Source: www.wakingtimes.com | Original Post Date: February 27, 2014 –

The world of television and modern media has become a tool of de-evolution, propaganda and social control. Since the reign of Edward Bernays and the rise of the Tavistock Institute in the early 20th century, nearly unlimited resources have been applied to understanding how to manipulate the human psyche through television and other forms of mass media. What we have today is an increasingly sophisticated full-spectrum assault on free will and psychological well-being, and we have come to a point where it is no longer even necessary for media institutions to attempt to hide their blatant work of manipulating public opinion, manufacturing consent, and creating winners and losers in the minds of the already brain-washed public.

One of the themes of the superb writing of Henry Giroux is that more and more Americans are becoming “disposable,” recognized as either commodities or criminals by the more fortunate members of society. There seems to be a method to the madness of winner-take-all capitalism. The following steps, whether due to greed or indifference or disdain, are the means by which America’s wealth-takers dispose of the people they don’t need.

1. Deplete Their Wealth

Recent analysis has determined that half of America is in or near poverty. This is confirmed by researchers Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who point out: “The bottom half of the distribution always owns close to zero wealth on net. Hence, the bottom 90% wealth share is the same as the share of wealth owned by top 50-90% families – what can be described as the middle class.”

The United States has one of the highest poverty rates in the developed world. It’s much worse since the recession, especially for blacks and Hispanics.

Source: www.thinkprogress.org | Original Post Date: July 3, 2014 –

Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.

The minimum wage went up in 13 states — Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is .99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is .68 percent.

“Every human culture, to remain healthy, sustainable, and vibrant, requires a constant renewal of ceremonies, crafts, cultural practices, and the arts. Each society must generate new knowledge, skills, self-understanding, and modes of self-transcendence. To evolve, a human community must have available a diverse set of authentic and viable social forms that enables it to respond to shifting times, long-term weather patterns, food sources, spiritual needs, cultural longings, and relations with other human groups.” –Bill Plotkin

Egalitarianism is a type of social system that has worked for human beings for millions of years, and it has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Anthropologist Christopher Boehm has proposed a social theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a leveling mechanism he calls Reverse Dominance: a social system of checks and balances that maintains egalitarian ethos while preventing a dominance hierarchy from forming. In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm offers compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory. In this article we will analyze this social theory and see how we might be able to use it to improve things within our own social environments.

“All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man… the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.” ~ Chief Seattle

Using animal spirit guides or animal medicine as a basis for our connection with the divine is a tradition as ancient as the first civilizations that settled on this earth. With its roots in Native American culture, European Paganism, Chinese medicine, Aboriginal mysticism and African folklore you probably wouldn’t find a land on this planet that didn’t acknowledge the power of animals and the importance of our harmony with these fellow creatures.

The mark of kindness and human virtue throughout religious texts often draws parallels to how one treats animals and reflects on the degree of our inner barbarity...