--SOURCE--"
I'm so glad I never purchase or read their paper, nor do I voluntarily visit their website. I only go there if directed to by a blog.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
New York Times Censorship: The Political Cartoon They Did Not Want You to See
A very well-done and creative piece of art, too!
--SOURCE--"
I'm so glad I never purchase or read their paper, nor do I voluntarily visit their website. I only go there if directed to by a blog.
--SOURCE--"
I'm so glad I never purchase or read their paper, nor do I voluntarily visit their website. I only go there if directed to by a blog.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Why Are Newspapers Dying?
"They are dying because they deserve to die"
NOBODY likes a LIAR!!!!!!!!!!
"Next: Bailout for Mainstream Media Liars
(March 2009) One of the silver linings of this economic depression is the collapse of mainstream media companies and the creation of internet blogs along with citizen journalism.
While this media shift is ongoing and certain, a question arises - Will the government, in further effort to keep their political-financial-media power in tact, bailout big media?
Does the News Industry Deserve a Bailout?
That was the headline in a recent article written in Time Magazine. Written by Douglas A. McIntyre, the article argues "the strategic value of the print media comes from the centuries that it has served as a check and balance to the central government both in the United States and elsewhere."
The article goes on to say “Politicians have every reason to want to see print media fail. That can be said tongue in cheek, but too many governors and congressmen have lost jobs after newspaper investigations to make the relationship between Fourth Estate and politicians a comfortable one.
A neutered press would benefit a number of elected officials.“
I wonder what a "neutered press" would look like? Would they peddle optimism even while the economy was collapsing? Would celebrity gossip become newsworthy? If the government wanted to loot the United States treasury and bailout their campaign contributors on Wall St, would a "neutered press" fail to demand answers or, even worse, scare the American people into submission? Would this neutered press allow the government to use 9-11 as a tool to occupy the middle east, while ignoring the cries of first responders and families of 9-11?
I've often said that I do not follow the mainstream news for information, I follow it for the lie.
Establishment news organizations such as Time magazine should be followed only to figure out what it is they are trying to sell. 'They' meaning the Washington In crowd of government, lobbyists and mainstream reporters.
When US government public relations organizations (Mainstream News) publish an article such as Mr. McIntyre's, you should be paying attention. The campaign is beginning.
The charts represent some of the largest media conglomerates. There is no doubt that many are in deep trouble and, if left to the markets, many may fail. Will they be allowed to fail?
The "Newspaper Revitalization Act" was introduced this week by Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland.
"We are losing our newspaper industry the economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy. It is in the interest of our nation and good governance that we ensure they survive" said Senator Cardin.
The act would grant newspapers tax-free status as non-profits, a deal similar to that enjoyed by public broadcasting outlets, which survive on tax-deductible contributions from listeners. The newspapers, however, will also be able to enjoy tax free advertising revenue.
Is it really in the interest of our nation to bailout the newspapers?
Are these not the same newspapers that led the unchallenged drumbeat into the Iraq war?
The newspapers who cheered for the economy as it became apparent that there were real problems emerging?
Should we bailout a newspaper industry who has failed to properly inform the public as to where $10 trillion+ of their money has gone?
The newspapers who silenced the campaign of Ron Paul, a Presidential candidate who broke fund raising records on his message of freedom.
The newspaper industry, owned and controlled by a hand full of giant media companies, has been reduced to an un-hired PR firm of the US government. A quick glance at the sourcing of major newspaper articles makes this clear.
They are dying because they deserve to die.
--SOURCE--w/hattip"
"The media which has printed these lies and presented the horrors of the day according to the angle desired by those who operate it have become their own worst enemy. They are daily providing the evidence that they lie. Truth tellers on the internet are turning over every rock they tried to bury the truth beneath."
Related: Senate Says Newspapers Are Non-Profits
NOBODY likes a LIAR!!!!!!!!!!
"Next: Bailout for Mainstream Media Liars
(March 2009) One of the silver linings of this economic depression is the collapse of mainstream media companies and the creation of internet blogs along with citizen journalism.
While this media shift is ongoing and certain, a question arises - Will the government, in further effort to keep their political-financial-media power in tact, bailout big media?
Does the News Industry Deserve a Bailout?
That was the headline in a recent article written in Time Magazine. Written by Douglas A. McIntyre, the article argues "the strategic value of the print media comes from the centuries that it has served as a check and balance to the central government both in the United States and elsewhere."
The article goes on to say “Politicians have every reason to want to see print media fail. That can be said tongue in cheek, but too many governors and congressmen have lost jobs after newspaper investigations to make the relationship between Fourth Estate and politicians a comfortable one.
A neutered press would benefit a number of elected officials.“
I wonder what a "neutered press" would look like? Would they peddle optimism even while the economy was collapsing? Would celebrity gossip become newsworthy? If the government wanted to loot the United States treasury and bailout their campaign contributors on Wall St, would a "neutered press" fail to demand answers or, even worse, scare the American people into submission? Would this neutered press allow the government to use 9-11 as a tool to occupy the middle east, while ignoring the cries of first responders and families of 9-11?
I've often said that I do not follow the mainstream news for information, I follow it for the lie.
Establishment news organizations such as Time magazine should be followed only to figure out what it is they are trying to sell. 'They' meaning the Washington In crowd of government, lobbyists and mainstream reporters.
When US government public relations organizations (Mainstream News) publish an article such as Mr. McIntyre's, you should be paying attention. The campaign is beginning.
The charts represent some of the largest media conglomerates. There is no doubt that many are in deep trouble and, if left to the markets, many may fail. Will they be allowed to fail?
The "Newspaper Revitalization Act" was introduced this week by Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland.
"We are losing our newspaper industry the economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy. It is in the interest of our nation and good governance that we ensure they survive" said Senator Cardin.
The act would grant newspapers tax-free status as non-profits, a deal similar to that enjoyed by public broadcasting outlets, which survive on tax-deductible contributions from listeners. The newspapers, however, will also be able to enjoy tax free advertising revenue.
Is it really in the interest of our nation to bailout the newspapers?
Are these not the same newspapers that led the unchallenged drumbeat into the Iraq war?
The newspapers who cheered for the economy as it became apparent that there were real problems emerging?
Should we bailout a newspaper industry who has failed to properly inform the public as to where $10 trillion+ of their money has gone?
The newspapers who silenced the campaign of Ron Paul, a Presidential candidate who broke fund raising records on his message of freedom.
The newspaper industry, owned and controlled by a hand full of giant media companies, has been reduced to an un-hired PR firm of the US government. A quick glance at the sourcing of major newspaper articles makes this clear.
They are dying because they deserve to die.
--SOURCE--w/hattip"
"The media which has printed these lies and presented the horrors of the day according to the angle desired by those who operate it have become their own worst enemy. They are daily providing the evidence that they lie. Truth tellers on the internet are turning over every rock they tried to bury the truth beneath."
Related: Senate Says Newspapers Are Non-Profits
Friday, March 27, 2009
Occupation Iraq: What Six Years Has Bought
For America? Nothing but shame.
"Six years into the occupation…
Also see the --SOURCE-- for more (plus video)
"Six years into the occupation…
- 72 months of destruction
- $607 Billions spent on the war
- 2 Million Barrels of oil being sold per day
- 2 Million Displaced Iraqis inside of Iraq
- 3 Million Iraqis forced to leave the country
- 2615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood
- 338 dead journalists
- $13 Billion misplaced by the current Iraqi government
- $400 Billion required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure
- 3 hours average of electricity daily
- 24 car bombs per month
- 7 major mafias running the country
- 4260 Americans dead
- 10,000 cases of cholera per year
- 50 of my friends dead
- 22 of my relatives dead
- 15 abductions of close relatives and people I know and love
- At least 1.3 million Iraqis dead since 2003.
So the numbers speak for themselves. Six. Six months is what it took for most Iraqis to realize no good could come of this war and occupation. Six years is what it has taken the rest of the world. Six years, six million Iraqis displaced inside and outside of Iraq- well over a million Iraqis dead or dying inside of the country.
As a scientist, as a researcher- it is a disaster that will never be sufficiently documented with numbers or words. As a researcher, the numbers are so astounding that we go back and recalculate to make sure they are real. As an Iraqi, it is enraging. The numbers and statistics fill me with a rage and shame that make my heart throb and my blood boil. It’s a rage towards all who are silent and uncaring, and a shame at the little we all are doing.
Souad N. Al-Azzawi Associate Professor, Baghdad, Iraq March26/2009
Also see the --SOURCE-- for more (plus video)
The Boxwood Maze and The Pecking Order
"The Boxwood Maze and The Pecking Order
Most of us get our news each day from some source or sources that report to us about things that happen in places near and far. Since a great deal of the news that gets made, gets made in restricted government and business locations, we don’t have access to what actually gets said and done. Often they don’t even tell us what that is. They tell us what it means and in government, business and religion they have divisions that shape the appearance of what they say and do, then they hand it to the media who shapes the presentation.
There’s a metaphorical table that appears in places all over the world and the same sort of people are sitting at that table. They make the decisions that affect the lives of the rest of us and you only have to look at the state of your lives to see how these decisions affect you. You don’t really need anyone to tell you what got said or done and you don’t need anyone to shape it. All you have to do is look at the quality of life and you can see the essence and shape of it. If there’s less money than there was, they decided that at the table. If there’s less food or it costs more, they decided that at the table. If the police are more brutal and there is unrest at home and abroad, they decided that at that table.
There is other news that concerns itself with climate and disasters; hurricanes and flood, air crashes and crimes. There’s the new of the society of our betters and there’s the human interest angles of those special stories where one or another of us has shown themselves to be exceptional in some acceptable or unacceptable way. There’s sports and entertainment and there’s always more. They shape that at the table too. They shape the way we feel about the climate and the disasters; the accidents and crimes, the behavior of the chosen few and what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
Pedophiles have a process called ‘grooming’ which operates in stages to convince the child that what is going to happen to them is okay. There’s no difference between this and what happens to society as a whole. You could say that the actual business of business, government and religion is child abuse. The only difference between it happening as a child or as an adult is that, as an adult, you’ve gotten used to it and you might even like it at that point. Most people accommodate it and explain it to themselves in some way that allows them to live with it… otherwise, business, government and religion could not operate and profit with any consistency. Those who don’t go along with the program are outlaws and criminals and that perception gets the shaping treatment as it is embraced by the public at large. There’s an old story that seems to relate to how we see things when we don’t really see them. Outlaws aren’t necessarily outlaws and so on and so forth.
It could be that more people would do more about their situation if they knew how to get out of the boxwood maze. Part of the problem is that they were born there and all they know about getting around, they learned from their parents and the official guides. If you’ve ever been in any of the large caves around the world that are tourist attractions, you will notice that there are the permitted routes and then there are the routes that are closed off with some sort of a barrier and posted with warning signs. Of course, you wouldn’t need to post a warning sign if you couldn’t get past the barrier and that provides some food for thought to those disposed to think.
The permitted routes in the caves are well lit and nicely enclosed for the benefit of the terminally clumsy and distracted. The un-permitted routes are dark and forbidding. It’s a strange dichotomy that the road to slavery and freedom are much the same. One is well lit and appears safe. One is not well lit and does not appear safe. Even though life itself is a risk, most people will avoid risk except during those times when some predator plays upon their greed.
For centuries the cultures of this world have been defined by a pecking order. Some of us, from birth, are allowed into parts of the maze that are prohibited to everyone else. It is an absolute truth that there is more than enough of everything to go around and that no one needs to go without shelter, food or medical care at any time. There are countries today where the example is there to be seen, even if they aren’t as perfect as they easily could be. The world is not like this because of The Pecking Order. The world is not like this because of the atavistic fear and appetite of those at the top of the pecking order. The rich and powerful are actually more frightened than anyone else and that is something else to think about.
There is another feature which enters into the mix and keeps you in your allowed portion of the maze and in your place in the pecking order. The satisfaction of having something just isn’t as great without the knowledge that many others do not. This is a key feature of why life is unfair. It is also a given that power has no greater savor than when it is over the lives of others.
9/11 was orchestrated by The Pecking Order. Wars, famines and financial ruin are orchestrated by The Pecking order with few, if any, exceptions. Due to the restrictions of The Maze and the voices from the hidden speakers there are few people who know what is really happening. As for the story about the bird linked earlier, I would add a caveat, “not everyone who covers you in shit is your friend either.”
What I want to say to you is critical to your time here in the maze and possibly to conditions that may exist beyond the maze and the pecking order. One should ask themselves why it is possible to go into the unexplored regions of the cave. You might ask yourself about the impact of the internet and the possibilities that it has granted you. You might wonder if there is some mysterious force somewhere, somehow, that has made it possible to escape the maze because it appears that this has happened for some who were willing to chance the possibility. Yes… you don’t know what’s out there but you do know what’s in the maze, as far as you have been allowed to see. Maybe all you want is to rise in The Pecking Order. That seems to be the goal of the majority. It’s present every time they buy a lottery ticket and it entertains their daydreams from the cradle to the grave. You have to understand how The Pecking Order operates before you can reasonably assess your chances.
