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Archive for the ‘death’ Category

How the FL Shooting Will Be Used To Bolster War, Usurp Freedom, And Create More Terrorism

How the FL Shooting Will Be Used To Bolster War, Usurp Freedom, And Create More Terrorism

by Claire Bernish

After September 11, 2001, discarding freedom and personal liberties in the name of security became standard operating procedure following a tragedy, and Friday’s mass shooting at the airport in Fort Lauderdale has not deviated from the new Orwellian norm.

Officials say Esteban Santiago arrived in Florida on a flight from Alaska and proceeded to the baggage claim area, where he pulled a firearm from his checked bag and opened fire — killing five people and wounding eight.

“He eventually retrieved a firearm and began indiscriminately shooting,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told the press Friday. “This cowardly, heinous act resulted in the deaths of five people.”

While the incident unfolded, before total casualties and injuries had been counted, corporate media presstitutes championed in live time increased security measures and tighter strictures on gun laws — except for TSA agents, whom, some intoned, should now be required to carry firearms in the performance of their duties.

We have been conditioned for this. Fustian politicians assume an inept undervaluation of rights — and a careless lack of vigilance under color of fear — in the minds of the somnambulant masses will allow the implementation of new rights-crushing legislation.

On cue, the Wall Street Journal nearly immediately published an article citing Jeff Price, an aviation security expert and aviation-management professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, who — without a hint of irony — asserted,

I think we can expect to see more of what we’ve seen every time we have one of these incidents at an airport — better-armed, better-trained police and a surge in law-enforcement visibility.

Because terrorism. Because mass shootings. Most simply, because guns.
Guns, many pols and gun-control enthusiasts will tell you, create calamity — nothing else — and the Second Amendment is an antiquated anomaly to be relegated to the already overflowing dustbin of constitutional rights.

These politicians will further exploit fear of The Next Tragedy to install new checkpoints, more scanners, appended means to verify identity, and additional TSA agents — already proven wholly ineffective, if not derelict — to molest, grope, and harass anyone daring to enter an airport.

Travel, they’ll say, is a dangerous affair — and must be policed accordingly.
No matter Santiago has been deemed mentally disturbed — one person, a lone shooter, who chose a divergent method for enmity — now that someone has undertaken a mass shooting in this manner, terrorists paid attention and gleaned fresh plans, they’ll say.

This snark is in no way reductive to the abhorrent nature of the indiscriminate shooting, nor to the mourning which indeed the country must now collectively experience; but right now is precisely the time for acute attentiveness — not fear-induced myopia as has become epidemic after such incidents.

A more rational response surprisingly came from one legislator, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Greg Steube, who is sponsoring a bill to eliminate gun-free zones in Florida — a necessary measure now that the state has experienced three horrific mass shootings.

“My first thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims,” Steube said Friday, quoted byUSA Today. “But this goes back to the fact why I’ve been working against gun-free zones for the past three years.

Gun-free zones don’t prevent criminals from breaking the law and killing innocent victims. All that law did was prevent law-abiding citizens who have a concealed-carry permit from carrying their firearm in defense of themselves and others.

While Steube’s thinking seems counterintuitive to those on a crusade to eliminate gun possession for everyone but law enforcement, Chicago — with the strictest gun control laws in the nation and more shooting deaths than New York City and Los Angeles, combined — proves the futility of the notion.

Stricture and prohibition spark black markets — if someone intends to do harm using a firearm, they will find it. That applies equally to all mass shooters — whether mentally unstable, paranoid xenophobe, or religious radical — if guns are the intended tool for an attack, oppressive gun laws only stop law-abiding civilians from killing whatever malicious wingnut next begins shooting random people in a crowd.

Tightening the reins on suffocating security procedures and positioning additional law enforcement officers in airports also won’t stop criminals of any motivation from discerning a creative method to thwart remaining deficiencies. These repeated clamp-downs only restrict our ability to travel freely — they aren’t preventing the next attack or quashing terrorism as politicians claim.

Fear is a potent manipulator — and the government counts on pulling the blindfold of dread over everyone’s eyes in the wake of catastrophe to erase yet another protected freedom from the Bill of Rights.

This time, don’t let it happen — don’t be fooled into obliging lawmakers whose only motive is to use death as a Police State weapon against all of us.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

The Cabal and Its Vampire Monster (Video)

NB Commentary: I want to comment on whether the deaths are faked or real. Everything is energy and the Cabal, that runs this world needs the energy and not necessarily the deaths. You once mentioned that folks are worth “more” dead than alive. Think about it, when someone dies or is reported to have died, all types of energy is released from family, friends, fans, individuals, etc. the Gofundme pages for example, the insurance companies, and behind all this are the Banksters. People don’t realize how the banking system works and how the digital entries are counted as assets, even if they are supposed to go to someone else. But while they are sitting there in the bank, they are considered commodities and can be traded. You follow me?
Now, let’s look at the emotional energy. The Cabal are ritualistically feeding a blood thirsty Vampire Monster, this monster once demanded “blood sacrifices”. They don’t have to have an actual death/blood when they can have hysteria, mania, grief and fear to feed their monster. Since the Monster is not in the physical plain and since we know that death is an illusion, they can manipulate the minds of the masses and get just as much energy out of them as if there was an “actual” death. Just watching how the masses reacts is the “dead” give away. 

