Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Monday, January 20, 2020
And we're STILL not listening...
I listen to his speeches, I look a his images -- and I STILL can't believe, he was only 39 years old when they murdered him!!!
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Fourth of July: “Put Away the Flags” Remembering Howard Zinn on July 4th
From Global Research on July 4, 2019:
Related:
- 'Sick Of Using Us As Props': Veteran Calls Trump's July 4 Military-Style Celebration 'Insanely Inappropriate'
This article was first published by The Progressive and Global Research in July 2010
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, was the author of the best-selling “A People’s History of the United States” (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project in 2006.
Howard Zinn died on January 7 2010. Please read Matthew Rothschild’s “Thank you, Howard Zinn,” for more about his legacy.
The original source of this article is The ProgressiveCopyright © Howard Zinn, The Progressive, 2019
Related:
- 'Sick Of Using Us As Props': Veteran Calls Trump's July 4 Military-Style Celebration 'Insanely Inappropriate'
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
50 years ago today and, like Dr. King -- they're STILL gunning us down..."The Giant Triplets of Racism, Extreme Materialism and Militarism" -- when will we hear?
Friday, September 12, 2014
As I've said here before -- "Our young people get it!"
There Is No Future in War: Youth Rise Up, a Manifesto
(Statement written by Ben Norton, Tyra Walker, Anastasia Taylor, Alli McCracken, Colleen Moore, Jes Grobman, Ashley Lopez)
Once again, US politicians and pundits are beating the drums of war, trying to get our nation involved in yet another conflict. A few years ago it was Iran, with “all options on the table.” Last year it was a red line that threatened to drag us into the conflict in Syria. This time it’s Iraq.
We, the youth of America, have grown up in war, war war. War has become the new norm for our generation. But these conflicts—declared by older people but fought and paid for by young people—are robbing us of our future and we’re tired of it.
There is no future in war.
We, the youth of America, are taking a stand against war and reclaiming our future.
War does not work. Period.
War does not work from an economic perspective
In 2003 US politicians orchestrated the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq based on blatant lies—lies that have cost the American people over $3 trillion.
Imagine what we could have done with this money:
With $3 trillion dollars, we could have guaranteed free higher education for all interested Americans. Instead, we are wallowing in over $1 trillion in outstanding college loan debt.
With $3 trillion, we could have created a system of universal health care. Instead, affordable health care is still out of reach for many Americans and we have no idea if there will even be a Medicare system when we are old enough to retire.
With $3 trillion we could have renovated our decrepit public schools and crumbling public infrastructure, giving us the kind of foundation we need for a thriving nation in the decades to come.
With $3 trillion we could have created a national energy grid based not upon environmentally destructive fossil fuels, but upon renewable energy sources--something that our generation cares passionately about.
Our true foes—those endlessly gunning for war—have been waging an economic war against us. Our foes are the ones who say we must increase Pentagon spending while we cut food stamps, unemployment assistance, public transportation, and low-income housing. They are the ones who want to destroy the social safety net that past generations have worked so hard to build. They are the ones who underfund our public schools - which are more segregated today than they were under Jim Crow - and then privatize them. They are the ones who throw hundreds of thousands of young people in prison, thanks to the racist and classist war on drugs, and then privatize the prisons to exploit and profit off of incarcerated citizens who make close-to-zero wages.
Throwing money at war does nothing to address the real issues we face. We, the youth of our country, are the ones who will feel this pain. The cost of war is sucking us dry; it is burdening us with debts we will never be able to pay back.
And war doesn’t even work to create jobs. Politicians say they can’t cut the Pentagon budget because the weapons manufacturers create much-needed jobs. Yes, our generation need jobs. But if members of Congress really wants to use federal spending to help us find employment, the military is the worst investment. A $1 billion investment in military spending nets 11,600 jobs. The same investment in education reaps 29,100 jobs. Whether it’s education, healthcare or clean energy, investments in those sectors create many more job opportunities than the military. The military-industrial complex does a great job lining the pockets of politicians; it does a lousy job creating an economy that works for all.
War does not work from a national security and defense perspective
The war apologists claim war makes our future “safer” and “freer.” But since the tragic 9/11 attack, the US military response has made the world a more dangerous place. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO bombing of Libya, the use of predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and countless other examples of military operations have only increased violence and hatred. Iraqis and Afghans are certainly no safer and freer; we are certainly no safer and freer.
We refuse to let our brothers and sisters, both here and abroad, die for access to cheap Persian Gulf oil. The Iraqis, the Afghans, the Iranians, the Libyans, the Somalis, and the people of any other country our military circles like vultures, are not our enemies. They oppose terrorism more than we do; they are the ones who must bear its brunt. We must oppose US intervention not because we don’t care about them, but because we do.
War does not work from an environmental perspective.
War is not environmentally friendly. It never has been, and it never will be. Bombing destroys the environment. It damages forests and agricultural land. It ravages ecosystems, endangering species, even forcing some into extinction.
Bombing contaminates water and soil, often leaving it unsafe to use for centuries, even millennia. This is especially true with nuclear and chemical weapons, such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the missiles containing depleted uranium the US used in Iraq. And because of weapons like these, infant mortality, genetic mutation, and cancer rates are exponentially higher in the civilian areas targeted. Children in Fallujah, Iraq, a city hit hard by these weapons, are born without limbs and missing organs.
The environmental costs of war are clearly not limited to isolated moments; they persist for many lifetimes. Heavy military vehicles, in conjunction with deforestation and climate change, lead to the emission of toxic dust from the ground. Even if their homes and livelihoods haven’t been destroyed by bombs, citizens who inhale these toxins are much more susceptible to a wide variety of diseases and health problems.
The US Department of Defense has long been the country’s largest consumer of fossil fuels. Military vehicles consume obscene quantities of oil for even small tasks. If we truly care about reversing, or at least mitigating, anthropogenic climate change—what many scientists recognize as a literal threat to the future of the human species—eliminating war would be an incredibly effective first step.
War does not work from a human rights perspective
The world isn’t any safer and freer for the million Iraqi civilians who died. How is freedom supposed to come at the tip of a bomb?
The debate rages back and forth; “specialists” fill the TV airwaves, repackaging the same tired excuses we’ve heard for years. Most of these “experts” are old white males. The people actually affected by our bombs and our guns--mostly young people of color--are nowhere to be seen. Their voices are silenced, their voices shouted over by the corporate media, by hawkish politicians, and by the profit-hungry military contractors.
War does not work from a historical perspective
War has never been about freedom and liberation; war has always been about profit and empire. American historian Howard Zinn once said “Wars are fundamentally internal policies. Wars are fought in order to control the population at home.”
Military intervention gives US corporations free reign in the countries we destroy. We bomb the country, targeting public infrastructure, and our corporations build it back up again. Fat cat CEOs make millions, even billions; the country, the people of the country, are left with mountains of debt. Our corporations own their infrastructure, their industrial capital, their natural resources. War is always a lose-lose for the people. Economic and political elite in both countries will make a fortune; the people of both countries will be the ones who have to pay for this fortune.
Defenders and purveyors of war have always done empty lip service to ideals like “freedom” and “democracy”; they have always repeated tired, vacuous tropes about “assisting,” or even “liberating” peoples.
How can we trust a country that says its brutal military invasion and occupation is “humanitarian,” when, at the same moment, it is supporting repressive dictators around the world? Saddam Hussein was on the CIA payroll since the 1960s. While we were invading Iraq to “overthrow tyranny” and “free” the Iraqi people, we were supporting the King Fahd’s theocratic tyranny in Saudi Arabia, the brutally repressive Khalifa family in Bahrain, and Mubarak’s violent regime in Egypt, among countless other unsavory dictators.
When we invaded Afghanistan to “free” the Afghan people from the Taliban, the corporate media failed to mention that Ronald Reagan had supported the Mujahideen, who later became the Taliban, and the Contras throughout the 1980s. He called the latter “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” while they were disemboweling civilians in a campaign of terror.
These historical events are absolutely pertinent to contemporary discussions of war. We must learn from them, as to not repeat them in the future, as to not fall for the same past political tricks.
