vincejones.com.au

I was eighteen in 1972,
Along with other fellow eighteen year olds at the time we were at the mercy of the Draft.
Being a conscientious objector it could have been a difficult time for myself and other objectors,either, being forced to go to war or going to jail would,nt have been a fair decision to make for an eighteen year old pacifists mind.
If not for the change of government in this country from the war mongering conservative government of the Liberal party to the more open minded and realistic stance of Gough Whitlams Labour party,my beliefs were never tested.

I,ve never liked the concept of Soldier, for they kill people. The modern day sodier more than ever is a hired professional killer.
Forty years ago many of us knew that the Government, either through conscription as in the Vietnam war, or what it devised after that war, a modernised professional army, sends its military men and women off to other countries to kill people because the ruling classes decide they want a war. These wars have nothing to do with you or me.
They have nothing to do with our defense or spreading democracy or overcoming evil rogue leaders. Wars are done in the interests of the ruling classes who propagandize a sentimental message of “patriotism”
And even patriotism isn’t enough. The soldier or the taxpayer must be given a “moral stake” in a war, a “moral responsibility” to put down “evil.”
I hope finally since the horror in Iraq(the war that was,nt about oil) that people will figure out that it,s the system that,s sending troops to foreign countries to kill, mame, rape and torture men women and children of other cultures.
What is the” system”?Is this not merely a euphemism for the Government.
And what propels the agrandisement of the Government? The Military. And what propels the Military?
Among other things our personal attachment to soldiers.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for hired killers.Let,s call a spade a spade.
Let,s not sentimentalise what a soldier does.

Patriotism is for fools.

P.S.
I thank Gough Whitlam personally for having the foresight and descency in stopping the”system”from turning me into a prisoner a killer or a corpse in the so called “fight for freedom”against the men women and children of Vietnam.

I SEARCH FOR PERSPECTIVE

Socrates argued the point twenty five centuries ago and concluded that no man aware of the difference between the good(which implies his own survival and improvement) and the evil (which implies his own destruction) would deliberately reject the good and elect the evil.
In a word,Socrates believed that man is basically a reasoning creature-animal rationale- with faith in and hope of survival and betterment

I believe that man has a place in the economy of the Universe and an opportunity to play a part in it,s up-building.
If humankind was to fill this place and play this role,decisevely and effectively,it must choose the right path and follow it deliberately and consistently,with few detours and fewer reversals.This means that man must decide to produce and create at the least possible cost in destruction to himself and to the environment.

Creative planned purpose is implicit in the Universe. Human beings should seek out,personify and carry out that purpose.
Of course there would be a price to pay: the mobilisation and direction of all of our energies aimed at our capacity to work according to the universes plan.

The world I see at present is not at all to my liking.It is a world in which the destructive forces clearly has the upper hand.I have been taught to believe in the possibilities of well-being for every individual and the probability of social improvement.I find myself in a world hell-bent on it,s own destruction.

My search for perspective and improvement is guided by the belief that,within the life force which has engendered and developed the human race,there were posibilities of infinite betterment for the individual,for social groups and for mankind as a whole.
Again and again the possibilities for humankind have been stated and restated.Basically there was mans capacity to distinguish the good from the evil.
In my search for perspective and improvement I find self serving,corruption,wickedness,baffling disgusting waste,indifference and plain boredom.At this moment in time we find a world which is not only tangled and troubled,it is tragic.
Mankind has not only failed to agree on a way out of it,s wilderness;it has gone far in believing that there is no such way.
I believe that we are witnessing a development of a program we all know as “western civilisation “that is demonstrably destructive rather than productive or creative and is settling down to slothfull indifference.

The would be saviours of mankind disagree widely among themselves in their assumptions, programs and plans of procedure.They refused for Idealogical,or religious reasons to team up with their fellow reformers and revolutionaries.In fact some of these saviours were ready to kill one another in order to demonstrate the correctness of their outlooks.
Surely this is a tangled, troubled world,From the standpoint of logic,ethics and orderly procedure,the world especially the West where I live is a MESS.
With all the formidable inventions that are being made in science and technology,the world is not only a mess it is also a menace.It is not a world that invites one to relax and enjoy the comfort of knowing that our governments are looking after our wellbeing.

I personally have wanted to play some part in in bettering the human lot.I have chosen to stand firmly with the producers the improvers and the creators.Above all I had awakened to the quite obvious fact that the masters and shapers of the world and the possessors of the worlds riches were cleverly scattering crumbs of wealth and power among the masses.They gave just enough crumbs to divert,decieve and corrupt each generation,to secure it,s dependence,and to keep it in line,serving the interests of masters and corrupters.

