The Liberty Voice) and decided to ask him about the unconstitutional FISA bill which recently passed through the Senate (FYI, Obama voted YES to spy on Americans.) Tiberi’s response? He turned around and started talking to someone else. The Fourth Amendment obviously not a big concern to him. Fortunately I had my Bill of Rights with me and kindly reminded him what it said.
This is Congress. This is who we’re relying on to save this country. They wear flag pins on their suit lapels and march in Fourth of July Parades, but when it comes time to actually stand up and defend the U.S. Constitution — they turn their back.
The good news that THEY are on their way out and WE’RE on our way in. This weekend at the D.C. Revolution March there were thousands of REAL PATRIOTS from across the country who took over Constitution Avenue and spent the day listening to amazing speakers like G. Edward Griffin, Naomi Wolf, Chuck Baldwin, and Ron Paul.
Together we marched against FISA, against the IRS, against the Federal Reserve, against REAL I.D., against the North American Union, against the war, against attacking Iran, against McCain, against Obama, against the false and dividing left/right paradigm, against everything that’s taking our country down. We marched FOR freedom, FOR liberty, FOR the Constitution, FOR the Bill of Rights, FOR limited government, FOR our Founding Fathers, FOR PEACE!
Also this weekend, another Patriot, someone I’m very proud to call my friend (and member of We Are Change Ohio) got the chance to ask McCain a very important question, live on CNN, at a recent town hall event in Portsmouth, Ohio.
He said to McCain:
“Can you tell us about your role as president of the ‘New Citizen Project,’ founded in 1994, which served as a chief fund-raising and parent organization to PNAC? And is this one of the factors that has made you so reluctant to support the victims’ family members and first responders who are begging for a new investigation into 9/11?”
Can you guess what McCain’s response was? YOU GOT IT! Once again, another member of Congress responded by not answering the question. He just rambled on about how he was a co-sponsor of the legislation that formed the 9/11 Commission and how great that Commission was (what a joke!!) Are we seeing a trend here?
Given our unwavering support of Israel ($6.8 million a DAY, to be precise), of course the U.S. will be by their side in no time. Another attack on a sovereign country that poses no threat is ready to be launched. A third front for our poor soldiers in the Middle East and millions more dead civilians. Another yawn comes from the mouth of mainstream media.
It’s another day in the neighborhood, folks. One by one, the dominoes are falling as predicted. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
How many of these news stories does it take to wake people up and move them to action?
LATEST UPDATE: I’ve obtained contact information for the NRA Security Coordinator for the event.
His name is Joseph Welby and his number is (703)267-3885. Time to bombard him with calls and demand some answers!
“Easy, easy, easy! I’m not resisting!” - Sam Logulo’s response to being grabbed by security officers
I tried, but couldn’t post this story without including my thoughts on the subject. Not just because it’s an important topic, but because it involves my friends Cody & Sam. I saw them in Louisville the day before and it’s scary to think of what could have happened, knowing how quickly cops reach for their tasers and guns these days.
Some of you may not think twice about the 1984-ish phrase “police state” and what it means to our country. But the fact is– this is yet another instance of abuse of power. You may be thinking “yeah right, they were out to cause trouble.” Sorry, but no. My friends were simply exercising their First Amendment rights. They didn’t touch anyone. They made no threats. They were only asking questions and documenting the answers.
What gives a privately hired security officer (aka, not real cops) the right to shove a non-threatening individual to the ground? Let alone 5 of them? What Constitutional right do they have to take someone’s property and never return it? What if that was your digital camera? Your purse? Would you be okay with that?!
As Editor of The Liberty Voice, I’m trying to put the power (and obligation) of the media to work and have called the Louisville Police Dept. and left messages with the Kentucky Expo Center to try and get answers about this.
So far the Police Dept. is denying involvement and I’ve gotten no word back from the Expo Center. Big surprise. However– we must keep calling (502-367-5180) and demanding not only an explanation about what happened, but the return of all property seized. Once we have the video footage, we can move forward with our case and get some justice served.
“It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931.
…As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to Internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded.”
- Naomi Wolf
Sunday: Going to see a play called “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” depicting the life and work of a 23-year-old American peace activist, one of my heroes, who was killed trying to stop Israeli bulldozers from tearing down a Palestinian home.
This is an amazing opportunity for people in Columbus, we’re very fortunate that this play is being performed here! I highly encourage you all to come out and see it (it’s free!) It’s at the Columbus Mennonite Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave., at 3pm.
Last but not least…
I finally sat down and fixed my computer (bad power supply which = completely dead), just in time to download Ubuntu 8.0, just released yesterday. So nice to have my precious computer back in my life!!
I feel like I used to include a lot more personal posts on my site, then it became taken over with 9/11 Truth and Ron Paul all the time. Great topics, indeed, but perhaps it’s time for a personal post or two?
Like mostly everyone I know, I’ve been completely snowed in all day. My car is blocked by 20 inches of snow— I’m not going anywhere.