The boxwood maze isn’t any different than the mazes of the clinical psychologists in laboratories around the world and their concern for the mice is a great deal less than it is for the results they achieve in order to reinforce the will of The Pecking Order.
For the first time in a very long time, the will of The Pecking Order is in trouble. How I come to know this is not important. All I can say is that there’s never been a better time to start thinking about unexplored locations inside you and outside you. Among those trapped within the maze there is going to be a grand confusion and it is likely that a great deal less attention is going to be paid to you in the process. Maybe you get this and maybe you don’t but it isn’t going to hurt anything if I have a little something to say about it which is going to end right here for the moment.
For further expansion: The Usury Vampire Game
Most of us get our news each day from some source or sources that report to us about things that happen in places near and far. Since a great deal of the news that gets made, gets made in restricted government and business locations, we don’t have access to what actually gets said and done. Often they don’t even tell us what that is. They tell us what it means and in government, business and religion they have divisions that shape the appearance of what they say and do, then they hand it to the media who shapes the presentation.
There’s a metaphorical table that appears in places all over the world and the same sort of people are sitting at that table. They make the decisions that affect the lives of the rest of us and you only have to look at the state of your lives to see how these decisions affect you. You don’t really need anyone to tell you what got said or done and you don’t need anyone to shape it. All you have to do is look at the quality of life and you can see the essence and shape of it. If there’s less money than there was, they decided that at the table. If there’s less food or it costs more, they decided that at the table. If the police are more brutal and there is unrest at home and abroad, they decided that at that table.
There is other news that concerns itself with climate and disasters; hurricanes and flood, air crashes and crimes. There’s the new of the society of our betters and there’s the human interest angles of those special stories where one or another of us has shown themselves to be exceptional in some acceptable or unacceptable way. There’s sports and entertainment and there’s always more. They shape that at the table too. They shape the way we feel about the climate and the disasters; the accidents and crimes, the behavior of the chosen few and what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
Pedophiles have a process called ‘grooming’ which operates in stages to convince the child that what is going to happen to them is okay. There’s no difference between this and what happens to society as a whole. You could say that the actual business of business, government and religion is child abuse. The only difference between it happening as a child or as an adult is that, as an adult, you’ve gotten used to it and you might even like it at that point. Most people accommodate it and explain it to themselves in some way that allows them to live with it… otherwise, business, government and religion could not operate and profit with any consistency. Those who don’t go along with the program are outlaws and criminals and that perception gets the shaping treatment as it is embraced by the public at large. There’s an old story that seems to relate to how we see things when we don’t really see them. Outlaws aren’t necessarily outlaws and so on and so forth.
It could be that more people would do more about their situation if they knew how to get out of the boxwood maze. Part of the problem is that they were born there and all they know about getting around, they learned from their parents and the official guides. If you’ve ever been in any of the large caves around the world that are tourist attractions, you will notice that there are the permitted routes and then there are the routes that are closed off with some sort of a barrier and posted with warning signs. Of course, you wouldn’t need to post a warning sign if you couldn’t get past the barrier and that provides some food for thought to those disposed to think.
The permitted routes in the caves are well lit and nicely enclosed for the benefit of the terminally clumsy and distracted. The un-permitted routes are dark and forbidding. It’s a strange dichotomy that the road to slavery and freedom are much the same. One is well lit and appears safe. One is not well lit and does not appear safe. Even though life itself is a risk, most people will avoid risk except during those times when some predator plays upon their greed.
For centuries the cultures of this world have been defined by a pecking order. Some of us, from birth, are allowed into parts of the maze that are prohibited to everyone else. It is an absolute truth that there is more than enough of everything to go around and that no one needs to go without shelter, food or medical care at any time. There are countries today where the example is there to be seen, even if they aren’t as perfect as they easily could be. The world is not like this because of The Pecking Order. The world is not like this because of the atavistic fear and appetite of those at the top of the pecking order. The rich and powerful are actually more frightened than anyone else and that is something else to think about.
There is another feature which enters into the mix and keeps you in your allowed portion of the maze and in your place in the pecking order. The satisfaction of having something just isn’t as great without the knowledge that many others do not. This is a key feature of why life is unfair. It is also a given that power has no greater savor than when it is over the lives of others.
9/11 was orchestrated by The Pecking Order. Wars, famines and financial ruin are orchestrated by The Pecking order with few, if any, exceptions. Due to the restrictions of The Maze and the voices from the hidden speakers there are few people who know what is really happening. As for the story about the bird linked earlier, I would add a caveat, “not everyone who covers you in shit is your friend either.”
What I want to say to you is critical to your time here in the maze and possibly to conditions that may exist beyond the maze and the pecking order. One should ask themselves why it is possible to go into the unexplored regions of the cave. You might ask yourself about the impact of the internet and the possibilities that it has granted you. You might wonder if there is some mysterious force somewhere, somehow, that has made it possible to escape the maze because it appears that this has happened for some who were willing to chance the possibility. Yes… you don’t know what’s out there but you do know what’s in the maze, as far as you have been allowed to see. Maybe all you want is to rise in The Pecking Order. That seems to be the goal of the majority. It’s present every time they buy a lottery ticket and it entertains their daydreams from the cradle to the grave. You have to understand how The Pecking Order operates before you can reasonably assess your chances.
The boxwood maze isn’t any different than the mazes of the clinical psychologists in laboratories around the world and their concern for the mice is a great deal less than it is for the results they achieve in order to reinforce the will of The Pecking Order.
For the first time in a very long time, the will of The Pecking Order is in trouble. How I come to know this is not important. All I can say is that there’s never been a better time to start thinking about unexplored locations inside you and outside you. Among those trapped within the maze there is going to be a grand confusion and it is likely that a great deal less attention is going to be paid to you in the process. Maybe you get this and maybe you don’t but it isn’t going to hurt anything if I have a little something to say about it which is going to end right here for the moment.
For further expansion: The Usury Vampire Game
WUFYS is Homeless
"What happened to WUFYS???
According to the host, our site causes their servers too much downtime. So they've given us eviction notice and WUFYS must find another home.
So that's why it's taking us so long to get back up - we're homeless.
Any suggestions or recommendations for a new hosting site would be greatly appreciated.
WUFYS is too important to go down into the night.
To all those who have written to me expressing your concerns, thanks.
To everyone who has contributed over the years...don't worry - hopefully your work is safe. If we lost anything it was the more recent posts. :( sorry - these things happen, it goes with the territory.
To everyone who loves WUFYS and has come to rely on it as a place to turn to when the shit hits the fan...don't worry, we'll be back.
In the meantime, feel free to post here at blogspot.... "
If you're here, then you know that the other site has disappeared.
According to the host, our site causes their servers too much downtime. So they've given us eviction notice and WUFYS must find another home.
So that's why it's taking us so long to get back up - we're homeless.
Any suggestions or recommendations for a new hosting site would be greatly appreciated.
WUFYS is too important to go down into the night.
To all those who have written to me expressing your concerns, thanks.
To everyone who has contributed over the years...don't worry - hopefully your work is safe. If we lost anything it was the more recent posts. :( sorry - these things happen, it goes with the territory.
To everyone who loves WUFYS and has come to rely on it as a place to turn to when the shit hits the fan...don't worry, we'll be back.
In the meantime, feel free to post here at blogspot.... "
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Disinformation in the Main Stream and Alternative Media
"Disinformation in the Main Stream and Alternative Media
Good disinfo agents tell a lot of truth while diverting certain aspects of the story. It's always up to us to figure out where the bottom line is, sort of separating the 'wheat from the chaff.' This applies not only to the main stream media but sometimes also to the 'leaders' of the patriot/truther movement.
Nathanael Kapner give us a look at Alex Jones.
read the entire article: Is Alex Jones A Zionist?...Controversy Swirls
Detain This specializes on the disinformation of the Associated Press.
TVNews Lies gives us a video example.
Gun control is an old disinfo tactic still being used to disarm Americans and negate the 2nd amendment.
Global Warming continues to be a major source of disinfo intended to separate more money from your wallet in the form of carbon taxes. It's a part of school curriculum.
War, terrorism, the 'War on Terror' and 9/11 are the ultimate sources of disinformation.
Knowing who owns the media goes a long way in realizing who controls the disinfo.
source--"
Also read: Preparing for Civil Unrest in America?
Resist 'Giving' Your Children to the Government
Good disinfo agents tell a lot of truth while diverting certain aspects of the story. It's always up to us to figure out where the bottom line is, sort of separating the 'wheat from the chaff.' This applies not only to the main stream media but sometimes also to the 'leaders' of the patriot/truther movement.
Nathanael Kapner give us a look at Alex Jones.
read the entire article: Is Alex Jones A Zionist?...Controversy Swirls
Detain This specializes on the disinformation of the Associated Press.
AP kisses Israeli ass with another 'corrective'
TVNews Lies gives us a video example.
How the News Networks Lie by Telling the Truth
Gun control is an old disinfo tactic still being used to disarm Americans and negate the 2nd amendment.
From David Codrea via Gun Rights Examiner;
Oakland shootings show uselessness of 'gun control'"The bulletproof vests that Romans and Sakai wore were no help - when Mixon fired his automatic rifle through a closet door in the apartment, he hit the two sergeants in the head."
The reporters (I like to call them "Authorized Journalists") managed to convey several visceral messages in that compact statement.
One of the bits of disinformation used to justify banning semiautomatic rifles is that the ammunition they fire can penetrate police vests. The truth is, the AK and variants fire a round that is hardly high-powered by rifle standards--so while the gunhaters are quick to assure people their hunting rifles are safe, any such rifle will penetrate body armor designed to stop handgun rounds. But note in this case, vest penetration was not a factor--so why even bring it up?
The other problematic choice of words? Using the term "Automatic rifle."
If, in fact it, was full-auto, that's yet two more sets of "gun control" laws ignored--state and federal. More likely, and information is conflicting at this point, it was a semiauto. But we in the gun rights advocacy community are used to seeing the press confuse the public on the difference. It's actually part of a larger disinformation plan that the media continually either intentionally propagates or obliviously parrots.*
Here's what we do know: "Gun control" laws were utterly useless at keeping guns out of the hands of a killer. And when he went on a rampage, it took other men with guns to stop him.
more
Global Warming continues to be a major source of disinfo intended to separate more money from your wallet in the form of carbon taxes. It's a part of school curriculum.
Kids Are Being Taught That Carbon Kills Polar BearsThe 'War on Drugs' turns lives upside down and creates a massive prison system. The disinfo about marijuana and industrial hemp has been ongoing for over 60 years. Can this be ended anytime soon?
We can't end the despicable "war on drugs" without an effective media that can mobilize our citizenry and spread the word.
War, terrorism, the 'War on Terror' and 9/11 are the ultimate sources of disinformation.
How our governments use terrorism to control us
Knowing who owns the media goes a long way in realizing who controls the disinfo.
Six Jewish Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Also read: Preparing for Civil Unrest in America?
Resist 'Giving' Your Children to the Government
Monday, March 23, 2009
Homage to Palestinian Moms
"Palestinian Mothers: Homage to Steadfastness and Sacrifice
Reham Alhelsi
When the women came and told her to leave what she was doing and come and sit in front of the house with them, my grandmother knew what was to come. They sat outside and didn’t talk much. My uncle had been shot in the chest by the IOF that afternoon, and was at that moment being operated. He was in a critical condition, the doctors had told the men who had brought him to the hospital. Some were sent back home to prepare the family for the news and to prepare the refugee camp to welcome the hero, in case the worst happened. Although hope dies last, it was a necessity to prepare everything for a quick funeral and a quick burial. The Israeli army had been known to take bodies of Palestinian martyrs and steal their organs without the Palestinian family’s consent. The organs would then be given to Israelis who needed them. So a Palestinian killed by the IOF, mostly for no reason at all or for defending his country, would be labelled as terrorist by Israel and the biased media, while his organs would be used to save Israeli lives. In other countries, stealing the organs of dead people is considered a crime, but as usual, it doesn’t apply to Israel.
