But to me what is more important is the realization that there are pyramids all over this planet in every section of the planet, occupying places/cities far and wide. It makes me ponder at the agenda for having them all over. In different places they were used for different purposes, but it can’t be ignored that they are every where.
My question is why do we have a planet covered with pyramids. Is there some “other’ mystical reason for these megalithic structures. And we must not forget Stonehenge in Europe. Or the huge round balls in Bosnia.
I have read some studies about the Earth energetic being with a giant grid and the pyramids act like conduits to connect the energy i.e., primary nodal point of ever sacred spot on the planet are connected on this grid. And that quite possibly it is these conduits that keep this planet under lock down. In fact the pyramid grid also shows the placement of great churches, synagogues and Mosques on these primary and sub-primary nodal points. These placements are no accident. Why in the advent of the Pyramids have practically megalithic places of worship been erected?
Before we go into the “my dog’s bigger than your dog” debate, we need to look deeper into the real reason and purpose for having a “dog” in the first place.
Is it just to say how magnificent the civilization was? If so, why are we left with just remnants.
Are they there for comparison and to determine the strength, value, heroism, quality of life than another culture?
Are they simply tourist sites and have no contemporary value or significance?
Why have they been discovered to have Astrological, Metaphysical and even Earth based indicators that have people coming to them from all over the world to observe, and/or be enchanted by them?
Who put them there in the first place? Are we saying that primitive people with stone tools built these structures in the time it would take modern day man to do over decades.. Maybe even longer than that? Are we even being told the truth about their origins and purpose and if so, why would one be used to feed the gods and another to sacrifice the lives of virgins to the gods? Why?
I think if we just take a moment and get over ourselves and realize what it took to even put these stone megaliths in place, the labor, the manpower down to the destruction of a neighboring environment it should cause us to stop and think. How do we know that removing all them big rocks and stones, didn’t cause great floods, or disruption of the Eco-system.
What I am proposing is that we take a little more time before we make a supposition and see what we can research on this and find out what these pyramids really mean and what use do they hold for us in modern times.
In closing I suggest that we live on a planet that has been structured by a particular Architect or assembly of Architects with an express purpose of creating a model, specific to this planet. Thus they have transplanted a pyramid culture that impacts on all life on this planet and any life that observes this planet. These pyramids are telling the Solar System, the Galaxy and the Universe we live in, who we are, how we got here and why we are here. This entire planet is a pyramid civilization, a pyramid culture (see Mars Pyramids).
When the true purpose of these facts are studied with an objective eye, we may come to “See” what the “Others” see when observing this planet and the life forms upon it.
“These are definitely pyramids, but authentic I don’t think so. The only and most important reason why these pyramids do not share the world stage with the other pyramids is because they lack the astrological precision that the Egyptians and Mayans had in their Pyramids. The one in Italy is the closest, but only in alignment configuration~it still lacks alignment with the heavens, reducing it to a duplicate. Pyramids without the astrological factor prove that their makers had no understanding of its purpose. My post was made in reference to the real deal pyramids, not the duplicates.”
“It is true Europe doesn’t have the same types of pyramids that the Egyptians and South Americans do, but they have the Henges that work in the same way. The Henges can still be used today. Maybe the ancient Europeans didn’t like the look or the shape of the pyramid. The South American pyramid is in a slightly different shape than the ones in Egypt.”
“There are also a couple in the US, though they are more correctly “mounds” – Cahokia in Illinois and Etowahin Georgia.
Neither is on the scale of the pyramids of Egypt or elsewhere, but both exhibit some astronomical alignments.”
“Or… we can look at what the geologists who’ve been out there have said: That they are hills. They’ve removed all the first and vegetation (how would it get on top of a large manmade structure anyway?) and have been using the remains of the Roman Villa, a medical era cemetery, and in some instances have been caught hoaxing inscriptions to show evidence of a culture.
Robert Schoch, a well known proponent of a much earlier date for the pyramids at Giza, investigated the site and reported that inscriptions appeared in a cave that had not been there to begin with.
All evidence points to it being a natural formation, and is based soley of of Osmanagić’s feeling that it has to be a pyramid.Geology of the Bosnian Pyramids“
“There are quite a few seemingly.
Silbury Hill, Wiltshire has been carbon-dated at 2660 years BC, the same era as the Giza pyramids. It contains an estimated 340,000 cubic metres of chalk and earth, rising to a height of 39.6 metres. The base of the monument is 167m in diameter and it is perfectly round. The flat top is 30m across. It is part of a sequence of ancient sites in the area that are in alignment.
Despite its external appearance, this is actually a step pyramid, consisting of six, six metre high steps. The steps are walled with blocks of chalk, which easily deteriorates when left exposed. Consequently the builders preserved it, by covering it with earth and grass.
Excavations have revealed that it is not a burial mound.
There is also an omphalos stone there which is always of interest to me. Ziggurats (a ziggurat: that is a kind of pyramid, but with “steps” – several storeys, each smaller than the one below. ) are far more practical and impressive than pyramids imo and should never be considered inferior not that you or anyone has said so but this is a misconception that I’ve encountered on occasions. I mean what can you do with a pyramid other than use it as a tomb?”
Few sights-or sites for that matter-can compare to the grandeur and majesty of the Ziggurats and the Pyramids. If you are looking to get a feel for the ancient civilizations on your next trip or vacation, few destinations can compare to these two for sheer historical value. Of course determining which one of these two is the “best” is an exercise in futility, as each will have its own merits and drawbacks. It would perhaps be better to point out their key attributes in the interest of helping you make a more informed decision and that is precisely what this comparison aims to do.
[Extracted from Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis: The Crisis of the American Republic, forthcoming from Metropolitan Books in late 2006, the final volume in the Blowback Trilogy. The first two volumes are Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000) and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004)]
In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq’s “patrimony” for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that — Iraqi oil. In their “joint statement on Iraq’s future” of April 8, 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair declared, “We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq’s natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit.” In this they were true to their word. Among the few places American soldiers actually did guard during and in the wake of their invasion were oil fields and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. But the real Iraqi patrimony, that invaluable human inheritance of thousands of years, was another matter. At a time when American pundits were warning of a future “clash of civilizations,” our occupation forces were letting perhaps the greatest of all human patrimonies be looted and smashed.
Coalition soldiers in front of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, a four-thousand-year-old temple in southern Iraq which is one of the archaeological treasures of the world. The military has placed the monument off limits in order to disguise the vandalism by U.S. soldiers, including the looting of clay bricks and spray-painting “Semper Fi” onto its walls
There have been many dispiriting sights on TV since George Bush launched his ill-starred war on Iraq — the pictures from Abu Ghraib, Falluja laid waste, American soldiers kicking down the doors of private homes and pointing assault rifles at women and children. But few have reverberated historically like the looting of Baghdad’s museum — or been forgotten more quickly in this country.
