The PR machine spins non-stop and at the end of the day, the winners are the ones who know how to use the media to their advantage. Hence, the dissemination of mis-information. It is a valuable job for nations promoting violence, nations taking what does not belong to them, and nations acting out of revenge. We have nations asserting their right to defend themselves from 'super-powers' by becoming the next 'super-threat' to the entire world. There are nations who can justify the genocide of their blood-cousins who lie within their own borders. When does the spin-machine stop spinning? When do people just refuse to buy into the lies that have blinded and enraged so many, and have justified untold violence?

At the end of the day, we are all just people. People with the same basic needs: to be safe, to be fed, the right to work in a safe environment and the right to protect ourselves, our homes, and our families. When did the powerful and greedy take away these rights from whole segments of society? In our own land, we, the people , have been sold out with tobacco, alcohol, pesticides, hormonally-stimulated livestock and crops, and pharmaceuticals. What really slows down the brilliant solution to the oil crisis? Who will jump on the bandwagon once a country with no oil in the balance comes forward and takes over the car industry, with their innovative technology? Why must our land cling to these decayed dinosaurs when there is so much hope for technology that has existed for decades?

Who has taken away our ability to hear a word from a politician, corporation, athlete, entertainer, or columnist, and believe it? Why can't we simplify our lives in the midsts of these rolling events without needing to second-guess everyone else? We don't know if the right or the left is winning. We don't know what pharmaceutical corporation is pimping our physicians. We don't know who is responsible for the alledged rapes of young girls by hormonally-driven atheletes. We don't know what 'super-killer' will enter into any school or workplace or when. We don't know what predator has been mentally- programmed by repetitive images, and waiting outside of the bushes to pounce on children, males, females, young and old alike. We don't know how we created a segment of our society who just likes to see bullets penetrating flesh, anybody's flesh. In our civilized society, how did we become so very un-civilized?

We have just got to back it up. We have got to look at cause and effect and call out the real culprits, the real criminals; the ones who sold us all out. The hypocrisy peddlers: those with clean houses and clean hands whose hearts and minds are full of vices and devises. Let us no longer be ensnared by words. But...if there is anyone who must be judged, let them be judged in the light of a simple notion: do those who speak walk out what is spoken? If so, then no matter what, they must be respected for lacking repulsive hypocrisy. Even if they themselves are manipulated or deluded, they have the courage of their convictions, as our Founding Father's had. Are you willing to give your life for something that you have written or spoken, or will you have to be dragged out kicking, screaming,and recanting whatever it is you have been alledged to have said?

ALICE PARRIS