This indeed is the essence of the problem,the success of the ruling classes in brainwashing the populace to the point where they believe what is best for the oligarchy is best for them.
So long as the brainwashing works, the masses remain in line,and the oligarchy can follow it,s program of making the rich richer and the powerful stronger.
Where is humankind to go?Will the oligarchy of the West coupled with the rich and powerful elite in tandem,rule the Earth and extend it,s domination over the solar system and then the Universe.Or were human beings in sizeable numbers awaking to their destinies
and preparing to win the perilous fight?
All indicators point to a social hurricane.As far as I can see,the West is moving uncontrolably towards a new age of international struggle.
One wonders what historians will make of this. Some may call it WW3. It is in fact the same old war in a new phase.
Wake up people of the West”The fat lady is Singing”
BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE

We live in a time where society takes sickness for granted and looks upon good health as lucky or exceptional.
There are doctors by the thousands all over the western world who practice medicine by prescribing pills and drugs.
Doctors have become experts on sickness. Only a minority are practitioners on health.

Early in their history the Chinese are reported to have paid doctors their regular fees so long as people remained well.
If and when a person became ill,the medical fees stopped until the person was restored to health.We in the West follow an opposite practice.We pay our doctors when we get sick and continue to pay them while we remain sick.
The longer and the more serious the sickness,the longer the fees are paid.The lesson of such a situation is obvious to any reasoning mind.If the doctor is paid when his or her patients are sick,the more often they are sick the more often
the doctor will get a fee.

Equally,the longer the sickness lasts and the more often the doctor is called in,the larger the income of the doctor.
Doctors will reject this reasoning outright.All the same, economic forces are potent factors in any society.
Doctors,dentists and druggists and their famillies buy their groceries and pay their mortgages and taxes out of the money supplied by people who are in need of their services.

WE cannot forget the story of the society lady who woke up one morning with a red blotch on her cheek.Much disturbed she called up her familly doctor and made an appointment to see him. The doctor looked at the disfiguring spot and shook his head dubiously..”is it that serious,doctor?”the lady questioned anxiously.”Rather serious Madam”answered the doctor.”if you had waited an hour or two before coming,the spot would have disappeared and I would have lost my fee.”All doctors are not that frank. The question “Who is your family doctor?”sugests that you expect to be sick and will therefore need help,so you keep a family doctor.The person who expects to be well does not need a doctor.He or she takes their good health for granted.

There is an old saying “practice makes perfect”Following this precept,those who want to be healthy,must practice health.They must work at it like any other activity,The practice of health involves many choices.You should choose to live quietly and simply,and to eat as much raw, organically grown foods as possible,to exercise regularly in the open air,to keep sensible hours and never overdo it physically. You can choose to exercise your body in the gym or at tennis or on the golf course,all are expensive,or you can choose to exercise your body by doing useful outdoor work,I grow and prepare my own food as much as I can which keeps me not only healthy but fit as well.

When I say that you should practice health,or that you should aspire to be healthy,I mean that the body is working to plan and purpose. The human organism,physical,mental ,emotional,spiritual,is the sum total of a body,being alive and in good working order.This human organism has been evolving toward it,s present form on earth for at least two million years.

Over these vast reaches of time and sequence,the processes of biological selection have matured the human organism into a wide range of variations of the present day human being,with the same general shape only differing in colour and size.Humans at this stage of evolvement should be at their strongest and healthiest period in history not at their weakest and sickest,sadly the latter seems to be the case.

What is a person to eat?Surely not the mishmashes and inadequate,denatured items displayed on the supermarket shelves.The artificiality of their worked over substances should be obvious to the sensible shopper. There is hardly anything natural in the supermarkets anymore. The grains are puffed, pounded, supersaturated with oils and sugar,not to mention the barrage of poisons they call preservatives.The meats are injected with hormones,coloured and full of antibiotics.The juices are flavoured,filtered and preserved.The overprocessed can foods are sweetened beyond measure.Sugar is included in packaged soups soft drinks ,salad dressings,sauces,and peanut butter.
The raw vegetables on the shelves are sprayed and dusted the raw fruits gassed and dyed.

Restuarants and food bars where so many go for their meals offer quick service items that may have been standing on the stoves for hours losing vitamins and before that sitting in warehouses and trains and clossets for months.
To sum it up the foods we eat have been gassed, preserved,salted,sugared,puffed,pounded,pasteurised,dyed,filtered, irradiated , handled and handled and handled again.