In archaeological circles, Iraq is known as “the cradle of civilization,” with a record of culture going back more than 7,000 years. William R. Polk, the founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, says, “It was there, in what the Greeks called Mesopotamia, that life as we know it today began: there people first began to speculate on philosophy and religion, developed concepts of international trade, made ideas of beauty into tangible forms, and, above all developed the skill of writing.” No other places in the Bible except for Israel have more history and prophecy associated with them than Babylonia, Shinar (Sumer), and Mesopotamia — different names for the territory that the British around the time of World War I began to call “Iraq,” using the old Arab term for the lands of the former Turkish enclave of Mesopotamia (in Greek: “between the [Tigris and Eurphrates] rivers”). Most of the early books of Genesis are set in Iraq (see, for instance, Genesis 10:10, 11:31; also Daniel 1-4; II Kings 24).
The pyramids at Giza, belonging (from the right) to Khufu (also known as Cheops), Khaefre (Khephren) and Menkaure (Mykerinus)
4th Dynasty
The pyramids at Giza, on the outskirts of modern Cairo, are perhaps the most iconic of all Egyptian monuments, and they mark the high point in the engineering skills first displayed by Imhotep in the previous dynasty. The largest, the Great Pyramid, shown here furthest from the camera, remains the most massive freestanding monument ever raised by humankind.
The 4th Dynasty was the period at which many of the institutions of the state appeared in mature form, and the art of this dynasty became firmly established in the canons that would endure until the end of Egyptian civilisation.
Nine university scientists gaped upwards at the gigantic, prehistoric pyramid that had no right to exist
A team of daring Chinese researchers, digging into the ancient mysteries of the origin of their country, have come to the inescapable conclusion that 12,000 years ago, an interstellar supreme alien race used much of the northern and central Chinese regions as massive Earth bases.
By David Swanson Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, Asheville, NC, July 27, 2014.
I started seeing graphics pop up on social media sites this past week that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s murder.” So I started asking people what exactly they think war is if it’s distinct from murder. Well, war, some of them told me, takes place between armies. So I asked for anyone to name a war during the past century (that is, after World War I) where all or even most or even a majority of the dying was done by members of armies. There may have been such a war. There are enough scholars here today that somebody probably knows of one. But if so, it isn’t the norm, and these people I was chatting with through social media couldn’t think of any such war and yet insisted that that’s just what war is. So, is war then over and nobody told us?
For whatever reasons, I then very soon began seeing a graphic sent around that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s genocide.” And the typical explanation I got when I questioned this one was that the wagers of war and the wagers of genocide have different attitudes. Are we sure about that? I’ve spoken to advocates for recent U.S. wars who wanted all or part of a population wiped out. Plenty of supporters of the latest attacks on Gaza see them as counter-terrorism. In wars between advanced militaries and poor peoples most of the death and injury is on one side and most of it — by anyone’s definition — civilian. This is as true in Afghanistan, where war rolls on largely unchallenged, as in Gaza, about which we are newly outraged. Well, what’s wrong with outrage? Who cares what people call it? Why not criticize the war advocates rather than nitpicking the war opponents’ choice of words? When people are outraged they will reach for whatever word their culture tells them is most powerful, be it murder or genocide or whatever. Why not encourage that and worry a little more about the lunatics who are calling it defense or policing or terrorist removal? (Eight-year-old terrorists!)
Yes, of course. I’ve been going after CNN news readers for claiming Palestinians want to die and NBC for yanking its best reporter and ABC for claiming scenes of destruction in Gaza that just don’t exist in Israel are in fact in Israel — and the U.S. government for providing the weapons and the criminal immunity. I’ve been promoting rallies and events aimed at swaying public opinion against what Israel has been doing, and against the sadistic bloodthirsty culture of those standing on hills cheering for the death and destruction below, quite regardless of what they call it. But, as you’re probably aware, only the very most open-minded war advocates attend conventions of Veterans For Peace. So, I’m speaking here backstage, as it were, at the peace movement. Among those of us who want to stop the killing, are there better and worse ways to talk about it? And is anything revealed by the ways in which we tend to talk about it when we aren’t hyper-focused on our language?
I think so. I think it’s telling that the worst word anyone can think of isn’t war. I think it’s even more telling that we condemn things by contrasting them with war, framing war as relatively acceptable. I think this fact ought to be unsettling because a very good case can be made that war, in fact, is the worst thing we do, and that the distinctions between war and such evils as murder or genocide can require squinting very hard to discern.
We’ve all heard that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. There is a parallel belief that wars don’t kill people, people who misuse wars, who fight bad wars, who fight wars improperly, kill people. This is a big contrast with many other evil institutions. We don’t oppose child abuse selectively, holding out the possibility of just and good incidents of child abuse while opposing the bad or dumb or non-strategic or excessive cases of child abuse. We don’t have Geneva Conventions for proper conduct while abusing children. We don’t have human rights groups writing reports on atrocities and possible law violations committed in the course of abusing children. We don’t distinguish UN-sanctioned child abuse. The same goes for numerous behaviors generally understood as always evil: slavery or rape or blood feuds or duelling or dog fighting or sexual harassment or bullying or human experimentation or — I don’t know — producing piles of I’m-Ready-for-Hillary posters. We don’t imagine there are good, just, and defensible cases of such actions.
And this is the core problem: not support for bombing Gaza or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or anywhere else that actually gets bombed, but support for an imaginary war in the near future between two armies with different colored jerseys and sponsors, competing on an isolated battlefield apart from any villages or towns, and suffering bravely and heroically for their non-murderous non-genocidal cause while complying with the whistles blown by the referees in the human rights organizations whenever any of the proper killing drifts into lawless imprisonment or torture or the use of improper weaponry. Support for specific possible wars in the United States right now is generally under 10 percent. More people believe in ghosts, angels, and the integrity of our electoral system than want a new U.S. war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, or Iraq. The Washington Post found a little over 10 percent want a war in Ukraine but that the people who held that view were the people who placed Ukraine on the world map the furthest from its actual location, including people who placed it in the United States. These are the idiots who favor specific wars. Even Congress, speaking of idiots, on Friday told Obama no new war on Iraq.
The problem is the people, ranging across the population from morons right up to geniuses, who favor imaginary wars. Millions of people will tell you we need to be prepared for more wars in case there’s another Adolf Hitler, failing to understand that the wars and militarism and weapons sales and weapons gifts — the whole U.S. role as the arsenal of democracies and dictatorships alike — increase rather than decrease dangers, that other wealthy countries spend less than 10 percent what the U.S. does on their militaries, and that 10 percent of what the U.S. spends on its military could end global starvation, provide the globe with clean water, and fund sustainable energy and agriculture programs that would go further toward preventing mass violence than any stockpiles of weaponry. Millions will tell you that the world needs a global policeman, even though polls of the world find the widespread belief that the United States is currently the greatest threat to peace on earth. In fact if you start asking people who have opposed every war in our lifetimes or in the past decade to work on opposing the entire institution of war, you’ll be surprised by many of the people who say no.