My grandmother sat quiet the whole time, no tears and no words. It was her youngest son, they said. His elder brothers had one time after another been imprisoned for everything that Israel considered “terror”, that she decided at least to spare the youngest the inside of an Israeli prison. Every day she would tell him to go to school and come back directly. “don’t go here or there”. I heard my mother say one time “she thought this way she was keeping him safe from the Israelis; everyday coming back from school after classes were over, and keeping him at her side most of the time.” Till one day, the boys came and told my grandmother that her son had been arrested. ”Arrested for what?” “he was throwing stones.” He hadn’t even bothered to go to school that day.” One of my other uncles said laughingly when the story was brought up once: but we had prepared him for this. And everyone laughed. I laughed too, because I have been though this process as well. Actually, to us kids, it was just another game. One of those bizarre refugee camp games, like the “UNRWA restaurant” game, where we would play little refugee kids standing in line and waiting for our daily portion of a slice of bread and small slice of tomato with salt, and being shouted at by the “UNRWA employee”. The other game, which was to prepare us for future imprisonment by the IOF was the “confession game”. Each one of us would be “tortured” to strengthen our resistance and prevent us from confessing anything in case we are interrogated by the IOF. There was really no “torture” in this game, because there was no real beating. We would be shouted at in a funny way, and the one among us to act the “IOF soldier” would be mimicking Israeli soldiers trying to be brave, but who are in fact afraid of us, little children. We would laugh while being “tortured”, for it was mostly fun for us. Although the game would not really prepare anyone for the barbaric Israeli interrogation and torture, in some way, the game was educational. It gave us the feeling that we are stronger than the IOF and that despite all their weapons, they feared us. So, we would just play being beaten by the IOF, and the one playing the IOF soldier would ask us continuously to confess and we would refuse. He would slash us, though not harshly, on the soles, and demand we confess. We would refuse, laughingly, because for us it was a game, a game that would prove useful one day.
That day, no funeral took place, for my uncle had made it. He had a strong will to live. But every time I think of that moment, I think about my grandmother. The 60 year old woman, who used to divide her week according to visiting days in Israeli prisons. Before one of them was released, another would be arrested, so that they rarely gathered at a dinner table. We were all used to it, not seeing all my uncles at the same time. I rarely heard my grandmother complain, but it was clear to everyone how much she loved her family and how sad she was that they weren’t all around her. She didn’t have to tell her children to go and demonstrate. It was a natural reaction to what these children themselves saw and went through, and it was the love of the land planted in their heart by my grandmother. She would often talk about Jrash, the village from which she and her family and all the residents were ethnically cleansed by the Zionist terror organizations. They were forced to move from one place to another, until they finally reached what is now Dheisheh refugee camp. There she tried to reconstruct her original home by planting some trees in the small piece of land near the UNRWA rooms they were to live in.
The life of my grandmother is typical of the lives of many Palestinian mothers. She was born in a small picturesque village in Palestine, where she grew up, got married and started a family. She would take care of her home, and help the family with the fields. She would care for her small garden and the apple trees which she loved most and would make marmalade for the winter. When the Zionist terror organizations started implementing their plan of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population, Palestinian villages were attacked one after the other, and horrific massacres took place. The residents of Jrash were finally forced to leave, but not before they fought heroically. My grandparents often talked about these days. During my last visit to Palestine a couple of months ago, I listened to my grandfather as he talked about the fight with the Zionist groups. With sharp memory, he mentioned such details, that for a few seconds I could feel myself there, with them, 60 years ago.
A number of times my grandmother was beaten by the IOF soldiers, some of whom were younger than her own sons and who didn’t care that she was an elderly woman. When IOF soldiers would attempt to arrest someone in the refugee camp, she would hurry with the other women and try and stop them. When Zionist settlers would attack the refugee camp, she would carry the tree stem she hides behind the couch and go protect the camp alongside the men and women. And in the early mornings of the day, when everyone is still fast asleep, after finishing the morning prayer I would hear her asking God to protect her family, her relatives, her neighbours, the refugee camp, the Palestinians and the whole world. I heard her day after day asking forgiveness for the whole world.
In Palestine mothers are sacred. Every one of us has several mothers: the mother that gave birth to us, the olive tree, the land and the mother of all: Palestine. And a Palestinian mother isn’t just a mother to the children she gives birth to, she is mother to all Palestinians. When a Palestinian is being arrested by the IOF, women of all ages will be surrounding the soldiers within seconds, trying to free the prisoner. And for that, sometimes they pay a heavy price, like the 60 year old Mariam Ayyad from Abu Dees. On the night of 20th of September 2008, IOF soldiers broke into her house. After arguing with her, the old woman was repeatedly hit and thrown on the ground by the soldiers until she died in front of her children and grandchildren. During curfews, it is mostly women who would move carefully from one house corner to another and from one street to the other and distribute wheat and milk. When young masked men wanted to go from one place to another, they would be assisted by these mothers, who would check that the roads were clear of IOF soldiers. And when one of their millions of children gets killed by the IOF, they all gather and mourn as one single mother, that it becomes difficult to figure out which one of these mothers is the martyr’s mother. They are the protectors, the helpers and the witnesses of Israeli brutality, for many of them not only carry the pain of losing their children, they carry the scars of more than 60 years of Zionist terror and destruction.
During the Nakba of 1948, Zionist terrorists massacred Palestinians indiscriminately. Even women and children, who are protected during wars under all human laws, were killed in a brutal way. Accounts of the Deir Yassin massacre mention that among the 254 Palestinians victims were 25 pregnant women who were bayoneted in the abdomen while still alive. Another 52 children were maimed in front of their mothers before having their heads cut off by the Zionist terrorists. After the village of Beit Darras had been surrounded by Zionist terror groups and further Zionist mobilization was on the way to occupy the village, the Zionist terror groups called on the Palestinian residents to leave the village safely from the south side. The villagers decided that it was safer for the women and children to leave, since it was the village the Zionists wanted. Upon leaving the village, all the women and children were massacred by the Zionist terrorists. Kafr Qasim, Qibya and many other massacres carry the same pattern of killing unarmed mothers and their children. Other mothers lost their children, and many their lives, after being forced out of their homes to wander the hills of Palestine in search of a safe spot.
The suffering and pain of Palestinian mothers continues till today. Palestinian mothers, including the elderly and the sick among them, are often humiliated at checkpoints in front of their children, and pregnant women are delayed, causing many to give birth at these checkpoint. Women are not only delayed at checkpoints, they are often prevented from reaching hospitals, causing miscarriages and even the death of some of women and infants. Many unnamed children are stillborn at Israeli checkpoints after unnecessary delays or after their mothers were forced to deliver on the dirt road or inside cars at the checkpoint. A report of the Palestinian Ministry of Health published in October 2006 states that since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 some 68 pregnant women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, leading to 34 miscarriages and the death of four women. In 2002, in two consecutive days two pregnant women on their way to hospital were shot and injured by the IOF soldiers at a checkpoint in the Nablus area. One of the women lost her husband who was shot on the neck and the chest. Others are forced to give birth at home, despite fear of complications because they fear they will be stopped at checkpoints and won’t make it in time to the hospital. In Azzun Atma near Qalqilya pregnant women are even forced to take up residence outside the village until they deliver out of fear that they might not be able to get the necessary medical treatment. The village, encircled by the apartheid wall, is separated by a gate from the rest of the West Bank. This gate is not manned at night, making the village a prison to its residents. According to a B’Tselem report, alone during 2006 some 20 out of 30 pregnant women from Azzun Atma were forced to relocate outside of the village because of their pregnancy.
IOF soldiers don’t hesitate in arresting Palestinian mothers to be used as hostages to pressure wanted Palestinians to give themselves up. In its report “Behind the Bars: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons” published in June 2008, Addammeer, Mandela Institute and the Palestinian Counselling Centre state that “As of May 2008, over 9.080 Palestinian political prisoners remain in Israeli prisons, detention facilities and camps; of those 73 Palestinian women (including 2 girls aged 16 and 17 of a total of 327 minors, and 24 mothers with a total number of 68 children.” Many of the prisoners are held without any charges, and are subjected to torture, humiliation and intimidation. There were four cases of women giving birth inside Israeli prisons under difficult conditions. These women had their hands and feet shackled to their beds. They remain so until they enter the delivery room and are chained again after they deliver.
Palestinian mothers are not only to suffer the loss of their children, husbands and other family members, they themselves are also targeted by the IOF. According to Miftah 7141 Palestinians had been killed by the IOF during the period from 28th September 2000 till 28th February 2009, 1138 of whom were children and 581 were women. A recent report of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights on Israel’s war on Gaza confirms that “Over the course of the 22 day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, a total of 1,434 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 235 were combatants. The vast majority of the dead, however, were civilians and non-combatants: protected persons according to the principles of IHL. PCHR investigations confirm that, in total, 960 civilians lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women. 239 police officers were also killed; the majority (235) in air strikes carried out on the first day of the attacks. The Ministry of Health has also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women.” Every single child killed had a mother. Human rights organization talked in their reports about mothers being killed together with their children, others witnessing the killing of their children and not able to prevent it, while others died in front of their children. Some of these mothers lost not only one child, but several. Of the many war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, one horrific story tells the fate of a Palestinian mother of 10. While sitting with her children, the IOF soldiers entered her house and demanded she choose five of her children to “give as a gift to Israel”. After the woman screamed in horror, the IOF soldiers told her they would choose themselves and then killed five of her children in front of her.
Palestinian mothers have been actively participating in resisting the occupation. They are the first to organize sit-ins in front of international organizations and hold marches demanding the release of their children from Israeli prisons or protesting the brutality of the Israeli military occupation. They visit their sons in hospitals and in jails, despite the long wait and the humiliation they endure on the hands of the Israelis jailers. Also, many of these mothers are the supporters of their families. When the father or son is arrested or killed by the IOF, it is the mothers who take on the burden of providing for their families. Those among them who have a piece of land would plant it with vegetables and herbs, to be later sold to neighbours or at the local market. Others use their embroidery skills to stitch Palestinian tradition dresses “thob”, scarves, shawls and pillow covers. They hold their families together, particularly in difficult times.
Biased media, serving only Zionist propaganda, ignores the suffering of Palestinian mothers under Israeli occupation and instead often portrays them as heartless women, who send these children to the streets and encourage them to throw stones so be killed and then celebrate their death. Palestinian parents encourage their children to study and get a good education and build a better future for themselves. Some parents even lock their children inside the house to prevent them from participating in demonstration or any other kind of activity against the IOF because they know the brutality of the IOF and out of fear they might be killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. Parents work hard to spare their children the suffering they themselves endured under the Israeli occupation. But as long as the Zionists occupy Palestine, Palestinian suffering will continue, and generation after generation will seek to get themselves rid of this brutal occupation, no matter how hard the parents try to keep their children away from it. Living in Palestine, and being confronted with Zionist terror every day, one is not in need of parents or teachers to form an idea about this Zionist state and decide to demonstrate for a better future. That is why many join demonstrations or get politically active without telling their parents. In many cases it is when the children get arrested or are killed that the parents first know of their children’s involvement in resisting the occupation. Palestinian mothers who lose their children often appear composed on TV and in the news, and if asked, most of them talk about their martyred children in pride and calm and without shedding a tear. It is behind the camera that they show their sorrow and anger at the loss of their beloved ones. Palestinians know that these mothers want to send a message to Israel: despite the suffering and the pain, you won’t break us, ever. Few journalists bother to visit these mothers days after their children have been killed. Many of them visit the grave of their killed child daily, and others keep their room as it was when they still lived there. Few reporters bother asking these mothers what memoires they have kept of their children. If they did, they would be shown clothes, hair brushes, notebooks and pictures, all soaked in tears. These mothers would have freely sacrificed their lives to save their children from death on the hands of the IOF and give them a future empty of Zionist occupation.
Mothers are sacred in Palestine because they are the personification of Palestine: the homeland and the mother of all Palestinians. It is the love of this land that is handed over from one generation to the next. Whenever in Dheisheh, we often sat with grandmother as children, listening to her talking about Palestine, the Nakba, the Naksa and the life in a refugee camp. She would talk about her mother and her grandmother, about her brothers and sisters, about my grandfather, and about her children. She was strong and was always there for her family, even at times when she herself was very weak. She was the safe island everyone seeks and the cave that sheltered us from the storm. Even long after her death, I still often think of her and ask for her guidance. She passed down her strength, steadfastness and kindness to her children. My mother continued the tradition of connecting us to the Palestinian landscape. As children, she and my father used to sit with us and tell us stories about Palestine, the history that one would not find in book, the history of the real people who lived on this land and appreciated it. For me, the personal experiences of my grandmother and mother are priceless. I am thankful to my grandmother and my mother for introducing me to a Palestine that was unknown to me, to parts of our history that others work hard to delete, to a heritage that is mine forever. Through our mothers Palestine is celebrated every single day.
In his poem “My Mother”, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said:
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother
--SOURCE--(w/great thanks)"
Update from Gaza:
Gaza Strip, 23 March 2009-(The PT)- Israeli army launched several air attacks on the Gaza Strip. Khan Younis City mid of the occupied Gaza Strip faced heavy Israeli bombings from the naval forces in the western part. Meanwhile, Israeli troops based in the eastern part of the City was attacked by heavy gunfire and shells....
The Israeli escalation comes within very hard time for Palestinians. The so-called ceasefire still imposing hard siege leaving more people in hunger and sentencing more people to death. Three Palestinians were killed yesterday due to inability of leaving abroad for treatment.
