Philosophers From The United States

"More and more people today become border people because the pace of society has increased. Just think about multi-media, computers and World Wide Web, for example. By the Internet you can communicate instantly with someone in India or somewhere else in the world, like Australia, Hungary or China. We are all living in a society where these borders are transgressed constantly."

"when Chicanas read Borderlands, when it was read by little Chicanas in particular, it somehow legitimated them. They saw that I was code-switching, which is what a lot of Chicanas were doing in real life as well, and for the first time after reading that book they seemed to realize, "Oh, my way of writing and speaking is okay" and, "Oh, she is writing about La Virgen de Guadalupe, about la Llorona, about the corridos, the gringos, the abusive, et cetera. So if she [Gloria Anzaldúa] does it, why not me as well?" The book gave them permission to do the same thing. So they started using code-switching and writing about all the issues they have to deal with in daily life. To them, it was like somebody was saying: You are just as important as a woman as anybody from another race. And the experiences that you have are worth being told and written about."

"I also want Chicano kids to hear stuff about la Llorona, about the border, et cetera, as early as possible. I don't want them to wait until they are eighteen or nineteen to get that information. I think it is very important that they get to know their culture already as children. Here in California I met a lot of young Chicanos and Chicanas who didn't have a clue about their own Chicano culture. They lost it all. However, later on, when they were already twenty, twenty-five or even thirty years old, they took classes in Chicano studies to learn more about their ancestors, their history and culture. But I want the kids to already have access to this kind of information. That is why I started writing children's books. So far I have had two bilingual books published, and I am writing the third one at the moment. This is going to be more for juvenile readers, little boys and girls who are like ages eleven to twelve. Next I want to write a book for young adults who are about fifteen to sixteen years old as well. With my children's books I want to provide them with more knowledge about their roots and, by doing so, give them the chance to choose. To choose whether they want to be completely assimilated, whether they want to be border people, or whether they want to be isolationists."

"A misinformed people is a subjugated people."

"I am a seventh generation American and so I don't have any 'real Mexican' roots. So this is what happened to someone living at the border like me: My ancestors have always lived with the land here in Texas. My indigenous ancestors go back twenty to twenty-five thousand years and that is how old I am in this country. My Spanish ancestors have been in this land since the European takeover which pulled migration from Spain to Mexico. Texas was part of a Mexican state called Tamaulipas. And Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and part of California and Colorado, were part of the northern section of Mexico. It was almost half of Mexico that the U.S. cheated Mexico out of when they bought it by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. By doing so they created the borderlands. The Anzaldúas lived right at the border. Therefore the ones of our family who ended up north of the border, in the U.S., were the Anzaldúas with an accent, whereas the ones that still lived in Mexico dropped their accent after a while. As the generations then went by, we lost contact with each other. Nowadays the Anzaldúas in the United States no longer know the Anzalduas in Mexico. The border split my family, so to speak."

"I preferred the world of imagination to the death of sleep"

"I did participate in the Chicano Movement. Actually, I started out with MECHA, a Mexican American youth organization. Also I was involved with different farm worker activities in South Texas and later in Indiana. When I became more recognized as a writer, I started articulating a lot of these feminist ideas that were a kind of continuation of the Chicano Movement. But I call it "El Movimiento Macha." A marimacha is a woman who is very assertive. That is what they used to call dykes, marimachas, half-and-halfs. You were different, you were queer, not normal, you were marimacha. I had been witnessing all these Chicana writers, activists, artists and professors who were very strong and therefore very marimacha. So I named it "El Movimiento Macha" as the Chicano Civil Rights Movement kind of petered out. And there were women like myself, many Chicanas, who were already questioning, having problems with the guys who were ignoring women's issues. Therefore, in the eighties and nineties, there are all these women-Chicana activists, writers and artists-around, and I listen to them, read them and reflect their influence on my life as well. What you could say is that in the sixties and the early seventies the Chicanos were at the controls. They were the ones who were visible, the Chicano leaders. Then in the eighties and nineties, the women have become visible. I see a lot of Chicanas when I travel. They come up to me, and while we are talking I ask them about their role models. They mention names like Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa and other Chicana authors. It is, and will continue to be, women that they are reading, that they respect. Not the guys. So it-the Chicano Movement-has shifted into the Movimiento Macha."

"The Chicano Movement coalesced identity and I have a lot of respect for it despite its sexist attitudes. For that reason it started diminishing. It's not dead, but the male aspect of it is diminishing because the men would not confront thing but racial issues. The movement to me is now like a mosaic with all these little pieces. The little pieces are the ones that are now being activated so that a poet like Lorna Dee Cervantes is her own little miniature movement. Francisco Alarcón, Norma Alarcón, José Limón, all the people who are writing are carrying out the struggle against domination and subordination in the kinds of things they focus on-language, folklore, just anything."