I’m a big fan of a book called Addicted to War. I think it will probably be a powerful tool for war abolition right up until war is abolished. But its author told me this week that he can’t work to oppose all wars because he favors some of them. Specifically, he said, he doesn’t want to ask Palestinians to not defend themselves. Now, there’s a really vicious cycle. If we can’t shut down the institution of war because Palestinians need to use it, then it’s harder to go after U.S. military spending, which is of course what funds much of the weaponry being used against Palestinians. I think we should get a little clarity about what a war abolition movement does and does not do. It does not tell people what they must do when attacked. It is not focused on advising, much less instructing, the victims of war, but on preventing their victimization. It does not advise the individual victim of a mugging to turn the other cheek. But it also does not accept the disproven notion that violence is a defensive strategy for a population. Nonviolence has proven far more effective and its victories longer lasting. If people in Gaza have done anything at all to assist in their own destruction, it is not the supposed offenses of staying in their homes or visiting hospitals or playing on beaches; it is the ridiculously counterproductive firing of rockets that only encourages and provides political cover for war/ genocide/ mass murder.
I’m a huge fan of Chris Hedges and find him one of the most useful and inspiring writers we have. But he thought attacking Libya was a good idea up until it quite predictably and obviously turned out not to be. He still thinks Bosnia was a just war. I could go on through dozens of names of people who contribute mightily to an anti-war movement who oppose abolishing war. The point is not that anyone who believes in 1 good war out of 100 is to blame for the trillion dollar U.S. military budget and all the destruction it brings. The point is that they are wrong about that 1 war out of 100, and that even if they were right, the side-effects of maintaining a culture accepting of war preparations would outweigh the benefits of getting 1 war right. The lives lost by not spending $1 trillion a year in the U.S. and another $1 trillion in the rest of the world on useful projects like environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, medicine and hygiene absolutely dwarf the number of lives that would be saved by halting our routine level of war making.
If you talk about abolishing war entirely, as many of us have begun focusing on through a new project called World Beyond War, you’ll also find people who want to abolish war but believe it’s impossible. War is natural, they say, inevitable, in our genes, decreed by our economy, the unavoidable result of racism or consumerism or capitalism or exceptionalism or carnivorism or nationalism. And of course many cultural patterns interact with and facilitate war, but the idea that it’s in our genes is absurd, given how many cultures in our species have done and do without it. I don’t know what — if anything — people usually mean when they call something “natural” but presumably it’s not the provocation of suicide, which is such a common result of participating in war, while the first case of PTSD due to war deprivation has yet to be discovered. Most of our species’ existence, as hunter-gatherers, did not know war, and only the last century — a split-second in evolutionary terms — has known war that at all resembles war today. War didn’t used to kill like this. Soldiers weren’t conditioned to kill. Most guns picked up at Gettysburg had been loaded more than once. The big killers were diseases, even in the U.S. Civil War, the war that the U.S. media calls the most deadly because Filipinos and Koreans and Vietnamese and Iraqis don’t count. Now the big killer is a disease in our thinking, a combination of what Dr. King called self-guided missiles and misguided men. Another hurdle for abolishing war is that the idea rose to popularity in the West in the 1920s and 1930s and then sank into a category of thought that is vaguely treasonous. War abolition was tried and failed, the thinking goes, like communism or labor unions and now we know better. While abolishing war is popular in much of the world, that fact is easily ignored by the 1% who misrepresent the 10% or 15% who live in the places that constitute the so-called International Community. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come or weaker than an idea whose time has come and gone. Or so we think. But the Renaissance was, as its name suggests, an idea whose time came again, new and improved and victorious. The 1920s and 1930s are a resource for us. We have stockpiles of wisdom to draw upon. We have example of where things were headed and how they went of track.
Andrew Carnegie took war profits and set up an endowment with the mandate to eliminate war and then to hold a board meeting, determine the second worst thing in the world, and begin eliminating that. This sounds unique or eccentric, but is I believe a basic understanding of ethics that ought to be understood and acted upon by all of us. When someone asks me why I’m a peace activist I ask them why in the hell anyone isn’t. So, reminding the Carnegie Endowment for Peace what it’s legally obligated to do, and dozens of other organizations along with it, may be part of the process of drawing inspiration from the past. And of course insisting that the Nobel Committee not bestow another peace prize on a war-thirsty presidential candidate or any other advocate of war is part of that. The case against war that is laid out at WorldBeyondWar.org includes these topics: War is immoral. War endangers us. War threatens our environment. War erodes our liberties. War impoverishes us. We need $2 trillion/year for other things.
I find the case to be overwhelming and suspect many of you would agree. In fact Veterans For Peace and numerous chapters and members of Veterans For Peace have been among the first to sign on and participate. And we’ve begun finding that thousands of people and organizations from around the world agree as people and groups from 68 countries and rising have added their names on the website in support of ending all war. And many of these people and organizations are not peace groups. These are environmental and civic groups of all sorts and people never involved in a peace movement before. Our hope is of course to greatly enlarge the peace movement by making war abolition as mainstream as cancer abolition. But we think enlargement is not the only alteration that could benefit the peace movement. We think a focus on each antiwar project as part of a broader campaign to end the whole institution of war will significantly change how specific wars and weapons and tactics are opposed.
How many of you have heard appeals to oppose Pentagon waste? I’m in favor of Pentagon waste and opposed to Pentagon efficiency. How can we not be, when what the Pentagon does is evil? How many of you have heard of opposition to unnecessary wars that leave the military ill-prepared? I’m in favor of leaving the military ill-prepared, but not of distinguishing unnecessary from supposedly necessary wars. Which are the necessary ones? When sending missiles into Syria is stopped, in large part by public pressure, war as last resort is replaced by all sorts of other options that were always available. That would be the case anytime any war is stopped. War is never a last resort any more than rape or child abuse is a last resort. How many of you have seen opposition to U.S. wars that focuses almost exclusively on the financial cost and the suffering endured by Americans? Did you know polls find Americans believing that Iraq benefited and the United States suffered from the war that destroyed Iraq? What if the financial costs and the costs to the aggressor nation were in addition to moral objections to mass-slaughter rather than instead of? How many of you have seen antiwar organizations trumpet their love for troops and veterans and war holidays, or groups like the AARP that advocate for benefits for the elderly by focusing on elderly veterans, as though veterans are the most deserving? Is that good activism?