--source--"
Reham Alhelsi
When the women came and told her to leave what she was doing and come and sit in front of the house with them, my grandmother knew what was to come. They sat outside and didn’t talk much. My uncle had been shot in the chest by the IOF that afternoon, and was at that moment being operated. He was in a critical condition, the doctors had told the men who had brought him to the hospital. Some were sent back home to prepare the family for the news and to prepare the refugee camp to welcome the hero, in case the worst happened. Although hope dies last, it was a necessity to prepare everything for a quick funeral and a quick burial. The Israeli army had been known to take bodies of Palestinian martyrs and steal their organs without the Palestinian family’s consent. The organs would then be given to Israelis who needed them. So a Palestinian killed by the IOF, mostly for no reason at all or for defending his country, would be labelled as terrorist by Israel and the biased media, while his organs would be used to save Israeli lives. In other countries, stealing the organs of dead people is considered a crime, but as usual, it doesn’t apply to Israel.
My grandmother sat quiet the whole time, no tears and no words. It was her youngest son, they said. His elder brothers had one time after another been imprisoned for everything that Israel considered “terror”, that she decided at least to spare the youngest the inside of an Israeli prison. Every day she would tell him to go to school and come back directly. “don’t go here or there”. I heard my mother say one time “she thought this way she was keeping him safe from the Israelis; everyday coming back from school after classes were over, and keeping him at her side most of the time.” Till one day, the boys came and told my grandmother that her son had been arrested. ”Arrested for what?” “he was throwing stones.” He hadn’t even bothered to go to school that day.” One of my other uncles said laughingly when the story was brought up once: but we had prepared him for this. And everyone laughed. I laughed too, because I have been though this process as well. Actually, to us kids, it was just another game. One of those bizarre refugee camp games, like the “UNRWA restaurant” game, where we would play little refugee kids standing in line and waiting for our daily portion of a slice of bread and small slice of tomato with salt, and being shouted at by the “UNRWA employee”. The other game, which was to prepare us for future imprisonment by the IOF was the “confession game”. Each one of us would be “tortured” to strengthen our resistance and prevent us from confessing anything in case we are interrogated by the IOF. There was really no “torture” in this game, because there was no real beating. We would be shouted at in a funny way, and the one among us to act the “IOF soldier” would be mimicking Israeli soldiers trying to be brave, but who are in fact afraid of us, little children. We would laugh while being “tortured”, for it was mostly fun for us. Although the game would not really prepare anyone for the barbaric Israeli interrogation and torture, in some way, the game was educational. It gave us the feeling that we are stronger than the IOF and that despite all their weapons, they feared us. So, we would just play being beaten by the IOF, and the one playing the IOF soldier would ask us continuously to confess and we would refuse. He would slash us, though not harshly, on the soles, and demand we confess. We would refuse, laughingly, because for us it was a game, a game that would prove useful one day.
That day, no funeral took place, for my uncle had made it. He had a strong will to live. But every time I think of that moment, I think about my grandmother. The 60 year old woman, who used to divide her week according to visiting days in Israeli prisons. Before one of them was released, another would be arrested, so that they rarely gathered at a dinner table. We were all used to it, not seeing all my uncles at the same time. I rarely heard my grandmother complain, but it was clear to everyone how much she loved her family and how sad she was that they weren’t all around her. She didn’t have to tell her children to go and demonstrate. It was a natural reaction to what these children themselves saw and went through, and it was the love of the land planted in their heart by my grandmother. She would often talk about Jrash, the village from which she and her family and all the residents were ethnically cleansed by the Zionist terror organizations. They were forced to move from one place to another, until they finally reached what is now Dheisheh refugee camp. There she tried to reconstruct her original home by planting some trees in the small piece of land near the UNRWA rooms they were to live in.
The life of my grandmother is typical of the lives of many Palestinian mothers. She was born in a small picturesque village in Palestine, where she grew up, got married and started a family. She would take care of her home, and help the family with the fields. She would care for her small garden and the apple trees which she loved most and would make marmalade for the winter. When the Zionist terror organizations started implementing their plan of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population, Palestinian villages were attacked one after the other, and horrific massacres took place. The residents of Jrash were finally forced to leave, but not before they fought heroically. My grandparents often talked about these days. During my last visit to Palestine a couple of months ago, I listened to my grandfather as he talked about the fight with the Zionist groups. With sharp memory, he mentioned such details, that for a few seconds I could feel myself there, with them, 60 years ago.
A number of times my grandmother was beaten by the IOF soldiers, some of whom were younger than her own sons and who didn’t care that she was an elderly woman. When IOF soldiers would attempt to arrest someone in the refugee camp, she would hurry with the other women and try and stop them. When Zionist settlers would attack the refugee camp, she would carry the tree stem she hides behind the couch and go protect the camp alongside the men and women. And in the early mornings of the day, when everyone is still fast asleep, after finishing the morning prayer I would hear her asking God to protect her family, her relatives, her neighbours, the refugee camp, the Palestinians and the whole world. I heard her day after day asking forgiveness for the whole world.
In Palestine mothers are sacred. Every one of us has several mothers: the mother that gave birth to us, the olive tree, the land and the mother of all: Palestine. And a Palestinian mother isn’t just a mother to the children she gives birth to, she is mother to all Palestinians. When a Palestinian is being arrested by the IOF, women of all ages will be surrounding the soldiers within seconds, trying to free the prisoner. And for that, sometimes they pay a heavy price, like the 60 year old Mariam Ayyad from Abu Dees. On the night of 20th of September 2008, IOF soldiers broke into her house. After arguing with her, the old woman was repeatedly hit and thrown on the ground by the soldiers until she died in front of her children and grandchildren. During curfews, it is mostly women who would move carefully from one house corner to another and from one street to the other and distribute wheat and milk. When young masked men wanted to go from one place to another, they would be assisted by these mothers, who would check that the roads were clear of IOF soldiers. And when one of their millions of children gets killed by the IOF, they all gather and mourn as one single mother, that it becomes difficult to figure out which one of these mothers is the martyr’s mother. They are the protectors, the helpers and the witnesses of Israeli brutality, for many of them not only carry the pain of losing their children, they carry the scars of more than 60 years of Zionist terror and destruction.
During the Nakba of 1948, Zionist terrorists massacred Palestinians indiscriminately. Even women and children, who are protected during wars under all human laws, were killed in a brutal way. Accounts of the Deir Yassin massacre mention that among the 254 Palestinians victims were 25 pregnant women who were bayoneted in the abdomen while still alive. Another 52 children were maimed in front of their mothers before having their heads cut off by the Zionist terrorists. After the village of Beit Darras had been surrounded by Zionist terror groups and further Zionist mobilization was on the way to occupy the village, the Zionist terror groups called on the Palestinian residents to leave the village safely from the south side. The villagers decided that it was safer for the women and children to leave, since it was the village the Zionists wanted. Upon leaving the village, all the women and children were massacred by the Zionist terrorists. Kafr Qasim, Qibya and many other massacres carry the same pattern of killing unarmed mothers and their children. Other mothers lost their children, and many their lives, after being forced out of their homes to wander the hills of Palestine in search of a safe spot.
The suffering and pain of Palestinian mothers continues till today. Palestinian mothers, including the elderly and the sick among them, are often humiliated at checkpoints in front of their children, and pregnant women are delayed, causing many to give birth at these checkpoint. Women are not only delayed at checkpoints, they are often prevented from reaching hospitals, causing miscarriages and even the death of some of women and infants. Many unnamed children are stillborn at Israeli checkpoints after unnecessary delays or after their mothers were forced to deliver on the dirt road or inside cars at the checkpoint. A report of the Palestinian Ministry of Health published in October 2006 states that since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 some 68 pregnant women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, leading to 34 miscarriages and the death of four women. In 2002, in two consecutive days two pregnant women on their way to hospital were shot and injured by the IOF soldiers at a checkpoint in the Nablus area. One of the women lost her husband who was shot on the neck and the chest. Others are forced to give birth at home, despite fear of complications because they fear they will be stopped at checkpoints and won’t make it in time to the hospital. In Azzun Atma near Qalqilya pregnant women are even forced to take up residence outside the village until they deliver out of fear that they might not be able to get the necessary medical treatment. The village, encircled by the apartheid wall, is separated by a gate from the rest of the West Bank. This gate is not manned at night, making the village a prison to its residents. According to a B’Tselem report, alone during 2006 some 20 out of 30 pregnant women from Azzun Atma were forced to relocate outside of the village because of their pregnancy.
IOF soldiers don’t hesitate in arresting Palestinian mothers to be used as hostages to pressure wanted Palestinians to give themselves up. In its report “Behind the Bars: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons” published in June 2008, Addammeer, Mandela Institute and the Palestinian Counselling Centre state that “As of May 2008, over 9.080 Palestinian political prisoners remain in Israeli prisons, detention facilities and camps; of those 73 Palestinian women (including 2 girls aged 16 and 17 of a total of 327 minors, and 24 mothers with a total number of 68 children.” Many of the prisoners are held without any charges, and are subjected to torture, humiliation and intimidation. There were four cases of women giving birth inside Israeli prisons under difficult conditions. These women had their hands and feet shackled to their beds. They remain so until they enter the delivery room and are chained again after they deliver.
Palestinian mothers are not only to suffer the loss of their children, husbands and other family members, they themselves are also targeted by the IOF. According to Miftah 7141 Palestinians had been killed by the IOF during the period from 28th September 2000 till 28th February 2009, 1138 of whom were children and 581 were women. A recent report of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights on Israel’s war on Gaza confirms that “Over the course of the 22 day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, a total of 1,434 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 235 were combatants. The vast majority of the dead, however, were civilians and non-combatants: protected persons according to the principles of IHL. PCHR investigations confirm that, in total, 960 civilians lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women. 239 police officers were also killed; the majority (235) in air strikes carried out on the first day of the attacks. The Ministry of Health has also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women.” Every single child killed had a mother. Human rights organization talked in their reports about mothers being killed together with their children, others witnessing the killing of their children and not able to prevent it, while others died in front of their children. Some of these mothers lost not only one child, but several. Of the many war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, one horrific story tells the fate of a Palestinian mother of 10. While sitting with her children, the IOF soldiers entered her house and demanded she choose five of her children to “give as a gift to Israel”. After the woman screamed in horror, the IOF soldiers told her they would choose themselves and then killed five of her children in front of her.
Palestinian mothers have been actively participating in resisting the occupation. They are the first to organize sit-ins in front of international organizations and hold marches demanding the release of their children from Israeli prisons or protesting the brutality of the Israeli military occupation. They visit their sons in hospitals and in jails, despite the long wait and the humiliation they endure on the hands of the Israelis jailers. Also, many of these mothers are the supporters of their families. When the father or son is arrested or killed by the IOF, it is the mothers who take on the burden of providing for their families. Those among them who have a piece of land would plant it with vegetables and herbs, to be later sold to neighbours or at the local market. Others use their embroidery skills to stitch Palestinian tradition dresses “thob”, scarves, shawls and pillow covers. They hold their families together, particularly in difficult times.
Biased media, serving only Zionist propaganda, ignores the suffering of Palestinian mothers under Israeli occupation and instead often portrays them as heartless women, who send these children to the streets and encourage them to throw stones so be killed and then celebrate their death. Palestinian parents encourage their children to study and get a good education and build a better future for themselves. Some parents even lock their children inside the house to prevent them from participating in demonstration or any other kind of activity against the IOF because they know the brutality of the IOF and out of fear they might be killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. Parents work hard to spare their children the suffering they themselves endured under the Israeli occupation. But as long as the Zionists occupy Palestine, Palestinian suffering will continue, and generation after generation will seek to get themselves rid of this brutal occupation, no matter how hard the parents try to keep their children away from it. Living in Palestine, and being confronted with Zionist terror every day, one is not in need of parents or teachers to form an idea about this Zionist state and decide to demonstrate for a better future. That is why many join demonstrations or get politically active without telling their parents. In many cases it is when the children get arrested or are killed that the parents first know of their children’s involvement in resisting the occupation. Palestinian mothers who lose their children often appear composed on TV and in the news, and if asked, most of them talk about their martyred children in pride and calm and without shedding a tear. It is behind the camera that they show their sorrow and anger at the loss of their beloved ones. Palestinians know that these mothers want to send a message to Israel: despite the suffering and the pain, you won’t break us, ever. Few journalists bother to visit these mothers days after their children have been killed. Many of them visit the grave of their killed child daily, and others keep their room as it was when they still lived there. Few reporters bother asking these mothers what memoires they have kept of their children. If they did, they would be shown clothes, hair brushes, notebooks and pictures, all soaked in tears. These mothers would have freely sacrificed their lives to save their children from death on the hands of the IOF and give them a future empty of Zionist occupation.