Being holed up inside for the past 24 hours, I’ve learned just how many things I’m addicted to. As addictions go, I’ve only realized their existence once I was unable unable to satisfy them. I’m house-sitting and forgot my phone charger, so my phone is dead, hence I haven’t talked to anyone or sent a single text message all day. That’s hard to fathom, yes, but the hardest tribulation I’m experiencing— I haven’t had coffee all day!! Though there’s a Caribou Coffee and a Starbucks within a mile, without a car and with 20 inches of snow to walk through, they’re still out of range. And lastly, I’m hungry. I’ve been subsisting on lots of toast and orange juice, but my newly veganized body is craving so much more and I just can’t get it right now. What I wouldn’t give for a veggie burrito bowl from Chipotle and a vanilla soy latte from Starbucks! That’s such a snotty American thing to say, I know, I can’t help it.
Thank goodness I have some semblance of an internet connection or I would be going totally crazy. That is one addiction I’m well aware of.
Perhaps this blizzard would be more fun if I hadn’t just read “The Power Failure From Hell” yesterday? I did enjoy standing outside and watching the snow fall last night, however. I love the silence that comes with storms, when everyone is inside hiding. I’m always amazed when Mother Nature decides to remind us who is in charge. We can build Space Stations. We can fly across the country in four hours. We can decode the entire human genome. But a foot of snow falls from the sky and entire cities come screeching to a halt. Whole newscasts become devoted to marveling at the ramifications of such weather phenomenon. Humans are strange and inconsistent creatures indeed.
In closing, I haven’t yet commented on Ohio’s Primary Day, I know. I guess I have too much in my head right now to try and express. As Rand Paul has pointed out, however, it’s not over.
“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” - Mark Twain
If only it were that easy! We have only just started educating ourselves. Meeting other like-minded citizens. Convening. Brain-storming. Inspiring. Planning. Building. I’ll say it again: we have only just begun. The real work for real change lies ahead of us still, daunting and unflinching as ever. And it will most certainly not be over by November 4th.
I’m reposting this wonderfully motivating article from WantToKnow.info because I think it’s time for some inspiration. The entire website is beautiful and their approach to such daunting topics as 9/11 Truth, the war, mass media cover-ups, etc. isn’t confrontational or depressing. Rather, they view activism from an empowerment and awareness perspective, one that holds a lot more promise than the endless struggle between “Us” and “Them.”
The Old Paradigm
Together, we can and will build a new paradigm on Earth. Yet in order to give meaningful suggestions for this, we first need to speak candidly about what’s happening in the world at present. It appears that there are factions within the world’s power elite which desire to exert as much control as possible over the world. Their primary means for establishing control are through promoting fear, secrecy, and polarization, and through distracting people from their deeper purpose in life. As these factions gain ever greater power and control, our freedoms and liberties are increasingly taken away, sometimes without our even realizing it.
Fear is used as a powerful tool of control by these factions of the global elite. “The terrorists want to kill us all. Your job, savings, and retirement are no longer secure. You are either for us or against us. We might be attacked at any time.” All of these messages push us towards fear. And by encouraging us to focus blame on others such as terrorists and “evil” leaders, the global power brokers push us away from feeling in control of our lives and towards the role of powerless victims. The more we slip into fear and being victims, the easier it is for us to be manipulated.
Secrecy leads to control through preventing the exposure of hidden agendas, and through breeding distrust, suspicion, and paranoia in the world. In the name of “national security,” we are told ever more frequently that we should not know what is happening behind closed doors in government. Yet we are encouraged to keep vigilant watch over our neighbors, over those who question the government, and over those who look or act different from us, as they could secretly be terrorists in sheep’s clothing. Rampant suspicion and secrecy are causing us to lose touch with the common humanity we share with all around us.
Polarization leads to “us vs. them” ways of thinking. Divide and conquer is a tactic that has been used successfully by the power elite of the world for centuries. As long as people focus on blaming and attacking “the enemy,” they are not likely to look for the deeper causes of their problems. Controlling factions of the power elite work to keep public and media attention focused on issues which divide us into two polarized camps, so that their greatest concerns of power and control go unnoticed. The power brokers then control both sides of the divided public by assuring that corporate ownership of the media and key candidates from all political parties support their deeper power and polarization agendas, which often involve war profiteering.
A final subtle, yet powerful method of gaining control is to distract people from their purpose in life. Consider that television, radio, and movies are filled with ever more greed, violence, and empty sex. Our educational system increasingly prioritizes passing tests over developing intelligence and creativity. Excessive corporate control of the media limits what news we receive, and often shapes our decisions and the way we think. Our attention is subtly being diverted from our deeper purpose in life to the more superficial attractions of sex, consumerism, and money.
As people succumb to fear, secrecy, and polarization, and as they lose touch with their sense of purpose in life, elements of the global elite are able to exert ever more control over our lives and world.
The New Paradigm
What can we do about all this? Ultimately, it is the collective fear, secrecy, polarization, and loss of purpose within all of us that has allowed leaders to take power who would subvert democracy, and who would take away our freedoms and liberties. By each one of us making a commitment to work on these issues both inside of ourselves and out in the world—and to inspire others to do the same—we can change our collective direction and build a solid foundation for a brighter future. Several actions can help us to take firm steps in that direction.
