Thursday, June 1, 2017

Bilderberg 2017 Agenda Participants Revealed


Bilderberg 2017 Agenda  Participants Revealed

Secretive globalist confab set to kick off Thursday

Venezuela devalues currency in crisis dollar sale

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-pushes-constitution-bid-amid-deadly-unrest-170541766.html
A hooded demonstrator protests against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on May 31, 2017 (AFP Photo/FEDERICO PARRA)
Caracas (AFP) - Crisis-hit Venezuela devalued its currency by 64 percent in a dollar auction that aimed to stabilize its foreign exchange market, officials said Wednesday.
Under an overhauled official exchange system, the government let investors bid for the dollars at a new higher rate in what President Nicolas Maduro said was an effort to undermine the black market.
It was the latest in a series of moves to ease a crisis in a country stricken by soaring inflation and shortages of food and medicine.
The US bills sold at a rate of 2,010 bolivars per dollar, said Pedro Maldonado, president of the central bank's Currency Auction Committee.
He told reporters the rate was "an unequivocal indication that we are beginning a process of economic recovery."
But the rate represented a sharp devaluation compared to 721 bolivars under the previous system -- and still far below the black market rate, currently around 6,000 bolivars per dollar.
The central bank sold $24 million overall, mostly to companies importing foreign goods.
"The amount assigned was laughable. It shows the lack of currency," economist Jesus Casique told AFP.
The result was announced after an outcry over US bank Goldman Sachs's decision to buy $2.8 billion in bonds issued by Venezuela state oil company PDVSA.
The opposition said that move gave a lifeline to Maduro.
Casique said the dollar auction "will not boost productivity, that is why they decided to cash in the PDVSA bond with a discount of 69 percent, to give the official exchange rate a breathing space."
- Constitutional reform -
Essential foods and medicines in Venezuela are priced at a special low fixed dollar exchange rate. But due to shortages, many other items are only available on the black market at a much higher rate.
The crisis has prompted deadly unrest in street protests by Maduro's opponents demanding elections to remove him from power.
 
Maduro says the crisis is the result of an "economic war" backed by the United States.
Venezuela's economic collapse has been driven by the fall in prices for its crucial oil exports since 2014.
Authorities on Wednesday began signing up candidates for a planned constitutional reform body, a move that has inflamed deadly unrest stemming from anti-government protests.
Opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro say he aims to keep himself in power by stacking the planned "constituent assembly" with his allies.
The electoral authorities have called on candidates to sign up online on Wednesday and Thursday to seek election to the 545-member assembly, which will be tasked with writing a new constitution.
The center right-led opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, has vowed not to take part.
"I hope no one will commit treason by taking part in such an absolutely fraudulent process," opposition leader Henrique Capriles said.
- Bursting point -
Opposition and government supporters meanwhile staged the latest in two months of street protests, with fresh clashes between prosecutors and police.
 
Prosecutors say the unrest has left 60 people dead so far.
"The game seems to be deadlocked. The government is becoming more and more repressive and the opposition is continuing its protests in the street," said political analyst Luis Salamanca.
"There could be a total, serious confrontation, permanent chaos. Anything could happen here -- even a popular uprising."
Opposition congressional speaker Julio Borges visited European lawmakers on Wednesday in Brussels, where he warned Maduro's plan will trigger more bloodshed.
At a news conference, Borges asked for "help" from EU institutions so that "those who have violated human rights are also hit with sanctions."
Venezuela's Foreign Ministry Delcy Rodriguez said on Twitter that request "exceeded all imaginable limits of immorality."