Mothers are sacred in Palestine because they are the personification of Palestine: the homeland and the mother of all Palestinians. It is the love of this land that is handed over from one generation to the next. Whenever in Dheisheh, we often sat with grandmother as children, listening to her talking about Palestine, the Nakba, the Naksa and the life in a refugee camp. She would talk about her mother and her grandmother, about her brothers and sisters, about my grandfather, and about her children. She was strong and was always there for her family, even at times when she herself was very weak. She was the safe island everyone seeks and the cave that sheltered us from the storm. Even long after her death, I still often think of her and ask for her guidance. She passed down her strength, steadfastness and kindness to her children. My mother continued the tradition of connecting us to the Palestinian landscape. As children, she and my father used to sit with us and tell us stories about Palestine, the history that one would not find in book, the history of the real people who lived on this land and appreciated it. For me, the personal experiences of my grandmother and mother are priceless. I am thankful to my grandmother and my mother for introducing me to a Palestine that was unknown to me, to parts of our history that others work hard to delete, to a heritage that is mine forever. Through our mothers Palestine is celebrated every single day.
In his poem “My Mother”, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said:
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother
--SOURCE--(w/great thanks)"
Update from Gaza:
Gaza Strip, 23 March 2009-(The PT)- Israeli army launched several air attacks on the Gaza Strip. Khan Younis City mid of the occupied Gaza Strip faced heavy Israeli bombings from the naval forces in the western part. Meanwhile, Israeli troops based in the eastern part of the City was attacked by heavy gunfire and shells....
The Israeli escalation comes within very hard time for Palestinians. The so-called ceasefire still imposing hard siege leaving more people in hunger and sentencing more people to death. Three Palestinians were killed yesterday due to inability of leaving abroad for treatment.
--source--"
Thursday, March 19, 2009
I’ll See You Next Time We Come Around
Or maybe I won't!!!
(Blog author's note: Posted in light of my continuing sabbatical; I alter this fabulous and perceptive author's titles not out of disrespect, but respect at the unexpected and prescient phrases, themes, and ideas that catch my eye in his brilliant essays.)
"Monsanto and Corporate, Jail-House, Gang Rape
One of the ugliest things to be manifesting in the Obama portfolio in these first 50 days is the war against small farmers; against farmer’s markets, alternative and organic growers of produce. There’s more but I don’t want to spend my time laying out what you can get from the link. You can get some nice details in the preceding site’s forum about Congresswomen DeLauro and her husband Stan ‘the man’ Greenberg who pimps for Monsanto. And… you can learn all you need to know about Monsanto in this video.
Those of us who have followed the predatory operations of this evil empire know about Monsanto deliberately seeding farmland they want to seize; their powerful law firms and helicopter spy ships. When you factor in what genetically modified foods do to the human body well… it becomes apparent that there is some kind of plan by a collection of corporate and government interests to make humanity as stupid as the livestock they consume and to reduce their numbers by a frightening amount.
It doesn’t matter if you believe there is a devil or not if… there are entities that behave in all the ways that we have been told that the classical devil of religion and myth is alleged to behave… something… something… a rose by any other name might well be a Venus Flytrap plant.
There’s a war on and it is a different kind of a war than the usual wars that these same bloodthirsty Morlocks usually sponsor. It’s a war of corporation owned governments against the rights and freedoms of the individual. If you read the news listed at What Really Happened and The Truthseeker each day then you will see many examples of this each and every single day.
What is happening as a result is that individuals who still possess objective reasoning skills, along with a certain amount of dignity and honor, are banding together to fight back against this aggregate of soul eating larva. One might well assume that part of the effort of these larvas is to flush these people out into the open so they know who they are. Let’s face it, when you are as stone cold evil as these larvas are there are no limits to what they will do or to the hubris and greed that drives them.
There’s a tight little hotbed of incest between the bankers and the corporations and their ‘main bitch’ is whatever government is bending over in the shower for them. You don’t have to tell these public servants not to drop the soap. They drop the soap on purpose and then they bat their eyes and talk like Mae West.
Organized religion, which is the tranny in the mix, likes to camp it up in the mess area or the prison chapel. They’re usually pretty loud and festive and all sit at the same table during meals. It really puts them in the mood to wear those long robes and funny hats. I know some of you have heard about the government’s recruitment of pastors who are going to help herd their flock during times of civil unrest. Heck, the government even gave them appropriate Bible verses. If you don’t know about this particular feature along with many others it’s… because you don’t want to or… you’re deep asleep in a burning house.
The Department of Homeland Insecurity is now labeling all kinds of ordinary citizens as ‘terrorists’. Sure, I’m making this up, just like I made up and printed the official documents that you can ‘full size’ and read for yourself at the click of your mouse. You will note the ultra-heavy emphasis on the dangers posed for the ‘self-chosen’ who, of course- no brainer- had nothing to do with this showing up in the first place.
Basically what this intends it what H.R. 875 intends. If you can’t put this together with the bank bailouts and the radical fleecing and aggressive policing of citizen ordinaire then you aren’t going to have any problem existing in tighter and tighter quarters; with less food and comfort than you thought was possible. You’re going become an official resident of Gaza Global. You’ll want to make sure you stay in line at all times and, from what I hear, neither the TV or the lights ever go off so you’ll be able to stay entertained and also never have to be afraid of the dark again. You never know who might be out there. It could even be one of us growing illegal vegetables or herding contraband goats from which we are making psychedelic cheeses.
Alright, let’s move on to the next false flag terror attack. Our people in Vegas are doing some serious handicapping and the same people from the 9/11 short-selling extravaganza (gee, I hope that’s not an Italian word) are already putting in their bids as well. You might remember that the first serious foray into this win-win area of commercial enterprise, which puts the profit margin of the private prison industry to shame, took place in The Heartland of Oklahoma City. You can’t get more main street,USA Red State
The next step was to hit the largest, liberal collective of lock-step, urban individualists inNew York City Afghanistan and Iraq
The next step was to go ‘internationale’ and take the show on the road to jolly oldLondon town and Madrid Chicago which gets a real bump for being Obama’s home turf AND, it’s close to Canada AND the distance between Chicago and Toronto
We’re getting 7 to 2 with no ‘over, under’ for bothSan Francisco and Seattle Phoenix
I’m glad you could come with me today on my little space/time journey. Every now and then it’s good to get out and stretch your legs and, if you’re a regular Smoking Mirrors reader, you know we like to stretch your mind as well. Some might argue that we like to stretch your credibility and I’ll have to agree that it is a real bummer that so many facts and curious coincidences tend to muck up that particular perception. How about I throw in a little something about UFO’s or Saddam being alive inParaguay
I love the smell of genetically modified, breakfast foods in the morning! While I’m looking out the window, I can merge together the sounds of the Rice Krispies crackling in the milk from the Monsanto-enhanced cows with the sonorous oratory of our great leaders …as they call us forth to face the mighty challenges that the people who own them …slipped into our early Christmas stockings.
Well… as the ass and mind bandits of the airwaves- and your local authorities- like to tell you… “Remain calm’. If you panic, you’ll just seize up and it will hurt that much more. Keep in mind that all good things must also come to an end and that’s why I’m going close today’s missive with a hearty “Hi Ho Silver” and I’ll see you next time we come around if there is one.
And why do I think there may not be one?
".... It’s got something to do with April coming. For me personally, April has often been “the cruelest month”. I got sent off to prison twice in April and there was that military thing and a couple of other episodes though, April has been kinder this last decade; at least so that I can’t single it out for anything. Life isn’t as hard for me as it is for so many people now because I have nothing to lose anyway. I don’t play the stock market. I don’t have a 401K and I am unlikely to claim Social Security when that time arrives. I retired on nothing years ago and I live by invisible means. You may not believe in such things but I’m living proof. Of course, it helps if you don’t want anything either. Lao Tzu said it well as he said everything well, “cut down on useless craving”. You’re only poor if you want shit you don’t need. The universe seems to be inclined to take care of everything else.
I read somewhere (wish I had saved it) that this April there’s a near exact configuration as existed at the start of one of the last World Wars and I’m getting this antsy thing and all sorts of premonitions about the period between April and June of this year....
--MORE--"
See you on the other side, readers.
(Blog author's note: Posted in light of my continuing sabbatical; I alter this fabulous and perceptive author's titles not out of disrespect, but respect at the unexpected and prescient phrases, themes, and ideas that catch my eye in his brilliant essays.)
"Monsanto and Corporate, Jail-House, Gang Rape
One of the ugliest things to be manifesting in the Obama portfolio in these first 50 days is the war against small farmers; against farmer’s markets, alternative and organic growers of produce. There’s more but I don’t want to spend my time laying out what you can get from the link. You can get some nice details in the preceding site’s forum about Congresswomen DeLauro and her husband Stan ‘the man’ Greenberg who pimps for Monsanto. And… you can learn all you need to know about Monsanto in this video.
Those of us who have followed the predatory operations of this evil empire know about Monsanto deliberately seeding farmland they want to seize; their powerful law firms and helicopter spy ships. When you factor in what genetically modified foods do to the human body well… it becomes apparent that there is some kind of plan by a collection of corporate and government interests to make humanity as stupid as the livestock they consume and to reduce their numbers by a frightening amount.
It doesn’t matter if you believe there is a devil or not if… there are entities that behave in all the ways that we have been told that the classical devil of religion and myth is alleged to behave… something… something… a rose by any other name might well be a Venus Flytrap plant.
There’s a war on and it is a different kind of a war than the usual wars that these same bloodthirsty Morlocks usually sponsor. It’s a war of corporation owned governments against the rights and freedoms of the individual. If you read the news listed at What Really Happened and The Truthseeker each day then you will see many examples of this each and every single day.
What is happening as a result is that individuals who still possess objective reasoning skills, along with a certain amount of dignity and honor, are banding together to fight back against this aggregate of soul eating larva. One might well assume that part of the effort of these larvas is to flush these people out into the open so they know who they are. Let’s face it, when you are as stone cold evil as these larvas are there are no limits to what they will do or to the hubris and greed that drives them.
There’s a tight little hotbed of incest between the bankers and the corporations and their ‘main bitch’ is whatever government is bending over in the shower for them. You don’t have to tell these public servants not to drop the soap. They drop the soap on purpose and then they bat their eyes and talk like Mae West.
Organized religion, which is the tranny in the mix, likes to camp it up in the mess area or the prison chapel. They’re usually pretty loud and festive and all sit at the same table during meals. It really puts them in the mood to wear those long robes and funny hats. I know some of you have heard about the government’s recruitment of pastors who are going to help herd their flock during times of civil unrest. Heck, the government even gave them appropriate Bible verses. If you don’t know about this particular feature along with many others it’s… because you don’t want to or… you’re deep asleep in a burning house.
The Department of Homeland Insecurity is now labeling all kinds of ordinary citizens as ‘terrorists’. Sure, I’m making this up, just like I made up and printed the official documents that you can ‘full size’ and read for yourself at the click of your mouse. You will note the ultra-heavy emphasis on the dangers posed for the ‘self-chosen’ who, of course- no brainer- had nothing to do with this showing up in the first place.
Basically what this intends it what H.R. 875 intends. If you can’t put this together with the bank bailouts and the radical fleecing and aggressive policing of citizen ordinaire then you aren’t going to have any problem existing in tighter and tighter quarters; with less food and comfort than you thought was possible. You’re going become an official resident of Gaza Global. You’ll want to make sure you stay in line at all times and, from what I hear, neither the TV or the lights ever go off so you’ll be able to stay entertained and also never have to be afraid of the dark again. You never know who might be out there. It could even be one of us growing illegal vegetables or herding contraband goats from which we are making psychedelic cheeses.
Alright, let’s move on to the next false flag terror attack. Our people in Vegas are doing some serious handicapping and the same people from the 9/11 short-selling extravaganza (gee, I hope that’s not an Italian word) are already putting in their bids as well. You might remember that the first serious foray into this win-win area of commercial enterprise, which puts the profit margin of the private prison industry to shame, took place in The Heartland of Oklahoma City. You can’t get more main street,
The next step was to hit the largest, liberal collective of lock-step, urban individualists in
The next step was to go ‘internationale’ and take the show on the road to jolly old
We’re getting 7 to 2 with no ‘over, under’ for both
I’m glad you could come with me today on my little space/time journey. Every now and then it’s good to get out and stretch your legs and, if you’re a regular Smoking Mirrors reader, you know we like to stretch your mind as well. Some might argue that we like to stretch your credibility and I’ll have to agree that it is a real bummer that so many facts and curious coincidences tend to muck up that particular perception. How about I throw in a little something about UFO’s or Saddam being alive in
I love the smell of genetically modified, breakfast foods in the morning! While I’m looking out the window, I can merge together the sounds of the Rice Krispies crackling in the milk from the Monsanto-enhanced cows with the sonorous oratory of our great leaders …as they call us forth to face the mighty challenges that the people who own them …slipped into our early Christmas stockings.
Well… as the ass and mind bandits of the airwaves- and your local authorities- like to tell you… “Remain calm’. If you panic, you’ll just seize up and it will hurt that much more. Keep in mind that all good things must also come to an end and that’s why I’m going close today’s missive with a hearty “Hi Ho Silver” and I’ll see you next time we come around if there is one.
