id was set in the arguments array for the "sidebar_left" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-1". Manually set the id to "sidebar-1" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/f21micha/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5307id was set in the arguments array for the "sidebar_right" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-2". Manually set the id to "sidebar-2" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/f21micha/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5307address to the annual state convention of the South Carolina Green Party, May 14, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A generation ago, America and the rest of the world found itself in un-charted territory.<\/p>\n 1980 saw the birth of Solidarity. Founded in the shipyards of Gdansk, it stood as a beacon of hope for ordinary working people in Poland and throughout the Soviet Empire. In less than 10 years time, not only had the Berlin Wall fallen, but the Soviet Union was forced to retreat from Afghanistan. Other than Romania, the regimes of Eastern Europe fell for the most part bloodlessly.<\/p>\n While the 1989 protests in China were drowned in blood, what we best remember from Tiananmen Square is the anonymous man who for a few brief moments, stopped the tanks, armed only with his bravery.<\/p>\n Two years later saw Boris Yeltsin facing down the tanks of an attempted military coup in Russia.<\/p>\n An African-American, Barbara Clementine Harris was consecrated as the first female Anglican Bishop in the world. Douglas Wilder and David Dinkins respectively became the first African-American Governor in America and New York City Mayor.<\/p>\n In 1990 Nelson Mandela was not only released from a lifetime prison sentence, but despite the decades long repression and bloodshed that began at Sharpville in 1960, his release led in the end to a peaceful transition to majority rule in 1994.<\/p>\n With the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998, the Irish Republican Army agreed to a ceasefire, which with exceptions from breakaway groups, still holds today.<\/p>\n It truly was a time that anything seemed possible. The world was ready to find new ways to work in harmony. What happened instead was that our leaders failed us. World-wide, our civic, religious, military, political and governmental leaders shrank back from the unknown and have ever since retreated into an ever growing restrictive cocoon of fear, prejudice and tribalism.<\/p>\n In The Future of Man, the French philosopher Pierre Tielhard de Chardin wrote about the spiritual evolution of mankind, describing it as a ever-narrowing spiral, reaching towards a peak of perfection, i.e., God. He termed this spiritual envelope that surrounds not just the individual, but the entire world, as the Noosphere.<\/p>\n Since our leaders stepped back from the brink of the unknown, Chardin’s evolutionary spiral has been spinning backwards and since 9\/11, gathering steam.<\/p>\n Civil liberties in America are being eroded beyond recognition, especially if one is, or looks like, a Muslim. Or a Latino. Or, as ever, an African-American. The Patriot Act remains intact. Guantanamo is still open for business. There is an American Military presence in virtually every country on earth. Armed militias have patrolled our border with Mexico, with little Federal opposition.<\/p>\n Many of the nations that appeared out of the former Soviet Union, have quickly slipped from potential democracies into one party or one man rule. Russia itself remains a democracy only for those who remain in Vladimir Putin’s good graces.<\/p>\n In France it is now illegal for a woman to wear a face veil. In Italy it is legal for the Prime Minister to have sex with teenage girls.<\/p>\n As the Catholic Church has yet to come to terms with over 20 years worth of reporting of sexual abuse by it’s clergy, the Anglican Church is poised to split by the issue of the ordination of homosexuals.<\/p>\n The traditional friend and champion of the working person in America, the Democratic Party, has climbed as deeply into bed with Corporate America as the Republican Party. As they’ve put on a brave face in Wisconsin, the Democratically controlled legislature in Massachusetts has passed a bill<\/a> eerily similar to what Wisconsin Governor Scott walker has proposed.<\/p>\n The Democratic Governor of NY ran in 2010 on an anti-union platform. The Democratic Majority leader of the NY State Assembly continues to approve rebating the stock transfer tax<\/a> which in 2010 amounted to 16 billion dollars, which means the 10 billion deficit the state faces has been artificially created. By Labor’s friend.<\/p>\n