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Archive for the ‘Lyrics and poems’ Category

I have many fathers
I have many mothers
I have many brothers
I have many sisters
I have many children
My fathers live in all different nations
My mothers speak all different languages
My brothers pray in all different manners
My sisters cook all different kinds of food
My children like to laugh and sing and play
all over the world in the very same way,
Mein Name ist Mensch

(My name is Man)

The above was a song by a 1970s German political pop-band, which performed under the name “Ton, Steine, Erde”. I adapted the lyrics slightly to our times (the original one talked about different skin-colors.) This song about the human family has a very personal meaning for me. Although I have lived most of my adult life in Iceland, I have grown up in south-western Germany. In 1993, after the fall of the Berlin wall, I went from Iceland to Germany to live in Berlin for a while, coming back to Iceland in 1999.

When I was still a teenager in Germany, someone told me:

“If you are poor and uneducated, you are nothing, absolutely nothing. Only a university education can make something out of you.”

I answered:

“I´m not nothing. I will be never be nothing, whatever job or education I´ll have.
Ich bin immer noch ein Mensch (I´m still a human being)”

“Ein Mensch”, the person sneered, “ein Mensch, was ist das schon? (of what value is a human being really?)”

I was too young then to explain it or express myself, but I was old enough to know it deep down in my heart, a knowledge, which never left me all my life:
Ein Mensch, a human being, is everything. Nothing is of more value than a human being. This value can´t be enhanced, nor can it be taken. It is mine forever, but not mine alone. I share it with every other human being on earth.

To be sure we live in an age, where human beings are often regarded as “nothing”, as not worthwhile at all.

We live in age where Malthusian ideology has returned with a vengeance, where indeed human beings are considered useless eaters, a “danger to the planet”.

We live in an age where the value of human life is considered to be negligible by those would-be rulers of the world, the “elites” the “global players”, the “philosopher kings”. And when the ends justify the means, hundreds or thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of human beings can be sacrificed to further the political aim of more power and control for those elites. Torture and any form of humiliation is justified to further those aims, where human dignity is of no concern for those who see themselves as superior, as elites – the ultra-rich, the intellectuals or the scientific geniuses.

They search for ever more “perfect” methods to kill human beings or produce agonizing pain to terrorize them into compliance, physically or psychologically.

A human being is indeed nothing for them, since they have brain-washed themselves into an anti-human belief-system.

They alternately believe that the human race destroys the planet or that humanity is a deficient, chaotic life-form which is out of control and needs to be brought under control somehow and by any means, or possibly even genetically altered.

Well, I believe that this elitist belief system is “mad”, insane or just plain false. And I believe that the falsehood of these elitist beliefs can be proven empirically.

Of course, since those elites are “true believers”, the likes of David Rockefeller or Henry Kissinger won´t change their minds any time soon. However, in time many other believers will. Some of those converts to human values might even be the children and grandchildren of today´s “elites”, who presently see themselves as born to rule, control, subdue and dominate.

For better or worse change is inevitable. Being human means having to deal with change and adapting to it. Being human means having the potential for hope that the change we´ll see inevitably will be for the better.

I believe that those who are denying the value of most human beings, to enhance their own perceived value, are now fighting a losing battle against the inevitable loss of their power. They won´t win, but the longer they stay in positions of too much power, the more terrible suffering they will cause among the innocent.

Being human means to work together towards the aim of one day – as soon as possible – ending the power of the ruthless and mad “elites”, so they can do no further harm to humanity.

As for me, I’ve got no power to change the world, not on my own anyway. That´s probably a good thing too. Who knows what the world would look like if I had. You wouldn´t like it, I´m sure. I never got the education, I was told was such a necessary precondition for becoming “something”, just stayed with my solid and basic German high-school education plus a couple of years community college for a nursery school educator.

Politically I was once member of the German Green Party (for exactly 3 weeks in 1995) and following that stand, I became a member of the German Socialist Party. How can a Catholic Christian become a member of a Marxist party, you might ask. Well, I´ve seen how the German ex-communists have been treated after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Western Capitalism had won, Eastern Communism had lost and was lying deadly wounded on the ground. I expected the winners to be gracious and forgiving. They weren´t.

When I joined the Green Party, I knew nothing about politics and very little about the world outside my own short horizon. I thought the Greens were the “good guys” I had been told so. Then I saw them doing what the rest of the western political class was doing to everyone who once was loyal to the now defunct East-German regime.

These people were being trampled upon while lying on the ground (figuratively). And I don´t like people being trampled upon, since I have experiences of being trampled upon myself – (a few times literally) and I´ve seen it being done to people I care about (also literally).

When I watched the Greens trampling others, I ripped up my Green party book and joined those on the ground.

Modern psychology calls that kind of behavior masochism. In better times, you´d have called it solidarity. It´s what the Danish and their king did, when the Nazis invaded Denmark and demanded that all Jews should wear the yellow star to mark them for a possible later deportation. So the Danish and their king all wore the yellow star, and no Jews were deported from Denmark.