It’s Time To Flush The Toilet

Link: http://freedomoutpost.com/its-time-to-flush-the-toilet/
Is it fair to compare Congress to a toilet? If there is one institution that embodies the corruption that permeates Washington D.C., it is the United States Congress. Dominated by extremely selfish career politicians that are primarily interested in raising enough money to win the next election, Congress has become a cesspool of filth, fraud and malfeasance. The American people are absolutely sick of this, and that is why approval ratings for Congress are consistently much lower than for any other political institution. In fact, at this moment Congress has an average approval rating of just 18.3 percent according to Real Clear Politics. Donald Trump captured the imagination of tens of millions of American voters when he pledged to “drain the swamp” during the last election, but I say that it is time to “flush the toilet” because the only way that we will ever be able to turn the federal government in a positive direction is by clearing out as many of these Congress critters as possible.
Getting Donald Trump into the White House was the biggest political miracle in American history, but now his agenda is almost completely stalled and it is Congress that is to blame.
For example, Trump repeatedly pledged that he was going to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border to combat illegal immigration, but at this point funding for that wall is being completely blocked.
What is the problem?
Congress.
Trump also pledged that Obamacare would be repealed very rapidly once he became president, but that obviously has not happened.
What is the problem?
Congress.
In fact, it is looking quite doubtful that a bill to repeal Obamacare will ever get through the U.S. Senate…
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is tempering expectations that the Senate will pass an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system, promising his colleagues a vote but not success.
McConnell in his public comments and private conversations about the ObamaCare repeal and replace bill is painting a more sober picture than Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who in March guaranteed passage through the House.
McConnell is stopping well short of any grand pronouncement.
Trump also promised all of us that our taxes would be going way down, but even though the Republicans control both houses of Congress this also seems to be going nowhere fast. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal
The GOP’s dreams have collided with interest-group lobbying and the tax system’s reality. Politicians all profess to hate the tax code, but they don’t agree on exactly what they hate. Voters gripe about complexity but are wary of losing cherished breaks that are woven into the economy.
“Eventually you run out of ways to pay for your promises,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation, which favors a simpler code with lower rates. “There aren’t any free obvious sources of money where you can just do the thing and nobody gets mad.”
I could bring up a whole bunch of other issues such as the national debt, trade with China, unconstitutional government surveillance, etc. but I think that you get the point.
Trump’s presidency is going to be mostly wasted if we do not get him some help. And I am not just talking about clearing out more Democrats. Right now the Republicans control the Senate and the House, but the problem is that most of them are “establishment Republicans”. Career politicians from both parties have sold their souls to the special interests and big donors that fund their campaigns, and this is why such a dramatic political revolution is necessary.
Sadly, most Americans don’t realize just how deep the corruption goes in Washington these days. To illustrate this, I would like to share just a few quotes from “The Confessions of Congressman X”. It claims to have been written by an anonymous Democratic member of the House of Representatives, and the following quotes very much ring true to those of us that understand how things in D.C. really work in our day and age…
-“Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them.”
-“My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything.”
-“Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works.”
-“It’s far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.”
-“Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don’t know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it’ll cost.”
-“We spend money we don’t have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It’s about getting credit now, lookin’ good for the upcoming election.”
And it isn’t just political corruption that is the problem. When you start peeling back the onion, you find some of the most disturbing things imaginable in political circles. For example, just consider what police just uncovered in New York City
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is hiring! There’s a vacancy in his administration for a computer programmer analyst, in the Department of Design and Construction. That’s because Jacob Schwartz, 29, a DNC staffer and former analyst, has been arrested and charged with being in possession of “kiddie porn” involving children as young as 6 months old.
Schwartz is also the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the downstate region vice president of the New York State Young Democrats. In other words, he was a “made” Democrat, part of the inner circle of budding influential NYC politicians, who was even friends with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robbie Mook.
Schwartz was caught with 3,000 child pornography images and 89 videos on his laptop after he downloaded them from the Internet. He surrendered his laptop to police, signed a release granting them permission to do a search of his hard drive, and was subsequently arrested. He has since posted $7,500 bail.
Of course, stories such as this are just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more out there, but we aren’t really supposed to talk about those things.
So what can be done?
Well, we can sit back and keep on complaining as our country deteriorates right in front of our eyes, or we can do something about it.
On Memorial Day back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan delivered a stirring address at Arlington National Cemetery. The following is an excerpt from that address
I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.
Yet, we must try to honor them—not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.
Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we—in a less final, less heroic way—be willing to give of ourselves.
There is no war for us to fight, but let there be no doubt that we are in the midst of a great battle for the soul of our nation.
If this generation of Americans does not stand up and defend liberty and freedom, the forces that seek to destroy our country will win by default.
For years, many of us have been trying to persuade our leaders to do the right things, but by now it has become exceedingly clear that they simply are not listening.
So if we want the direction of our country to change, we have got to vote them out and replace them with others that will listen to the will of the people.
I am under no illusion that this will be easy. The special interests and the big donors have a tremendous amount of money, and the mainstream media is very closely allied with the establishment.
But the election of Donald Trump showed us that anything is possible, and I choose to believe that it is possible for us to take our government back.
We just have to be willing to try.
Article reposted with permission from End of the American Dream
Take a look at the future of America: The Beginning of the End and then prepare

