Overturned

We are a nation that believes that every man and women is endowed by their creator with inalienable rights and those rights are guarded and sustained by the constitution, not by government officials, not by elected officials and certainly not by ballot initiative. Our rights are fundamental, they are the birthright of every American. That's why we challenged in a court of law the flawed and unconstitutional arguments that long have been used to deny Americans their rights. That gay marriage, a love between two adults is somehow a danger to society, that how we are born, our sexual orientation, not our love or personal commitment, somehow defines a marriage and that state sponsored discrimination is somehow justified and should be institutionalized.

With respect to marriage and after a lengthy trial, a fair trial, the court rejected the false logic that has been used for so many years to rationalize that blatant discrimination. But this trial did more than expose that false logic, it embraced the fundamental American values of freedom and fairness, it upheld the notion that the greatness of this country lies in the ability of each successive generation to broaden the scope of freedom, to deepen the notion of liberty and to strengthen the very principle of justice. Today's decision affirms that under the constitution a government of the people by the people and for the people cannot discriminate against the people.

There is another powerful consequence of this decision that I hope all Americans take into account, today there are millions of gay people across the country: they are your neighbors, your friends and your family, they see how marriage strengthens the bonds of family and community and they wonder, can they ever have that same strength and stability? Or will their government continue to say that marriage is not for them? Today's decision gives gay Americans the hope and strength and comfort that they too can have a future filled with love, commitment and shared responsibility. And so today we begin the process of saying to millions of people who are made to feel ostracized, besieged, bullied and ashamed of how god made them... be who you are, love who you love, and marry who you wish to marry.

As gay and straight citizens take to the streets in celebration here in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas and New York I know there are millions who must celebrate quietly across America. Places where merely taking the hand of a loved one still feels like a revolutionary act. To those quiet millions, to the teenager in Bakersfield who aches for acceptance, to the college student in Salt Lake who only seeks liberty and equality, to the couple in Topeka who longs to openly share their commitment and love - this victory is for you. Because in ending the public sanctioning of discrimination in our law, we render unacceptable the private discrimination you must bear.

This is not the only victory needed to close that gap between the lives you lead and the lives you deserve, but it is a critical victory, one that honors the principles that define America . The principles that stirred a convention in Seneca Falls, the principles that fueled tireless marches through Selma, Birmingham and Washington DC, the principles that sparked the fires of resistance at the Stonewall Inn and the principles that inspire us in this urgent struggle to uphold the right to life, liberty, love and the pursuit of happiness. We will continue to stand up and fight for these principles, for these founding constitutional rights of all Americans until we truly are one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Chad Griffin
President- American Foundation for Equal Rights

Evil Empire Part 2: "Magic" Seeds

The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbors prepared their father's body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.

As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India's economic boom, they now face working as slave labor for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low. Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide. Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.

There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on - they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless - as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting. Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.As neighbors gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. 'He was a loving and caring man,' she said, weeping quietly. 'But he couldn't take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.'

Shankara's crop had failed - twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India's ancient story. But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead. Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiraling debts - and no income. So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops. The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.

For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month. Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonizing deaths. Most swallow insecticide - a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.

It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed. Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and 'agrarian distress' that is the real reason for the horrific toll. But that is not the full story. In one small village 18 farmers have committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.

Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much. She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.Village after village, families tell how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds. The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds. But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.

Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks. The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.

In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution. But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many farmers have found there is a terrible price to be paid. Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite. Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off. Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year. But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own. As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated , leaving a wife and two children. As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbors squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a genetically modified plant created by Monsanto.

'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.' Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbors crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.' Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes. 'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.'

Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as 'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life. Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.With rumors of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any more of us dying.' India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.

This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.' But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'. In the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.

Original author: Andrew Malone

Evil Empire

When we consider the morally bankrupt, devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporations we generally come up with corporations like Microsoft, Bechtel, AIG, Halliburton, Goldman-Sachs and Exxon-Mobil. Yet somehow, Monsanto, arguably the most devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporation in the world has somehow been able to disappear in a cloud of lies.

Monsanto has spent billions of dollars trying to depict itself as a visionary corporation, a world-historical force that is working to bring science and an environmentally responsible outlook to the solution of humanity's most pressing problems. Whether you are concerned about population growth, the future of agriculture, the quality of our food, or the health needs of the population, we are assured that Monsanto will find the answers.

But just who is Monsanto? Where did they come from? How did they get to be the world's second largest manufacturer of agricultural chemicals, one of the largest producers of seeds, and soon the largest seller of prescription drugs in the United States? Is Monsanto the "clean and green" company its advertisements promote, or is this new image merely a product of clever public relations? A quick look at their history reveals clues as to why Monsanto is known throughout the world as the most evil and unethical corporation on the planet today.