And why do I think there may not be one?
".... It’s got something to do with April coming. For me personally, April has often been “the cruelest month”. I got sent off to prison twice in April and there was that military thing and a couple of other episodes though, April has been kinder this last decade; at least so that I can’t single it out for anything. Life isn’t as hard for me as it is for so many people now because I have nothing to lose anyway. I don’t play the stock market. I don’t have a 401K and I am unlikely to claim Social Security when that time arrives. I retired on nothing years ago and I live by invisible means. You may not believe in such things but I’m living proof. Of course, it helps if you don’t want anything either. Lao Tzu said it well as he said everything well, “cut down on useless craving”. You’re only poor if you want shit you don’t need. The universe seems to be inclined to take care of everything else.
I read somewhere (wish I had saved it) that this April there’s a near exact configuration as existed at the start of one of the last World Wars and I’m getting this antsy thing and all sorts of premonitions about the period between April and June of this year....
--MORE--"
See you on the other side, readers.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A Poem For Palestine
"Iman Darweesh Al Hams:
[Nirvana Released: A 13 year old slain]
Iman...
Iman...
IMAN...
"I light candles in a daze, cause I found God."
Iman, A mother whispers
I thought, somewhere
Iman, a mother questions desperately grasping,
I thought
IMAN, a mother is screaming why
do I hear
Kurt Cobain singing
Iman's name, dropped
the press printed words
written as news
of her memory
tossing hurt
expel shock
and raged
through
a silence of rain
stormed against my bare palms
pouring through the dark
brown clouds within my eyes
face anguished
as the paper falls
softer than Iman fell
pounding sandy dust
pitching the rocks, pushed
her childlike flesh
bruised but bleeding
a heart pumped
slower, than the soldiers
as heartbeat stopping
Nirvana jukeboxed music beat
Iman's down
behind my closed eyes
shot
how does an Officer walk
calmly, I wonder
did she think he was
going to be
her saviour
stop this sudden maddness
this murder
of a child
did the sun blind her
from seeing
the devil
with stripes
saviour he
see her fear
see her strength
verifying
youth
shooting
The Charge Sheet alleges
Capt. R. as he is
offically unknown
fired two shots
after approaching
Iman who was
already downed
by some previous
gunfire
please don't forget
he switched his gun
to an automatic response
emptying her life
out
all the while
too many sets of eyes
watched without one mouth
to say
whats being done
is wrong
all the while
Kurt is singing
"STAY AWAY"
"STAY AWAY"
"STAY AWAY"
it's too late
for Iman, 13 years
her statue of limitations
it's too late
for me, I can't forget her name
but it's too late
maybe, bullets are cheap
and the price of life
gets cheaper by the day
"Now, I light candles in a daze
cause I found God."
What is will
What is good
Ask Iman
cause it's too late
to tell her
-- authored by i_dread on 2004-11-30
[Nirvana Released: A 13 year old slain]
Iman...
Iman...
IMAN...
"I light candles in a daze, cause I found God."
Iman, A mother whispers
I thought, somewhere
Iman, a mother questions desperately grasping,
I thought
IMAN, a mother is screaming why
do I hear
Kurt Cobain singing
Iman's name, dropped
the press printed words
written as news
of her memory
tossing hurt
expel shock
and raged
through
a silence of rain
stormed against my bare palms
pouring through the dark
brown clouds within my eyes
face anguished
as the paper falls
softer than Iman fell
pounding sandy dust
pitching the rocks, pushed
her childlike flesh
bruised but bleeding
a heart pumped
slower, than the soldiers
as heartbeat stopping
Nirvana jukeboxed music beat
Iman's down
behind my closed eyes
shot
how does an Officer walk
calmly, I wonder
did she think he was
going to be
her saviour
stop this sudden maddness
this murder
of a child
did the sun blind her
from seeing
the devil
with stripes
saviour he
see her fear
see her strength
verifying
youth
shooting
The Charge Sheet alleges
Capt. R. as he is
offically unknown
fired two shots
after approaching
Iman who was
already downed
by some previous
gunfire
please don't forget
he switched his gun
to an automatic response
emptying her life
out
all the while
too many sets of eyes
watched without one mouth
to say
whats being done
is wrong
all the while
Kurt is singing
"STAY AWAY"
"STAY AWAY"
"STAY AWAY"
it's too late
for Iman, 13 years
her statue of limitations
it's too late
for me, I can't forget her name
but it's too late
maybe, bullets are cheap
and the price of life
gets cheaper by the day
"Now, I light candles in a daze
cause I found God."
What is will
What is good
Ask Iman
cause it's too late
to tell her
-- authored by i_dread on 2004-11-30
Monday, March 16, 2009
The AmeriKan Empire: It's All Good!
Thank God someone still reads the New York Times because I never even visit their website anymore (and I was a decades-long purchaser and consumer).
"It's All Good: Media Reports for Duty as Militarists Plan More Wars
Written by Chris Floyd
Surely there is no one who still needs to be apprised of the fact that the New York Times is one of the chief organs of the American Empire, operating in a semi-official fashion to disseminate the intentions and wishes of our rulers. The fact that the paper also publishes some excellent reporting -- and can even, on occasion, assume an adversarial stance against one faction of the elite or another -- in no way undermines its essential function in the imperial power structure. After all, Pravda and Izvestia did the same under the Soviets.
[Of course, the dead hand of state censorship was heavier under the Soviets than in our ultra-modern, low-carb authoritarian system. We prefer witless diversion over outright repression, tasers over bullets, and the eager self-censorship of cozy, coddled media dullards over direct intervention by government functionaries -- although, to be sure, if repression, bullets and direct intervention (along with KGB-style torture, rendition, detention without trial, etc.) are deemed necessary, our elites are more than willing to oblige.]
But despite the glaring transparency of the NYT's stovepiping duties, it is still instructive to watch these operations in action now and then, if only to keep one's bullshit detector in fighting trim. And a story by Thom Shanker highlighted in the Times on Saturday provides an excellent example of this venerable and pernicious process.
The nugget of "news" in the story was unsurprising -- but its implications were no less disturbing for that. Shanker, in the usual cringing courtier mode of our higher media, funnels the usual unexamined, unquestioned spin of the usual anonymous "senior official" to let the rabble know that the poobahs on the Potomac are gearing up to fight even more wars simultaneously all over the globe. Specifically, what we have is -- as Shanker puts it in the inelegant prose that characterizes most NYT pieces - a "rethink [of] what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time."
No, what we need now, says Shanker's Anonymous Militarist, is the ability to fight every damn body every damn where in every damn kind of way. Not just a two-front war, but three-front wars, four-front wars, counterinsurgencies, police actions, nation-building (with the preceding nation-destroying, of course), on and on, all at the same time.
Nowhere -- absolutely nowhere -- does the story give the slightest space for even the briefest consideration of a viewpoint that questions in even the mildest way the assumption that the United States should and must be prepared at all times to wage war on multiple fronts all over the world, forever. No, this "need" is simply a given -- for Thom Shanker, for the New York Times, and for the bipartisan Beltway elite.
But let's give credit where it's due. We should note that Shanker does not rely solely on the word of the anonymous Senior Pentagon Official in preparing the American people for decades of endless war. To provide some needed context and nuance on this issue, he also quotes two Serious Experts. Who are they? Try not to laugh when you hear.
One of them is Thomas Donnelly, the author of the report published in 2000 by the Cheney-Rumsfeld group Project for a New American Century, which we have detailed so often in these pages and elsewhere. The other is astroturf "liberal" Michael O'Hanlon – yes, the same Iraq warhawk who falsely painted himself as a progressive opponent of the Iraq War who had been "converted" to the noble cause by Bush's vaunted "surge." That's right: the "perspective" on the Administration's move to a multi-war strategy was provided by two ardent proponents of aggressive military intervention around the world.
Donnelly's PNAC report -- a blueprint followed faithfully by the Bush Administration -- openly yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the American people into adopting PNAC's global militarist agenda wholesale. The report also called for imposing an American military presence in Iraq -- even if Saddam Hussein were no longer on the scene. Here are some of the points of Donnelly's report on behalf of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and other PNAC members. And remember, these were set down in September 2000 -- long before PNAC's longed-for "new Pearl Harbor" in September 2001; you know, the day that "changed the world" and has been used to justify the Terror War and the further militarization of American society. As we noted in the earlier PNAC piece, Donnelly, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, called for:
And note this point from the 2000 PNAC report:
That earlier piece also had more about the mindset of this "expert" called in by the Times:
This now has become the theme of the Obama Administration as it seeks "to develop the ability to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.'" But what else to be expected from a new president who chose to retain the militarists' hand-picked Pentagon poobah – longtime Bush Family factotum Bob Gates – as head of the nation's war machine? This unprecedented action -- carrying over a Defense Secretary from the regime of a party vanquished at the polls – was entirely Obama's decision. Thus he is not being sandbagged or undermined or played by Bushist moles in the Pentagon, as many Obamalators like to believe; the people in the Pentagon now are there because the new president wants them to be there.
Donnelly, bless his heart, is admirably open about the assumptions behind the strategy shift, telling the NYT:
"The ultimate guarantor of international security": i.e., the old dream of global Pax Americana – with the world's nations in the same position vis-Ã -vis the "guarantor" as they were under the ultimate model for our militarists: the "Pax Romana" in days of yore. Of course, one of those old Romans had a better description of the reality of such guarantees of security. The historian Tacitus put it the mouth of a recipient of Rome's international security, the British chieftain Calgacus:
Creating a desolation and calling it peace is also high on the list for O'Hanlon, an incontinent quoter who is dragged out at every opportunity by the stovepipers to give "liberal" cred to their warlike designs. As we noted in August 2007 – in the midst of the escalation and "ethnic cleansing" operation in Iraq known as the "surge," O'Hanlon was prominent among the "liberal hawks" who were pushing the truly barbaric "solution" of partitioning Iraq into ethnic enclaves – by force, if need be. As noted below, another of these barbarians was the man Obama picked as his vice president: Joe Biden. (See original for all links):
And so in the recent story, O'Hanlon – described by the Times as a "liberal-centrist" – is trotted out to put a positive, progressive spin on the multi-war plan. It's a "good start," he says, because the Bush-Obama war chief Bob Gates has said that other parts of the government need to pitch in more on the imperial project; the Pentagon can't run the world all on its own. At least, that's what I think O'Hanlon said. His "insight" is such mushy, think-tank wankery that it's hard to divine any genuine content in it. Like Shakespeare's malapropic Dogberry, O'Hanlon is "too cunning to be understood." Here's the quote:
Whatever you say, Kev. But I sure hope you don't waste your next EZ Pass out of Gaza to dredge up boilerplate like this.
So there you have the considered, professional and, above all, serious analysis of the New York Times and its "experts." A strategy to commit the United States, and its cannon fodder – sorry, its citizens – to the service of a war machine capable of fighting endless, multi-level, violent conflicts simultaneously around the world does not occasion any demur, objection, pause for thought or – God forbid! – the slightest consideration that an ever-expanding, ever-meddling global empire of more than 700 military bases in 160 countries, and the aggressive foreign policy which put them there, might not be the best way to guarantee the peace and security of the American people. (Much less the bombed, droned, death-squadded and meddled-with targets of the strategy.)
No, when it comes to expanding American domination by force, menace, violence and death, our bipartisan courtiers and conduits of empire agree: It's all good!
--MORE--"
"It's All Good: Media Reports for Duty as Militarists Plan More Wars
Written by Chris Floyd
Surely there is no one who still needs to be apprised of the fact that the New York Times is one of the chief organs of the American Empire, operating in a semi-official fashion to disseminate the intentions and wishes of our rulers. The fact that the paper also publishes some excellent reporting -- and can even, on occasion, assume an adversarial stance against one faction of the elite or another -- in no way undermines its essential function in the imperial power structure. After all, Pravda and Izvestia did the same under the Soviets.
[Of course, the dead hand of state censorship was heavier under the Soviets than in our ultra-modern, low-carb authoritarian system. We prefer witless diversion over outright repression, tasers over bullets, and the eager self-censorship of cozy, coddled media dullards over direct intervention by government functionaries -- although, to be sure, if repression, bullets and direct intervention (along with KGB-style torture, rendition, detention without trial, etc.) are deemed necessary, our elites are more than willing to oblige.]
But despite the glaring transparency of the NYT's stovepiping duties, it is still instructive to watch these operations in action now and then, if only to keep one's bullshit detector in fighting trim. And a story by Thom Shanker highlighted in the Times on Saturday provides an excellent example of this venerable and pernicious process.
The nugget of "news" in the story was unsurprising -- but its implications were no less disturbing for that. Shanker, in the usual cringing courtier mode of our higher media, funnels the usual unexamined, unquestioned spin of the usual anonymous "senior official" to let the rabble know that the poobahs on the Potomac are gearing up to fight even more wars simultaneously all over the globe. Specifically, what we have is -- as Shanker puts it in the inelegant prose that characterizes most NYT pieces - a "rethink [of] what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time."