Back in the day, you would see actual blood flowing. Humans have used “blood” in rituals across cultures. The shedding of blood is an Archetype. Blood represents life, energy. When you bleed, you lose energy, and if enough blood is lost your physical body dies. It seems that so many living things have blood in them, down to the tiniest bug., Throughout human history man has shed the blood of another in conflicts. The more blood he sheds the more power he has, hence “blood sacrifices” are empowering to those who conduct them. 

Zachary K Hubbard, in his YouTube Videos, has pointed to this in the transfer of power from one entertainer to another, and the rigging of sports events. 



Wars are ritual sacrifices to their Vampire Monster and are still conducted because their Monster needs some “real” blood from time to time.. But it also has a ripple effect around the rest of the world. Grief, Terror, Shock & Awe, feeds the Monster, real or contrived, it’s the energy of Shock and Awe that they want. 

When humans indulge in ritual sacrifices that include the spilling of blood and death, they link into that Vampire Monster and become its host. It seeks them out for constant feeding and promises them dominion over the unwashed masses. 

But it’s all energy and what we need to do is become the Masters of how we allow our energies to be manipulated and/or drained from us. This Vampire Monster the Cabal is feeding, drains us of our Psychic energy, where the real power lies.. Once the Cabal realized they didn’t have to actually “kill” people to get the energy, they created “Social engineering projects”, to get the same results. Sports games, music festivals, religious evangelism, horror movies, violence and other conduits where the masses gather together and emit powerful energy. 

When he say it’s all fake, I can see what he means because they make shit up as they go along, and watch folks become manic, releasing their psychic energy. They have to make shit up, because their Vampire Monster is insatiable. 

Antonio Armstrong (NFL) and Wife Murdered by their son, July 29, 2016.. Ritual Sacrifice? Son Framed?

NB Commentary: Prince Was Not Murdered. (Video)

NB Commentary: I don’t think Prince was that stupid not to be able to tell the difference between his medication. They are trying to make it look like he was a drug addict as well, hiding the label or mislabeling his medication. Prince was smart enough that even if there was a mix up in his meds, his body would react and he would either figure out why, or have someone to help him figure that out. 
Prince was brilliant. He knew they “Wanted to Kill” him in every way possible.. so he took his own self out before he would give them the satisfaction of doing it. The Star Whackers are assassins and that’s what they do for a living. Prince gave the world warnings, which meant he knew of his impending death, and for the sake of torturing the “targeted individual” I would wager they told him his days were numbered. In his song about the elevator he also foretold his death, but remember, it says when the elevator tries to take you down, punch a higher floor. 
The music industry tried to take him down. He punched a higher floor, and I would say according to his beliefs, that higher floor would be heaven or the AfterLife. People have issues around folks committing suicide and due to religious influence, if somebody “kills” you, your chances of going to “heaven” are higher.. But what that tells us subliminally that it is better that someone have control over your life, along with the ability to take your life, then if you took control over your life, yourself. Prince new better, he knew that his greatest triumph would be to “cheat the PTB” our of his death. 
When you understand how this world works, that it is scripted, planned and manipulated you understand how those “idols” in Hollyweird are “scripted, planned, manipulated and assassinated” according to the agenda. Prince knew that. He was a highly evolved spiritual being. He knew the science behind the Industry and he knew about “prophecy”. That is why he was able to predict 911 years before it happened. Prince was extremely cautious about his health as well as the people around him. Of course there will always be infiltrators, but he was also brilliant, smart, keen and conscious. I never got into him before he died. But after he made transition I did a reading on what happened to Prince Rogers Nelson, and it showed me who he was on a Spiritual Level and that he took control of his life and his music up until the very end. 
Don’t fall for the Media lie, that has scandalized so many other of his minions, they did not kill Prince, he would not allow them to do so.

Happy 4th Of July: Here Are 10 Ways America Is Number 1 — That Are No Reason For Celebration