Where do we turn for good health and nourishing,unadulterated food.To your own gardens,and local fruit and vegetable markets of course,and your own kitchens.Grow your own,cook your own,or better still eat your own food RAW. The best source of health comes from the best and simplest food in the world,which is from your garden,eaten raw before the vitality has fled. Five minutes away from contact with the earth or mother plant is enough to start the wilting disintegration process in leaved greens and fruit and vegetables
.
Time and time again people query me on my sources of protein.Where,, I ask in return,do the cows, ,giraffes,gorillas, elephants and rhino,s all strong massive creatures get their protien needs supplied, from the green things is the answer. They don’t eat refined,cooked,pickled,pasteurised,dehydrated,spiced,salted,smoked,sugared materials…They are simple creatures eating natures way. We should try to be the same, Simple living, people eating simple home grown foods..

My friends son has asthma another friends son has diabetes and another leukaemia,,,my father has stomach cancer, my close friend has gallstones, while another has thyroid troubles,,does this not sound like your circle of friends. These are all painful diseases and not normal if a healthy diet is embraced.

No one can deny the benefits of alopathic medicine to the community,they are tireless educated men and women and excellent at their professions, unfortunately their surgeries are overloaded by undernourished people… people who have never been educated on the topic of health.

BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE
We let them do it.

I regard war as a social disease, something that afflicts society, that curses people. I do not suppose one person in every ten that would want war. There are some people who are pugnacious, and who love to fight, for the sake of a fight, and they might like war, but I do not believe there are more than ten people in a hundred, certainly not twenty in a hundred, that do.

I believe the great majority of people agree with me that war is a curse. All the things that come out of war come out in spite of war and not because of it.

The democracy that has come into society, has come in spite of war and not because of it. That would have come out in any case, and we would have had it without the expenditure of many millions of lives and many hundreds of billions of wealth.

I regard war as a social disease, a social curse, and I believe that we should stamp war out. To my mind the great curse of war is not that people are killed and injured, not that property is destroyed. That happens every day in peace times as well as in war times. To my mind the great curse of war is that it is built on fear and hate.

Now fear and hate are primitive passions; they do not belong in civilized society. In civilized society, for fear and hate we substitute constructive purposes and love. It is their positive virtues. When we fear things, we draw back from them,whilst at the same time drawing our fears toward us. When we hate things, we want to destroy them.

In civilized society, instead of drawing away from things, and wanting to destroy them, we want to pull things together and build them up. Fear and hate are negatives. Peace and love are positives, and form the forces upon which civilization is built. And where we have collectively fear and hate, it is a means of menace to the order of the world.

Furthermore, during war, we ask people to go out and deliberately injure their fellows. We ask a man to go out and maim or kill another man against whom he has no sound grievances–a man who may be a good farmer, a good husband, a good son, and a good worker, and a good citizen in his own culture. Another man comes out and shoots him down,or tears his body apart with a bomb; that is, he goes out and raises his hand against his neighbor to do his neighbor damage. That is the way society is destroyed. Whenever you go out to pull things to pieces, whenever you go out to injure anybody, you are going out to destroy society. Society can never be built up unless you go out to help your neighbors.

The principle, “each for all and all for each,” is the fundamental social principle. People must work together if they are going to get anywhere. War teaches people to go out and destroy other people and to destroy other people’s property.It has been said that war is hell, I believe that means, or at least to me that means, that war creates a hell inside of a man who goes to war. He is going to work himself up into a passion of hatred against somebody else, and that is hell.

The destruction of life and property is incidental. The destructive forces that war puts into a man’s soul are fundamental. That is why I am opposed to all wars, just as I am opposed to all violence. I don’t believe in any man having the right to go out and use violence against another man. That is not the right of one human being to have against the other, that is not the way you get brotherhood and sisterhood. I am against all wars. I am against dueling; I am against all violence of man against man, and war is one of those methods of violence.
To support any government that pursues war against another country,makes you personally complicit.Just because you dont see the bodies fall does,nt mean you did,nt kill them.

I believe war is barbaric, I believe it is primitive, I believe it is a relic of a bygone age; I believe that society will be destroyed if built up that way. That is, I believe that they that take the sword must perish by the sword; just as they that set out to assist their neighbors are bound to build up a strong, cohesive united society.
I am a student of public affairs as I believe we all should be,I was once a Socialist,I believe I am now an Equalist,equalist as in every person and every creature has a right to be.I believe I have a right to discuss public questions.I believe we have a right to oppose the passage of law.I believe we have a right under the law,after the law has passed to agitate for a development of public support that will result in a repeal of that law.