Sh*t just hit the fan on unmasking under Obama. These people might all want to head to Tahiti.

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-intelligence-committee-said-to-have-issued-seven-subpoenas-in-russia-probe-1496261435

Four target former national security adviser Mike Flynn, Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, individuals say

WASHINGTON—The House Intelligence Committee issued seven subpoenas on Wednesday, in a sign that its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election is advancing in scope and intensity, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Republican-led committee issued four subpoenas related to the Russia investigation, targeting President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and their businesses. The committee is also investigating possible ties between Trump associates and Russia.
The other three subpoenas were issued to the National Security Agency, the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency for information about a procedure known as “unmasking.” The subpoenas are related to questions about how and why the names of the president’s associates were unredacted and distributed within classified reports by Obama administration officials during the transition between administrations.

Wednesday’s requests were the first subpoenas issued by the House committee in the Russia probe so far and showcase the continuing divide within the committee over the direction of the probe. Democrats are seeking an aggressive investigation into Mr. Trump and his associates, and Republicans are pushing for a probe into the unmasking.

The Senate Intelligence Committee also is examining suspected Russian involvement in last year’s campaign. That panel is expected to hear testimony as early as next week from former FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the agency’s Russia investigation until Mr. Trump fired him on May 9. Russia has denied interfering with the election and Mr. Trump has denied that his associates colluded with the Russian government.

Mr. Comey is expected to testify Mr. Trump asked him to back off the investigation of Mr. Flynn, according to a person familiar with the matter. The panel’s request for Mr. Comey’s testimony was sparked by his abrupt dismissal by Mr. Trump and allegations that Mr. Trump may have been trying to interfere in the continuing investigation. The president has denied the allegations. Mr. Flynn was forced to resign in February after misleading senior White House officials about his conversations in December with the Russian ambassador.
The probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is now headed by former agency director Robert Mueller, who was tapped by the Justice Department to serve as a special counsel.

The House investigation suffered a setback when its Republican chairman Devin Nunes was forced to step aside in April after an ethics complaint was filed over his handling of classified materials. Mr. Nunes remains the chairman of the committee but recused himself from the Russia inquiry.

Mr. Nunes signed all seven subpoenas despite his recusal, according to people familiar with the matter. A GOP congressional aide said that the unmasking investigation was now considered separate from the Russia probe, allowing Mr. Nunes to act on his own authority even while recused.

Democrats on the committee criticized the move, saying they didn’t consent to the unmasking subpoenas. “This action would have been taken without the minority’s agreement. Any prior requests for information would have been undertaken without the minority’s knowledge,” said a senior Democratic committee aide.

Democrats are seeking an aggressive probe of Mr. Trump and his associates, including questions about whether they had any contact with Russian agents.
Republicans on the committee are pushing for an investigation of how the names of Trump campaign officials became exposed in classified intelligence reports based off intelligence community intercepts, as well as questions about how classified information about Mr. Trump’s associates was given to the media.
Mr. Nunes first raised the issue of unmasking in March based on information he received from the White House.

Typically, information about Americans intercepted in foreign surveillance is redacted, even in classified reports distributed within the government, unless a compelling need exists to reveal or “unmask” them. Unmasking requests aren’t uncommon by top intelligence community officials but Republicans want to know whether any of the unmaskings of Trump campaign officials during the transition were politically motivated.