NB Commentary: American Exceptionalism is a hodgepodge of deluded definitions of what it means to be exceptional. In reality, there is no real value in this exceptionalism except that it is highly overrated and seriously undermines any reality that one might wish their brain to travel through.
The Media hype about how great America is, which probably should be stated the USA, is the burning flame of this delusion. It tends to give folks the idea of being better than the rest of the world and that in and of itself gives them the right to impose their “betterness” on the less fortunate creatures who don’t have a clue about how to run their lives without the help/ better known as intervention from the USA.
This bandage over the eyes of the citizens of the USA has them sullied in the eyes of those who meet the brunt of the swift hard kick that comes from American Boots on the ground. How great is great and what does it mean? I could add a few more to this list of ways that America ain’t so great, but suffice it to say, that without mentioning the pervasive inequality between the haves and the have-nots, the USA does a serious disservice to its credibility when trumping around telling others to run their governments and live their lives as Americans do.
Unfortunately, there are enough other folks out there, who risk their life and limb to come here, as they too, have swallowed the hype that America is better than any other “free” country in the world. They soon find out that that is not the case, quite the contrary. They see that they too will be stepping over the homeless, subjected to bigotry, inequality, low wages and disruption in family life as they attempt to assimilate and get their Lion share of the American pie.
This dichotomy can only create a nation filled of delusional, paranoid, socio-pathic, psychopaths swimming a a pool of cognitive dissonance. So Yeah, What does the 4th of July mean? Ask Fredrick Douglas.

http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2016/7/4/what_to_the_slave_is_4th


Happy 4th Of July: Here Are 10 Ways America Is Number 1 — That Are No Reason For Celebration
JULY 4, 2016
As Americans don their red white and blue sequence bar-b-que aprons and raise their flags, ironically made in China, in an effort to “celebrate their freedom,” we should be asking ourselves this 4th of July, what freedoms do Americans really have?
We are under constant surveillance, our every move under a microscope by government goons, “protecting us” from “terrorists.”
We are under the constant threat of violence from the State for possessing a plant, or having a tail light out, or simply walking down the street.
Americans are constantly paranoid of those blue and red lights popping up in the rearview mirror that most always end in extortion and could very well end with a visit to the hospital, being locked in a cage, or worse.
In the Land of the Free, police killed more people in just one month of this year than the United Kingdom has in the entire 20th century.
In the Land of the Free, police kill at more than 70 times the rate of other first world nations.
In the Land of the Free, we are told to “fear the terrorists” but US police kill 58 times more people than all terrorist activity against US civilians since 9-11!
State-sanctioned deprivation of rights, liberty, and life, is that what we call “Freedom” these days? The exact opposite of what the founders meant when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
Sadly, when people do begin to question this paradigm of violence against the citizens and the usurping of freedom, blame is quickly associated and directed toward whichever corporate puppet is in charge, then they just go back to sleep — resolute in the notion that they can vote those bastards out and it will all be fixed.
Boobus Americanus then slips back into la la land, cheering on the police state as if they are fans on a football stadium sideline. “My team is winning! USA! USA! USA!”
But your team is not winning, Boobus!
Just for a moment, can we stop chanting that “USA is number one”?
Can we remove the patriotic blinders for a moment and take a look at the categories in which we are actually number one?
Because it’s certainly not freedom.
According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica.
Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46. Yet somehow, Americans still believe their leaders when they say that terrorists “hate our freedom,” as if the ‘terrorists’ took down the first 45 freest countries and are just now getting to us!
No, we are most assuredly not number one in freedom.
But, we are however number 1 in,
Prison Population:
The job of law enforcement in America today is enforcing every arbitrary edict in the land to maximize profits for just a few private prison companies who are paid with stolen money (taxes). Because order followers don’t question any of their orders, it has lead to 65 million Americans (about 22% of the population) having criminal records. 
This vicious cycle has become a phenomenon known only as recidivism.

Obesity:
Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.

Child abuse death rate:
The United States has the highest child abuse death rate in the world. Many of these deaths happen in State-approved foster homes after children are ripped from their parents’ arms because their parent took part in some arbitrary victimless crime, like smoking marijuana.

Hours spent in front of the television:
Nobody watches more television per week (28 hours) than Americans do. Americans are far better at keeping up with the Kardashians than they are about putting an end to government corruption.

Teen Pregnancy Rate:
The US leads the world, by a wide margin in teen pregnancies. This is in spite of public schools offering vaginal implants for birth control to 11-year-old girls without their parents’ permission.

Prescription Drug Use:
Americans are not even close to being in the top 10 healthiest countries in the world, despite consuming far more prescription drugs than the rest of the world.

Citizens Killed by Police:
In Canada, the total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2015, was 23; 52 times less than the U.S.
If we look at the United Kingdom, police killed 3 people in 2015, one person in 2014, and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities.
From 2010 through 2015, there were eight fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, is approaching 40 fatal police shootings in that same time period.
China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 4 killings by law enforcement officers in 2015. Police in America killed 302 times more people than China!

Debt:
The United States has accumulated the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
As for the citizens, there is more credit card debt in America than anywhere else in the world. There is more mortgage debt in America than anywhere else in the world. And, there is more student loan debt in America than anywhere else in the world.

Crime:
According to nationmaster.com, the United States has the most total reported crimes in the world, by a long shot.

Arbitrary, immoral and downright evil laws:
How ironic is it that the Land of the Free has the most laws on the entire planet?
Attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that the average American commits three felonies a daywithout even knowing it. Although it has been estimated that there are over 3000 types of federal criminal offenses, no one knows the exact number for sure.
At any given time, a police officer could walk up to you and find you in violation of some arbitrary law. It is a mathematical certainty.
So, next time your chest begins to fill with patriotic puff, stop for a second and realize that Americans are number one, but in such a bad way.
In the meantime, however, we still have the freedom in this country to inform ourselves and others. Only through a lesser ignorance will these horrid tyrannical traits subside.