Founded by Missouri pharmacist John Francis Queeny in 1901, Monsanto is one of the world's largest chemical manufacturers and an agricultural giant that is indeed taking control of the world's population, one seed at a time. Just about every non-organic food product available to consumers has some sort of connection with Monsanto. Corn, soy and cotton can be found in just about every American food product and upwards of 90% of all corn, soybeans and cotton are grown from genetically engineered seeds, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These genetically enhanced products appear in around 70% of all American processed food products and Monsanto controls 90% of all genetically engineered seeds. In other words, Monsanto controls and owns patents on most of the American food supply.

Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company. But Monsanto is not only patenting their own GMO seeds, they have also succeeded in slapping patents on a huge number of crop seeds, patenting life forms for the first time in history, without a vote of the people or Congress.

Farmers who buy Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seeds or sell them to other farmers. Farmers must buy new seeds every year, and they must buy them from Monsanto. Monsanto has actually hired an army of private investigators and agents to secretly videotape and photograph farmers that may attempt to reuse their seeds. These “seed police” as the farmers call them have infiltrated community meetings and attempted to pressure farmers into signing papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Quite fittingly, farmers have described Monsanto’s tactics as similar to the “Gestapo” and “Mafia.”

Monsanto tries to pass itself off as an innovative agricultural company, when in reality they produced two of the most toxic substances ever known polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin (Agent Orange). Monsanto may also be responsible for more than 50 Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites ( uncontrolled hazardous waste sites), and they’re the masterminds behind some of the most dangerous products on the market today:

* Genetically modified crops (Monsanto provides the seeds for 90 percent of the world's GM crops)
* Fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides
* Aspartame
* Recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST, a genetically engineered growth hormone given to dairy cows to make them produce more milk

Monsanto has also considered using what’s known as terminator technology on a wide-scale basis. These are seeds that have been genetically modified to “self-destruct.” In other words, the seeds (and the forthcoming crops) are sterile, which means farmers must buy them again each year.Yet, most farmers cannot afford to buy new seeds every year, so collecting and replanting seeds is a crucial part of the agricultural cycle. This is the way food has been grown successfully for thousands of years.
Further, the traits from genetically engineered crops can get passed on to other crops. Once the terminator seeds are released into a region, the trait of seed sterility could be passed to other non-genetically-engineered crops, making most or all of the seeds in the region sterile. If allowed to continue, every farmer in the world could come to rely on Monsanto for their seed supply and this is not a company that you want in control of your food supply.

When you consider that one-in-four food labels is inaccurate, that the F.D.A.'s testing is weak at best, then how can we trust one corporation to have so much control over our produce? The answer is, we can't. Monsanto's Mon 863, Mon 810, and Roundup herbicide-absorbing NK 603 in corn caused kidney and liver damage in laboratory rats. Scientists also discovered damage to the heart, spleen, adrenal glands and even the blood of rats that consumed the mutant corn.

This hasn't slowed down Monsanto's profits thought, in 2008, Monsanto cleared over $2 billion in net profits on $11 billion in revenues. Its herbicide, glyphosate, alone is estimated to bring in a revenue of $1 billion in gross profit by 2012, enabling Monsanto to further drive herbicides into seeds and to price those seeds at a premium price, further driving price up on the farm and in the grocery stores which will be deadly for farmers who in 2009 saw their income decline 34%.

Because Monsanto claims that its GMOs create higher yields and therefore comparatively higher revenues per acre for struggling American farmers, they're certainly a tempting option. On the surface, that is. Monsanto controls its seeds with an iron fist, so even if you happen to own a farm next to another farm upon which Monsanto seeds are used, and if those seeds migrate onto your land, Monsanto can sue you for royalties.

Additionally, if you use seeds from crops grown from Monsanto seeds, a process known as "seed cleaning," you also have to pay royalties to Monsanto or they will sue you. Monsanto has recovered $15 million in royalties by suing farmers, with individual settlements ranging from five figures to millions of dollars each. But in keeping with the Orwellian nature of modern marketing, one of the first phrases you see on the front page of the Monsanto website is "we help farmers." Funny. In a cruelly ironical way, that is.