Our naysayers say we are against the troops. We are not against the troops. US troops are disproportionately from less-privileged backgrounds. Military recruiters target impoverished communities of color, and there are many recorded instances of them using deceptive tactics to get young citizens to sign long binding contracts. These are the troops that die in US military operations. They are not our enemies. We refuse to let our brothers and sisters be cannon fodder. The real people against the troops are the ones who send our country’s poor to die in rich people’s wars.
How many times do we have to be lied to, how many times do we have to be tricked, how many times do we have to be exploited until we say enough is enough? We are tired of war! War accomplishes nothing. War only fattens the wallets of economic and political elites, leaving millions dead in its wake. War only leads to more war, destroying the planet and emptying the national treasury in the process.
We, the youth of the United States of America, oppose war.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about the rest of the world; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our security; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our troops; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we aren’t concerned with our future; we oppose war precisely because we do.
There is no future in war. (HT CodePink)
Now -- if only OUR old asses would listen...
How many more of your "Wounded Warriors" are you willing to sacrifice for this confused and used fool as he ramps up going to war against ISIL/ISIS (or whatever name the West chooses to call them on any given day anyway)? And WHAT is Cheney talking about with his "our "inability to shape events" -- what has the alleged United States of America been doing BUT shaping events the world over???
Related:
- “STOP HITTING YOURSELF”
- Say ‘No’ to War and Media Propaganda
- Neocons Revive Syria ‘Regime Change’ Plan
- The Islamic State (ISIS) Used to Justify Renewed U.S. “Humanitarian Bombings” in Iraq and Syria
- The Islamic State, the “Caliphate Project” and the “Global War on Terrorism”
- Mid-East In Depth: Did the U S "Engineer" the ISIS Attack on Iraq from Syria?
(Statement written by Ben Norton, Tyra Walker, Anastasia Taylor, Alli McCracken, Colleen Moore, Jes Grobman, Ashley Lopez)
 |
| A peace sign printed on the American Flag is raised during a protest against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Archive / History Channel) |
Once again, US politicians and pundits are beating the drums of war, trying to get our nation involved in yet another conflict. A few years ago it was Iran, with “all options on the table.” Last year it was a red line that threatened to drag us into the conflict in Syria. This time it’s Iraq.
We, the youth of America, have grown up in war, war war. War has become the new norm for our generation. But these conflicts—declared by older people but fought and paid for by young people—are robbing us of our future and we’re tired of it.
There is no future in war.
We, the youth of America, are taking a stand against war and reclaiming our future.
War does not work. Period.
War does not work from an economic perspective
In 2003 US politicians orchestrated the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq based on blatant lies—lies that have cost the American people over $3 trillion.
Imagine what we could have done with this money:
With $3 trillion dollars, we could have guaranteed free higher education for all interested Americans. Instead, we are wallowing in over $1 trillion in outstanding college loan debt.
With $3 trillion, we could have created a system of universal health care. Instead, affordable health care is still out of reach for many Americans and we have no idea if there will even be a Medicare system when we are old enough to retire.
With $3 trillion we could have renovated our decrepit public schools and crumbling public infrastructure, giving us the kind of foundation we need for a thriving nation in the decades to come.
With $3 trillion we could have created a national energy grid based not upon environmentally destructive fossil fuels, but upon renewable energy sources--something that our generation cares passionately about.
Our true foes—those endlessly gunning for war—have been waging an economic war against us. Our foes are the ones who say we must increase Pentagon spending while we cut food stamps, unemployment assistance, public transportation, and low-income housing. They are the ones who want to destroy the social safety net that past generations have worked so hard to build. They are the ones who underfund our public schools - which are more segregated today than they were under Jim Crow - and then privatize them. They are the ones who throw hundreds of thousands of young people in prison, thanks to the racist and classist war on drugs, and then privatize the prisons to exploit and profit off of incarcerated citizens who make close-to-zero wages.
Throwing money at war does nothing to address the real issues we face. We, the youth of our country, are the ones who will feel this pain. The cost of war is sucking us dry; it is burdening us with debts we will never be able to pay back.
And war doesn’t even work to create jobs. Politicians say they can’t cut the Pentagon budget because the weapons manufacturers create much-needed jobs. Yes, our generation need jobs. But if members of Congress really wants to use federal spending to help us find employment, the military is the worst investment. A $1 billion investment in military spending nets 11,600 jobs. The same investment in education reaps 29,100 jobs. Whether it’s education, healthcare or clean energy, investments in those sectors create many more job opportunities than the military. The military-industrial complex does a great job lining the pockets of politicians; it does a lousy job creating an economy that works for all.
War does not work from a national security and defense perspective
The war apologists claim war makes our future “safer” and “freer.” But since the tragic 9/11 attack, the US military response has made the world a more dangerous place. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO bombing of Libya, the use of predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and countless other examples of military operations have only increased violence and hatred. Iraqis and Afghans are certainly no safer and freer; we are certainly no safer and freer.
We refuse to let our brothers and sisters, both here and abroad, die for access to cheap Persian Gulf oil. The Iraqis, the Afghans, the Iranians, the Libyans, the Somalis, and the people of any other country our military circles like vultures, are not our enemies. They oppose terrorism more than we do; they are the ones who must bear its brunt. We must oppose US intervention not because we don’t care about them, but because we do.
War does not work from an environmental perspective.
War is not environmentally friendly. It never has been, and it never will be. Bombing destroys the environment. It damages forests and agricultural land. It ravages ecosystems, endangering species, even forcing some into extinction.
Bombing contaminates water and soil, often leaving it unsafe to use for centuries, even millennia. This is especially true with nuclear and chemical weapons, such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the missiles containing depleted uranium the US used in Iraq. And because of weapons like these, infant mortality, genetic mutation, and cancer rates are exponentially higher in the civilian areas targeted. Children in Fallujah, Iraq, a city hit hard by these weapons, are born without limbs and missing organs.
The environmental costs of war are clearly not limited to isolated moments; they persist for many lifetimes. Heavy military vehicles, in conjunction with deforestation and climate change, lead to the emission of toxic dust from the ground. Even if their homes and livelihoods haven’t been destroyed by bombs, citizens who inhale these toxins are much more susceptible to a wide variety of diseases and health problems.
The US Department of Defense has long been the country’s largest consumer of fossil fuels. Military vehicles consume obscene quantities of oil for even small tasks. If we truly care about reversing, or at least mitigating, anthropogenic climate change—what many scientists recognize as a literal threat to the future of the human species—eliminating war would be an incredibly effective first step.
War does not work from a human rights perspective
The world isn’t any safer and freer for the million Iraqi civilians who died. How is freedom supposed to come at the tip of a bomb?
The debate rages back and forth; “specialists” fill the TV airwaves, repackaging the same tired excuses we’ve heard for years. Most of these “experts” are old white males. The people actually affected by our bombs and our guns--mostly young people of color--are nowhere to be seen. Their voices are silenced, their voices shouted over by the corporate media, by hawkish politicians, and by the profit-hungry military contractors.
War does not work from a historical perspective
War has never been about freedom and liberation; war has always been about profit and empire. American historian Howard Zinn once said “Wars are fundamentally internal policies. Wars are fought in order to control the population at home.”
Military intervention gives US corporations free reign in the countries we destroy. We bomb the country, targeting public infrastructure, and our corporations build it back up again. Fat cat CEOs make millions, even billions; the country, the people of the country, are left with mountains of debt. Our corporations own their infrastructure, their industrial capital, their natural resources. War is always a lose-lose for the people. Economic and political elite in both countries will make a fortune; the people of both countries will be the ones who have to pay for this fortune.
Defenders and purveyors of war have always done empty lip service to ideals like “freedom” and “democracy”; they have always repeated tired, vacuous tropes about “assisting,” or even “liberating” peoples.
How can we trust a country that says its brutal military invasion and occupation is “humanitarian,” when, at the same moment, it is supporting repressive dictators around the world? Saddam Hussein was on the CIA payroll since the 1960s. While we were invading Iraq to “overthrow tyranny” and “free” the Iraqi people, we were supporting the King Fahd’s theocratic tyranny in Saudi Arabia, the brutally repressive Khalifa family in Bahrain, and Mubarak’s violent regime in Egypt, among countless other unsavory dictators.
When we invaded Afghanistan to “free” the Afghan people from the Taliban, the corporate media failed to mention that Ronald Reagan had supported the Mujahideen, who later became the Taliban, and the Contras throughout the 1980s. He called the latter “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” while they were disemboweling civilians in a campaign of terror.
