Time to abolish gang violence...no, not those gangs!

No, Not These Folks...

No, not these folks either...though they

 definitely had the right idea.

These folks actually.

I suppose what I am saying here is an end to nationalism as a viable system on a planet under siege.  Do I seriously assume that such thinking is viable?  No.  We seem to covet these stolen identities as being sacred to who or what we are, regardless of the fact that we all share a common history, a single planet and one gene pool.  We bleed red, we are all dependent on the same sustenance...we all share the impermanence of life.  And apparently, that is never quite enough for some.

And yes, I'm well aware of the Bilderberg Conspiracy.  One of many that takes a wrong assumption, seasons it with hysteria and then serves it up with a glass of Holy Water. But more on that in a minute.  The first question is 'just what is a gang?'

Well, for one thing, they are nothing new. They primarily grow to fruition in those sections of a society that have/feel/are marginalized.  Meaning, they are trying to establish a home away from home. Sometimes by choice, more often driven to a new land by economic hardship, violence, prejudice -- aka, forced dislocation.  And in most cases, the welcome mat was yanked long before their arrival....most often by the last bunch that showed up; trying to escape the same famine, violence and hate. But then, how quickly we tend forget our own migratory history once we have regained the comfort of the hearth. 

Gangs are merely tribes.  They look out for their own as all tribal systems do.  They seek comfort in familiarity of customs, language, food...even music. They seek to protect their own in a hostile environment; to find food and shelter -- make a living in an economy and society that is determined to block any form of social mobility.  And they are determined to defend their community -- violently, if necessary.  And very often, crime becomes the only job left to them.

Now before you blow a righteous gasket, consider your own 'historical gang' in time:   
Yep....New York's Irish immigrants facing down the indignation of white Protestant Americans; folks that didn't exactly come to America through the front door either.  And just like them, the eastern Europeans, the Italians, the Chinese, Russians...ad nauseum. Denied access to the mainstream (respectable) avenues of commerce, they created opportunity through the lucrative channels of gambling, bookmaking, bootlegging, drugs...in effect, supplying the less glamorous amenities to those very white Protestants who vigorously campaigned for their deportation.  Hypocritical?  Well sure...this is America after all.  

So then, what is a nation?  First off, realize that a nation and a country are not the same animal. Africa if full of countries that share no common internal sense of nationality. The same is true for much of central Asia, South America...even large nation/countries like Russia and China.  Almost all were created by external forces and have actually existed on paper for less than 200 years.  Hardly the stuff to create a sense that some kind of mutual identity holds even an ounce of validity.  Even America itself is little more than a country in the miserable throes of puberty -- an experimental democracy that has yet to endure the test of real time.  

So, on to conspiracies. The Bilderberg Group:
    

In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, said: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. "There will always be people who believe in conspiracies, but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion... When people say this is a secret government of the world, I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."

In a 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by the Political Research Associates, investigative journalist Chip Berlet argued that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group date back as early as 1964 and can be found in Phyllis Schlafly's self-published book A Choice, Not an Echo,^[38] which promoted a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose internationalist policies would pave the way for world communism.^[39] Paradoxically, in August 2010 former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote a controversial article for the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma in which he cited Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,^[40] which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self".^[35]

As Shakespeare once lamented, "much adieu about nothing."  This was a group that was formed originally in Europe.  To understand their thinking, you must understand Europe in the context of the last century.  A hundred revolutions, two world wars, the rise of Bolshevism, fascism and mass genocide...and at the heart of the matter, nationalism.  But not the kind associated with the false and selective pride found in a long history, but the kind that says, "We're better," or maybe, "It's all your fu**** fault!"  And of course, that's when the cemeteries get pressed for space.

Later came the reluctant acceptance of the European Union, albeit primarily an economic tool to address the domestic and international commerce issues inherent in small states suddenly tossed head-first into a newly globalized economy.  But the consolidation also occurred during a period when the world witnessed the first of many, global environmental insults: Chernobyl.  The first salvo in the continuing dissolution of national boundaries as a viable defense against a neighbor's transgressions -- intentional or otherwise.    
                                            Or perhaps worse yet: the collapse of the Soviet Union. Little known or publicized here was the collapse of the SU's borders, meaning that a steady stream of commodities, including radioactive materials simply left the country for parts known and unknown.  Industrial sites, poorly maintained in better times, were simply abandoned as newly unpaid workers simply walked off.  East Germany was so contaminated by chemical and industrial wastes that even Bonn didn't want it back, despite the German public's outcry to reunify the German state.  And of course even now, in this new century, the issues of climate, resources (basic as food and water), over-population, competition for energy sources; even arable land have completely broken down the old notions that, "it is somebody else's problem."  Today, "somebody else's problem" now has the ability to destabilize the geo-political landscape of entire regions -- perhaps even an entire continent.  

The bottom line is that the environment is everybody's problem; concurrently every body's responsibility.  One planet, one mutual future as a viable specie, or perhaps another as merely a random curiosity left behind on a dead planet.  

I sometimes hear the familiar retort:  "Hell, I'll be dead anyway, so who gives a shit?" Course, that is half true.  No, not the 'dead' part' -- the 'who gives a shit part?'  And I guess that might ultimately be the epitaph to our brief stay in the Milky Way.  "They just didn't give a shit."   Hmm.