In other words, as I said in the beginning, in a democracy, if we are to have a democracy, as a student of public affairs and as a Equalist and as a Pacifist, I have a right to express my opinions. I may be wrong, utterly wrong, and nobody listen to me, nobody pay any attention to me.Still, I have a right to express my opinions.

I have been throughout my life as consistent as I could be. I have spoken and written for years, about the necessity for love and peace to be the currency between people and not fear and hate. I stand before you today as an advocate of economic justice and world brotherhood , and peace among all men and women.

And I write this article in the attempt to further those ends,
Within the Constitution are the rights of free speech and a free press; the right to speak and print the convictions that I have. It was for those rights that our ancestors left Europe and came here. It is for those rights that some of us are contending today.

I care not for the prosperity of this country if we are going to have gag laws. I care not for the wealth of this country if we are going to be forbidden to have free speech, and an opportunity for expressing our minds and expressing our opinions and discussing the great issues that are before us.

Furthermore, as a citizen, we all have certain duties. Citizenship involves duties as well as rights. If I saw that your house were on fire, it would be my duty to warn you and to try to put it out, that is, put out the fire, and if I could not put out the fire, to save as much of your goods and as many of your family as I could save. That would be my duty as a neighbor and citizen.

I have been a student of public affairs in this country for many years. I believe this country is in danger, in dire peril. I see imperialism, militarism and war ahead of us. In our policy toward Iraq, in the policy that we are developing under the direction of preparedness for development and purchase of weapons, I see ahead of us imperialism and militarism and war.
Iraq is not the last war, there is another war our chickenhawk leaders are looking at, Iran is in the Israel and US crosshairs,Australia will undoubtedly be asked to put on it,s deputy badge.I fear if this war takes place ,humanity could enter the dark ages once again.
.There is yet an other more pressing war headed our way,and it seems to get very little attention,I feel it will be the greatest war man has ever faced,a war between man and nature.It has been said many times that nature is cruel,I believe no creature has been crueler to nature than man.
These are the best of times and also the worst of times as we have the power to destroy ourselves and the resources to save ourselves.
On the other hand, I see ahead of us in our industrial life,widespread exploitation, by the employers of those who work for them. I see that exercised with increasing tyranny, and I see ahead of us revolt. In other words, to my mind, the outlook is not bright,
There are clouds on the horizon. I believe the world is in peril and I believe that she is in peril from internal disturbances; I believe that the danger lurks within. And I believe it rests primarily in our unfair and unjust system of distribution of wealth, and the income of the country.

As I said a moment ago, that if your house were on fire, it would be my duty as a neighbor to warn you and to try to help you save your property. I say to you now, that I believe the worlds people are in danger, our common life and our common liberties are in danger of being revoked, it is my duty to warn you, it is my duty to speak out and to continue to speak out as long as I have an opportunity to do so.
You will say if you speak out today against these perils , you may lose your job, you may lose your freedoms. And I answer you again that as a citizen it is my sole obligation to speak out when I see peril ahead, and stand the loss of position or of my freedom or any other loss that may be entailed in issuing the necessary warnings.

I want to say to you that I would like to see,justice for all of the earths people. .As long as an other man or woman is not free, you are not free and I am not free. As long as any of us are in chains in this land, we are all in chains. As long as any are in ignorance through lack of education, we are all in ignorance to that extent. As long as anybody starves in the land, we all starve. As long as anybody suffers from inequity or racism, we are all suffering from inequity and racism . We are all interconnected as one body, and we suffer in common with it, and we benefit in common with it.

As I said a moment ago, the only principle upon which society can ever be built is the principle of each for all, and all for each. The principle of union, the principle of joint cooperative action for the benefit and the service of all.

I believe that action is the action of the people, the action of the masses, of mankind, and that sooner or later they will insist upon their rights.

In every nation there are progressive people writing and campaigning for exactly the same causes which bind us together in the peace movement,and we are told very little about them because the people at the top are becoming anxious at the growing rejection of their system and the brutality it uses to enforce its will to maintain its power and privileges.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

I am an optimist because I do not believe that such horror and injustice can go on for too long without it being challenged and overturned since it is only able to persist because we have been told we must accept it and once that acceptance is withdrawn and replaced by determination to build something better it will crumble..In other words “we let them do it”

I have expressed my hopes, my ideals, my ambitions for justice , and for brotherhood and peace among all people of the world. I have expressed what I feel and believe , and for the time being the matter is in your hands.