I´m German by birth and I´ve got a partly Jewish background. My mother was one of those children, who had to live with false documents, and was being sent from one foster home to the next to cover up her background during the German Nazi rule. This is in and of itself irrelevant. I just mention it, to make the point, that an ethnic background should not determine any absolute loyalties. I believe that as a human being, one´s first loyalty must be to ethics and <strong>not</strong> to ethnicity.

Sure I can be loyal to the country of my birth, which in my case is Germany, or to the country I have immigrated to, in my case Iceland, or to my religion, in my case Catholic Christianity, but this loyalty may never ever become absolute beyond the loyalty I have to the human race as a whole and to my fellow human beings walking on this planet at this moment of time.

I believe that a Jewish background does not give anyone the moral permission to justify the crimes of the criminal state of Israel against the Palestinian people and against it´s other neighbors, crimes which, via Mossad interference into their internal affairs, reach into many developing countries.

What I have read about Zionism and Palestine caused me to question the holocaust narrative. I found that I had been taught so many lies about the founding of Israel that this central matter should also be examined. I had always thought that revisionists were just hate filled racists, but then that’s what the Zionists are. I was impressed by the works of Jurgen Graf and Germar Rudolf.

For me being skeptical of certain parts of today´s official Holocaust narrative seems important. Public Holocaust skepticism should at least be considered by all decent people of Jewish background, in order to break the power that Zionism has over the Jewish people.

The Holocaust narrative of today reinforces the Jewish “eternal myth”. This myth states, that Jewish people cannot live securely within non-Jewish communities, since the Gentiles have supposedly some kind of automatic Jew-hatred built into their genes.

Jewish historians of the 19th and early 20th century have acknowledged that the “eternal Jewish victim-hood” was indeed a propaganda myth the Jewish elites used to keep control of the rest of the Jewish population. Anti-Jewish persecution in the past had always been caused by the anti-Gentile actions of the Jewish elites towards the surrounding non-Jewish community.

The realization that persecution was brought on by bad behavior of at least some within the community, was a liberating knowledge for ordinary Jewish people. It meant, that persecution against Jews could be stopped by the Jewish people collectively by treating non-Jews as equals and with respect and by distancing themselves as individuals and as communities from all those Jewish individuals who don´t.

The current Holocaust narrative, which also excludes reasons why some part of the German people suddenly became violent Jew-haters, enables Israeli crimes since it furthers the Zionist propaganda myths, that Israel needs to “defend” itself at all costs, and that the Jewish state needs to have absolute and uncontested superiority in the region.

When I was a teenager in Germany I told myself that I did not only belong to the people who were the perpetrators of the atrocities, but also to the victims. Feeling comfortable about this background once, makes me now morally responsible to speak out against the crimes Israel commits to supposedly “protect” the Jewish people from harm.

This is the reason I´m open about being a Holocaust “skeptic” now. With my background this is a matter of ethics.

So who am I? I´m a woman, 49 years old. I´m a wife and a mother of grown children. I´m a Catholic. I´m definitely working class, doing a low paid service job. I´m a non-intellectual. I´m an immigrant in the country I live in. I´m an ex-socialist. I´m not Silvia Night, my real name is Ortrud Gessler-Gudnason. I´m not much different from all the other working class average people around me. I´m no one special.

And still – I am very, very, very special indeed.

I belong to the most special species, which ever lived on this planet. The only one that is self-aware, with knowledge of the past and a hope for the future, able to ask the most important question of all: Why?

I am a human being. Ég er manneskja. Ich bin ein Mensch.

.
.
P.S.:
I give you my full name, not because I like any attention. I actually would rather hide behind a nick, an internet-pseudonym.
But anonymity isn´t an option any more on the internet and hiding is impossible in Iceland.
Those who really dislike me for what I´m writing could find me easily. So I try to make sure, that those who like me, can find me, too.
Holocaust sceptics have gotten threats in the past, either against themselves or their families (some have even been hurt).
Others, especially the real revisionist researchers have been jailed. Being not anonymous means for me, that I´m not alone in the real world. If anything happens, real people will ask questions.

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Do we in the West live in democratic societies?

Surely not.

A democracy is more than just an opportunity for the population to put a small ex mark on a piece of paper (or nowadays touch a computer screen on a certain field).

The word “democracy” means rule of the people, all the people not only those with a couple of billions in share-values and those on the payroll of the billionaires.

Democracy means respect for the will of the people, for the life of every individual and for their dignity.

Democracy means the rule of law, law which applies equally to everyone.

In Spain and Italy over 90% of the population was opposed to a war in Iraq, and still their government went to war, together with the America and Britain.

In Iceland the opposition to war was just as high and still the Prime Minister signed onto the “coalition of the willing” without asking the Parliament or even the members of his own party.

By now the vast majority of Americans is opposed to continuing the war in Afghanistan or expanding it into Pakistan, the government doesn´t care.

Did the people ask to subjected to a the Patriot Act?

