Op-Ed
The world’s two big nuclear militaries are in the same war now in Syria and, if not on opposite sides exactly, certainly not on the same side. A primary, if not the primary, goal of the United States in Syria is overthrowing the Syrian government. A primary, if not the primary, goal of Russia is maintaining the Syrian government. Hostilities are building in each nation toward the other. Republican candidates for president are trying to outdo a certain Democratic candidate for president in bellicosity toward Russia. Forces armed by the U.S. in Syria are eager to shoot down Russian planes. Russia and the U.S. and its allies are clearly unhappy about each other’s flights. Hillary Clinton wants a no-fly zone. Israeli and Russian planes have already come close to fighting. Israel has attacked the base Russia is using, or at least Russia says it has.
The myth of American Exceptionalism is widely, but perhaps insincerely, believed by most American thought-leaders and political and economic elites, whether they are radical Republican Party members/voters or are members/voters of the moderate “Republican” wing of the Democratic Party.
Members of the democratic wing of the Democratic Party and anybody that espouses Green Party values (whether they are registered members or not) are skeptical of the mass media’s constant reportage on American Exceptionalism.
Oh, America is certainly an exceptional nation, all right, but the reality is that most of the evidence of exceptionalism should be sources of sorrow, shame and embarrassment. All American patriots, including the pseudo-patriots who espouse the classical fascist/nationalist notion of “My nation, right or wrong”, should be on their knees repenting of what America has done on behalf of that misbegotten belief, starting with the “patriotic” genocidal massacres of the aboriginal Native Americans, the quasi-genocide of America’s African slaves, the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny.
When Zionist Haganah militias carried out Operation Yiftach, on May 19 1948, the aim was to drive Palestinians in the northern Safad District which had declared its independence a mere five days earlier, outside the border of Israel.
The ethnic cleansing of Safad and its many villages was not unique to that area. In fact, it was the modus operandi of Zionist militias throughout Palestine. Soon after Israel’s independence, and the conquering of historic Palestine, the militias were joined together to form the Israeli armed forces.
Not all villages, however, were completely depopulated. Some residents in villages like Qaytiyyanear the River Jordan, remained in their homes. The village, located between two tributaries of the Jordan - al-Hasbani and Dan rivers - hoped that normality would return to their once tranquil village once the war subsides.
We done somethin' we both know it
We don't talk too much about it
Yeah it ain't no real big secret all the same
Somehow we get around it
Iraq wasn't really hiding WMD baby
We believed what we want to believe
You see the wars are what make all the refugees
... the wars are what make all the refugees
Somewhere, somehow somebody
Liberated you from your home
Now you're on the move to survive
Far from the graves of your loved ones
Libya's hell since we killed Gadaffi baby
Everybody's dead or hurt, not free
You see the wars are what make all the refugees
... the wars are what make all the refugees
Baby this ain't the first
Bombs fixed a million lands by making em worse
The latest lie seems real to you
But it's one of those things
You gotta die to make true
I thought the cause of climate destruction was political corruption, but I thought the cause of so little popular resistance was ignorance and denial. Naomi Klein's new film This Changes Everything seems to assume that everyone is aware of the problem. The enemy that the film takes on is the belief that "human nature" is simply greedy and destructive and destined to behave in the way that Western culture behaves toward the natural world.
I think that is an increasingly common frame of mind among those paying attention. But if it ever becomes truly widespread, I expect it to be followed by epidemics of despair.
I thought the cause of climate destruction was political corruption, but I thought the cause of so little popular resistance was ignorance and denial. Naomi Klein's new film This Changes Everything seems to assume that everyone is aware of the problem. The enemy that the film takes on is the belief that "human nature" is simply greedy and destructive and destined to behave in the way that Western culture behaves toward the natural world.
I think that is an increasingly common frame of mind among those paying attention. But if it ever becomes truly widespread, I expect it to be followed by epidemics of despair.
Now that General David Petraeus wants to arm and train al Qaeda killers, a number of questions arise that might be raised with the great leader:
1. Should people who said that anyone was a traitor who called you David Betray-Us while you were fighting al Qaeda, now call you David Betray-Us or a traitor?
2. Do you imagine that just because you can share all sorts of secrets with your girlfriend and get off easy, there are no hardcore nut cases who believe in the "material support for terrorism" law more than they believe in you?
No, I’m not referring to the U.S. election. I’m referring to “Bycatch.” The name refers not to fish accidentally caught and killed while trying to catch and kill other fish, but to humans murdered in a game in which the player hopes to murder certain other humans but knows that he or she stands a good chance of murdering some bycatch.
The Nazis never reached this height of banality in the general German public, but had they done so it would be a sinister feature of tens of thousands of Hollywood movies. If Russians sat around playing a board game that involved blowing up Ukrainian children, the Washington Post would have already published several front-page articles.
This is a game that puts you in the shoes of one particular human being, thus far, but imagines several engaging in the same activity in competition. In Bycatch you become Barack Obama going through his Tuesday murder list. But Bycatch imagines as many nations as people playing the game, each engaging in a drone murder spree against the others. Here’s an excerpt from the rules:
“How to strike
Nukes get all the attention, but the fact is that intense inspections of Iranian facilities will also prevent Iran from developing a ray gun that causes your clothes to vanish and your brain to convert to Islam.
No, there is not the slightest scrap of evidence that Iran is trying to create such a thing, but then there's also not the slightest scrap of evidence that Iran is trying to create a nuclear bomb.
And yet, here are a bunch of celebrities in a video that certainly cost many more dollars than the number of people who've watched it, urging support for the Iran deal after hyping the bogus Iranian nuclear threat, pretending that the United States gets "forced into" wars, making a bunch of sick jokes about how nuclear death can be better than other war deaths, suggesting that spies are cool, cursing, and mocking the very idea that war is a serious matter.
There is much that is revolting about the current world and Andre Vltchek, Christopher Black and Peter Koenig are well placed to document it, which they have done in their new book 'The World Order and Revolution! Essays from the Resistance'. http://badak-merah.weebly.com/the-world-order-and-revolution.html