No, what we need now, says Shanker's Anonymous Militarist, is the ability to fight every damn body every damn where in every damn kind of way. Not just a two-front war, but three-front wars, four-front wars, counterinsurgencies, police actions, nation-building (with the preceding nation-destroying, of course), on and on, all at the same time.
Nowhere -- absolutely nowhere -- does the story give the slightest space for even the briefest consideration of a viewpoint that questions in even the mildest way the assumption that the United States should and must be prepared at all times to wage war on multiple fronts all over the world, forever. No, this "need" is simply a given -- for Thom Shanker, for the New York Times, and for the bipartisan Beltway elite.
But let's give credit where it's due. We should note that Shanker does not rely solely on the word of the anonymous Senior Pentagon Official in preparing the American people for decades of endless war. To provide some needed context and nuance on this issue, he also quotes two Serious Experts. Who are they? Try not to laugh when you hear.
One of them is Thomas Donnelly, the author of the report published in 2000 by the Cheney-Rumsfeld group Project for a New American Century, which we have detailed so often in these pages and elsewhere. The other is astroturf "liberal" Michael O'Hanlon – yes, the same Iraq warhawk who falsely painted himself as a progressive opponent of the Iraq War who had been "converted" to the noble cause by Bush's vaunted "surge." That's right: the "perspective" on the Administration's move to a multi-war strategy was provided by two ardent proponents of aggressive military intervention around the world.
Donnelly's PNAC report -- a blueprint followed faithfully by the Bush Administration -- openly yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the American people into adopting PNAC's global militarist agenda wholesale. The report also called for imposing an American military presence in Iraq -- even if Saddam Hussein were no longer on the scene. Here are some of the points of Donnelly's report on behalf of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and other PNAC members. And remember, these were set down in September 2000 -- long before PNAC's longed-for "new Pearl Harbor" in September 2001; you know, the day that "changed the world" and has been used to justify the Terror War and the further militarization of American society. As we noted in the earlier PNAC piece, Donnelly, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, called for:
--- Projecting American dominance with a "worldwide network of forward operating bases" – some permanent, others "temporary access arrangements" as needed for various military interventions – in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. These additions to America's already-extensive overseas deployments would act as "the cavalry on the new American frontier" – a frontier that PNAC declared now extended throughout the world.
--- Withdrawing from arms control treaties to allow for the development of a global missile shield, the deployment of space-based weapons and the production of a new generation of "battlefield nuclear weapons," especially "bunker-busters" for penetrating underground fortifications.
--- Raising the U.S. military budget to at least 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, with annual increases of tens of billions of dollars each year.
--- Developing sophisticated new technologies to "control the global commons of cyberspace" by closely monitoring communications and transactions on the Internet.
--- Pursuing the development of "new methods of attack – electronic, 'non-lethal, biological…in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace and perhaps the world of microbes."
And note this point from the 2000 PNAC report:
--- Developing the ability to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." This means moving beyond the "two-war standard" of preparedness which has guided U.S. strategy since World War II in order to account for "new realities and potential new conflicts."
That earlier piece also had more about the mindset of this "expert" called in by the Times:
Donnelly, a former journalist and legislative aide, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs last year that America should look to its "imperial past" as a guide to its future. Reviewing The Savage Wars of Peace, a pro-Empire book by journalist Max Boot, Donnelly cites approvingly the "pacification" of the Philippines by American forces in 1898-1900, in which at least 100,000 Filipinos were killed in a bid for independence. He also points to the U.S. Army's success in subduing the Native American tribes in a series of small wars, and, closer to our time, the efficient "constabulatory operation" in Panama, which was invaded by the first President Bush in 1989. Similar "savage wars of peace" – pacifications, counterinsurgencies, police actions, invasions – will be required to maintain the new American Empire, says Donnelly.
And here too, George W. Bush has clearly echoed the thinking of the PNAC members who now surround him in the White House. Speaking at a Republican fundraiser last August, the President seemed keenly aware of the heavy price in blood and treasure the nation will have to pay to maintain its imperium in the New American Century: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland."
This now has become the theme of the Obama Administration as it seeks "to develop the ability to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.'" But what else to be expected from a new president who chose to retain the militarists' hand-picked Pentagon poobah – longtime Bush Family factotum Bob Gates – as head of the nation's war machine? This unprecedented action -- carrying over a Defense Secretary from the regime of a party vanquished at the polls – was entirely Obama's decision. Thus he is not being sandbagged or undermined or played by Bushist moles in the Pentagon, as many Obamalators like to believe; the people in the Pentagon now are there because the new president wants them to be there.
Donnelly, bless his heart, is admirably open about the assumptions behind the strategy shift, telling the NYT:
“We have to do many things simultaneously if our goal is to remain the ultimate guarantor of international security,” Mr. Donnelly said. “The hedge against a rising China requires a very different kind of force than fighting an irregular war in Afghanistan or invading Iraq or building partnership capacity in Africa.”
"The ultimate guarantor of international security": i.e., the old dream of global Pax Americana – with the world's nations in the same position vis-Ã -vis the "guarantor" as they were under the ultimate model for our militarists: the "Pax Romana" in days of yore. Of course, one of those old Romans had a better description of the reality of such guarantees of security. The historian Tacitus put it the mouth of a recipient of Rome's international security, the British chieftain Calgacus:
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them.... To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create desolation and call it peace.
Creating a desolation and calling it peace is also high on the list for O'Hanlon, an incontinent quoter who is dragged out at every opportunity by the stovepipers to give "liberal" cred to their warlike designs. As we noted in August 2007 – in the midst of the escalation and "ethnic cleansing" operation in Iraq known as the "surge," O'Hanlon was prominent among the "liberal hawks" who were pushing the truly barbaric "solution" of partitioning Iraq into ethnic enclaves – by force, if need be. As noted below, another of these barbarians was the man Obama picked as his vice president: Joe Biden. (See original for all links):
The idea of a three-way split of Iraq between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds has long been mooted in some quarters -- Joe Biden and "liberal" intellectuals like Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith were early enthusiasts -- and it is now gaining force within the foreign policy "clerisy" that Glenn Greenwald and Arthur Silber have been dissecting in recent days. Firedoglake points us to the incisive commentaries of Reidar Visser, "an actual expert on the regional aspects of Iraq and its history," who has lately been debunking the deeply ignorant and murderously arrogant "partition" proposals of Galbraith and others.
Visser takes aim at one of the most hideous of these proposals: "The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq," by respected "scholars" Michael O'Hanlon (see A Tiny Revolution for more on this fine mind of our time) and Edward Joseph. When I first read of these gentlemen's work, I thought it must surely be a parody, a take-off on the deadly serious, genocidal fantasies of Philip Atkinson, who, on a website hardwired to the rightwing power grid of Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey and Dick Cheney, called for Bush to nuke Iraq, repopulate it with Americans and declare himself President-for-Life. The O-Hanlon-Joseph piece for the highly respectable Brookings Institution partakes of that same kind of murderous fantasy. As Visser notes:...using cool academic language, the authors review the nuts and bolts of relocating somewhere between 2 and 5 million Iraqis in order to create new ethnic federal entities. Snippets from this part of the report probably speak best for themselves: “we advocate where possible dividing major cities along natural boundaries” (p. 16); “on the actual day of the relocation operation, Iraqi and US-led coalition forces would deploy in sufficient numbers to look for snipers, cover the flanks of the civilian convoys, inspect suspicious vehicles for explosives and conduct similar tasks” (p. 17); and finally, on p. 24, “this [internal border] control system would place some burdens on Iraq’s internal trade and other aspects of its economy. It would complicate the efforts of individuals to cross from one region to another to visit family and friends. For the most part these burdens would be bearable. For individuals or businesses that need to make frequent crossings across Iraq’s new internal borders, or those willing to pay for the privilege, an EZ pass system [sic] might be developed to expedite movements for those with important and regular business to conduct.”
"On the actual day of the relocation operation...." Try to imagine such a day, when millions of Iraqis are uprooted and forced to move to other areas, all under guard by "Iraqi and US-led coalition forces." Actually it's not that hard to imagine, for we have seen it before: in faded photographs and newsreel footage and films like "The Sorrow and the Pity," "Shoah," and "Schindler's List." Less familiar in the popular imagination but perhaps even more apposite are the "relocations" of ethnic populations carried out by Josef Stalin, when whole peoples, such as the Chechens, were uprooted and transported by force to other regions. Or we could of course look closer to home, at the "Trail of Tears," the deadly removal of the Cherokee from their homelands to concentration camps in Oklahoma.
These kinds of scenes are precisely what the clean-limbed O'Hanlon and his partner envisage for Iraq, followed by a life ensnared by checkpoints and passes and internal border controls. It may sound harsh, brutal and inhuman, but not to worry: "For the most part these burdens would be bearable."
I have a suggestion for Mr. O'Hanlon. I propose that he subject himself to such a regimen, then come back and tell just us how "bearable" it is. He doesn't even have to move five million Iraqis under armed guard to participate in this experiment: he can go to Palestine right now, where the people already live under his kind of "soft partition." Let him try it on for himself, just for a few months -- not the lifelong sentence he proposes for the Iraqis. We can even give him an "EZ Pass" to expedite any "important business" he needs to do.
And so in the recent story, O'Hanlon – described by the Times as a "liberal-centrist" – is trotted out to put a positive, progressive spin on the multi-war plan. It's a "good start," he says, because the Bush-Obama war chief Bob Gates has said that other parts of the government need to pitch in more on the imperial project; the Pentagon can't run the world all on its own. At least, that's what I think O'Hanlon said. His "insight" is such mushy, think-tank wankery that it's hard to divine any genuine content in it. Like Shakespeare's malapropic Dogberry, O'Hanlon is "too cunning to be understood." Here's the quote:
“We have Gates and others saying that other parts of the government are underresourced and that the DoD should not be called on to do everything” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “That’s a good starting point for this — to ask and at least begin answering where it might be better to have other parts of the government get stronger and do a bigger share, rather than the Department of Defense.”
Whatever you say, Kev. But I sure hope you don't waste your next EZ Pass out of Gaza to dredge up boilerplate like this.
So there you have the considered, professional and, above all, serious analysis of the New York Times and its "experts." A strategy to commit the United States, and its cannon fodder – sorry, its citizens – to the service of a war machine capable of fighting endless, multi-level, violent conflicts simultaneously around the world does not occasion any demur, objection, pause for thought or – God forbid! – the slightest consideration that an ever-expanding, ever-meddling global empire of more than 700 military bases in 160 countries, and the aggressive foreign policy which put them there, might not be the best way to guarantee the peace and security of the American people. (Much less the bombed, droned, death-squadded and meddled-with targets of the strategy.)
No, when it comes to expanding American domination by force, menace, violence and death, our bipartisan courtiers and conduits of empire agree: It's all good!
--MORE--"
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Cheney Assassination Squads
"Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney
Muriel Kane
March 11, 2009
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Muriel Kane
March 11, 2009
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of "America's Constitutional Crisis" whether abuses of executive power, like those which occurred under Richard Nixon, continue to this day.
Hersh replied, "After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet."
Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. "It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," he explained. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."
Hersh told MinnPost.com blogger Eric Black in an email exchange after the event that the subject was "not something I wanted to dwell about in public." He is looking into it for a book, but he believes it may be a year or two before he has enough evidence "for even the most skeptical."
Stories have been coming out about covert Pentagon assassination squads for the last several years. In 2003, Hersh himself reported on Task Force 121, which operated chiefly out of the Joint Special Operations Command. Others stories spoke of a proposed Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group.
As Hersh noted in Minnesota, the New York Times on Monday described the Joint Special Operations Command as overseeing the secret commando units in Afghanistan whose missions were temporarily ordered halted last month because of growing concerns over excessive civilian deaths.
However, it appears that Hersh is now on the trail of some fresh revelation about these squads and their connection to Vice-President Cheney that goes well beyond anything that has previously been reported.
Eric Black's blog posting, which includes an hour-long audio recording of the full University of Minnesota colloquy, is available here.
--MORE--"
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Mossad Linked to 9/11 Attacks
"Mossad linked to 9/11 attacks: Report
Mon, 09 Mar 2009
New found information has implicated the Israeli Intelligence agency Mossad in the staging of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
According to a recent article published in the American Free Press weekly, the revelation that the cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah was in fact working as a longtime Mossad agent is proof that Israel had a hand in the terror attacks on US soil.
The New York Times recently reported that Lebanese national Ali al-Jarrah, a supposedly earnest Palestinian supporter, had been actually working as a highly valued spy for Israel over the past two decades.
Al-Jarrah reportedly admitted that he had been conducting covert espionage activities against Palestinian groups and the Lebanese Hezbollah since 1983.