These historical events are absolutely pertinent to contemporary discussions of war. We must learn from them, as to not repeat them in the future, as to not fall for the same past political tricks.
Our naysayers say we are against the troops. We are not against the troops. US troops are disproportionately from less-privileged backgrounds. Military recruiters target impoverished communities of color, and there are many recorded instances of them using deceptive tactics to get young citizens to sign long binding contracts. These are the troops that die in US military operations. They are not our enemies. We refuse to let our brothers and sisters be cannon fodder. The real people against the troops are the ones who send our country’s poor to die in rich people’s wars.
How many times do we have to be lied to, how many times do we have to be tricked, how many times do we have to be exploited until we say enough is enough? We are tired of war! War accomplishes nothing. War only fattens the wallets of economic and political elites, leaving millions dead in its wake. War only leads to more war, destroying the planet and emptying the national treasury in the process.
We, the youth of the United States of America, oppose war.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about the rest of the world; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our security; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our troops; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we aren’t concerned with our future; we oppose war precisely because we do.
There is no future in war. (HT CodePink)
Now -- if only OUR old asses would listen...
How many more of your "Wounded Warriors" are you willing to sacrifice for this confused and used fool as he ramps up going to war against ISIL/ISIS (or whatever name the West chooses to call them on any given day anyway)? And WHAT is Cheney talking about with his "our "inability to shape events" -- what has the alleged United States of America been doing BUT shaping events the world over???
Related:
- “STOP HITTING YOURSELF”
- Say ‘No’ to War and Media Propaganda
- Neocons Revive Syria ‘Regime Change’ Plan
- The Islamic State (ISIS) Used to Justify Renewed U.S. “Humanitarian Bombings” in Iraq and Syria
- The Islamic State, the “Caliphate Project” and the “Global War on Terrorism”
- Mid-East In Depth: Did the U S "Engineer" the ISIS Attack on Iraq from Syria?
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Punked by Putin -- and rightfully so
(Updated below)
Russian president Vladimir Putin not only called the Obama Administration's bluff by offering to intervene in Syria, he made the Changeling look like the warmongering, Murderer-in-Chief that he is -- to the entire world. Большое спасибо, президент Путин!
In his September 11 op-ed, Putin said to America -- what I'm sure -- plenty other countries are feeling. He took the Changeling to the wood shed (with a few licks to Shrub for good measure), by using his own "rule of law" rhetoric to slap him in the face. Who woulda thunk it? The ex(?)-KGB guy comes out smellin' like a rose as he artfully lays bare all the crimes against humanity the U.S. government has committed over the last 12 years. Priceless!
I'm sure the Zionist AIPACers, as well as the New World Order PNACers (now the FDDers) are mad as hell right now that their little chicken hawk (emphasis on chicken for so-o-o-o many reasons) mucked up their plans to steamroll the Middle East. Good! I'm sick of all of them any-damned-way.
John Pilger speaks to how their "absolute power corrupts absolutely" here:
And wonder of wonders, Putin's gambit worked:
***UPDATE: Well, it didn't take long for the Changeling to get those new "marching orders"-- Obama to host Benjamin Netanyahu at White House:
And of course, Israel's little puppet fell right in line with this little veiled threat, revealing how little he really cares about those children allegedly gassed by Assad and how much he really cares about Israel:
Related:
- The Honey Obadger: He Don’t Give a Shit
- Taking Exception to Exceptionalism
- Continuity of Military Agenda: Syria Catastrophe Engineered Under Bush, Executed Verbatim Under Obama
- Empire, Hypocrisy and Deflection
- Assad tells Obama to stop arming rebels, or no deal
- US Grandstands on Chemical Weapons Treaty While Violating It
- Syria Distraction Gone, What Will Obama Use to Cover Passage of TPP or a Comparable Sneak Attack on the Middle Class?
- Background and Articles relating to Project for a New American Century
Russian president Vladimir Putin not only called the Obama Administration's bluff by offering to intervene in Syria, he made the Changeling look like the warmongering, Murderer-in-Chief that he is -- to the entire world. Большое спасибо, президент Путин!
 |
| (Photo courtesy of Leon Kuhn) |
I'm sure the Zionist AIPACers, as well as the New World Order PNACers (now the FDDers) are mad as hell right now that their little chicken hawk (emphasis on chicken for so-o-o-o many reasons) mucked up their plans to steamroll the Middle East. Good! I'm sick of all of them any-damned-way.
John Pilger speaks to how their "absolute power corrupts absolutely" here:
Under the "weak" Obama, militarism has risen perhaps as never before. With not a single tank on the White House lawn, a military coup has taken place in Washington. In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, and piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration. Behind their beribboned façade, more former US soldiers are killing themselves than are dying on battlefields. Last year, 6,500 veterans took their own lives. Put out more flags.Read that last line again -- especially all you Black, "symbolism" folk (Soror Norton, are you listening?). Quite frankly, I could give two shits about a little boy touching the Changeling's hair in the Oval Office -- we're talking about the MURDER of non-white peoples in which he's voluntarily complicit on a huge scale! How's that for "symbolism?" Wake the hell up, people (trust me, critical thinking is your friend)! This is not about Republicans versus Democrats, Family. That's some manufactured shit, specifically designed to delude. They're all really the same -- none of whom is "us."
The historian Norman Pollack calls this "liberal fascism". "For goose-steppers," he wrote, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while." Every Tuesday, the "humanitarian" Obama personally oversees a worldwide terror network of drones that "bugsplat" people, their rescuers and mourners. In the west's comfort zones, the first black leader of the land of slavery still feels good, as if his very existence represents a social advance, regardless of his trail of blood. This obeisance to a symbol has all but destroyed the US anti-war movement: Obama's singular achievement. (all emphasis mine)
And wonder of wonders, Putin's gambit worked:
The just announced U.S.-Russia agreement in Geneva on a "joint determination to ensure the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons (CW) program in the soonest and safest manner" sounds the death knell to an attempt by Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to get the U.S. into the war in Syria.For now, the Changeling's marching orders have changed (cuz he ain't runnin' Jack!). But don't hold your breath. As history dictates -- he'll get new ones :
***UPDATE: Well, it didn't take long for the Changeling to get those new "marching orders"-- Obama to host Benjamin Netanyahu at White House:
Netanyahu said earlier Tuesday that Iran would be at the top of his agenda.Um, Bibi? Stop lying, mkay? The IAEA has confirmed, time and again, that Iran's "nuclear" program is currently only being used for civilian energy and medicine. It has no weapons-grade nuclear program unlike Israel's stockpile (thanks to Dr. Vanunu, we all know unequivocally -- you do have a stockpile!). That said, I see no reason why this sovereign nation shouldn't develop a weapons-grade nuclear program to defend themselves against the likes of those Hitler, Jr. Zionists who are already oppressing their brethren in Palestine.
“I intend to focus on the question of stopping Iran's nuclear program, an actual halt to the nuclear program," the Israeli leader said. "And until this is achieved, the pressure on Iran should be intensified and not eased."
Netanyahu also pressed for the United States to strike Syria after an August chemical weapons attack attributed to strongman Bashar Assad’s regime. (emphasis mine)
And of course, Israel's little puppet fell right in line with this little veiled threat, revealing how little he really cares about those children allegedly gassed by Assad and how much he really cares about Israel:
However, Obama recently warned that Iran should not be emboldened by his decision to call off a strike on Syria.Was that a Freudian slip exposing Israel in his second sentence? Nah, he doesn't have the guts to do anything like that. He'd rather be led around by the nose into a war for which he will be eternally blamed -- way to literally "go down" in history, Mr. First Black President. {smdh}
“What the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue,” Obama said during an interview this week with ABC. “The threat against Iran — against Israel — that a nuclear Iran poses, is much closer to our core interests. A nuclear arms race in the region is something that would be profoundly destabilizing.” (emphasis mine)
Related:
- The Honey Obadger: He Don’t Give a Shit
- Taking Exception to Exceptionalism
- Continuity of Military Agenda: Syria Catastrophe Engineered Under Bush, Executed Verbatim Under Obama
- Empire, Hypocrisy and Deflection
- Assad tells Obama to stop arming rebels, or no deal
- US Grandstands on Chemical Weapons Treaty While Violating It
- Syria Distraction Gone, What Will Obama Use to Cover Passage of TPP or a Comparable Sneak Attack on the Middle Class?