The most recent subpoenas to the intelligence agencies seek information on any requests made by former national security adviser Susan Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power for names to be unmasked in classified material. The three didn’t personally receive subpoenas, the people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Brennan, Ms. Rice and Ms. Power didn’t respond to requests for comment. Ms. Rice in April told CNN she never did anything “untoward” with intelligence collected on American citizens, including Trump aides working on the transition.
Ms. Power hasn’t previously been reported as a potential witness in the probe so her inclusion in the subpoenas may mean Republicans are broadening their areas of investigation.

Unmasking is typically restricted to high-level officials to safeguard the privacy of Americans caught up in U.S. government spy operations directed at foreign targets. Typically, only top officials within the intelligence agencies and the administration have the ability to ask for unmasking, which is approved by the agency that controls the information.

Officials have acknowledged the names of some Trump aides were revealed in the classified documents, and Republicans have questioned whether it might have been improper.

The four subpoenas related to the Russia investigation are aimed at Mr. Flynn and his business Flynn Intel Group LLC, as well as Mr. Cohen, a former Trump Organization attorney, and his law firm. “If subpoenaed, I will work with my lawyers to cooperate with the various investigations,” Mr. Cohen said. An attorney for Mr. Flynn didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Both have declined to voluntarily cooperate with the probe but Mr. Flynn is complying with a Senate subpoena for his business records.

The House panel also recently sent a letter to former White House press aide Boris Epshteyn asking him to voluntarily submit information to the committee. Mr. Epshteyn briefly served as special assistant to the president in the Trump administration before departing his post earlier this year. A lawyer for Mr. Epshteyn made the request public on Wednesday.

“Like many others, Mr. Epshteyn has received a broad, preliminary request for information from the House Intelligence Committee,” an attorney for Mr. Epshteyn said Wednesday.

He added: “This is a voluntary request. Mr. Epshteyn has not been subpoenaed nor do we anticipate that he will be. We have reached out to the committee with several follow up questions and we are awaiting their response in order to better understand what information they are seeking and whether Mr. Epshteyn is able to reasonably provide it.”

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Authorized Covert Economic War on The Soviet Union, originally released Thu 9/22/11   6:47 PM   Duly
Mandated by U.S. PRESIDENT R W  Reagan's to " Secret Agent - Your Dead Man Walking " UNDER THE TOTTEN DOCTRINE [ 92 U.S. 105, 107 ] to Leo / Lee Emil Wanta. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc.
Office of the Chairman / Chief Executive Officer
Ambassador Lee Emil Wanta
S.D.R. Diplomatic Passport No. 04362, 12535
4001 North 9th Street, Suite No. 227
Arlington, Virginia, USA  22203-1954
Commonwealth of Virginia
_________________________________________________
 
* White House INTEL Files Received and Acknowledged *
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

American Soldiers Are WAKING UP!! SUPPORT OF TAKING AMERICA BACK!!! (St...



The Lessons of Sgt. Pepper’s 50 Years Later: Stop Fighting One Another and Focus on the Real Enemy