"It is not the family's first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah's cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," said the Times.
His connections with one of the key masterminds of the terror attacks have fueled speculations about Israel's recruitment of people claiming to be Muslims as undercover assets.
Israeli connections to 9/11, according to the New York Times, can be traced back to the five 'dancing Israelis' who were witnessed jumping and high-fiving with shouts of 'joy and mockery' as Flight 11 and Flight 175 slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
The Israelis were reportedly held in custody for 71 days before being quietly released after they were suspected of being Mossad agents.
Citing two former CIA operatives, the Forward weekly then reported that at least two of the detained Israelis were found to be members of a Mossad surveillance team.
"There was no question but that [the order to close down the investigation] came from the White House. It was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11," the weekly stated.
At least 2,970 people died on the morning of September 11, most of whom were civilians.
Former Italian prime minister Francesco Cossiga has touched on the issue, suggesting that the events of 9/11 were none other than a CIA-Mossad inside job.
"All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe ... now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned by the CIA and the Mossad in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part ... in Iraq [and] Afghanistan," the Italian ex-premier was quoted by Corriere della Sera as saying.
His argument was further strengthened by leaked reports that employees of Israeli telecom firm Odigo -- which provides instant messaging services -- received a warning two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers and forewarned Jews to stay away from work that day.
Odigo headquarters is situated 2 blocks away from the former location of the World Trade Towers.
--MORE--"
Mon, 09 Mar 2009
 At least 2,970 people died on the morning of September 11, most of them civilians. |
New found information has implicated the Israeli Intelligence agency Mossad in the staging of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
According to a recent article published in the American Free Press weekly, the revelation that the cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah was in fact working as a longtime Mossad agent is proof that Israel had a hand in the terror attacks on US soil.
The New York Times recently reported that Lebanese national Ali al-Jarrah, a supposedly earnest Palestinian supporter, had been actually working as a highly valued spy for Israel over the past two decades.
Al-Jarrah reportedly admitted that he had been conducting covert espionage activities against Palestinian groups and the Lebanese Hezbollah since 1983.
"It is not the family's first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah's cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," said the Times.
His connections with one of the key masterminds of the terror attacks have fueled speculations about Israel's recruitment of people claiming to be Muslims as undercover assets.
Israeli connections to 9/11, according to the New York Times, can be traced back to the five 'dancing Israelis' who were witnessed jumping and high-fiving with shouts of 'joy and mockery' as Flight 11 and Flight 175 slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
The Israelis were reportedly held in custody for 71 days before being quietly released after they were suspected of being Mossad agents.
Citing two former CIA operatives, the Forward weekly then reported that at least two of the detained Israelis were found to be members of a Mossad surveillance team.
"There was no question but that [the order to close down the investigation] came from the White House. It was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11," the weekly stated.
At least 2,970 people died on the morning of September 11, most of whom were civilians.
Former Italian prime minister Francesco Cossiga has touched on the issue, suggesting that the events of 9/11 were none other than a CIA-Mossad inside job.
"All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe ... now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned by the CIA and the Mossad in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part ... in Iraq [and] Afghanistan," the Italian ex-premier was quoted by Corriere della Sera as saying.
 Jewish personnel working at the center were reportedly advised to skip work on September 11, 2001. |
Odigo headquarters is situated 2 blocks away from the former location of the World Trade Towers.
--MORE--"
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Truth Is....
".... an outcast.... an enemy.... something to crucify"
"Somewhere a Wing, no Bird is Flying
Sometimes it can be hard to crank one of these out. Except for going to What Really Happened and the Truthseeker I don’t think I’ve seen any news at all. I haven’t been answering my emails. I leave my house on quick runs to the store for dog food. I don’t talk to anybody…. Thousands of black birds landed on my lawn a few minutes ago. It was an impressive sight. I’ve got a whole lot of lawn and that was a whole lot of birds. Last year seven white doves used to land on my lawn. Then there were fourteen of them and then there was twenty one and I haven’t seen them again. I don’t know what it means. Maybe it’s one of those, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” or birds will be birds. I don’t know. I think that’s the key feature. I don’t know.
I’ve been the beneficiary of a crushing weight lately. I feel like Atlas without the shoulder muscles. Sometimes I catch myself all slouched over and I have to make myself straighten up. I don’t like slouching. I don’t like it when my posture is not straight. The weather has been wack. They say they haven’t seen anything like this last winter for over forty years....
*****************************
Back to why it’s been difficult to write another one of these. I told myself it didn’t matter if I did or not anyway because there are about seven hundred of these things in the different blogs and that really ought to cover at least my personal take on anything and any one of them could be tarted up as something new.
I know the feeling.
It’s got something to do with April coming. For me personally, April has often been “the cruelest month”. I got sent off to prison twice in April and there was that military thing and a couple of other episodes though, April has been kinder this last decade; at least so that I can’t single it out for anything. Life isn’t as hard for me as it is for so many people now because I have nothing to lose anyway. I don’t play the stock market. I don’t have a 401K and I am unlikely to claim Social Security when that time arrives. I retired on nothing years ago and I live by invisible means. You may not believe in such things but I’m living proof. Of course, it helps if you don’t want anything either. Lao Tzu said it well as he said everything well, “cut down on useless craving”. You’re only poor if you want shit you don’t need. The universe seems to be inclined to take care of everything else.
I read somewhere (wish I had saved it) that this April there’s a near exact configuration as existed at the start of one of the last World Wars and I’m getting this antsy thing and all sorts of premonitions about the period between April and June of this year. I don’t think it has anything to do with the birds on my lawn during either period or that dream I had last night which was mega powerful. I don’t think it has anything to do with my recent Jeremiads at that public toilet of a forum called The Best of the Fray. On the other hand, I don’t know. I do know that I feel this weight which I think is somehow connected to the pressure so many are feeling and to the general mood of gloom as we watch everything being stolen by certain psychopaths that no one seems willing to identify as such except for a few brave souls upon whom scorn and derision are heaped.
Listen up children… very few people want to hear the truth. The truth is not welcome in their homes; in their churches, in their communities, in their places of employment, in their romantic engagements, on their lips and even when it starts to pound them in the least desirable part of their anatomy they are going to pretend it isn’t happening and they are going to go to the pharmacy and the liquor store and they are going to deny and deny and deny.
The truth is an outcast. The truth is an enemy. The truth is something to crucify and you can be sure that has happened and will again. It doesn’t matter if the particular well known historical event occurred or not. The symbolism of the thing is a real archetypal fact that you see happen every day in small and great ways around the world as tribute to the lie that rules the conditions of this and all preceding lives.
Whether you believe in the historical reality of this person it is hard to imagine that any sane person would disagree with the message yet we violate it reflexively, automatically. We push it aside because it interferes with business and Caesar has never been more powerful than he is today.
I’m not a Christian or a Muslim though I have served in these capacities as I have made my way. I decided that I liked the guy with the elephants head. It’s no more absurd than any of the others and if your God can walk on water and rise from the dead then my God can have an elephant’s head. I don’t think it matters what image you choose and for those who believe in nothing well… think about that for a moment and tell me if it is even possible. We know so little about the meaning of life because we know so little about ourselves. All I know is that whatever God there may or may not be he has always used human hands.
Well… there’s any number of people will tell you I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’ve no problem agreeing with then. The plus side for me is that I know full well that they don’t know either. Something is coming up in the first part of this year and I do not know what to tell you about that. What I know is that this weight is a really heavy thing and I could not imagine that I have the power to continue to move under it but somehow I do. I know that many of my readers feel this because you tell me.
If you see the water starting to rise I want you to think about green things growing and ancient ruins on high ground because somehow the key to our continuing is contained there. I want you to think of this and not think of the marketplaces and the never ending lies we are surrounded by that crucify the truth. There’s nothing religious about this. Not many people know that the reason the Templars were exterminated with extreme prejudice is because they said you didn’t need priests to intercede on your behalf. That was the kicker and because it’s all lies all the time it’s something you don’t get told like so many things you don’t get told.
Those black birds are gone now but I’m still here. I guess you are too. Keep your weather eye out because there are some heavy bears lumbering through the landscape and the sugar they are looking for is you.
"Somewhere a Wing, no Bird is Flying
Sometimes it can be hard to crank one of these out. Except for going to What Really Happened and the Truthseeker I don’t think I’ve seen any news at all. I haven’t been answering my emails. I leave my house on quick runs to the store for dog food. I don’t talk to anybody…. Thousands of black birds landed on my lawn a few minutes ago. It was an impressive sight. I’ve got a whole lot of lawn and that was a whole lot of birds. Last year seven white doves used to land on my lawn. Then there were fourteen of them and then there was twenty one and I haven’t seen them again. I don’t know what it means. Maybe it’s one of those, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” or birds will be birds. I don’t know. I think that’s the key feature. I don’t know.
I’ve been the beneficiary of a crushing weight lately. I feel like Atlas without the shoulder muscles. Sometimes I catch myself all slouched over and I have to make myself straighten up. I don’t like slouching. I don’t like it when my posture is not straight. The weather has been wack. They say they haven’t seen anything like this last winter for over forty years....
*****************************
Back to why it’s been difficult to write another one of these. I told myself it didn’t matter if I did or not anyway because there are about seven hundred of these things in the different blogs and that really ought to cover at least my personal take on anything and any one of them could be tarted up as something new.
I know the feeling.
It’s got something to do with April coming. For me personally, April has often been “the cruelest month”. I got sent off to prison twice in April and there was that military thing and a couple of other episodes though, April has been kinder this last decade; at least so that I can’t single it out for anything. Life isn’t as hard for me as it is for so many people now because I have nothing to lose anyway. I don’t play the stock market. I don’t have a 401K and I am unlikely to claim Social Security when that time arrives. I retired on nothing years ago and I live by invisible means. You may not believe in such things but I’m living proof. Of course, it helps if you don’t want anything either. Lao Tzu said it well as he said everything well, “cut down on useless craving”. You’re only poor if you want shit you don’t need. The universe seems to be inclined to take care of everything else.
I read somewhere (wish I had saved it) that this April there’s a near exact configuration as existed at the start of one of the last World Wars and I’m getting this antsy thing and all sorts of premonitions about the period between April and June of this year. I don’t think it has anything to do with the birds on my lawn during either period or that dream I had last night which was mega powerful. I don’t think it has anything to do with my recent Jeremiads at that public toilet of a forum called The Best of the Fray. On the other hand, I don’t know. I do know that I feel this weight which I think is somehow connected to the pressure so many are feeling and to the general mood of gloom as we watch everything being stolen by certain psychopaths that no one seems willing to identify as such except for a few brave souls upon whom scorn and derision are heaped.
Listen up children… very few people want to hear the truth. The truth is not welcome in their homes; in their churches, in their communities, in their places of employment, in their romantic engagements, on their lips and even when it starts to pound them in the least desirable part of their anatomy they are going to pretend it isn’t happening and they are going to go to the pharmacy and the liquor store and they are going to deny and deny and deny.
The truth is an outcast. The truth is an enemy. The truth is something to crucify and you can be sure that has happened and will again. It doesn’t matter if the particular well known historical event occurred or not. The symbolism of the thing is a real archetypal fact that you see happen every day in small and great ways around the world as tribute to the lie that rules the conditions of this and all preceding lives.
Whether you believe in the historical reality of this person it is hard to imagine that any sane person would disagree with the message yet we violate it reflexively, automatically. We push it aside because it interferes with business and Caesar has never been more powerful than he is today.
I’m not a Christian or a Muslim though I have served in these capacities as I have made my way. I decided that I liked the guy with the elephants head. It’s no more absurd than any of the others and if your God can walk on water and rise from the dead then my God can have an elephant’s head. I don’t think it matters what image you choose and for those who believe in nothing well… think about that for a moment and tell me if it is even possible. We know so little about the meaning of life because we know so little about ourselves. All I know is that whatever God there may or may not be he has always used human hands.
Well… there’s any number of people will tell you I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’ve no problem agreeing with then. The plus side for me is that I know full well that they don’t know either. Something is coming up in the first part of this year and I do not know what to tell you about that. What I know is that this weight is a really heavy thing and I could not imagine that I have the power to continue to move under it but somehow I do. I know that many of my readers feel this because you tell me.
If you see the water starting to rise I want you to think about green things growing and ancient ruins on high ground because somehow the key to our continuing is contained there. I want you to think of this and not think of the marketplaces and the never ending lies we are surrounded by that crucify the truth. There’s nothing religious about this. Not many people know that the reason the Templars were exterminated with extreme prejudice is because they said you didn’t need priests to intercede on your behalf. That was the kicker and because it’s all lies all the time it’s something you don’t get told like so many things you don’t get told.
Those black birds are gone now but I’m still here. I guess you are too. Keep your weather eye out because there are some heavy bears lumbering through the landscape and the sugar they are looking for is you.
Beautiful Little Oriental Girls
--MORE--"
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