Did the people demand the military or the CIA become torturers in Afghanistan, Iraq or Guantanamo or in secret torture prisons all over the world?

Would the population actually vote for such a policy, if they were given a vote?

No, most certainly not.

But there was a time when the American and the British population was in it´s majority pro-war.

Why?

Because they were made to believe, that their country was under attack by a dangerous worldwide Islamic terrorist movement and going to war was the only way to protect their homes and their country from disaster.

We know now with certainty, that on 9/11, 2001 it wasn´t Islamic fundamentalists who attacked America.

9/11 was an act of psychological warfare, a psy-ops, planned and executed by insiders from the Bush administration to put the American people into a war mood, ready to send their young people as cannon fodder into endless wars, fought in the interest of corporations and in the interest of a foreign country, Israel.

The demolition-mass-murders of 9/11 were committed in front of a live TV audience of billions of people all over the world.

These were certainly not the acts of a democratic state, a state of law ruled by the people and for the people.

But do we live in fascist societies?

Well, we might be on the way down that road. But we haven´t yet reached the stage of full-blown fascism.

What we live in is a propagandocracy.

Propagandocracies have the trappings of a democracy, like general elections and a constitution which formally guarantees the right of “free speech”, but by tricks, sell-outs and manipulations propagandocracies have gotten rid of the most important tools for the people to make informed democratic decisions – an independent and honest mass media.

In the aftermath of 9/11 the western mass-media has shown it´s face as being a servile tool of a lawless elite.

Whatever criminal group was behind 9/11, it was the media which acted as their propaganda agents. Not only the corporate media, but all mass-media, including the state-owned media like the BBC, the Icelandic RUV and German ARD and ZDF have shown themselves to be providing cover for the criminal elite.

The fascist like elites of the West do not predominantly rule by force, but mainly by manipulation, at least at home. They have so far saved their most brutal assaults on life and dignity for people from developing countries.

The Western elites are self-indoctrinated into an ideology of disdain for mankind and a belief that they must control ordinary men.

These elites learned that the most efficient control over people can be gained not by brute force but by manipulation. So they made manipulation and deception into a science, literally. And with the help of large parts of academia and the mass-media, with the use of public relations, and advertisement agencies as well as military training centers, ever more sophisticated forms of lies and mind-games were developed. The most efficient tools, of course, are the psy-ops operators of the intelligence agencies.

The aim of 9/11, just like the aims of many other elite ordered psy-ops, was creating hatred and fear necessary for the “right” kind of warfare spirit in the population and the dehumanizing of “the enemy”. In this way the soldiers on “our” side would be sure to have no compunctions about bombing and shooting “the enemy”, even to the point of burning them alive with phosphorus weapons in Fallujah or torturing them and their children in Abu Ghraib.

When, at what point in history, did “lying” become a respected profession for ambitious university graduates?

It happened during WWI, in the war and propaganda ministries of the allies. There “psychological warfare” was invented, and it was then when today´s western propagandocracies were born.

And why?
Because of

Christmas in the Trenches:

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.

“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky

“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well

And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ‘em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”

‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same

(by John McCutcheon)

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Not Silvia Night

Song:

THIS IS NOT SILVIA NIGHT

This not Silvia Night
She has left without a fight
Now´s  a  time to think, and a time to care
something Silvia would never dare.

This is not Silvia Night.
Come has the morning light.
With pain-throbbing heads we now can see
that greed really does not set us free.

This is not Silvia Night
She has gone all out of sight.
Now it´s time to see the world exactly as it is
letting honesty and fairness no longer go amiss.

This is not Silvia Night……..

Silvia Night (Silvía Nótt) was a fictional Icelandic TV-character and singer. She was  conceived by the authors as a spoof on a hyper-commercialized, over-sexualized and thoughtless Icelandic youth-culture, which in turn was only the reflection of a greedy egotistical adult culture. The character became very popular among Icelandic kids, although the actress of the role, Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir, often got the feeling the kids did not get the irony and the social criticism behind it.
In 2006 Silvía Nótt was chosen to be Iceland´s contribution to the European song-contest with the song “Congratulation Iceland”. Staying in character she offended everyone and made last place.
This did not hurt her popularity among Icelandic children, though. After a last CD with a near pornographic cover the act was retired.
Today, after the bust, “Silvía Nótt” could make an excellent metaphor for the culture surrounding the Icelandic boom-times.
But her times are over now, in Iceland and everywhere else.
Where do we go from here?
Let´s think about it.


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Ekki Sylvia Nótt

‘Eg er ekki Silvía Nótt

Hún er lengi farin á brótt.

Nú er tími komin til að hugsa

að fræða sig og spyrja því

sem áður við höfum ekki spurt.

Tími Silvíu er á bak og burt.

Að sjá heimurinn eins og hann er

og ábyrgð sem hver okkur ber,

fyrir hann

og fyrir náungan

Mun vonandi skila okkur betra arf

eftir tími hennar Silvíu hvarf.


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