Humanity is involved in a struggle, as we have always been, but there are much more of us now. Inciting peaceful change has never been more important. However, so many well-meaning individuals go about inciting this change with blunt force. This has to change.
If you truly want to make the world a more peaceful place, you have to become a more peaceful person. Petty infighting, personal attacks, vitriol, and hate are the tools of tyrants and also of those who only claim to be awake.
Peace is true professionalism.
Next time you’re cringing in a public setting, listening to Joe Six Pack spout off NFL stats like an ESPN commentator, wait for an opportune time and plant a seed.
Hey Joe, speaking of the Kansas City Chiefs, what do you think of wide receiver, Dwayne Bowe and his arrest for having weed? Do you think its cool that he was deprived of his freedom for having a plant? How can we legitimately call this country the land of the free when that can happen to someone?
Be the change that you want to see in this world.
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. .

Mass shooting in Orlando gay nightclub, June 12, 2016

Mass shooting in Orlando gay nightclub: 50 dead, 53 injured, ‘act of domestic terrorism’

NB Commentary: Guess folks was loving Muhammed Ali, a professed Muslim too much, they needed to demonise the Muslims for the sake of balance. Did anyone see the video of the beautiful Jenazah prayer service for him? Oh yeah, and they love doing stuff right around or right at the beginning of Ramadan. The cowards, love to get them when they are vulnerable. How many folks remember that the Shock & Awe campaign of the Iraq war was right at the beginning of Ramadan that year? Yeah, they are really brave to drop bombs on fasting folks, weak, thirsty and hungry.. But we know, the warriors are NOT fasting, but it’s just the blatant disrespect for the Holiest Month of the Islamic faith. SMDH.

So now we have a mass shooting, #guncontrol #hatemuslims, #falseflag, #whoturnedofthisdudeschip
#whtthehellelseishappeningtheydon’twantustopayattentionto.
Last night, around this time say 2AM or so, I got a serious dizzy spell, I said to myself, what the hell is gonna happen now?
DEAD MEN TELL NO LIES, OR DO THEY?
Now, I don’t jack shit about guns, or rifles for that matter but I would notice someone walking into even the darkest alley with a gun that looks similar to this, and not from watching it in a movie. Plus he was heavily armed??????

Mass shooting in Orlando gay nightclub: 50 dead, 53 injured, ‘act of domestic terrorism’

By Ian Greenhalgh on June 12, 2016
We have come a long way from the Texas Bell Tower sniper shootings in 1966 and the mass killing scourge that Charles Whitman unleashed on us that day.
Yes… another one.
Editor’s Note Update: Well this is indeed a bad day, when a new mass killing record is set in the US by a lone shooter with only an assault rifle and a handgun. The bad news is the updated statistic of 53 dead  and 50 injured now. That means where were a lot of clip reloads. Our prayers go out to all the victims and their families.
I did a very quick notice Press TV news clip on the story. We did not know the shooter was an Afghan Muslim at air time.  They graciously gave me some time to cover the “copycat” crime history on these shootings, starting with the Texas bell tower sniper…how the massive coverage triggered other losers seeking to go out in a blaze of glory to do the same.
We had the “Going Postal” genre, where disgruntled, fired employees would go back and shoot up their former employers and then later came the school shootings, which also became “copycat” fodder. No one call this terrorism at any step of the process, almost like permission had not been given to use the term.
I knew the question would come up about “too many guns in America” which set me up for saying what never gets airtime during these mass killing stories, that 2 million Americans defend themselves from criminal attacks every year using a gun. Many do not have to fire them, and then there are those who kill their attackers.
This puff of smoke is from Whitman firing a shot
The “people versus guns kill people” debate will be going on for a long time. A gun has never killed anyone, people do. And if they are not totally crazy they do it for a reason, like they saw someone else do it on TV and decided to do the same for whatever warped reason.
My two cents? Dear night club, with 300 plus people in your club you can afford two armed and well trained security people to protect your customers. You have the camera technology to spot suspect people. Adding a $1 to the entry fee would cover the cost.  You could put up a sign that you have a well-armed establishment.
Here in Georgia churches were banned places for gun carriers, but that law was amended to allow the churches to allow armed concealed carry security if they chose. This was done after random church shootings began and everyone was well tuned to the copycat crime aspect.
After the Newtown, Connecticut mass elementary school shooting nine states enacted legislation to allows schools to have armed, trained personnel. But most were afraid of the “liability” of getting sued from an incident and chose to be defenseless to an armed attacker, depending on locked door security to save them.
No school has been sued for not having protection. In the meantime there are idiots that actually put up yard signs, “This is a gun-free house”. The house breakers and thieves are most grateful. There is another kind of sign,  “We have guns and now how to use them”. This debate will be with us forever… Jim W. Dean]

This tragic incident has several hallmarks of being a false flag attack; the shooter being a young Muslim, the FBI ‘checking’ to see if he has links with extremists, the shooter already dead and unable to answer any questions. It’s all too familiar. The fact it was a gay club may also be significant, given the current hoo-hah in the US political arena over LGBT issues.