- Background and Articles relating to Project for a New American Century
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Another Black tool lies us into war, only this one is a Nobel Peace Prize winning warmonger
Seems the American public hasn't learned a damned thing about being lied into war. Remember when white supremacy put a Black face on that one too -- props and all?
Margaret Kimberley's Colin Powell Busted post over at Freedom Rider a couple days ago included a photo of a bust of Powell holding up that vial at the U.N. as he lied us into Iraq. Stunning likeness, no?
I swear, tools will do anything to be in the spotlight. Powell's lies, immortalized in bronze and concrete, will forever be a reminder of what falling for anything will do to you. Not only will the Murder-in-Chief's homage be way grander than a bust once they're finished with him (Impeachment? International War Crimes Tribunal? -- one can only hope), it'll be fodder for "stupid Black people in power" jokes -- for years to come.
I've been sitting here shaking my head incredulously as I keep reading the same kind of bullshit the tools in the White House and the mainstream media served up to "we the people" in the run-up to the Iraq war. This level of hubris is just unconscionable. Do they think all of us are stupid enough to believe them -- again? Or do they just not give a damn? Don't bother answering, both questions were rhetorical.
I didn't believe them from the beginning and I sure don't believe them now. Given the recently released declassified CIA documents showing how dirty their hands were during their "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" shenanigans during the Iraq/Iran War, coupled with the facts in this unsettling information, there's certainly no reason for anybody else to believe them either.
If there were chemical weapons used (and that's a huge "if"), I believe the West and Israel are involved in providing them to the rebels. Why? For one, this is what ole Pinnocchio said today:
Anyway, there are a number of answers to that, "Why?" and greater minds than mine do a way better job of articulating the myriad of reasons than I ever possibly could. So, here's Pepe Escobar, my favorite "roving correspondent" for Asia Times, laying out some very compelling points on GRTV:
And here, he not only reiterates them, he shares his take on the Changeling's ass-backward foreign policy, with a few observations from Stephen Schlesinger on RT News:
Family, please stop letting the Changeling bamboozle you, sullying Dr. King's memory with the implication that he's some representation of anything for which he stood. The only thing Dr. King had to say that even remotely describes this White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy's trojan horse is -- that he represents "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
Make no mistake people, Obama is no King (though in a weird, either Freudian-slip or just plain ignorant way, he's better described as the white folk's, "Joshua") -- as evidenced by the extremely huge chasm between his words and motivations for a strike on Syria, and these shared by Dr. King in his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech (posted in the sidebar -- if for nothing else but nostalgia's sake, do take the time to listen to it):
Related:
- Prince Bandar and Zionist lobby partnering to force Obama into prolonged war with Syria
- The World Has Condemned Bashar al-Assad For Firing Chemical Weapons — But Did He Actually Do it?
- U.S. About to Act with Impunity and Attack Syria
- The Drums of War are Beating: Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria
- Syria regime vows to defend itself
- The Prince: Meet the Man Who Co-Opted Democracy in the Middle East
Margaret Kimberley's Colin Powell Busted post over at Freedom Rider a couple days ago included a photo of a bust of Powell holding up that vial at the U.N. as he lied us into Iraq. Stunning likeness, no?
 |
| (Photo courtesy Merrily Kerr, New York Art Tours) |
I've been sitting here shaking my head incredulously as I keep reading the same kind of bullshit the tools in the White House and the mainstream media served up to "we the people" in the run-up to the Iraq war. This level of hubris is just unconscionable. Do they think all of us are stupid enough to believe them -- again? Or do they just not give a damn? Don't bother answering, both questions were rhetorical.
I didn't believe them from the beginning and I sure don't believe them now. Given the recently released declassified CIA documents showing how dirty their hands were during their "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" shenanigans during the Iraq/Iran War, coupled with the facts in this unsettling information, there's certainly no reason for anybody else to believe them either.
If there were chemical weapons used (and that's a huge "if"), I believe the West and Israel are involved in providing them to the rebels. Why? For one, this is what ole Pinnocchio said today:
“First of all, I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line,” Obama said, despite his statement a year ago that President Bashar Assad would cross a “red line” with him if chemical weapons were deployed in Syria’s civil war.If that's not Zionist-speak, harkening back to the days of the Jewish Holocaust when the world, the international community sat back and watched Hitler's massacre in Germany, I don't know what is (like the Zionists care more about the lives of those oft-labeled, "sand niggers" in Syria than they do their capitalist plundering of their land and resources -- What? You know as well as I do that's what those of a decidedly alabaster hue call them, so quit playing). I swear, Shirley Chisholm must be rolling over in her grave too as it is so very apparent this man is, unlike her -- definitely both "Bought" and "Bossed." {smdh}
“So when I said that my calculus would be altered by chemical weapons, which the overall consensus of humanity says is wrong — that’s not something I just made up. I didn’t pick it out of thin air,” Obama said. “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line, and America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line.” (emphasis mine)
Anyway, there are a number of answers to that, "Why?" and greater minds than mine do a way better job of articulating the myriad of reasons than I ever possibly could. So, here's Pepe Escobar, my favorite "roving correspondent" for Asia Times, laying out some very compelling points on GRTV:
And here, he not only reiterates them, he shares his take on the Changeling's ass-backward foreign policy, with a few observations from Stephen Schlesinger on RT News:
Family, please stop letting the Changeling bamboozle you, sullying Dr. King's memory with the implication that he's some representation of anything for which he stood. The only thing Dr. King had to say that even remotely describes this White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy's trojan horse is -- that he represents "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
Make no mistake people, Obama is no King (though in a weird, either Freudian-slip or just plain ignorant way, he's better described as the white folk's, "Joshua") -- as evidenced by the extremely huge chasm between his words and motivations for a strike on Syria, and these shared by Dr. King in his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech (posted in the sidebar -- if for nothing else but nostalgia's sake, do take the time to listen to it):
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.Bet the Nobel Peace Prize Committee's feeling pre-t-t-t-y damned foolish right about now. If they're not, they sure as hell should be! Seems they not only erroneously thought all Black folks looked alike -- but thought alike as well. {smdh}
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? (emphasis mine)
Related:
- Prince Bandar and Zionist lobby partnering to force Obama into prolonged war with Syria
- The World Has Condemned Bashar al-Assad For Firing Chemical Weapons — But Did He Actually Do it?
- U.S. About to Act with Impunity and Attack Syria
- The Drums of War are Beating: Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria
- Syria regime vows to defend itself
- The Prince: Meet the Man Who Co-Opted Democracy in the Middle East
Friday, August 9, 2013
This, my fellow Americans, is what terrorism looks like -- recognize it? You should, since it continues in our names
Thank you so much Dr. Kohls.
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Un-Censored Version
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls
68 years ago, at 11:02 am on August 9th, 1945, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan. That bomb was the second and last atomic weapon that had as its target a civilian city. Somewhat ironically, as will be elaborated upon later in this essay, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan and ground zero was the largest cathedral in the Orient.
These baptized and confirmed airmen did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride. There was no way that the crew could not have known that what they were participating in met the definition of an international war crime (according to the Nuremberg Principles that were very soon to be used to justify the execution of many German Nazis).
It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst considerable chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government had been searching for months for a way to honorably end the war. The only obstacle to surrender had been the Roosevelt/Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese that prolonged the war and kept Japan from surrendering months earlier.
The Russian army had declared war against Japan on August 8, hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war represented a powerful incentive for Japan to end the war quickly and they much preferred surrendering to the US rather than to Russia. A quick end to the war was important to the US as well. It did not want to divide any of the spoils of war with Russia.
The Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had made a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional fire-bombing (using napalm) campaigns that had burned to the ground 60+ major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. That list of protected cities included, at one time or another Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. These relatively undamaged cities were off-limits from incendiary terror bombings but were to be preserved as possible targets for the new “gimmick” weapons of mass destruction.
Scientific curiosity was a motivation in choosing the targeted cities. The military and the scientists needed to know what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead. Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as much as other cities. Little did they know.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress that had been christened Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s plutonium bomb was in the bomb bay, code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston Churchill.