I want to celebrate those who resist and oppose war, not those who engage in it. I love Veterans For Peace because it’s for peace. It’s for peace in a certain powerful way, but it’s the being for peace that I value. And being for peace in the straightforward meaning of being against war. Most organizations are afraid of being for peace; it always has to be peace and justice or peace and something else. Or it’s peace in our hearts and peace in our homes and the world will take care of itself. Well, as Veterans For Peace know, the world doesn’t take care of itself. The world is driving itself off a cliff. As Woody Allen said, I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen, I want to live on in my apartment. Well, I don’t want to find peace in my heart or my garden, I want to find peace in the elimination of war. At WorldBeyondWar.org is a list of projects we think may help advance that, including, among others:
Creating an easily recognizable and joinable mainstream international movement to end all war.
Education about war, peace, and nonviolent action — including all that is to be gained by ending war.
Improving access to accurate information about wars. Exposing falsehoods.
Improving access to information about successful steps away from war in other parts of the world.
Increased understanding of partial steps as movement in the direction of eliminating, not reforming, war.
Partial and full disarmament.
Conversion or transition to peaceful industries.
Closing, converting or donating foreign military bases.
Democratizing militaries while they exist and making them truly volunteer.
Banning foreign weapons sales and gifts.
Outlawing profiteering from war.
Banning the use of mercenaries and private contractors.
Abolishing the CIA and other secret agencies.
Promoting diplomacy and international law, and consistent enforcement of laws against war, including prosecution of violators.
Reforming or replacing the U.N. and the ICC.
Expansion of peace teams and human shields.
Promotion of nonmilitary foreign aid and crisis prevention.
Placing restrictions on military recruitment and providing potential soldiers with alternatives.
Thanking resisters for their service.
Encouraging cultural exchange.
Discouraging racism and nationalism.
Developing less destructive and exploitative lifestyles.
Expanding the use of public demonstrations and nonviolent civil resistance to enact all of these changes.
I would add learning from and working with organizations that have been, like Veterans For Peace, working toward war abolition for years now and inspiring others to do the same. And I would invite you all to work with WorldBeyondWartoward our common goal.
David Swanson is Director of World Beyond War, host of Talk Nation Radio, author of books including War No More: The Case for Abolition, War Is A Lie, and When the World Outlawed War.
Updated December 6, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper |revcom.us
On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela died at the age of 95. In the coming period,revcom.us/Revolution will have more reporting and analysis of the significance of the struggle against the brutal racist apartheid regime in South Africa with which Mandela was so closely associated, Mandela’s role in that, and the nature of South Africa today. But at this moment, the following are five points of orientation:
The vicious system of apartheid—blatant, racist, brutal oppression and discrimination against black (and other non-white) peoples in South Africa, which Nelson Mandela struggled against—was part of a legacy of centuries of the most horrific plunder of Africa as a whole by the capitalist world. In South Africa after World War 2, apartheid further institutionalized and intensified that vicious oppression. Black (and other non-white) South Africans were locked down in prison-like “Bantustans,” without the most basic necessities of life (like clean water or decent shelter). They were treated as non-humans, subject to fascist “pass laws” that governed their every movement. On the backs of their labor, white settlers lived the lifestyles of northern Europe and global capitalism-imperialism accumulated massive profits.
Nelson Mandela emerged as an opponent of the apartheid system in the 1950s. He joined the rising tide of courageous, widespread struggle among many different sections of people in South Africa that went up against the whips, clubs, guns and torture chambers of the regime. For this he was sentenced to a life of hard labor in prison, and he never backed down in his opposition to apartheid. The struggle against apartheid became a cause that inspired people around the world. Many people gave their lives in this struggle. And Nelson Mandela became the most prominent symbol of that struggle.
But the powers-that-be are not praising Mandela because of his role as an opponent of apartheid, but because he conciliated with the forces of the old order, and played a key role in dismantling apartheid in a way that didn’t excavate, but in the main reinforced the historic and horrific oppression of the black and other non-white peoples of South Africa. Whatever Mandela’s intent, his outlook of “embrace the enemy” which is being so extolled by the powers-that-be in their eulogies, went directly against the need to uproot all the political, structural, economic, social and cultural relations that formed the foundation for that system.
We have to have the honesty to confront the reality of the path Nelson Mandela charted. It did not lead to freedom for the oppressed people of South Africa. The vast majority of people in South Africa continue to suffer in the grip of global capitalism-imperialism. Today, two decades after Mandela became the first black president of South Africa, the situation for the masses of black people in South Africa remains horrendous. South Africa is one of the world’s most unequal societies. Over half the population of South Africa lives in extreme poverty. The only source of water for 1.4 million children is dirty, disease-ridden streams. Immigrant workers from poorer countries in Africa are subjected to violent attacks. Conditions for women, who played such a heroic role in the battle against apartheid, are abysmal—South Africa has the highest rate of rape in the world. And, perhaps the most heartbreaking consequence of all, people have been left demoralized—seeing all this as more proof that fundamental change in society is not possible. That is not the case.
But it is the case that nothing short of uprooting exploitation and oppression can free the people of South Africa or anywhere else. The “wretched of the earth” have made revolution and started on the road to communism—a society free of all oppression—first in Russia and then in China. They achieved great things before these revolutions were turned back. And not only has this been done before, it can be done again, and even better this time. We urge everyone reading this to get their hands on the special issue of revcom / Revolution “You Don’t Know What You Think You ‘Know’ About… The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future,” and get into the work of Bob Avakian atrevcom.us.
People fuss and complain and make long videos warning us about the so-called New World Order. I say, it ain’t new!! Anytime a group of people can change the time on the clock and effect the entire world’s bio-rhythm, now that’s some power. I know that everyone in the “whole world” ain’t changing their clocks, but if they don’t change, and they have to interact with those who do, they still have to make an adjustment on some level. Now, that’s power.
Two times a year, a small group of folks get to determine “what time it is”! I think that highly signifies how controlled our world is. Imagine, just because you said so, billions of people adhere to your command. Now, that’s power!!
Lest we forget, we live in a controlled and manipulated world. This change alters our bio-rhythms, our sense of balance, our ability to manage our lives, our sleep cycles, our frequencies and our general relationships and interactions with all that goes on around us. Now that’s power!
Two times a year, a small group of folks get to determine that their “robots” go to their clocks and change them to fall in lock step with the “commands” of a hidden few. Now that’s power!
Imagine how they must feel when billions of people follow suit across the expanse of the entire planet. Everybody, particularly in the Western world, follows suit. Billions of hands on clocks around the world. Billions of people finding reasons to believe this disruption is fine. They make excuses, they warn, they intimidate, they complain, but in the final analysis, they all comply. Now, that’s power!
So the next time you feel you must point out that there is a “New World Order” ask your self, if you changed your clocks forth in spring and back in the fall. Ask yourself, were you effected, even in the slightest by others changing their clocks, ask if you were happy you didn’t have to change your computer clock, your cell phone and any other gadget you have that simply does the job for you.