"The soul uses everything to further its own making. … States which disrupt the smooth flow (complacency) of life are exactly what propel the soul to do its work: make soul, increase consciousness of itself. Our greatest disappointments and painful experiences—if we can make meaning out of them—can lead us toward becoming more of who we are."

"Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of “home.” Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender."

"At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off all together as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."

"That focal point or fulcrum, that juncture where the mestiza stands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the possibility of uniting all that is separate occurs. This assembly is not one where severed or separated pieces merely come together. Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new consciousness—a mestiza consciousness."

"They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't."

"only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body--flesh and bone--and from the Earth's body--stone, sky, liquid, soil."

"Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants."

"Those who are pushed out of the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized (when not brutalized into insensitivity)."

"Alienated from her mother culture, ‘alien' in the dominant culture, the woman of color does not feel safe within the inner life of her Self. Petrified, she can’t respond, her face caught between los intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits."

"It is heartening to be able to end a textbook that has no prerequisites with a problem that has not yet been solved."

"Dr. Greer has a formidable background in the science of human consciousness. A former emergency room doctor, Greer studied meditation, Sanskrit, the use of mantras, and the ritual of pujas from the time he was a teenager. He has published books and released documentaries and he seems to have the ear of practical, grounded folks at the highest levels of society, government, and the military. He speaks with riveting authority and intelligence. Dr. Greer claims that extra-terrestrials have been visiting us for a long time... Greer compiled evidence from hundreds of sources. He gathered a group of impressive and credible sources, and he presented the people and the evidence at a televised press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC in May, 2001. Disclosure has already happened, according to Dr. Greer... Dr. Greer posits that the ETs visit us by way of transdimensional technology, using the science of consciousness. He reasons that the distances are so vast that any species who can travel across the cosmos must travel faster than the speed of light. And the way to exceed the speed of light is through the speed of thought, which is instantaneous, or nearly so. This assumption evokes physicist Dr. William Tiller’s work on quantum physics and intentionality."

"Dr. Greer would probably say “Conscious intention…creates robust effects,” not limiting this theory to human consciousness. Tiller goes so far as to posit the Tiller model, which states, “We are primarily elements of spirit, indestructible and eternal and ‘multiplexed’ in the Divine.” It’s that ‘multiplex’ that Greer touches on; it unites all beings who are consciously aware of being conscious. That is, who are awake. Tiller’s model and Greer’s discourse bear strong similarities... This story, like all good stories, has protagonists and villains. The protagonists are We the People who want the truth and who also want to make peaceful contact with other citizens of the Universe. The ETs themselves, who are waiting for the inhabitants of Earth to mature into peaceful, open-hearted contact, are also good guys. The villains are the war-mongering military-industrial complex who want to maintain their hegemony... These “petro-Nazis,”... maintain their vast wealth through cultivating war, fear, and dependence on fossil fuel oils... the new technologies gleaned from the downed ET craft could save the planet... could also save us ordinary folk vast amounts of money. Those technologies are being sequestered by the very people about whom Eisenhower warned us in 1961... This poignance, this heart-break, this sense of ‘what if?’ underscores Dr. Greer’s film. Close Encounters... evokes thought, excitement, wonder, and personal responsibility. We each can be one of the 1% whose higher thoughts resonate all of us into an uplifted reality — a reality of universal community and good will."

"Meanwhile , Unacknowledged is being BLOCKED by media, no coverage even though it is the 2017 #1 Documentary on iTunes and widely popular on Netfli[ etc. The secret government is manipulating a false disclosure and threat via their lackeys and 'cut-outs'. Stay tuned!"

""Unacknowledged" focuses on the historic files of the Disclosure Project and how UFO secrecy has been ruthlessly enforced - and why. The best evidence for Extraterrestrial contact, dating back decades, is presented with direct top-secret witness testimony, documents and UFO footage, 80% if which has never been revealed anywhere else. The behind-the-scenes research and high level meetings convened by Dr. Steven Greer will expose the degree of illegal, covert operations at the core of UFO secrecy. From briefings with the CIA Director, top Pentagon Generals and Admirals, to the briefing of President Obama via senior"

"What they've done is they formed this alliance among themselves, of the industry that makes money by building war machines. The military that uses the war machines and justifies them, and then the intelligence community that is not really an intelligence community, it's a covert operations community, armed with military weapons and nuclear weapons, and that they're trying to push the boundaries now of establishing their dominion in full-spectrum dominance over the planet."

"Staged UFO events feature craft with seams and rivets. That’s the way to tell ours from theirs."