Stronger Monsanto herbicides, compatible with herbicide resistant seeds, are giving rise to mutant super weeds that have adapted and are rapidly spreading through the air to farms that don't use Monsanto GMOs, destroying obviously vulnerable crops. Say nothing of the inevitable mutant bugs that will adapt to the pesticides that are implanted into the Monsanto Mon 810 genetic code. And if further studies indicate similar organ damage in humans, the externalized costs to health care systems will begin to seriously out-weigh the benefits of this so called cheaper food.
On January 15, the Obama Justice Department launched an anti-trust investigation against the corporate behemoth over its next generation of genetically modified "Roundup Ready" soybean seeds. The very next day, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, which challenges the safety of genetically modified agricultural products, the centerpiece of the Monsanto empire. If the investigation fails, farmers will have to switch over to the next generation of Roundup Ready seeds in 2014. And the cycle of corporate abuse and monopolization will continue.

A Capital of Inspiration

"New York is a tremendous generator of inspiration. It is a capital of inspiration... You feel at a place where reality is most intense."
~David Lehman


"If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else?
Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself."
~John Lennon

Help End The Siege In Gaza

We all know the story of the atrocities committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. There is no question that the occupation is illegal, that there have been innumerable human rights violations, that Israel is continuing to build settlements and their apartheid wall is reaching ever farther into Palestinian land. We are going on 60 years now of what most people would consider ethnic cleansing, while the world at large sits idly by unable or unwilling to stand up to the American backed Israeli war machine.

More than 300,000 Israeli settlers are now living on illegal settlements on Palestinian land. It is against international law for an occupying country to transfer it's own civilians into an occupied territory, the same as they also cannot forcibly remove those people inhabiting the occupied territory... but Israel has completely ignored these laws. The Israeli Occupation Authority (IOA) issues demolition orders on Palestinian homes on a daily basis, leaving thousands of refugees. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) then move in with bulldozers and demolish the homes and use the land to build settlements and highways that only settlers are allowed to travel on.

Israel has decided that things such as fruit, shoes and books are "luxuries" that the Palestinian people do not deserve and have effectively blocked these items and many others from entering into the occupied territories. Human rights organizations and even the United Nations are denied access to the Palestinian people, 90% of whom are now suffering from malnutrition. The Palestinian refugees, over half of whom are children, have limited or no access to clean drinking water, health care, education or even food and clothing.

The time is long past that the people of the world need to stand up in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Palestine. Whether or not our individual nations are willing to make a stand against the Israeli government does not dissolve our responsibilities as individuals to do what is right. As is often the case in these matters people are bound to ask themselves what they could possibly do to help others halfway across the world, to justify that their voice and their opinions matter not at all in the great scheme of things, to 'feel bad' for the weak and the oppressed but to do nothing more. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

In exactly this spirit of non-complacency Norman Finkelstein and other prominent activists are enlisting various Palestinian solidarity groups in their planning of an international march on Gaza in an effort to end the blockade of the territory. It is their plan to bring thousands of demonstrators from across the globe to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population together as one people. According to a draft statement of purposes and principles "This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi. Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement." According to the statement the march will be set for January 1st, 2010. "We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade. We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign ... If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed."

Regarding the march Finkelstein was quoted as saying "If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens - Israel can't shoot."

My friends and I are planning to form our own delegation to visit Israel and the occupied territories in December and to join in the march on Gaza, to help break the siege and bring this horrible violence and occupation to an end. Please do everything you can to show your support for this worldwide movement by spreading the word, donating to help fund the delegations, or by adding your support and presence to our numbers. If you are interested in joining our delegation or to learn more about what can be done to aid the Palestinian people, please feel free to e-mail me at Crystal.HighRoad@Gmail.Com

The 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

The corporate media tried to portray the student movement in China as some kind of campaign against socialism, but it was in fact a campaign against the tyranny and injustice of Communist Party rule and for a more just and democratic society. A society where workers and peasants had power in reality, not only in name.The song most frequently sung by the student protesters during the seven weeks they had occupied the heart of China's capital was called the "The Internationale."

Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be all!

The protesters were making a powerful witness in song, not just in protest of the tragedy then unfolding in Beijing and of the betrayal of 20th century socialism by all those who, in its name, had become a new class of oppressors and exploiters.

Despite the calamity which took place in China that day, the student martyrs had given the world a glimmer of hope. While the nonviolent movement that had emerged that spring in Beijing and in towns and cities throughout China was brutally crushed, other largely nonviolent movements would emerge elsewhere in the coming years that would bring down scores of autocratic regimes, ranging from monarchies to Communist dictatorships to right-wing military juntas. By the end of that year, such unarmed insurrections would usher in democratic governance in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Chile, and Kenya. During the 1990s, nonviolent movements brought down dictatorships in Mongolia, Mali, Thailand, Madagascar, Indonesia, Nigeria, and elsewhere. This decade has seen strategic nonviolent action play the pivotal role in overcoming corrupt and autocratic rule in such countries as Serbia, Nepal, Georgia, Ukraine and the Maldives.