I’m just saying, we can’t escape it…. This world has been under a “World Order” since its inception, and so as I say, every year that I resist, complain, fuss and refuse to change my clock out of sheer rebellion, ain’t no such thing as a “New World Order”!
It’s the “Same World Order” and some folks just happen to wake up to how it manipulates, dictates, determines, discriminates, and all the rest of it, but surely we are a ‘COMPLETELY CONTROLLED WORLD COMMUNITY!“
Humanity in the modern age, treat celebrities like their predecessors of the old days treated their gods. It seems that human beings have to have something to idolize, look up to, admire, wish to be like or live their lives for.
Celebrities are the new age obsession of modern man, who once built altars and brought offerings to their gods, the modern day devotee (fan) now does the same, purchasing their pictures, videos, music in a frenzied state of wanting to be next to them, if only through a conduit.
The Modern day Priest is the peddler of these New Age Celebrities Gods. They pose as media moguls, press agents, producers and distributors of the mania that consumes the fans. These modern day idolaters scream, dance, sweat and cry over the “gods” they chose and keep their gods amply supplied with all the modern conveniences, and sometimes so modern, their “gods” can live in full furnished multimillion dollar homes.
Like any religion, the worshippers keep the Gods and their Mediators in power as the devotee depletes his resources just for one more favor or act of kindness towards them. These acts of kindness maybe inclusive of but not exclusive of, autographs, pictures, handshakes, special tokens and VIP seating at a gala affair.
When the devotee sees, reads or experiences the lives of their gods, they are energized living through their imagine world, or lack there of. They are excited by the challenges, the scandals, the lies, the deceit that shrouds their gods, because in order for their god to exist in the world of Celebrities they must face these and many other obstacles of success and/or failure. The Modern day devotee(fan) takes the life of the Celebrity in full scale of it’s own life, moving and progressing along as the God would demand of them. Dare they fall in the disfavor of their Gods or other devotees find them trifling.
Some devotees become so obsessed they will kill for their god, or kill their god itself, destroying its life, history and perchance its effect on any other devotee other than they.
Perhaps this is a displace madness, an obsession generated by the total lack of self ownership and self power. Perhaps the Celebrities while only temporary give the devotee the moment in time where they can feel overwhelmingly powerful and completely divorced from their miserable lives or completely disconnected from the miserable lives their very Gods live.
It is part of the social construct. Children see parents as gods, infallible and invincible, and as adults this lifelike onus is given to the Celebrity of their own choosing. In the realm of Celebrity worship, there are no boundaries as anything that would prove disconcerting to another can be hidden in the privacy of the devotees home, away from the scrutiny of any onlooker.
Devotees can get into fierce verbal battles with other devotees of other Gods, and like the Gladiators of old, can fight to the teeth about their particular god and its “well deserved” greatness and power.
Like any usurpation of power handed over freely or forcefully taken, the taker is as much a victim as the giver. The co-dependency of this relationship between the Devotee and the God, keep them inexorably bound to each other creating a life long dance of fierce passion and need to give the each other validation. The concert hall, theater, stadium or fan club is the Church of the Celebrities. The devotees attend these churches religiously and participate in the ritual celebration of their Gods.
The question to me becomes, what is missing from the human psyche that such props are needed? How has humanity come to this? And what is missing inside of the human being that this type of attribution of power is needed to be given to an “Idol” or object of their devotion. How is it that the social construct supports and promotes this type of mania?
Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith divorce: Lawyer Laura Wasser reportedly retained by Jada
From Huffington Post: Despite denying divorce rumors back in August, it appears that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith may be finally going their separate ways — at least according to In Touch Weekly. The magazine is reporting that Jada Smith recently met with celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who has represented the likes of Britney Spears, Maria Shriver, and Kim Kardashian. A source tells In Touch that Smith has “finally begun to take steps to dissolve their marriage,” even reportedly turning down a role in Keanu Reeves directorial debut to spend time with her kids during this “difficult time.”
Progressive media claims they’ll be ‘tougher’ on Obama now | Glenn Greenwald
Barack Obama in the Oval Office. Photograph: Pete Souza/AP
Monday 3 December 2012
Given the rationale they have embraced, is there any reason to believe this will happen, or that it will matter if it does?
Last week, the Huffington Post’s media reporter, Michael Calderone, wrote a long article on the widespread perception that MSNBC isn’t so much a progressive network as it is “simply pro-Obama”. Citing a new Pew study that found that MSNBC was actually more negative toward Romney than even Fox News was against Obama “and offered mostly positive coverage about Obama” – most remarkably, during the last week of the campaign, MSNBC did not air a single story critical of Obama: not one – Calderone wrote: “post-election, the question is whether MSNBC continues cheering Obama on – or takes him on.” On Sunday, Politico’s media reporter, Dylan Byers, set out in search of an answer to that question, not regarding MSNBC specifically but “progressive media” generally. Here’s the crux of what he found:
“For the better part of four years, progressive media has had President Barack Obama’s back. “Now that he’s won re-election, it is faced with a choice: Should the left continue always to play the loyal attack dog against the GOP, blaming the opposition at all hours of the news cycle for intransigence? Or, should it redirect some of that energy on the president, holding him to his promises and encouraging him to be a more outspoken champion of liberal causes? “Already, there are rumblings of change. “In the days and weeks following Obama’s victory, progressive voices, primarily in print media, have made efforts to push the president on key parts of the unfinished liberal agenda – including climate change, drone strikes, troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, civil liberties and gun control. . . . “‘Liberals in the media are going to be tougher on Obama and more respectful at the same time,’ Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker’s chief political commentator and a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, told POLITICO. ‘He was the champion of our side, he vanquished the foe….. [but] now liberals don’t have to worry about hurting his chances for re-election, so they can be tougher in urging him to do what he should be doing.'”