The only field test (blasphemously code-named “Trinity”) of a nuclear weapon had occurred just three weeks earlier (July 16, 1945) at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lava rock that resulted from the heat of that blast (twice the temperature of the sun) can still found at the site today. It is called trinitite.
The reality of what had happened at Hiroshima was only slowly becoming apparent to the fascist military leaders in Tokyo. It took 2 – 3 days after Hiroshima was incinerated before Japan’s Supreme War Council was able to even partially comprehend what had happened there, to make rational decisions and to discuss again the possibility of surrender.
But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council was meeting that morning in Tokyo, Bock’s Car and the rest of the armada of B-29s was already approaching Japan – under radio silence. The dropping of the second bomb had initially been planned for August 11, but bad weather had been forecast, and the mission was moved up to August 9.
With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at the primary target, but Kokura was clouded over. So after futilely circling over the city three times, there was no break in the clouds, and, running seriously low on fuel in the process, the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
The history of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest catholic church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral (completed in 1917), but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the location where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549. The Christian community survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of the church in Japan, it became obvious to the Japanese rulers that Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan, and it didn’t take too long for all Europeans to be expelled from the country – as well as their foreign religion. All aspects of Christianity, including the new Japanese converts, became the target of brutal persecutions.
By 1600, being a Christian was a capital crime in Japan. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their new religion suffered torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the growing Japanese Christian community had built the massive Urakami Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that the massive Cathedral was one of two Nagasaki landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site 31,000 feet overhead, he identified the cathedral through a break in the clouds and ordered the drop.
At 11:02 am, during morning mass, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. Ground Zero was the persecuted, vibrant, surviving center of Japanese Christianity.
The Nagasaki Christian death count
Since the Cathedral was the epicenter of the blast, most Nagasaki Christians did not survive. 6000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 died as a direct result of the bomb. Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school disappeared into black smoke or chunks of charred remains Tens of thousands of innocent Shinto and Buddhist Japanese also died instantly and hundreds of thousands were mortally wounded, some of whose progeny are still in the process of slowly dying from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium.
What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, destroy Japanese Christianity, American Christians did in 9 seconds. Even today those who are members of Christian churches in Japan represent a fraction of 1% of the population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services is 30. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a thriving church.
~#~#~#~
The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Un-Censored Version
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls
These baptized and confirmed airmen did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride. There was no way that the crew could not have known that what they were participating in met the definition of an international war crime (according to the Nuremberg Principles that were very soon to be used to justify the execution of many German Nazis).
It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst considerable chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government had been searching for months for a way to honorably end the war. The only obstacle to surrender had been the Roosevelt/Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese that prolonged the war and kept Japan from surrendering months earlier.
The Russian army had declared war against Japan on August 8, hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war represented a powerful incentive for Japan to end the war quickly and they much preferred surrendering to the US rather than to Russia. A quick end to the war was important to the US as well. It did not want to divide any of the spoils of war with Russia.
The Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had made a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional fire-bombing (using napalm) campaigns that had burned to the ground 60+ major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. That list of protected cities included, at one time or another Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. These relatively undamaged cities were off-limits from incendiary terror bombings but were to be preserved as possible targets for the new “gimmick” weapons of mass destruction.
Scientific curiosity was a motivation in choosing the targeted cities. The military and the scientists needed to know what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead. Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as much as other cities. Little did they know.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress that had been christened Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s plutonium bomb was in the bomb bay, code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston Churchill.
The only field test (blasphemously code-named “Trinity”) of a nuclear weapon had occurred just three weeks earlier (July 16, 1945) at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lava rock that resulted from the heat of that blast (twice the temperature of the sun) can still found at the site today. It is called trinitite.
The reality of what had happened at Hiroshima was only slowly becoming apparent to the fascist military leaders in Tokyo. It took 2 – 3 days after Hiroshima was incinerated before Japan’s Supreme War Council was able to even partially comprehend what had happened there, to make rational decisions and to discuss again the possibility of surrender.
But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council was meeting that morning in Tokyo, Bock’s Car and the rest of the armada of B-29s was already approaching Japan – under radio silence. The dropping of the second bomb had initially been planned for August 11, but bad weather had been forecast, and the mission was moved up to August 9.
With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at the primary target, but Kokura was clouded over. So after futilely circling over the city three times, there was no break in the clouds, and, running seriously low on fuel in the process, the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
The history of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest catholic church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral (completed in 1917), but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the location where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549. The Christian community survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of the church in Japan, it became obvious to the Japanese rulers that Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan, and it didn’t take too long for all Europeans to be expelled from the country – as well as their foreign religion. All aspects of Christianity, including the new Japanese converts, became the target of brutal persecutions.
By 1600, being a Christian was a capital crime in Japan. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their new religion suffered torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the growing Japanese Christian community had built the massive Urakami Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that the massive Cathedral was one of two Nagasaki landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site 31,000 feet overhead, he identified the cathedral through a break in the clouds and ordered the drop.
At 11:02 am, during morning mass, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. Ground Zero was the persecuted, vibrant, surviving center of Japanese Christianity.
The Nagasaki Christian death count
Since the Cathedral was the epicenter of the blast, most Nagasaki Christians did not survive. 6000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 died as a direct result of the bomb. Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school disappeared into black smoke or chunks of charred remains Tens of thousands of innocent Shinto and Buddhist Japanese also died instantly and hundreds of thousands were mortally wounded, some of whose progeny are still in the process of slowly dying from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium.
What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, destroy Japanese Christianity, American Christians did in 9 seconds. Even today those who are members of Christian churches in Japan represent a fraction of 1% of the population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services is 30. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a thriving church.
Friday, January 18, 2013
From Côte d'Ivoire, to Libya, to Mali -- the FUKUS "War on Terror" in Africa, nothing but neocolonialism run amok
As the "usual suspects" (France, the UK and the US) continue their neocolonial incursions into Africa for land, resources and veritable world domination -- the string-pullers prepare for the master distraction of the Puppet-in-Chief's second coronation. And, as has been the case for his first four years, no "Black Agenda" will be realized anywhere in the world during the next four, if we can't come together and at least --
- Stop dreamily training our eyes and minds on the Changeling;
- Realize our combined "strength-in-numbers" across the diaspora and in Africa;
- Stop living the definition of insanity (doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results) and,
- Begin to understand and recognize the patterns of imperialism which, today, manifest themselves as neocolonialism.
Henningsen: Mali War Retaliation: World Police Protecting Corporate Interests in Africa
35 foreign hostages held captive at a gas field in Algeria have reportedly been killed in the operation to free them. 15 of the captors are also thought to have died, some people are apparently still being held. The local media suggests Algerian forces attacked a convoy of kidnappers and captives from the air.
Militants first attacked the complex on Wednesday, killing at least two of the staff and seizing dozens. The hostage-takers were demanding an end to the French-led combat action against insurgents in neighboring Mali. And there, the operation has intensified.
French troops are now on the ground in support of a heavy air campaign against Al-Qaeda-linked groups. The army has also received logistical support from its NATO allies, while the EU is preparing to send hundreds of military personnel to train the Malian army. (emphasis mine).
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Delivered April 4 1967
Given what is now transpiring in Algeria and Mali, it's quite obvious that Dr. King, among other true, leaders dedicated to our self-determination, had long ago been prescient about these exact outcomes. The revolutionary, African leader of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, even more so.
Nkrumah's spirit looms large in the person of Sister Affiong L. Affiong, co-founder of the Pan-African Women's Network Moyo wa Taifa and Executive Director of the Moyo Solidarity Centre based in the UK and Ghana. I first heard this sister speak on this Sons of Malcolm post. There, as in the video below, she not only fervently address the patterns of imperialism and neocolonialism, she vociferously calls for the identical solutions to combat them, as articulated by Nkrumah, Lumumba, Malcom and Garvey -- Pan-Africanism. Do listen carefully, as the sound is not the best:
Dr. John Henrik Clark instructs here that:
"...the Black Race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed...During the period in West African history -- from the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moorish invasion in 1591, the City of Timbuktu, with the University of Sankore in the Songhay Empire, was the intellectual center of Africa."The neocolonialist-backed insurgents in Mali have all but erased the great historical ruins of the "The El Dorado of Africa" with the help of imperialism -- I have to wonder if it was by design.