"Dr. Steven Greer is a global authority on extraterrestrials who has previous works with Sirius and Unacknowledged and now founder of the Disclosure Project, brings this documentary to talk about shattering the bounds of secrecy of the ET phenomenon. People seeing UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects) is not a new phenomenon. What has been sightings spoken has turned into sightings being video’s with cell phones making it impossible to deny that, at the very least, something is happening in our world. Dr. Greer has submitted briefings to five presidents on the subject and with information that he has gathered. While the government creates their own narrative based on fear, Dr. Greer wants to put the facts together in this brutally honest documentary. He believes that it is possible to create a relationship between humans and Extraterrestrials (ET). This documentary brings groundbreaking video/photographic evidence along with the interviews of Princeton’s PEAR lab Adam Curry, civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan and CIA’s Dr. Russel Targ. These interviews are as equally important as with what Dr. Greer has to share. The most important is Greer’s story of being visited as a child and through learning joint meditation with the ET’s, he was able to create the CE5 protocol which allows goodwill telepathy inviting ET’s to know where the good guys are."

"There is secrecy that is legal, and unfortunately, where Edward Snowden made his mistake, was by disclosing secrets, no matter how inappropriate it might have been that they were going on, that were being managed legally that the President and Congress and the intelligence communities knew about... On the other hand, there's secrecy that is illegal! And these are the unacknowledged special access projects. USAPs, U-S-A-P for short."

"According to some estimates we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions."

"$2.3 trillion with a "T." That's $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America."

"More money for the Pentagon when it's own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25% of what it already spends."

"We're spending well over a $100 million per day on classified programs that have no congressional oversight, no public scrutiny, uh, there is no monitor of these programs. A number of these programs go directly through Congress, totally. When you start going through these documents, these programs start dropping off the radar screen. These are all classified programs within the defense budget, but they don't supply any technical information on the program."

"I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth."

"And so the public has to understand there became to be this bifurcation that this separation between legitimate national security and military operations, and the deep black programs that are unacknowledged. We're talking about the black budget, the deep black, super-secret unacknowledged budget that runs in the 100 to 200 billion dollars a year. I'm being conservative."

"And if people think that the Congress and the President actually have a hand on this, they're gravely mistaken. They do not. This is where we get into the structure of secrecy."

"My '03 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

"We actually did recoveries of crashed saucers. There were bodies that were involved with some of these crashes. There were also some were alive. It marks the beginning of the global disclosure movement. These just were hovering off the floor without any visible means of support. They were referred to as "Alien reproduction vehicles." Fifteen years later, Dr. Steven Greer opened his archives of documents and interviews. This information was refused to the President of the United States by the director of Central Intelligence George Bush Senior. They revealed the true story of the secrecy, and of disclosure."

"There is no evidence. I wish to emphasize that these lifeforms from elsewhere are hostile towards us. But there is a great deal of evidence that they are concerned with our hostility. This is that story...One of my biggest disappointments over the last 25 years is those who lack the courage of their convictions. If one percent of the people who I've talked with, met with, or briefed, had that courage, this would have all been fixed long ago. I've always told them, "If you won't do it, I will." So here it goes..."

"I didn't believe in UFOs until London control called us in the winter of 1962 and asked us would we chase one. Their testimony would make history. I said, "what are you gonna tell the public about it?" And he says, "No, we don't tell the public about this, it would panic the public." This was the most-watched event in the history of the National Press Club."

""Where's the evidence?" "Or where's the beef on the UFO issue?" In fact, we have so much evidence that Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was in charge of project Blue Book for the Air Force, stated that it's an embarrassment of riches. We have so much."

"I can introduce a man who says, "There are more things between heaven and hell than any of us have accepted." And I have the witnesses and the documents to prove it. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Steven Greer."

"I'm Richard Doty. I was assigned as a special agent with the Air Force office special investigations at Kirtland Air Force base. I was a counter-intelligence officer at the base. During my time there, my first few months there, I was briefed into a special access program involving the US government's investigation and contacts with extraterrestrial. The visitation of these extraterrestrials to... To Earth."

"The structure of secrecy is complex, and multifaceted. We've been led to believe that we live in a mostly transparent democracy, with the President at the top of the intelligence food chain. A true Commander-in-Chief. The reality however is much different."

"On May 9th, 2001, 20 military, government, and corporate witnesses, held a press conference in Washington DC. And these are folks who have been involved in so-called "Black Budget", or covert unacknowledged projects. They described a decades long conspiracy to cover up extraterrestrial visitation to Earth. These unacknowledged special access projects are taking in at least 40 to 80 billion dollars per year. And the study of extraterrestrial technology in covert military programs. And, they are sitting on technologies that can change the world forever. This technology would liberate Earth from fossil fuels, environmental devastation, and poverty in a single generation."