[I want to focus on this claim that media progressives will now be “tougher” on Obama, but first, an aside: Hendrik Hertzberg proclaims that they will now be even “more respectful” of Obama than they have been. Short of formally beatifying him, or perhaps transferring all their worldly possessions to him, is that even physically possible? Is there a reverence ritual that has been left unperformed, swooning praise left to be lavished upon him, heinous acts by him that have not yet been acquiesced to if not affirmatively sanctioned in the name of keeping him empowered? That media progressives will try to find ways to be even “more respectful” to the president is nothing short of scary.] As for the vow that media progressives will now criticize Obama more and hold him more accountable, permit me to say that I simply do not believe this will happen. This is not because I think those who are taking this vow are being dishonest – they may very well have convinced themselves that they mean it – but because the rationalization they have explicitly adopted and vigorously advocated precludes any change in behavior. Over the past four years, they have justified their supine, obsequious posture toward the nation’s most powerful political official by appealing to the imperatives of electoral politics: namely, it’s vital to support rather than undermine Obama so as to not help Republicans win elections. Why won’t that same mindset operate now to suppress criticisms of the Democratic leader? It’s true that Obama himself will no longer run in an election. But any minute now, we’re going to be hearing that the 2014 midterm elections are right around the corner and are of Crucial Significance. Using their reasoning, won’t it be the case that those who devote their efforts to criticizing Obama and “holding accountable” the Democrats will be effectively helping the Republicans win that election? Won’t Obama critics stand accused of trying to keep the Speaker’s gavel in the hands of the Tea Party rather than returning it to Nancy Pelosi, or of trying to hand Senate control over to Mitch McConnell (or, soon enough, of trying to give the White House to Marco Rubio instead of Hillary Clinton)? Once one decides in the name of electoral expediency to abdicate their primary duty as a citizen and especially as a journalist – namely, to hold accountable those who wield the greatest political power – then this becomes a permanent abdication. That’s because US politics is essentially one permanent, never-ending election. The 2012 votes were barely counted before the politicalmediabegan chatteringabout 2016, and MSNBC is already – as one of its prime time hosts put it – “gearing up” for the 2014 midterm. I’ve described before how the permanent election cycle is the most potent weapon for keeping the citizenry (and media) distracted by reality-TV-show-type trivialities and horse-race excitement in lieu of focus on what the government is actually doing. But the other significant benefit of having all political disputes viewed through a partisan electoral prism is that it keeps partisans focused only on the evils of the other party and steadfastly loyal to their own. The desire to influence election outcomes in favor of one’s own party subsumes any sense that political officials from one’s own party should be checked in how they exercise their power. How is it rationally possible that those who have embraced this reasoning can – or should – change behavior in light of the looming Incredibly Important 2014 midterm election and then the 2016 election after that? Former MSNBC host and frequent Obama critic Cenk Uygur – who, in one of the most remarkable media events ever, was removed by MSNBC as prime-time host in favor of individual who literally vowednever to criticize the president under any circumstances – told the Huffington Post that it was hard to see how this would happen:
“‘Should MSNBC take a more aggressive stance with President Obama after the elections to make sure he follows through on his progressive promises? Of course,’ Uygur said in a follow-up email. ‘Will they? Probably not. They’ve been leaning back on their criticism of Democrats for so long, that I’m not sure they know how to, or care to, hold them accountable.'”
If sustained criticisms of the president should have been suppressed in deference to the 2012 election, then I simply don’t see why the same mindset won’t apply to the 2014 and 2016 elections. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that I’m wrong here, and that the “progressive media” really is gearing up to change behavior and unleash a torrent of demands and criticisms aimed at Obama. Here’s my primary question about that: why would that matter? Once you vow unconditional, permanent loyalty to a politician and a party – once you demonstrate that you will support them no matter what they do – why would you possibly expect that they will do anything but ignore you? A rational politician, by definition, pays attention to those whose support is conditional and uncertain, not to those who loudly proclaim that it is a solemn duty to support that politician and his party under all circumstances. That’s just the basic rules governing how power works, of negotiations and politics: those who eagerly renounce all their leverage make themselves inconsequential and impotent. What Hertzberg and his Obama-loyal media comrades mean by “getting tougher” with Obama is some version of this message:
I’d really appreciate it if you did X, Y and Z, and strongly believe you should, but even if you don’t, you should know that I’m going to be there for you and your party: cheering for you, raising money, demanding that everyone else support you, doing everything in my ability to keep you empowered.
Why would anyone believe that posture will affect anything? Once the choice is made to lock oneself into a state of permanent, unbreakable partisan loyalty, based on the lesser-evil justification, then one renders oneself completely powerless. I’m not arguing here against that choice. Whatever one thinks of the lesser-of-two-evils rationale, it’s at least cogent and rational. The debate over that choice has already been hashed out and there’s no point in repeating it here. But whatever one thinks of it, there are costs and benefits to that choice, and one should be honest about both. The benefit, which its proponents endlessly tout, is that it prevents the empowerment of the “greater evil”: the GOP. But there’s a significant cost to that choice that they almost never acknowledge: namely, to announce ahead of time that you will always lend your unlimited support to a particular party no matter what it does is to instruct politicians to ignore you, to disregard all of your beliefs and grievances and efforts to “get tough” and hold them accountable. It should be said that there are other ways to impose genuine accountability besides making one’s electoral support uncertain. One way is to engage in political protest movements outside the electoral process, of the type that forced Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968 race in protest of his Vietnam war, or even the Tea Party protests that put genuine fear in the hearts of political elites. But progressive media figures, for the most part, want nothing to do with street protests. There was, and is, a genuine, powerful movement devoted to protesting the political class on populist grounds – the Occupy movement – and most of them treated it with a mixture of condescension and scorn, largely because they couldn’t figure out how it might help Obama and the Democratic Party win elections. Nobody should hold their breath waiting for Hendrik Hertzberg and other similar progressive media figures to start supporting protest movements against the policies of the Democratic Party which they claim to find so objectionable. Another possibility is waging a battle within the Party against those perpetrating policies to which one objects by, for instance, challenging the Party’s establishment candidates in primaries. That is how the Tea Party was able to force the GOP to pay more heed to their agenda. But establishment progressives regard the Tea Party’s tactic with contempt because it was guilty of the most grievous sin – it undermined the Party’s ability to maximize its electoral success – and would never dream of posing a similar challenge to their own party’s establishment. I know from experience, having worked for several years on a project to recruit and empower primary challenges to awful Democratic incumbents, that any project that might cost the Democrats even a single seat in Congress will be met with anger and recrimination by establishment progressives. So, even if it actually happens, what Hertzberg and company are really talking about with their tough-talking vows to “be tougher” on Obama are empty gestures. “Demands” of politicians unaccompanied by a strategy to wield power are inherently inconsequential. There are truly few things I’d like to see more than progressives holding Obama accountable and trying to compel him to change behavior, but their past conduct – and especially the reasoning they offered to justify it – leaves little reason to believe that this can or will happen. Doing that requires a radical change in how one thinks about political priorities and, even more so, one’s own functions and duties as a journalist. Do you see any serious grappling with those questions in the giddy, triumphant, self-congratulatory progressive media? One final point: most of the people interviewed in the new Politico article (including from media figures who have been quite critical of Obama) all agree that the “progressive media” suppressed legitimate criticisms of Obama in order to help him and the Democrats win the election. As the Nation’s publisher, Katrina vanden Huevel, accurately put it to Politico (with a statement that is a strong contender for Understatement of the Year):
“‘MSNBC, with all due respect, has not been that strong in terms of talking about closing Guantanamo, about militarization, about this administration’s civil liberties record,’ Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, told POLITICO. ‘We may address alternative approaches to those issues, but they won’t be the talking points on MSNBC that night.'”