Since the initial reports, the shooter has been identified as US citizen Omar Mateen from Florida. 

The suspect behind the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, which left dozens dead and injured, has been identified as Omar Mateen, the CBS network reported, citing sources. The channel added that the FBI is currently checking if he was linked to extremists.
A correspondent from the WFTV channel said Mateen was 27 years old and was from Port St. Lucie in Florida, nearly 150km from Orlando.
According to reports on social media, he was born to Afghan parents.
Quite frankly, this is almost certainly an event designed to provoke further anti-Islamic feeling in the US and judging by the sort of stupid, ill-informed and hate-filled commentary that is already appearing on various websites reporting on this story, it is an easy sell.  
This comment, the byline to an article on the shooting is sadly typical of the nonsense flooding the interwebs:
His level of preparation indicates an intention to demonstrate his profound devotion to Allah during Ramadan.
Since when was Ramadan about killing people? How is committing murder showing devotion to Allah? This is just ludicrous nonsense written by someone who is either completely ignorant of Islam or is willfully telling nefarious lies in order to demonise Islam and Moslems.
__________

NB Commentary: KENYA ATTACK THAT LEFT 147 DEAD COMPARED TO PARIS ATTACK NEWS COVERAGE

NB Commentary: 

Any attack that is hosted by MSM is only done when it suits the overall agenda. Anything outside of the agenda and was not orchestrated by the puppet masters and their puppets has little to no importance unless it can be capitalized upon. #BringBackOurGirls Movement. In which, case it became a National and international project to have people holding white boards in front of them saying “Bring Back Our Girls:. In short order it was found to be a bit of a hoax for two reasons, the school mentioned was not the school where Boko Haram had raided. 2. Alternative news outlets exposed the lunacy of this one and it quickly became a non story. However, that did not stop Boko Haram from its terroristic threats and barbarism, but not in the context of the International spotlight.
And remember the bombing of the Mall In Kenya (Westgate shopping mall attack). That too hit the national/international newswire.. It served the agenda of fear and trepidation and shielded the real issues that were going on at the time. More proof that there has to be an agenda.
So… when there is a big hype about something in the news, look around, there is probably something else that is happening or has happened that they need to blow up another story to distract the masses. And sometimes, it’s just social engineering.

KENYA ATTACK THAT LEFT 147 DEAD COMPARED TO PARIS ATTACK NEWS COVERAGE

     NOVEMBER 14, 2015
    The way Kenya is currently trending on Twitter and Facebook shows that folks have plenty to say about the Kenya attacks in comparison to the news coverage that the Paris attacks have received. As reported by CNN, 147 people were killed at Garissa University College in Kenya back on April 2, but news hounds might only remember the horrific attack at the Kenya college as a blip on the radar in the news cycle in comparison to the equally horrific Paris attacks.
    According to the website popularity tracking list called “What’s Hot” on Alexa.com, an Amazon company, a BBC News article about the 147 people killed in the Kenya attack by an Islamist group is the sixth most popular URL on their list as of this writing.
    So many tweets and posts are coming into Twitter and Facebook about Kenya that some readers are getting confused, wondering why the Kenya tweets are trending. The Kenya attacks not only left 147 people dead, but also injured at least 79 folks in the attack that lasted for hours. It was a sad day for Kenya, which saw the country experience an attack that claimed such a high death toll that it was the largest amount of people killed on Kenyan soil since 1998, when more than 200 people lost their lives in the bombing of the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi.
    The disparity of attention between the Kenyan attacks and the Parisian attacks are being blamed on the fact that Kenya is a third-world country.
    The fact that Facebook has allowed folks to change their profile photos to French flags with Facebook’s new filter to allow them to support Paris, as reported by TIME‎, is being compared to the lack of Kenyan flag filters on Facebook during the time Kenya was attacked.
    Other attacks are being questioned and re-examined in the wake of the tragic Paris attacks, along with queries about the news coverage, or lack thereof, for other tragic events.
    As written by Jeremy Wheeler on Facebook about the Paris and Kenya attacks, some social media users are noting the difference in the tragedies in terms of the outpouring of worldwide sympathy and news coverage.
    “Apologists for the terrorists who murdered in Paris are popping up even before the bodies are cold. Back in April when Islamist terrorists attacked a university in Kenya what was the excuse then? Did you even hear about it?”
    The Kenya attack on Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya is being brought back to life months later as a means for social media users to give attention to other terrorist attacks around the world.
    While social media users recognize that both attacks are tragic, Facebook user Ann VanRyan wrote to Facebook, asking about the option for a Kenya flag overlay as Facebook offers the France flag overlay.