"Without peace there can be no further progress on earth. The simple truth is this: We have reached the point in human evolution where the only possible future is a peaceful one. Now, there are many people who argue: "Oh, we're never peaceful and we'll always try to kill each other." The truth is most people don't want to go around murdering each other. Out of six billion people, most are actually very nice peaceful people. Unfortunately we have not been willing to restrain the few rabid dogs that routinely like to attack the flock."

"Some in these covert projects have misinterpreted certain ET actions: For example, when we tried to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon, to show the USSR how powerful America was, an extraterrestrial vehicle came in and intercepted it and destroyed it. Now, you could take that to be evidence that these ETs were hostile towards us, when in reality they were trying to protect facilities on the moon, and also the sanctity of space as a peaceful place free from weapons of mass destruction.But from the shoes of those humans who wanted to see that moon detonation happen, their frustration could lead to the assumption that this ET action was proof of their hostility! A number of such events have happened, where humans have misinterpreted ET actions as evidence of hostility, when in reality it was evidence of enlightenment. These extraterrestrial civilizations are simply trying to contain an immature and out-of-control militarized civilization on earth from escaping the biosphere and going out into space."

"I welcome the fact that releasing these technologies would require us to create an enforceable, sustainable, peaceful civilization just to survive. We're at the point now where every one knows we can't put off much longer dealing with these large structural and environmental issues. So when a solution comes along, it will focus people's attention and finally require us to do what we should have done decades ago."

"We have to be aware of the chaos, but we should not only focus on that. It's easy to dwell on the negative. But there is so much that's beautiful that's all around us and there's so much that's happening that's positive. We can discipline ourselves to dwell on that which is good and beautiful and draw that to us and bring it into the world. It isn't easy, because we live in a world that's increasingly harsh and destructive. But this propels us all the more to connect firmly to truth and to a deeper vision. We must have the courage to choose enlightenment, and take responsibility for our own evolution and the progress of humanity."

"When I met with Lord Hill Norton, in England — a five-star Admiral, "sea lord" and former MOD head... At one point, he asked me, "Why would they not tell me about this? I was head of the Ministry of Defense, and I was also head of MI-5 and MI-6.. I was head of the Military Committee for NATO! Yet I never knew about this... I only learned about it later, and I found out about it from people like Lord Mountbatten. Why wouldn't they tell me?" He was outraged that he was "out of the loop," just like Admiral Tom Wilson... head of Intelligence Joint Staff, and... CIA Director James Woolsey and on and on and on. I said, "Well, sir... What would you have done if you had found out that there was a transnational group that answered to no government in the world but had infiltrated almost every aspect of every government of any significance in the world; that had arrogated to itself, through a criminal enterprise and ruthless behavior ~ including murder and assassinations illegal control of the most important technologies ever discovered, including technologies capable of interstellar travel, technologies that could take the whole world off the need for fossil fuels, save the environment, and end poverty in the world; and that this group had utter contempt for the rule of law and for democracy and for the freedoms and welfare of the people, or even for the future of Earth?"

"He exclaimed, "I wouldn't have stood for it for one bloody moment!!" I said, "And that's why they never told you. You've just answered your own question." He asked, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "Because if you had known, and this would have been your response, you would have ended up like Jack Kennedy or like Lord Mountbatten, blown up by an alleged IRA bomb that was actually set by this rogue group. And you would have ended up like Marilyn Monroe and Mary Meyer and all these other people, who were killed for not going along with the secrecy You would have ended up like all the rest of them." Then I added, "And like, unfortunately, some of my group — like former CIA Director, Bill Colby" He just looked at me. He then muttered something to effect of, "Those bastards!"."

"We live in the most interesting of times. We're the last generation that will fully have the experience of both the old world and the new era. We're too close to it to really see it, but we have a beautiful station that is pivotal. It is unlike any generation before or that will come after. We are the generation of transformation. It is at once overwhelming and beautiful. We should be joyous and amazed at the extraordinary time we are in and the unparalleled opportunities we have. Efforts expended through the difficulty of this time, for this purpose- for the establishment of universal peace- will be honored and remembered for thousands of years. If we seize the opportunity, we are providing a service to humanity that no other generation could provide — and that's why we're here."

"So the question is: Just exactly what has to happen before the body politic learns this lesson? We have already hit peak oil production, and we are going to become like "Mad Max", the movie, fighting over the last barrel of oil. The time has come to do the right thing, and move our civilization to its next level of development. Are we willing to live with the rule of law, like a civilized world, or are we going to be cowardly and look the other way when rogue and illegal operations and 'Murder Incorporated' run roughshod over the interests of the people?...How much chaos and stupidity will transpire before we come out on the other side?"