Link: http://freedomoutpost.com/the-lessons-of-sgt-peppers-50-years-later-stop-fighting-one-another-and-focus-on-the-real-enemy/
“Count me out if it’s for violence. Don’t expect me at barricades unless it is with flowers.... What’s the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, it’s no good shooting people.”—John Lennon
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
America is still wrestling with many of the same problems today—endless wars, civil unrest, campus riots, racial tensions, police brutality, divisive politics, overreaching government agencies and threats to freedom—that it struggled with 50 years ago when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The hippies of the Sixties Generation who embraced flower power, opposed war and didn’t “trust anyone over 30” are now senior citizens who voted for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, both warmongers with greater loyalties to Wall Street than “we the people.”
The Baby Boomers—“the generation that battled over Vietnam and civil rights, that gave us the modern self-help movement and Woodstock”—have become today’s Establishment. As Bruce Cannon Gibney writes for the Boston Globe, “Let us dispense with ideas that aging flower children have substantial claims on goodness, as boomers liberal and conservative alike engaged in warrantless wiretapping, extrajudicial assassinations, gratuitous assaults on the dignity of minorities, mass disenfranchisement, the erection of a vast and useless penal state, and policies of cavalier disregard.”
And the rebellious music and anti-war message of Sixties musicians, movements and symbols have since been co-opted by corporations that have come to realize that “there was lots and lots of money to be made.” As historian Bertram Gross explains, “The counterculture became absorbed into the Establishment, functioning more and more as an arm of business operations in entertainment, clothing, foods, and foreign cars, while the New Left and the many organizations of white and black revolution collapsed into sawdust.”
In retrospect, as Rolling Stone conceded, perhaps the Sixties Generation and “1960s rock didn’t save the world—maybe didn’t even change the world enough,” but it was still a transformative time for those coming of age and trying to find their place in the world, and the Beatles played a large part in shaping that conversation.
No album was more influential than the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Indeed, when Rolling Stone announced its top 500 pop music albums of all time several years ago, perched at the top of the heap was Sgt. Pepper.
Unleashed on the world on June 1, 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s, as Rolling Stone heralded, “is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, sanguinity, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.”
More than mere music, however, Sgt. Pepper’s “formally ushered in an unforgettable season of hope, upheaval and achievement: the late 1960s and, in particular, 1967’s Summer of Love. In its iridescent instrumentation, lyric fantasias and eye-popping packaging, Sgt. Pepper defined the opulent revolutionary optimism of psychedelia and instantly spread the gospel of love, acid, Eastern spirituality and electric guitars around the globe.”
The events leading up to 1967 laid the groundwork for a social revolution powered by young people. With the young ripe for rebellion, drugs invading the country and altering people’s consciousness, and the drums of war providing a constant backbeat, it was only a matter of time before flower power and peace became the mantra of the Sixties’ generation.
In turn, the playfulness of those years led to the hippie movement and, ultimately, to an abdication of adulthood. There was a sense that there was no need to grow up anymore. But, as author Mary Gordon notes, “the flower child’s sense of wellbeing gradually disintegrated as Vietnam became more central to consciousness.”
University students and academics began believing that the Vietnam War was a direct result of the greed and lies of old men in suits and uniforms. The government—the “Establishment” that John Lennon would later refer to as “the monster”—had withheld the real story in order to do its dirty work. “I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends,” Lennon recognized.
All of these cultural streams converged in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was hailed as a major cultural event upon its release, simultaneously mirroring the angst of its age while offering a solution to the social and political upheavals of the day. The solution offered by the Beatles was a return to spirituality and love for our fellow human beings.
Sgt. Pepper’s was a declaration of change, both culturally and personally for a generation coming of age and for the Beatles, in particular, who had become weary of the endless mayhem of concerts and Beatlemania.
“We were fed up with being Beatles,” Paul McCartney would later say. “We were not boys, we were men… artists rather than performers.”
Retreating into Abbey Road studios with producer George Martin (often referred to as the fifth Beatle for his collaborative efforts “figuring out how to turn John Lennon and Paul McCartney's wilder ideas into records”), the Beatles focused their efforts on creating a concept album that would showcase their artistry and vision, while serving as a substitute for touring—a way to embark on a virtual tour with the album as the medium.
Seven hundred recording hours later, Sgt. Pepper’s was born in all its psychedelic glory, the Beatles’ most audacious and inspired leap into the avant-garde: their self-presentation as fictional characters.
Sgt. Pepper transformed rock music from a musical diversion into an art form—one that remains revered to this day. Although the album begins as a light farce, it moves to a sobering awakening. At heart, Sgt. Pepper was a spiritual experience for an increasingly materialistic world.