    “Facebook… Where’s my option to have the Kenya flag overlay on my profile pic? This is equally as horrendous and is happening every day in the poorest parts of our world. ‪#‎LookForTheHelpersJess‬
    Related searches such as Kenya Paris and the #prayforKenya hashtag are also trending in the wake of the controversy over the difference in news coverage. The Kenya attack articles are being retweeted, causing some users to think the Kenya attack just occurred.
    (AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)

NB Commentary: Why Do We Watch People Die?

NB Commentary: Why Do We Watch People Die?

See video below

It’s called a Death Culture, not only is the fascination with seeing someone give up the ghost, but then we try to hold on to the dead, through grieving, massive funerals, morticians, memorials, tombstones, insurance policies, etc. In some cultures, they actually dig the bodies up, redress them in their finest, put them on display and then bury them again. Imagine that!

It certainly is part of the human condition cross-culturally because this fascination with death and it’s aftermath is played out all over the world. Who genetically engineered that into our DNA that we find death and dying to be such a phenomenon rather than birth and living!

I do realize that there are some cultures that see Death as just another part of life, that is, they see the immortality of the Soul and that while the person is physically dead, their Soul lives on to re-incarnate according to some, and then to go to heaven/hell according to others.

Whatever the case may be.. it is a fascination and most likely fear of the unknown that pulls us into these scenarios. Nobody “has come back” to tell us what it was like, some say, so we may be vicariously dying and being reborn with the individual. There is an immediate denial when we hear of someone dying. Maybe that’s part of keeping them alive, or having them alive after death.

One more thing, we as a western culture have been desensitized about death as well. Even though we may know that it is “REAL” while we are watching it on TV it probably doesn’t register cause the stuff on TV isn’t real, at least that’s what we tell our children when they show signs of being horrified by the blood and gore they see on TV and in the movies.

The Seth Material says, birth is more traumatic than death but for some reason we just don’t get it. Besides, if we did…. imagine the stock market crash that would cause.
In the final analysis, I would say trace it back, follow the money and how the Money Changers create streams of income off of our fear of dying. Think about it. It could very well be “just for the money”, the energy, the keeping the Blood suckers alive.

I always found it interesting that after a movie filled with blood, gore, death, tragedy, etc., if there were any animals in the movie, it would be followed by a disclaimer, “No Animals Were Injured In This Presentation” but they never say….
“Neither was any human…..”

Interesting.


Published on Nov 19, 2014
The who, how and why of the JFK assassination. Taken from an historical perspective starting around world war 1 leading to present day. We hope after watching this video you will know more about what happened in the past and how the world is run today.

Robin Williams, Dead, Suicide? Depression? So What?

“Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair” Alan Alda

Sometimes, I just can’t understand the rationale that we stand on when a celebrity dies. It’s as if they have some sort of super power, some beyond human experience, existence that makes them more of an IDOL, than a real living breathing human.
The adoration and adulation is so displaced. A great attention given to a person who barely knows who he/she is outside of the admiration thrust upon them by their audience. In real life, beyond the big scream, they cry, they fart, they throw up and catch the flu. But on screen they are more than human, they are more than super human, they are GODS.
Somewhere in the human psyche we need to have these GODS, these DEITIES, who seem to give us this false sense of hope and a false sense of reality. We never see them sweat except as part of the act. We don’t see what it takes to get one scene together to fit the big screen. But alas, we are manipulated and mezmorized by their “bigger than life” persona.
Yet, by the same token we will walk over a homeless person lying in the gutter. Some of us will actually bring harm to them, as if they are not human and deserving of being treated as a living, breathing human manifestation of the Divine. We are also the same ones who will vote for the killing of thousands of children in other people’s homes. How is that possible? How do these two opposing beliefs come from the same species. Even in the animal kingdom you see a compassion that far outweighs what we tend to portray for one another, particularly in the more privileged side of the human family.
Robin Williams, brought us all a taste of a world beyond our own abilities to manifest in the sense that he could be all of us and none of us at the same time. He could be almost any character and make it so real, we really believed it. Yet who was he, and did he hurt every time he heard that another Palestinian home had been bombed and another 50 children killed in an areal assault? Did he pay attention to what was happening in the world outside of his fame? I tend to believe he did, but that could simply be a personal bias.
My point is this… Here we are mourning the likes of a ROBIN WILLIAMS, another human being who had the opportunity to make us laugh so hard, we’d better stop before we damage our hearts, yet, we are divorced from the sadness, the grief, the despair, the depression of others who are not on the Big Screen.
What gives them carte-blanche to our sympathies? What makes their pain bigger than any one else’s and what makes them so important, even more important than the thousands of Yazidi fleeing into war torn Syria. What kind of world is this? Imagine just for a moment what that must feel like, when 20 members of your immediate family is killed in an instance and you are the only one who survives. Would you consider the fact that this lone survivor could give into the deepest darkest despair and kill himself or become a suicide bomber? Would his suicide make headline news??