Instead of reading the daily diet of MSM propaganda on Mali, please check out the links below (from bottom-to-top) for a clearer picture of the ongoing recolonization of The Continent.
UPDATE: Family, this primer (from my favorite source of non-MSM, unbiased information, "The Roving Eye," Pepe Escobar) is instructive of the depths to which FUKUS has gone, and will continue to go, to remain true -- to that aptly coined acronym, in Africa. A bit long, but well worth the read.
- Mauritanian Consensus Against French Intervention in Mali
-'THE WAR IS IN MALI, THE TARGET IS ALGERIA' - ABDEL BARI ATWAN
-The Geopolitical Reordering of Africa: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Northern Mali, France “Comes to the Rescue”
- Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Shadow Wars in Africa
- Namibian Government Blames NATO for Mali Unrest
- The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Glen Ford -- "making it plain"
Please, follow the source link to the podcast and hear views rarely shared in the MSM.
Related:
Humanitarian Coverup: Why is Obama Silent Over the New Congo War?
Friday, November 16, 2012
A Colin Powell, WMD lecture redux?
Well, it seems it's not enough for the Changeling to back Israel's bloody hands -- seems he's gearing up to get the hands of your sons, daughters, husbands and wives a little bloody as well -- (h/t Pan-African News Wire):
Okay, y'all really got to be shittin' me!! You mean to tell me that all of you, so washed in Obama-love, will fall for this bullshit -- again! -- just because it's coming from Chocolate Jesus! If you are -- I tell you, he's the BEST, damned, deus ex machina (a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty) money could buy -- and they've paid billions!
Come on people! You watched Colin Powell, lie his integrity into the toilet for Shrub & Co. with all those, made-for-TV, show-and-tell diagrams about Iraq's WMDs at the U.N. Don't fall for this let-us-murder-more-folk trick again! Unless of course, you don't mind sending your loved ones into harm's way while his are snug as a bug in a rug. Based on my personal experience, it truly is not worth it -- but you decide.
Pentagon Has Plans to Intervene In Syria Under Guise of Seizing "WMD"
Pentagon Says 75,000 Troops Might Be Needed to Seize Syria Chemical Arms
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has told the Obama administration that any military effort to seize Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons would require upward of 75,000 troops, amid increasing concern that the militant group Hezbollah has set up small training camps close to some of the chemical weapons depots, according to senior American officials...
...Mr. Obama has been clear for more than a year that he would resist direct American intervention, but in August he said one circumstance would cause him to revisit that position. “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he said at a news conference. “That would change my calculus.”
Mr. Obama brought those concerns up again in a news conference on Wednesday, saying that the United States was in close contact with Turkey and Jordan “and obviously Israel, which is having already grave concerns as we do about, for example, movements of chemical weapons that might occur in such a chaotic atmosphere and that could have an impact not just within Syria but on the region as a whole.”...
“There is credible information that the Assad regime has been upgrading and expanding its chemical weapons arsenal, which needs to be maintained,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A credible delivery capability is also needed, hence the North Korean angle.”
The estimation that it would take 75,000 troops to neutralize the chemical weapons grew out of what Mr. Obama, in his August news conference, referred to as extensive contingency planning for how the United States would respond if the chemical weapons were on the move or appeared vulnerable. (all emphasis mine)
"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!"
Okay, y'all really got to be shittin' me!! You mean to tell me that all of you, so washed in Obama-love, will fall for this bullshit -- again! -- just because it's coming from Chocolate Jesus! If you are -- I tell you, he's the BEST, damned, deus ex machina (a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty) money could buy -- and they've paid billions!
Come on people! You watched Colin Powell, lie his integrity into the toilet for Shrub & Co. with all those, made-for-TV, show-and-tell diagrams about Iraq's WMDs at the U.N. Don't fall for this let-us-murder-more-folk trick again! Unless of course, you don't mind sending your loved ones into harm's way while his are snug as a bug in a rug. Based on my personal experience, it truly is not worth it -- but you decide.
Monday, October 1, 2012
How's that "War of Necessity" working out for you?
Remember that? (full bloviating text here)
Three years later -- boots still on the ground, explain just how wrong the "Nobel Peace Prize" doppelgänger really was {smdh}:
Related
- Karzai: U.S. fosters corruption in Afghanistan
-Battered NATO considering early Afghanistan withdrawal
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Update: "Tails to kites" -- America, Israel and the megalomania of exceptionalism
I'd initially incorporated this into the previous post as an update, but reading it again this morning, it felt buried. I decided to dig it out because the connect-the-dots observation was one that shouldn't be overlooked.
~#~
There are layers of "dog-whistles"; some too ridiculous to seriously consider (Republicans do this; Democrats do that -- as if there's any difference), some too serious not to (Zionist manipulation and decimation of a people; sanctions; fomenting rebellions; lying the country into wars).
But at the end of the day, they're all pretty much "dog whistles," intended to interrupt critical thinking and distract from the one thing, to never forget to remember about imperialism -- always follow the money.
Bro. Amenta's comment here, not only reminded me not to forget, but to tell me a little something new:
Deb, this is an excellent post. It describes the wickedness with which Is-Ra-El operates in that region with the blessing of the U.S.
However, the attack on Iran has little to do with it's nuclear program, and by the way there is NO nuclear program in existance on this Earth that is soley for the purpose of "cheap" energy. The waste product is ALWAYS used for weaponry.
That aside, this bluffing of a combat attack on Iran is merely a veil for real war that is going on.
In Feb 2008 Iran began its Iranian Oil Bourse which began setting prices of oil on the French Stock Exchange. Prior to the advent of the Iranian Oil Bourse only the U.S. and her agencies set the price of oil each and every day. And, all oil bought and sold the world over had to be purchased with the U.S. Dollar aka the Petro Dollar. When Iran set in motion it's Oil Bourse the U.S. began sabre rattling even making plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.
At any rate, Iran began setting oil prices in 2008 and on top of that requested that whomever bought oil from them pay in other currencies than the U.S. Dollar aka the Petro Dollar. This caused countries to dump dollars, and those dollars come right back to circulate here in the good ole U.S. And, guess what? Our prices go UP. In other words the value of the USD goes down. The Fed stopped printing the M3 report that trackes how many bills dominated in 10's, 5's and 1's circulate in the country because they knew the flood of bill back in circulation here would alarm those who knew of the report.
In retalliation, the U.S. cyber attacked Iran nearly shutting down the it's nuclear program yet, Iran persisted and cut a deal with China and Russia (I think it was early this year) in which both countries agreed to buy Iranian oil utilizing their own currencies and not the U.S. Dollar aka the Petro Dollar.
(Photo courtesy of hawaiinewsdaily.com)
Another blow to the U.S. Dollar. Thus the seeminly stupid remark by Moron, sorry I mean Mormon Romney stating that Russia is our (his) greatest enemy right now. The Changeling (your great term for this dude) seized upon the ignorance of the voting public and joked Romney was living in the cold war age. No. Moron, there I go again, I mean Mormon Romney is living in this current currency war, but, most of us don't even know there is a war raging. So, The Changeling, sensing our stupidity, (one of the many reason I don't care for this fella, ok all of them would have done what The Changeling did)) jumped on it and many of us ate it up. Transparency for ya, huh? At any rate, both the U.S. and Is-Ra-El are using each other for the sake of their own ends. Is-Ra-El will allow U.S. planes with Iraeli marking go bomb places there and the U.S. lets Is-Ra-El run amuck over the Palestinians many of whom are black folk.
Peace!
Deb said...Bro. Amenta...Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Why didn't I see it??!! -- probably because I slept the damned, Iranian Oil Bourse thing! This is the exact same reason Qadaffi was murdered and Libya damned-near destroyed! His plan for the introduction of one, African currency -- THE GOLD DINAR!!!...
Oh-h-h this shit is way more foul than I knew! I also didn't know this: "...and by the way there is NO nuclear program in existance on this Earth that is soley for the purpose of "cheap" energy. The waste product is ALWAYS used for weaponry."
~#~
Peace back at you, Brother! I appreciate the knowledge and I won't forget to remember the next time (as I'm certain there'll be one).