The Huffington Post article expressed the same idea:
“MSNBC’s afternoon and primetime hosts kept their sights on Romney and the Republicans during the election cycle, while spending considerably less time holding Obama accountable on issues like civilian casualties from drone strikes, use of executive power and the Afghanistan conflict, the nation’s longest-ever war, which escalated under the current White House. Instead, the network’s top partisan hosts –- with the exception of former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough –- seemed to circle the wagons around the Democratic president during his reelection bid.”
If you think about it, this is actually an extraordinary indictment of these media outlets. What could possibly be worse for a media outlet – even one with acknowledged political leanings – than purposely to suppress and ignore criticisms of the nation’s most powerful political officials in the name of keeping one’s favorite politicians in power? Recall the controversy – and the endlessprogressive mockery – that erupted when Rush Limbaugh admitted after the 2006 midterm election that he had “carried water” for the GOP by suppressing criticisms of it because he wanted to help them win the election:
“The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I’m going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried. Now, you might say, ‘Well, why have you been doing it?’ Because the stakes are high! Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country’s than the Democrat [sic] Party does and liberalism.”
Is this not the same confession, grounded in the same mentality, expressed in that Politico article from many stars of “progressive media”? Ultimately, it’s not actually that difficult to maintain and express these two simultaneous ideas:
(1) as a journalist, I’m now going to tell you about some truly heinous policies that President Obama, as the nation’s most powerful political official – as well as the Democratic Party, in control of the bulk of the US government – are embracing; as a citizen and an opinionist, I believe we should do everything possible to oppose these heinous policies loudly and effectively; and (2) now that an election is about to happen, I believe, as a citizen and an opinionist, that President Obama and the Democratic Party should win the election because their opponents are worse.
But so monomaniacally obsessed were many members of the progressive media that idea (1) was completely ignored and suppressed in favor of idea (2) – not in the days or weeks before the election, but for years. There is never any justification for those who work in media or hold themselves out as journalists – as opposed to, say, those who are party apparatchiks – to refrain from holding the nation’s most powerful political leaders accountable. That is the core function of journalism – and citizenship. I genuinely hope they’re serious and sincere with their vows to change this conduct, but it is very difficult to see how that can happen given the precepts to which they have so steadfastly committed themselves.
Update on AP/Iran story
Regarding the two columns I wrote last week about AP’s depicting of an absurd graph as evidence of Iran’s work toward a nuclear weapon: the AP reporter responsible for that story, George Jahn, has written a new article admitting that “a leaked diagram suggesting that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon is scientifically flawed”, but Jahn nonetheless insists that the graph somehow “still supports suspicions that Tehran is trying to build a bomb, especially when combined with other documents that remain secret.” This post says all that needs to be said about that. Meanwhile, the graph, by design, is now being touted by Fox News and John Bolton to scare people about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program.
The More Effective Evil has trounced those Republicans with evil intentions. Folks who never made a single demand of the corporate, war mongering Democrat think they are some kind of victors. “The non-resisters have won a non-victory against an unimpressive enemy,” while Obama plots new atrocities.
Victory! – for the Non-Resistance
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.”
“Get Away Sandy – God and Obama Will Save Us” read the graffiti, scrawled man-high on a cinderblock wall in the majority Black town of Plainfield, New Jersey. It is an apt articulation of African American politics as we descend into the First Black President’s second term.
Black folks may or may not have a prayer, but they certainly don’t have any earthly influence on the direction of the nation or on a president for whom they gave near-unanimous support, while asking nothing in return.
Wait a minute! I’m hearing echoes of…a familiar voice:
“We have learned that Black politicians and activist-poseurs have an infinite capacity to celebrate not having engaged in struggle with Power, and that the Black masses can be made drunk by the prospect of vicariously (through Obama) coming to power.” – Black Agenda Report, “The Obama ’08 Phenomenon: What Have We Learned?” November 4, 2008.
As Marx said, history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Independent Black politics, rooted in the historical African American consensus on social justice, racial equality and peace, definitively collapsed, after a long illness, with the first Obama presidential campaign. The tragedy was compounded, exponentially, by the timing, coinciding with capitalism’s greatest crisis since the Great Depression. The autumn of 2008 was an historical juncture for the nation and the world. Either the people would erect structures to protect themselves from being crushed under the dead weight of a system in terminal decay, or the Lords of Capital would swallow the State whole, and buy themselves some time.
African Americans, the most politically volatile and left-oriented U.S. constituency – a people specifically targeted by Wall Street’s machinations – had an historical role to play. “The man STRUCK,” said Frederick Douglass, “is the man to cry out.” But Black folks had already been struck silly with Obama’Laid.
“Despite his background, Obama knew enough about African Americans to pay us no attention and less respect.”
The rulers had, at long last, found our Achilles Heel, the weakest spot in African Americans’ political armor. Our reflexive racial solidarity (actually, an aspect of Black nationalism), which had served us so well, for so long, short-circuited our progressive political instincts. We became fodder for Obama, the slicker-than-Slick-Willie corporate guy with the brown face.
Despite his background, Obama knew enough about African Americans to pay us no attention and less respect. There would be no penalty. Black folks had convinced themselves that Obama needed our protection; it never occurred to most of us that we needed protection from him – not during the primaries, when he praised Ronald Reagan’s reaction to the “excesses” of the Sixties, or when he refused to endorse even a voluntary halt to home foreclosures (while Hillary Clinton and John Edwards endorsed “voluntary” and mandatory moratoriums, respectively); not in the last weeks before his inauguration, when Obama announced that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all “entitlements” would be “on the table” for chopping under his administration.
Instead, a million Black folks gathered on the National Mall for what we at BAR called “The Great Black Hajj of 2009,” a pilgrimage, as if to Mecca, in celebration of Obama’s ascension. There, he proclaimed to the multitudes: “In the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
Dutifully, Black folks set aside the last vestiges of their vaunted distrust of Power. Henceforth, African Americans would consider themselves as a Palace Guard – the antithesis of independent political actors. Thus was Obama empowered to become the “More Effective Evil.”
With little resistance on the Left, and virtually none from organized Black America, Obama has worked miracles for the resuscitation of the Lords of Capital and their imperial apparatus – feats that only a Black corporate Democrat could accomplish. After saving George Bush’s bank bailout in October of 2008 (it passed only after candidate Obama’s intervention), Obama undertook the historic mission of placing the U.S. State at the total disposal of finance capital. Under Obama’s watch, the Treasury Department and, especially, the Federal Reserve have funneled at least $16 trillion to Wall Street and its foreign annexes – a sum greater than the national GDP. The “free money” window at the Federal Reserve has become a permanent fixture of the global financial order, permanently blurring the lines between the U.S. state and international finance capital. Obama has embedded the state into the banks, and vice versa, in ways that cannot be undone without causing the system to collapse. In a very real sense, the “good faith and credit” of the United States has become a collective corporate asset of the Lords of Capital – an outcome that fits the classic structural description of fascism. No Republican could have delivered the state apparatus so effectively to the banks – there would have been fierce resistance from within the Democratic base, as well as libertarian Right. But Obama has proven to be the more effective facilitator of the bankers’ state.