George Harrison’s “Within You, Without You,” the centerpiece of the album, is a warning not to get lost in materialism or we will lose our souls:
We were talking
About the love we all could share
When we find it
To try our best to hold it there
With our love, with our love
We could save the world
If they only knew.
We were talking
About the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world
And lose their soul
They don't know, they can't see
Are you one of them.
The album’s final song, John Lennon’s “A Day in the Life,” points to the horrors of existence if humanity does not abstain from its destructive tendencies.
In fact, “A Day in the Life” sets the other songs on the album and the Beatles’ career in perspective. A collection of vignettes that are somewhat tragic, the song is punctuated with the phrase “I’d love to turn you on”—either a reference to drugs or the need to tune into the Beatles’ message. No doubt drugs were an intended reference in “A Day in the Life.” As author Mark Hertsgaard writes, “Indeed John and at least one other Beatle were tripping—or flying, as John put it—during the photo session for the Sgt. Pepper album cover.”
The Beatles underscored the verses of that final song with a dark, tumultuous orchestra crescendo. McCartney had wanted to include an instrumental passage with the avant-garde feel of musician John Cage and others, a spiraling ascent of sound, beginning with all instruments, each climbing to the highest in their own time. Lennon wanted the song to end with “a sound like the end of the world.” Thus, the Beatles simultaneously struck an E-major chord on three grand pianos, drawing out the sound as long as possible with electronic enhancement. The effect of the crashing E-major chord, followed by some 53 seconds of gradually dwindling reverberation, brings to mind nothing so much as the eerily spreading hush of the mushroom cloud-visions of nuclear holocaust.
The cover art for Sgt. Pepper, now one of the best-known works of pop art, was as mind-blowing as the album’s contents. Created by Peter Blake, the album cover represented the first fusion of pop art and pop music. Distorting the line between fantasy and reality, Blake placed the Beatles, who were dressed in Victorian band uniforms, among notable historical figures and artists past and present—some of whom were handpicked by the Beatles—including George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allen Poe, Aldous Huxley, Lenny Bruce, Mae West and Bob Dylan.
In this way, art romanticizes celebrity. The cover, an homage to the Beatles’ late live stage career, with the figures arranged in a funereal pose as if attending a graveside memorial, was also a harbinger of the earthshaking changes to come for the Beatles and the world at large.
“It was the soundtrack to summer, and winter for that matter,” notes author Barry Miles. “You could not get away from it.”
Indeed, young and old alike approached Sgt. Pepper with a religious awe. The LSD evangelist Timothy Leary, after listening to the album, reputedly said in a mystical voice, “My work is finished. Now, it’s out.” Leary actually believed he could hear the voice of God in the music of the Beatles.
David Crosby of the popular rock band the Byrds brought a tape of the Sgt. Pepper album to the band’s hotel room and “played it all night in the lobby with a hundred young fans listening quietly on the stairs, as if rapt by a spiritual experience.”
Paul Kantner of the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane said, “Something enveloped the whole world at that time and it just exploded into a renaissance.” And as musicologist Tim Riley observed: “The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released. For a brief while, the irreparable fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the minds of the young.”
The Summer of Love followed in the wake of Sgt. Pepper’s release. Optimism filled the air, the almost tangible hope that peace would eventually prevail and the destructiveness of humanity would end. Armed with “flower power,” young people took to the streets and demonstrated en masse against the Vietnam War.
By 1968, however, the radiance of that golden age had already started to fade. Student rebels around the world adopted more militant tactics. Flower power was replaced by raised fists. Cultural heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were brutally assassinated. The Beatles too were disbanding. They were not gods, after all, and the love that once united them grew cold.
By the end of 1968, it was clear that the Beatles were not going to save the world.
Yet the music of the Beatles remains with us as a poignant reminder that we all have a part to play in bringing about a world dedicated to peace and love. And the greater lesson of their music—that evil does not have to triumph and that good can prevail if only we can step beyond our self-interest—is one that we each must learn in our own time and in our own way.
First, as John Lennon cautioned, we have to stop playing the government’s games.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
The answer to oppression, injustice and tyranny is the same today as it was 50 years ago: if you want freedom, you have to begin by freeing your mind. That will mean rejecting violence, politics and anything that divides.
“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control,” warned John Lennon. “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”
Or in the more lyrical words of George Harrison:
When you’ve seen beyond yourself
Then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come
When you see we're all one
And life flows on within you and without you.
Article posted with permission from John Whitehead