Yes, I'd forgotten to remember why the murders of balking leaders, and the destruction of sovereign nations by America and the "usual suspects" had to take place in Iraq and Libya. It was way more about those "euros and gold dinars," than it ever was about any pure, R2P "humanitarian concerns" for the people whose lives and countries have been, and remain destroyed.
Related:
- Iran presses ahead with dollar attack
Monday, September 10, 2012
"Tails to kites" -- America, Israel and the megalomania of exceptionalism
When W.E.B. Dubois wrote, "Why I won't vote" in October 1956, I was three months old. As I read it this week at 56 however, it seemed he'd just written it today! If you don't believe me, just take the time to read it.
But this post is not about elections (well, not exactly). It is primarily about Israel's undue influence on, and blatant disregard for, America (except as its battering ram, of course) - and how that influence can be fashioned, into yet another "necessary war" by the Changeling and his handlers, if we don't step up and say loudly,"Never Again!"
Substituting "Conservatives" for "A.D.A.'s," Dubois hit the nail on its proverbial head with his "kites and tails" analogy in the essay. It seemed a perfect, and continuing description of the relationship between America and Israel -- "... they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly." After watching this newly revealed video, posted by Brother nomad at ironymous this week, there should be no doubt in your mind exactly who the "kite" is:
So, in 2001, any West Bank land that Israel wanted to retain was to be declared, "military and security zones." And in 2012, we have this, Israel orders demolition of 8 Palestinian villages for IDF training sites; and this, Israel may revive illegal Palestinian home-razing policy -- all while those "quite superfluous and rather silly" tails (America and those other, neocolonial "usual suspects") -- stand by and do nothing.
Adding insult to injury, Bibi brags at the 1:04 click, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."
And nothing proves him more right, about how "very easily" America is to move, than this recent laugh-a-palooza at the DNC (Please, do look at the couple's faces at the 1:09, 2:43 and 3:15 - 3:25 clicks!):
Well Mr. Zogby, you can say, "I don't know" all you want, but according to this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle -- he most certainly did: Obama Changes Platform to Back Jerusalem as Israeli Capital:
"The president yesterday “said put it back in,” said Robert Wexler, a former Florida Democratic congressman who is president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.
The change was sought because “the president wanted certainty regarding his steadfast commitment to Israel,” said Wexler, who was part of the discussions among the White House and Democratic lawmakers."
Hm-m-m, seems Bibi really does know "what America is."
"People who treat other people as less than human, must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."
James Baldwin
With both, Israel and America -- Denying the Israeli Past, while continuing to ignore its present, I can't help but believe that, like America (given its ever-increasing spate of retaliatory incidents from without, as well as home-grown carnage from within), Israel should certainly consider Mr. Baldwin's prescient and wholly logical, admonition.
Fear can either be a great motivator -- or stop you dead in your tracks. And beneath all of Israel's drum-beating and chest-thumping for war with Iran -- I smell fear.
But it's not the, "We're just trying to live peacefully here in our (stolen) homeland, but the Muslim world just hates us and wants to wipe us out" kind of fear, necessarily (though it is that, in a revisionist history kind of way); it seems more like the "poisoned bread" kind of fear, about which Baldwin warned, that says, "Oh shit! Our continuing, foot-on-neck, ethnic cleansing-fueled, occupation will soon bite us in the ass if we don't hurry up and wipe them out" kind of fear -- particularly for the Zionists.
Haaretz writer, Amira Hass, addresses the latter pretty clearly in her, pot-meet-kettle, "Israel must understand it cannot be like America" piece (Yeah, I always like it when somebody other than me, calls "real Americans" out on their hardly, "exceptional" bullshit):
The labyrinth of interchanges and roads on the way to Jerusalem tells of planners, ministers, mayors and contractors who "think America." We have gotten used to dimensions that dwarf anything that is not asphalt - people and trees, for example. We have gotten used to "transportation solutions" that gobble up nature. Moreover it's as if, without meaning to, these so-called solutions are tearing apart the existing social fabric.
If it were only a matter of ministers, planners and asphalt, so be it. But thinking America has become a character trait. Thinking America guides Jewish-Israeli society in its policy toward our very own red Indians. Why should we be less successful than the United States, Canada or Australia, which, as they came into being and gained world eminence, wiped out - to differing degrees - the societies and communities that lived there before?
Now, when the remnants of the first peoples in those countries dare to demand rights, a share in resources and compensation, they no longer endanger whites and their hegemony. And this could be just as true for us...
Though I agree with her that, the "remnants of the first peoples" in the countries she listed, now can, and do "demand rights, a share in resources and compensation," that certainly doesn't mean they're getting anywhere near what they're owed (Now I could be wrong, and If I am, I'd appreciate someone from those other two countries she mentioned offering their current, real-world experience).
And while they kinda sorta co-exist with their oppressors often in, or very close to, poverty conditions and definitely not equally -- it's obvious their mere existence still seems to threaten the "hegemony" of the alabaster brethren among whom they live. It's abundantly clear in the way they continue to mistreat them, even down to the refusal of said brethren and sistren to stop using the word "our" when talking about "Others" -- as if they're nothing but personal property (i.e. "our very own red Indians," or Ann Coulter's, "our Blacks," in referring to Herman Cain).
Those who insist "on being white and other lies," are all afraid because of what they've done to other human beings. They're clearly afraid of the possible vengeance those deeds might one day provoke -- hence the need for all the guns; the police state apparatus; mass incarceration of those to which they've done all these horribly, inhumane things, occupation and yes, war.
In this piece from RT News, Bibi's fear is showing. And despite Panetta's, Deputy Dawg posturing -- it's evident that this Israeli piece of "bread," which Americans have "cast on the waters," has definitely come "floating back to them poisoned" in the person of one, Benjamin Netanyahu.
(Interesting that Panetta met with Ehud Barak in Ashkelon, the city in which whistle-blowing, nuclear scientist, Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned for 18 years, because he told the truth about Israel's secret proliferation of nuclear weapons in Dimona. Kindly allow me this brief, non-revisionist history interlude in the service of that truth):
Back to the afore-mentioned, RT News piece:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sanctions were not curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He waved off the visiting Pentagon chief’s advice to stick to a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.
At a Wednesday meeting with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Jerusalem, Netanyahu suggested that Israel’s patience with Iran was reaching the end of its tenure.
"Right now the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program," he noted. "This must change, and it must change quickly because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out."
He stressed that while the sanctions were hurting Iran’s economy, they were failing to force it to abandon its nuclear program.
“Neither sanctions nor diplomacy has yet had any impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said.
Seems the American, Dr. Frankenstein is being backed into a corner by its "monster" -- a corner from which, it will not emerge unscathed.
Sanctions
The Changeling, like his predecessors, is aggressively peddling sanctions as a "soft" approach to stop Iran's alleged, nuclear weapons program, even though Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has the "inalienable right," under Article IV, "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. . .” (something no one has yet been able to dispute they are doing). Israel on the other hand, as a non-signatory, can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants.
Sanctions are just another bullying, rather than diplomatic attempt to make the Iranians "heel," while covering up the non-partisan greed of America and those "quite superfluous and rather silly" other tails in the Western world. Hold onto your heart, as John Pilger documents the continued fall-out from another of America's "soft" approaches -- sanctions in Iraq:
This is what "American exceptionalism" looks like. And since, "America is a thing you can move very easily..." -- it seems there'll be plenty more of it. {smdh}
I think I'll end this with some sage words from Noam Chomsky with which I agree: "The US and Israel, Not Iran, Threaten Peace."
Related:
- The Truth About Obama and Israel
- Sukant on Latest Zionist Massacre in Gaza, and Relation to 'Arab Spring'
- The liberal way to run the world - "improve" or we'll kill you
- Iran Call for Nuclear Abolition by 2025 is Unreported by New York Times
- On the verge of an Israeli Spring?
- The Elephant in the map room
Thursday, May 24, 2012
From Freedom Rider: "Black Agenda Report at UNAC"
I'm still not able to log into, or comment on, Black Agenda Report since this happened, so I'm reallly glad Margaret Kimberley posted the following video on her personal, "Freedom Rider" blog. If you're sure you don't want to blindly follow the Changeling and his string pullers into Armageddon - and particularly if you're not, this United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC) workshop is well worth a listen (tried linking to UNAC but for some reason, the link doesn't work here):
During my visits to West Africa since 2010, I can definitely attest that what Glen Ford is saying, from the 32:01 to 33:34 segment of the video, is true. The Chinese are there, doing exactly what Glen said - and more.