Why are we so divorced from the chemical, electro-magnetic impact that death and destruction has on all of us, in every single corner of this globe. Is one death and its reason more significant than the death of an old man who gave up after being shut away in an old folks’ home for 20 years where no one came to visit him? How is it, that Robin’s depression is a clarion call for folks to focus on remedies for it, and questions about it and how can we avoid it in others….?? How is that possible when we are constantly bombarded with all types of violence against one another and others we don’t even know? How in the same breath, we weep and cry and wish we knew before it was too late, and then say that Israel’s disproportionate force against Gaza is justifiable? How do we support the arming of rebels around the globe who have no compassion at all for their victims and their families as they slaughter, maimed and behead them. What type of mind do we as a human family have that we can go so deep into the mirror over a superficial SUPER STARwho told us himself that“NO MOVIES ARE REAL!” yet we are lacking in our ability to comprehend, respond or change the conditions of our world where distress, pain and misery lie.
Seriously, is the fact that Robin Williams was depressed more of a headline than the deep despair that Liberian Mother feels whose child succumbed to Ebola? Or the Ferguson’s mother whose son was shot several times and killing all his chances to go to college this coming September? How displaced is our attention, concern and adulations when it comes to a so-called Hollywood Celebrity than for our family and neighbors who live in our midst? How displaced is our concern when we spend ours and dollars on Pop Culture and ignore the pain of those who are on the other side of the globe, who are awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night to the rhythmic sequence of bombs falling on their neighborhood, a neighborhood they could not escape. What about their despair, what about their depression, grief and feelings of loss?
And finally, how can we avoid it? Sometimes, I think the Universe let’s it happen to us so we can see what it feels like and maybe, just maybe we will have more empathy for others. I wonder how effective that method is however. It seems we get more self gratification weighing in on our favorite celeb, sports start or politician than we do on the real issues. We are all one human family sharing one home, Earth, and surely, whatever is happening anywhere in the world is happening everywhere. 
We hear so much about honoring the dead, honoring their families, giving the families of these famous deceased folks their privacy, etc., etc. ad infanitum, yet, who honors those that are killed by our tax dollars and warmongering Politicians? Who stops and places a yellow ribbon on their hearts for them. Who refuses to participate in their annihilation? If it meant that the way we could save Robin from his ill fated demise meant that we stop supporting the industry that killed him, would we do it. Would we release ourselves from the joys of his mania and allow him, the artist to live in peace?  Would we rally around programs that brought peace into his life if it meant he would make no more movies for our gawking eyes and selfish idol worship to enjoy? Would we stop if it meant that we would have to find something else to entertain us or find a way to entertain ourselves without destroying the idol of our worship? Would we? Could we? Are we all crying out loud because we cannot live without Robin Williams, our major distraction from what is really happening in the real world????
Yes, another IDOL  has succumbed to the ravishes of an industry that kills it. And to what does that mean? Save we shall simply find another distraction and move ever more from reality and deeper into the matrix of mind control.

I hope that Robin is doing well, wherever he is. I hope he realizes that our worshipping of him was a sickness as much as his desire to be worshipped and that if he comes back he will love himself, more than any mass of emotionally starved and derranged human beings could ever love him. Rest In Power, Robin Williams, and all those who preceeded you and all those who follow and particularly the forgotten ones whose physical bodies are wasting away under the rubble of human ignorance and cruelty. 

Opinion

Alan Alda: A Niagaraof Wit Falls Silent
Aug. 12, 2014Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?

Within minutes we were telling one another he was gone. His genius, that had burned so hot, was cold, and the whole country felt the chill at once.
For years, we had watched with awe as a Niagara of wit poured from his unconscious. Where did that manic waterfall of funny have its source?
And where did his fearlessness come from? The night that he and Jane Fonda and I hosted the Academy Awards show together, he kept coming up with outrageous jokes in the wings. But before he went out on stage, he seemed to be using me as his taste monitor. He would think of a line and say, “Is that too tasteless?” Invariably, I’d say, “Yes, it’s too tasteless,” and invariably he’d go on stage, say the line and kill with it.
Unfortunately, sometimes the mind that runs so fast it can’t keep up with itself also has its down time. I didn’t know he suffered from depression, although it doesn’t surprise me. But it makes me want to dosomething.
I hope it makes us all want to do something.
While the whole country, and much of the world, feels this moment of sadness at his death, can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?
Can we educate one another to recognize the early signs of depression? Can we make it clear to one another how dangerous it is? We all know now that drunk driving kills. But, when I looked up the numbers, I was astonished. Each year there are more than twice as many suicides attributed to depression as deaths on the road due to alcohol.
Maybe our grief can be transformed into an awakening. The man who enriched our lives could be the focus of saving countless other lives. Robin Williams could be with us a little longer.

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN!

STOP THE KILLING TRAIN

author unknown

Published 8 August 2014

The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs.

Many years back, moved by the first Gulf War, I wrote a piece with the above title, Stop the Killing Train. I am revisiting the same subject because, regrettably, the topic remains at the forefront even if the precipitating violence is different.