We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgment hall,
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all:
To make the thief disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide, and do it well.

It is up to those in China and elsewhere still suffering under oppressive rule to lead their own struggles for liberation from tyranny. We cannot trust that the U.S. government or any other government can legitimately engage in "democracy promotion." However, global civil society can offer the kind of international solidarity, in opposing arms transfers to human rights abusers, in providing workshops on strategic nonviolent conflict, and in raising global awareness of these struggles for freedom and justice.

It is a solidarity that is based not upon whether the oppressive regime being challenged is an ally or an adversary of the United States or what kind of economic system it claims to adhere to. It is a solidarity based upon nothing less than a universal respect for fundamental civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Yippee, I’m A Hippie!!!

What is a Hippie? Some say it’s the way people dress, and behave, a lifestyle. Others classify drug users and rock 'n' roll fans or those with certain radical political views as hippies. The dictionary defines a hippie as one who doesn’t conform to society’s standards and advocates a liberal attitude and lifestyle. With all these differing definitions and views, how can we define hippie or know if we are one?

Well it seems to me that these definitions miss the point. By focusing on the most visible behavioral traits these limited descriptions fail to reveal what lies in the hippie heart that motivates such behavior. To understand the true hippie, we must look at those circumstances that preceded the birth of the hippy movement, the important events that changed our lives, our resulting frustration with society, and the philosophy that developed from our spiritual maturation.

Hippy is an establishment label for a profound, invisible, underground,evolutionary process. For every visible hippy, barefoot, beflowered, beaded, there are a thousand invisible members of the turned-on underground. Persons whose lives are tuned in to their inner vision, who are dropping out of the TV comedy of American Life.

Timothy Leary (The Politics of Ecstasy) 1967

My view is that being a hippie is a matter of accepting a universal belief system that transcends the social, political, and moral norms of any established structure, be it a class, church, or government. Each of these powerful institutions has its own agenda for controlling, even enslaving people. Each has to defend itself when threatened by real or imagined enemies. So we see through history a parade of endless conflicts with country vs. country, religion vs. religion, class vs. class. After millennia of war and strife, in which uncounted millions have suffered, we have yet to rise above our petty differences.

I’ve been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one.
And I believe it could be, someday it’s going to come.
Cat Stevens (Peace Train)

A hippie is adverse to all repressive hierarchical power structures since these go against the hippie goals of peace, love and freedom. This is why the “Establishment” feared and suppressed the hippie movement of the ’60s, as it was a revolution against the established order. It is also the reason why the hippies were unable to unite and overthrow the system since they refused to build their own power base. Hippies don’t impose their beliefs on others. Instead, hippies seek to change the world through reason and by living what they believe.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world.
John Lennon (Imagine)

To be a hippie you must believe in peace as the way to resolve differences among peoples, ideologies and religions. The way to peace is through love and tolerance. Loving means accepting others as they are, giving them freedom to express themselves and not judging them based on appearances. This is the core of the hippie philosophy.

If you want to be free, be free, because there’s a million things to be.
Cat Stevens (If You Want to Sing Out)

The hippy movement erected signposts for all to see. Some warn us of impending danger, others direct us towards richer, more fulfilling lives, but most show us the road to freedom. Freedom is the paramount virtue in this system. Freedom to do as one pleases, go where the flow takes you, and to be open to new experiences. This embraces an attitude that allows for maximum personal growth.

I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road towards freedom - external freedom is a way to bring about internal freedom.
Jim Morrison

Many beliefs have sprung from our core philosophy such as an earthy spirituality, the Green movement, and even shamanism and vegetarianism. These philosophical and political views reflect a respect for nature and the planet as a whole, something lacking in our capitalistic and materialistic societies. The world needs hippies to point out alternatives to the entrenched system and warn of the impending disasters that await us if we don’t change our lifestyles. The goal is not to make everyone a hippie (what would we have to protest?). Rather we can try to influence others by example, through tolerance and love and teaching the virtues of the hippie way.

You create your own reality.
Seth (Seth Speaks)

So being a hippie is not a matter of dress, behavior, economic status, or social grouping. It is a philosophical approach to life that emphasizes freedom, peace, love and a respect for others and the earth. The way of the hippie has never died. There have always been hippies from the first time society laid down rules, to Jesus, to Henry David Thoreau, to John Lennon, to you and me. I believe there’s a little hippy in all of us. It’s just been repressed by our socialization process. We need to find that hidden hippie and cultivate it from within.

I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken)