The Speech

I haven't written anything for a long time. Not that I was lacking good topics - I just didn't feel I wanted to write anything. However, I got that urge to share something that struck me deeply. It does not need much introduction - you only need to listen to it, to read it....

I didn't write it- someone else did. Charlie Chaplin did it 1940, for his great movie, "The Great Dictator". Also, someone else created a video based on this speech that I borrowed as well.

Sorry for lack of creativity in this case.

The Speech:

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;

More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!...

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Default, Greece, and help bring down the corporate gangsters

We took a tram to go to Asklipio Voulas. It is always more exciting to merge with locals and see how people live. We went to this southern part of Athens to have dessert in one of locally recommended restaurants. It took 1 hour to get to Voulas from Acropolis.

Our dessert was irresistible, combination of ice cream and fruit - and when you combine that with a perfect view on Aegean sea, life cannot be better.

We started chatting with our waiter. He was in his early thirties, very professional and polite. We asked him how safe was in Athens, especially now, when government protests were happening on a daily basis. It was safe, but everyone should listen his/her common sense, not to go to hot areas, and those ones were on Syntagma square and around the parliament building. We thought that we have to go there anyway, as our hotel was a block from Syntagma square.

Our new friend became more passionate, and we had quite a conversation. Good thing was that there were no many customers, so he was able to talk to us. He was mad because of everything that was happening in Greece. I asked many questions as I wanted to know more, what Greek people were feeling and thinking about austerity measures applied and forced by the government and European Union.

"Whose fault was all of this?", I asked, and my new friend said: "Rich bastards. They did all of this. See that beach down there?", he pointed to beautiful Apolonies Aktes beach just below the restaurant, "People of Athens have to pay 10 euros to get there, to touch the sea....."

"And now, the government wants to sell our islands to rich bastards, and that means that we'll lose Greece. We won't be local anymore, in our own country. They'll take everything".

He was talking, giving me more examples, and I was listening. I was thinking as well. Similar pattern was applied in Croatia, where people were becoming foreigners in their own country. "Rich bastards" came and bought everything that had some value. They'll get it much easier once Croatia is granted membership in EU.

I was thinking how economic hit-men assassinated governments and spread new colonialism and corporatism to the world.

Greece was a good target, and I actually admired hit-mens work, as they hit 'prosperous' western country - appetite of their employers has grown, so they were not anymore satisfied with some "rogue" south american "regimes". It was time now to enslave even well off countries. To steal their resources.

They need them in order to feed their ponzi scheme.

Of course, Greeks were stereotyped as lazy, as inefficient, and it was concluded that social policies applied through many years drained government pockets. Everything that had to do with word 'social' was the real cause of Greece's demise.

If there is a crisis, everyone should get a life boat or no one should. It was unfair for the ship Titanic to only have enough life boats for the rich, it is no less unfair to save the rich from the austerity measures imposed on the middle class and poor.

Banks, investors, and others of the rich connected to Greece's debt problems, who have benefited from Greece's past borrowing, are not even to be subject to the taxes to be used to pay off that debt. Are the workers in Greece wrong to protest the fact that

they are being forced to pay for the present and future profits of these powerful interests?

During a crisis like WWII, when everyone was considered to share in on the danger, the rich paid 90% taxes, and really did not enjoy nearly so much luxury as they did before the war, until the crisis had passed.

There is a crisis in Greece: While the homes of the middle class and poor burn, the rich, especially banks, should not sit idle and play their fiddles.

Frankly, the entire Western World should reconsider ignoring the permanent crisis created by one sided trade policies that guarantee the permanent poverty of the third world. Why stop with just helping Greece?

Western media keeps referring to events taking place in Greece as the "death throes of socialism". I appreciate the need of apologists for capitalism to misrepresent the facts concerning the economic collapse in Greece. However, the events unfolding in Greece are not the results of socialism but the results of a capitalist system that is not based on free market principles. Instead its a system where oligarchic and monopolistic interests have been allowed to exploit Greece for their own ends without regard for the consequences. It is as Mussolini said: " a better name for Fascism would be Corporatism". That is what has destroyed Greece. Corporatism in its most rapacious form.

I told my friend the following:

"25% of Greeks now live below the poverty line due to previous measures taken to pay of the banking cartel. Follow the examples of Iceland and Argentina and tell the bankers to pound sand. Capitalist vultures are waiting to buy up your country at close-out prices, in cahoots with your politicians and rich elite. Who refuse to pay taxes as the middle class do. Your corrupt companies, allied with foreign banks, have brought you to this. The billions spent on the owelympics franchise was the straw that broke your back. Odious debt incurred by the corrupt does not need to be repaid by the citizens. Default, Greece, and help bring down the corporate gangsters that are the root of this. And then reform your government and your business and tax laws".

Welcome to the Hague. Your final resting spot. Enjoy the stay.

I just came back to Canada from my Himalaya’s trip. After a couple of days getting back to normal, I was ready to start writing some of my impressions. I thought it would take me days and weeks to process all information, and much more for writing. There was so much that I've seen and experienced.

And then something happened that changed my train of thoughts. Some old memories became alive; they were buried and forgotten for many years. In the past they would come more often to the light, but I would bury them quickly. It bothered me that they would come back, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to get rid of them, to delete them, to shred them, so that they never come back.

Those memories were related to one of real life monsters that got big media attention on May 26^th. He was finally ‘found’, after more than 15 years. Those memories were related to one ideology that is still very much alive and scary.

I was thinking about these memories, how they were still there, and how heavy they were. The memories were still existent, and uneasy feelings were flowing through my body and my brain. I became quiet, and I needed solitude, as I knew that there was nobody close to me who would understand why my eyes changed the colour. My eyes became sad.

Because of this ideology and this monster, there is a picture of Viktor Frankl in my office. He was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and beside that he survived Nazi concentration camps. His book Man’s Search for Meaning talks about his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, and describes his method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, and consequently, a reason to continue living.

I read this book many times, as I was trying to understand my own meaning, because my own existence was in jeopardy for many years, thanks to the ideology that was propagated by the apprehended monster. I had so much in common with Viktor Frankl.

When I was little I would ask my mom if there were real monsters, and as I was waiting for her answer with my open eyes, I was imagining that there must be some little monsters that scare little kids when they go to bed. My mom would confirm that, and told me not be scared, because she was there to protect me.

I would be impressed by little and big monsters from cartoons, comics and books I read, and sometimes I would imagine how I would be able to fight them with a sword, and defend my family and myself. I believed that all kids had similar thoughts and dreams.

Later, when I was already grown up, but still very green, I got a chance to meet real monsters, not just little and big monsters from my books. One of them looked exactly like other people on this planet, and now, after long hiding, he was visible again, after 15 years. This monster was now a sorry looking man. Once powerful and strong, now weak and sick. I was wondering how could he have led his people to commit crimes and murder? Instead of pride, his nation and human race should humble themselves before God and the world.

I was lucky and smart enough to outsmart the monster’s ideology, and to go as far as I could, in order to forget monster’s followers’ "heroism". However, I still saw what the monster and his hordes did to propagate their ideology.

Memories would still come back, and I was worried because I couldn’t make them go away. Only after I read one of Viktor Frankl’s interviews in which he was asked if he still remembered his days in concentration camps, I was able to let it go.

This is what Frankl said:

"You asked me earlier, do I still think of these things? Not a day goes by when I do not! And in a way I do pity those younger people who did not know the camps or live during the war, who have nothing like that to compare [their own hardships] with…Even today, as I lose my sight or with any severe problem or adverse situation…I have only to think for a fraction of a second and I draw a deep breath. What I would have given then if I could have had no greater problem than I face today!"

Once I read this, I understood it all. In same way, I could even say ‘thank you’ to my monster and his people ideology.

I didn’t have problems any more. Thanks to this “hero” that put 300,000 people including me, into super size concentration camp, and kept us there for 1435 days.

Monsters’ followers never wanted to accept their responsibility – we actually locked ourselves up, we cut all water, electricity, and natural gas, and we bomb shelled ourselves. That’s why they have been protesting in their own country, after the monster was apprehended.

I felt sorry for this old man, and I felt even sorrier for his followers, and especially for their society. He didn’t only damage his victims, he demolished his own people, as what does one say about a society that creates monsters like this and protects them for 15 years? I am worried about this country in which they are protesting for a murderer and majority of the protesters are teenagers... This is even scarier then monster itself. If any of people saw with their own eyes the mass graves they and they alone would understand what this man and his followers were and are still capable of.

Of course, they didn't do anything. In their world, their victims abused themselves.

This society and their smart politics that created and protected the monster played another great game in which they were supported by their friends. Their friends have created and protected many of their monsters. Of course the monster was extradited. It was a political matter and predetermined ahead of time. Monster's protectors and jailers wanted to join the EU and this is seen as part of the admission price. They look now as good guys.

Good thing, after all, is that actually, there are some good people there. They identify themselves as 'people', as 'human beings', and they are not blind. They are awake, and they are hope, for their own society, and hope for rest of us. As other monster kingdoms might see the change in them.

When I would talk to my mentor Howard in the past, and that was before Viktor Frankl helped me not to have problems, I would mention to Howard my anger, that was deep inside me, and that was somehow trapped inside. As it was waiting to be released. I would ask Howard, why I was still so angry, even though I left super size concentration camp long time ago. He would ask me what I would do if saw the monster, or other monsters on the street? I replied: ”I would run them over, break their knee caps...”

He said that I wouldn’t do it, as I was angry, and anger was making me less civilized. “You are not a monster, and you are genuine human being”.

He said that one day all of that would be gone, and that I would be free.

And that day came. I was lucky and smart enough to see it. My eyes still hasn't returned to their normal colour. I can't stop thinking about my friends, acquaintances, and all unknown people who were not that lucky.

I will need couple of days.

I know there are many other monsters, around us, who are free. I am telling them that their turn will come soon.

Life is still a fairy tale in which monsters end up alone, betrayed, forgotten and dead.