And speaking of China, remember the Changeling's little, "We're filing a trade case with the WTO against China over their Rare Earths materials" performance a couple months ago? Here's it is if you missed it:
Or maybe he thought all of us did, Maxine.
Okay, he's threatening to sue China, over their rare earth materials, because our exceedingly greedy and consumptive country -
I'm not going to sit here and act like I understand all the specifics of this, but here are some folk who seem to:
I don't know about you, but it seems to me - we can't have our cake and eat it too. Food for thought.
Back to the UNAC video. I just got back from South Carolina a few weeks ago now, and Bruce Dixon's observation at the 45:26 click is dead-on. I told my brother as we rode through what used to be the predominantly Black eastside, "Riley and his cohorts are makin' sure the city will only be for white folk - and those Black folk who love to look down their noses at their own people." And he is. I'll write more about that, hopefully sooner, rather than later.
During my visits to West Africa since 2010, I can definitely attest that what Glen Ford is saying, from the 32:01 to 33:34 segment of the video, is true. The Chinese are there, doing exactly what Glen said - and more.
And speaking of China, remember the Changeling's little, "We're filing a trade case with the WTO against China over their Rare Earths materials" performance a couple months ago? Here's it is if you missed it:
"This case involves, something called rare earth materials, which are used by American manufacturers to make high-tech products, like advanced batteries that power everything from hybrid cars to cell phones. We want our companies building those products right here in America. But to do that, American manufacturers need access to rare earth materials – which China supplies. Now if China would simply let the market work on its own, we’d have no objections but, their policies currently are preventing that from happening, and they go against the very rules that China agreed to follow. Being able to manufacture advanced batteries and hybrid cars in America is too important for us to stand by and do nothing. We’ve got to take control of our energy future and we can’t let that energy industry take root in some other country because they’re allowed to break the rules.” (emphasis mine)Taking "control of our energy future" - is accomplished by bringing a trade case against China?? It's their shit!! As Maxine would say:
Or maybe he thought all of us did, Maxine.
Okay, he's threatening to sue China, over their rare earth materials, because our exceedingly greedy and consumptive country -
- doesn't make a damned thing on its own anymore, except of course - those things with which we and our allies kill others in sovereign countries (as Glen so wonderfully and succinctly explained from the 25:37 to 32:00 segment in the first video) and,
- didn't, and still won't, plan for this inevitability???
I'm not going to sit here and act like I understand all the specifics of this, but here are some folk who seem to:
I don't know about you, but it seems to me - we can't have our cake and eat it too. Food for thought.
###
Back to the UNAC video. I just got back from South Carolina a few weeks ago now, and Bruce Dixon's observation at the 45:26 click is dead-on. I told my brother as we rode through what used to be the predominantly Black eastside, "Riley and his cohorts are makin' sure the city will only be for white folk - and those Black folk who love to look down their noses at their own people." And he is. I'll write more about that, hopefully sooner, rather than later.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
April 4, 1968 - more than an assassination of the man
Today marks the 44th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, and in ways totally antithetical to those things for which he fought and died, we - with increasing gullibility and neediness - continue to accept the absolute, all-about-power wretchedness of the euro-centric powers-that-be. Yeah, they knew exactly what they were doing when they killed him.
They knew he'd become an even greater force with which they'd have to reckon, a force that not only his people would get behind - but one that many in the country as a whole would too. They knew his humanity, pitted against their obvious lack thereof, would be contagious, and therefore, a most effective contretemps to their various foot-on-neck machinations, designed primarily to keep Black and brown folk in their place - like today's, "Stand Your Ground" laws, Castle Doctrines, the Democratic party-revived, Obama-backed, Byrne grants (or Justice Assistance Grants - per Brother Ass-coverer) and, the "Secure Communities Act" of today.
They knew he would continue to explicitly "protest for right" and against their war-mongering, unlike the deus ex machina that is the Changeling. And they knew that the country wouldn't, no couldn't ignore him.
In his own words (long, but well worth the listen)...
Yeah, they knew exactly what they were doing when they killed him. They not only assassinated the man, they eliminated a more than worthy and powerful opponent, who could've brought some REAL change in which ALL of us could believe - in other words, a nationwide movement for justice and equality for everyone.
UPDATE: h/t to my brother, nomad for furnishing this very detailed update - Dr. Martin Luther King assassinated by US govt: King Family civil trial verdict
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
From cannon fodder to forever vegetables - courtesy of the good ole U.S. of A.
Congress to Investigate Pentagon Decision to Deny Coverage for Brain Injured Troops. They need an investigation? What the hell for? So they can continue to cherry-pick the results? And how long will this investigation take? Until those returning - damaged within or without - die? Until their families are destitute? Or both? Given what it's costing, and has cost, these returning injured and their families - does it matter what it costs the damned government, or Tricare?
Now, since I haven't read the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as all of you in Congress commencing this investigation surely have [insert eyeroll here], could somebody explain to me where exactly does traumatic brain injury fit into these pre-existing condition eligibility requirements? Now it could just be me, but it seems that the active-duty, military person with a traumatic brain injury, now insured by Tricare - is stuck between a rock and a hard place in this master plan.
While the swooners continue to champion the Changeling's health INSURANCE reform bill (which only fattens the pockets of the health insurance industry by giving them a guaranteed pool of people tomilk insure through his mandate), the number of those needing real health "CARE" reform continues to mount. Guess they'd rather spend up to $50,000/each for domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement, than $50,000 per patient on cognitive rehabilitation therapy for traumatic brain injury for their wounded "warriors." {smdh}
UPDATE: Per this Politico piece, "White House beefs up support for military families."
Along with career counseling for retiring service members and broader availability of services for spouses and dependants, the initiative includes enhanced mental health programs along with safeguards to protect military families from predatory lenders and financial scams, he said. (emphasis mine)
So why the "investigation" again?"
UPDATE II: In Houston, Rep. Giffords Could Receive Brain Injury Treatment Thousands of Troops Do Not
A key congressional oversight committee announced today that it was opening an investigation into the basis of a decision by the Pentagon's health plan to deny a type of medical treatment to troops with brain injuries.Ya think Claire??
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the chairman of the subcommittee on contracting oversight, said she wanted to examine a contract issued by Tricare, an insurance-style program used by soldiers and many veterans, to a private company to study cognitive rehabilitation therapy for traumatic brain injury. Such injuries are considered among the signature wounds of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The study, by Pennsylvania-based ECRI Institute, found insufficient or weak evidence to support the therapy. Often lengthy and expensive, cognitive rehabilitation programs are designed to rewire soldiers' brains to conduct basic life tasks, such as reading books, remembering information and following instructions. ECRI's findings ran counter to several other studies, including ones sponsored by the Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health, which concluded that cognitive rehabilitation was beneficial.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, McCaskill cited an investigation by ProPublica and NPR in December, which found that top scientific experts had questioned the Tricare-funded study in confidential reviews, calling it "deeply flawed" and "unacceptable."
"If true, these reports raise significant questions regarding the Department's award and management of the contract with ECRI Institute, and may have profound implications for hundreds of thousands of injured service members and their families," McCaskill wrote. "We owe it to our brave service members to find the truth." (emphasis mine)
Now, since I haven't read the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as all of you in Congress commencing this investigation surely have [insert eyeroll here], could somebody explain to me where exactly does traumatic brain injury fit into these pre-existing condition eligibility requirements? Now it could just be me, but it seems that the active-duty, military person with a traumatic brain injury, now insured by Tricare - is stuck between a rock and a hard place in this master plan.
While the swooners continue to champion the Changeling's health INSURANCE reform bill (which only fattens the pockets of the health insurance industry by giving them a guaranteed pool of people to
UPDATE: Per this Politico piece, "White House beefs up support for military families."
Along with career counseling for retiring service members and broader availability of services for spouses and dependants, the initiative includes enhanced mental health programs along with safeguards to protect military families from predatory lenders and financial scams, he said. (emphasis mine)
So why the "investigation" again?"
UPDATE II: In Houston, Rep. Giffords Could Receive Brain Injury Treatment Thousands of Troops Do Not
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