“Obama has embedded the state into the banks, and vice versa, in ways that cannot be undone without causing the system to collapse.”
Social Security was untouchable – until Obama laid his hands on it. Beginning with his pre-inauguration pronouncements on entitlements, Obama has been the guiding hand of an austerity offensive that did not exist on Election Day, 2008. Instead, Obama made deficit reduction his own priority, at a time when pundits were saying obituaries over the GOP. (Much as they are, today.) The Black Democrat appointed the Right-weighted Deficit Reduction Commission to promulgate a $4 trillion blueprint for austerity, a formula that matched Republic proposals in 2011. The blueprint would have been the basis for Obama’s cherished Grand Bargain had the GOP not balked at “modest” taxes on the rich – levies that are irrelevant to those who will lose their programs under the axe. Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.
Imperial aggression has never fared better than under the opposition-less Obama. At one point, he was bombing five countries simultaneously, pretty good work for a Nobel Peace Prize winner – or did the prize help empower him to such heights of bellicosity? His ever-evolving “Kill List” includes not only individuals of all nationalities (including our own) but also any country whose government is inconvenient to the United States. With “humanitarian” jargon as his only justification, President Obama has attempted to render international law a dead letter. No nation has any rights that he feels bound to respect. Obama, with his drone armadas and multiplying Special Forces troops, represents a far greater threat to global civilization – which must be rooted in law! – than the failed conquerer George Bush (who actually negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq). Unlike Bush, Obama has promulgated his own, novel doctrine of war, which declares that wars only exist when sufficient numbers of Americans become casualties. Under this construct, Libya was not a war, and the possibilities for U.S. non-war depredations are endless.
Preventive detention is the crown jewel of Obama’s presidential exceptionalism. Statutory authority to imprison Americans without charge or trial was beyond Bush’s reach, and he knew it. But Obama guided a bill through the Congress with very little Democratic opposition. He is the more effective secret police warden.
Now Obama has won another “mandate,” which he will use to finish the projects he started: wider wars, a more profound government subservience to finance capital, and that “new legal architecture” on national security that he warned about on the Daily Show, a few weeks ago. He looks forward to fulfilling his austerity dreams early in his new term: “I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time.”
The non-resisters have won a non-victory against an unimpressive enemy, while the more effective evil plots new atrocities.
You will note that I have not specifically mentioned Black folks since the beginning of this article; that’s because African Americans have made themselves irrelevant – not just for the second Obama presidency, but possibly deep into the future. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” and Black folks have failed to demand even elementary respect from this president, much less concrete programs, or peace. Obama isn’t the only one who has noted Black ineffectuality. Until an independent African American politics and political movement can be rebuilt, there is no reason for a president or Congress to pay “the Blacks” any more attention than Obama did.
But I think the bigger reason is that great man-made river and the technology he used to change a desert into farmland. They don’t really need oil, that is a sham, they know all about free energy. They wanted and seized Qaddafi’s 3-4 billion dollars in gold dinars. He was threatening to change his economy to the gold dinar and he was encouraging other African leaders to do the same. And there is historical, spiritual and cosmic reasons for them to seize certain territories. If you notice, these territories are mentioned in the Bible stories. These lands are so ancient, that Europeans cannot be found there. The history is unbelievable. If they can conquer these regions they can really re-write history while gaining access to the ancient secrets.These folks know what’s up, they keep the masses in the dark
by Nana Baakan Agyiriwah on Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 10:58pm
I find it quite troubling that after the many declarations of skills, talents, ability, wisdom, knowledge and understanding herald by African peoples past and present world wide for millions of years on this planet, that we, having only been under the USA/European Slavery system for some four+ hundred years, have devolved to the point of choosing a leader because he is black, and there ain’t nobody else out there. What has this whole nation become? A nation of take the lesser of two evils?? Why do we have to choose evil at all??
The President of the United States is not only representing African people, but supposedly he is a world representative and in some perceptions, the representative of the greatest country in the world, a world leader, et al, and we vote for him simply because he is black, or we feel we are taboo to express our concerns over the policies of this man in black skin.
How is it that on his watch the US has engaged in 3 war campaigns, drone attacks on other sovereign countries and what we saw without regard in Libya, sending troops deep into Africa, and now this Kony thing? These are military operations and we all know what military operations look like. Why is there no challenge to this, or, if folks are so happy about the Health Care legislation, much of those dollars that are spent on war could certainly be spent here in the US, and build infrastructure and develop genuine green energy.
Why is it okay, to look the other way, and say, well, he is black and he is all we have and we have been fighting for our seat at the table for 4 hundred years, instead of looking at the table, see what is being served, check out the room the table is in, then look outside at the neighborhood? Have we become so desperate for leadership, that we will take anything that is thrown at us? Why are people ignoring the aides, backers and financial supporter of Pres. Barack Obama? Why are they stepping over this elephant in the room so they can claim they lived during the time when a Black man was President of the United States.
There have been many African Presidents, Rulers, kings and monarchs, does that mean that they too were above reproach, and therefore their misdeeds could be overlooked, and no one is ever called to task? Is that what happened to the many African nations that have dropped the ball on their developments because the people did not, would not see beyond the corruption?
Again, it is quite troubling to me, that the reason folks are voting for Obama again is because he is black, or, on the other side of the aisle he is being mis-treated by them white folks who don’t want to see no black folks get anywhere. Folks we need to wake up. The fact that he is still in office proves that the “Important White Folks who run this country” want him there. The media talking heads are all on board the good ship lollipop because they are being told and paid to do so. As soon as the tied changes, they too will change and pull out all the dirt and grime they can.
Bottom-line, it is flimsy to support any person in such a high position because of their ethnicity. Since these people will be on the front lines for all folks in this country, they need to have top notch skills to maintain that position on the front lines. They need to know what is going on domestically and globally as it relates to economic, politics, world affairs cultures, religions, societal norms, manners, and etiquette, along with a strong sense of the seriousness of their position as it relates to world peace and maintaining a peaceful environment at the home base. They need to be scholars in all the fields that are needed to govern a whole nation properly. This may sound like a tall task but if they are at least familiar with the nuts and bolts of this kind of leadership, they will call around them folks to advise them that are highly eligible to advise a President. In this way, when they receive advise that is non-supportive of the original agenda, then they can make a determination and have the person step down from the position of adviser.
The President should be keenly aware that the decisions he makes will reflect back on him and not on the advisers behind him. So they should be chosen appropriately. This will probably sound rather idealistic and probably unrealistic, but my point is that we need to get there in our own discernment, before we take this ship down to hell!! Waving an American flag with Obama’s face on it!!!!! What does that mean???
decacsinc 
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