For the purpose of the exercise, please use your imagination.

Suppose a hypothetical god got tired of what we humans do to one another and decided that from January 1, 1991 onward all corpses unnaturally created anywhere in or by the hand of the “free world” would cease to decompose. Anyone dying for want of food or medicine, anyone hung or garroted to death, shot or beaten to death, raped or bombed to death, anyone dying unjustly and inhumanely for want of clean air or water or other necessities of life, would, as a corpse, persist without decomposing. The permanent corpse would then automatically enter a glass-walled cattle car attached to an ethereal train traveling monotonously across the U.S., state by state, never stopping. The hypothetical God would tirelessly display our achievements for us all to see.

One by one the corpses would divinely load onto the cattle cars. After every thousand corpses piled in a car, a new car would hitch up and begin filling in turn. Mile after mile the killing train would roll along, each corpse visible through the train’s transparent walls. We can suppose it fills at the rate of 200 new corpses a minute, or one new car every five minutes, day and night, without pause.

By the end of 1991, on its first birthday, the killing train would easily measure over 2,500 miles long. Traveling at 20 miles an hour it would take about five days to pass any intersection across the U.S. Imagine you are sitting at a railroad crossing. You watch this horror go past, 24 hours a day, for five full days. Every car contains 1,000 corpses, all clearly visible. This hypothetical God knows how to communicate so we can’t ignore reality.

By the year 2000, assuming no dramatic change in institutions and behavior, the train would stretch from coast to coast about seven times. It would take about six weeks from the time its engine passed the Statue of Liberty to when its caboose would go by. Would the God still wonder when pitiful, aspiring humanity would get the message?

By 2014 – you can safely just double the ugly statistics. Deaths accelerate, unless, of course, we had gotten the message. So, coast to coast it would stretch, about 14 times. Every corpse an indictment.

Think how a young child sometimes points to a picture in a book or magazine and asks for an explanation, “Tell me about a tree?” A car? A boat? Or a train? A big train? The killing train? Go ahead, try to answer that one. Perhaps that explains why this image isn’t, in fact, a common one on our TVs and in our never-ending streams of information.

Bad enough, way worse than bad enough, it could even get worse. Consider that climate change will before long start to wrack up even larger kill lists. But, of course, those dead would pile into the killing train too, since with only modest exceptions they too are preventable.

The killing train, in any event, no matter how each moribund commuter who need not have been on board got his or her ticket, is horrendous.

Imagine the lost opportunity and lost love. Imagine as well the network of negative influences that radiate from the unnecessary deaths displayed by the killing train stretching from coast to coast and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Consider the horrendous impact, not only on those on board, but on every person that any of those corpses ever loved or would have loved, fed or would have fed, taught or would have taught.

Who rides the killing train? 
Certainly citizens of the “Third World,” selling their organs for food, selling their babies to save their families, suffering disappearances and starvation. They live in Brazil, the Philippines, El Salvador, but also New York. They enter the killing train, every day. It isn’t a peace train. It isn’t a justice train. It isn’t a love train. It is a killing train. Its current most bloody loading platform: Gaza. But don’t forget those who starve and die of preventable diseases in the Third World and in the first world too. All are onboard.

Is the gigantic sprawling disgusting image exaggerated? 10 million kids die yearly for lack of basic medical aid that the U.S. could provide at almost no cost in countries whose economies Exxon and the Bank of America have looted. Preventable death fills the killing train. To the sane, it is mass murder. The grotesque image I offer is actually understated.

Bloated diseased bodies are victims of murder just as surely as bullet-riddled bodies tossed into rivers by death squads, or shrapnel shredded bodies prone in the piles of blasted hospitals and homes. Denying medicine by out of reach pricing or preventable shortages is no less criminal than denying medicine by blowing up pharmacies and demolishing hospitals is no less criminal than supplying torture racks, stealing resources, and paving roads with bomblets. Bombing electric power stations and pulverizing hospitals enlarges the train. Deaths by starvation and disease are no less unnatural than those by bomblet and bullet, and enlarge the train.   

Evolution has given humans the capacity to perceive, think, feel, and imagine. During war time—as now exists in so many places —if we get aroused to action we begin to see the whole train as it persists day in and day out. When this happens, what do we do about it? Do we become depressed? Cynical? Anguished? Cry? Daydream of Armageddon? Daydream of justice? Or do we hand out a leaflet?

Once we begin to see the killing train, how do we face the killing train? Part of me says these crimes are so grotesque, so inhumane, that the perpetrators deserve to die, now. A little tiny killing train for the killers and no more big killing train for everyone else. An eye for a million eyes. What other step makes more sense? Was this the hypothetical God’s plan?

But, of course, that’s not the way the world works. Yes, people give the orders. People wield the axes, withhold the food, pay the pitiful salaries, blow up the power stations, spew the garbage, lie, steal, cheat, obey – and produce corpses. But institutions create the pressures that mold the people.

When an institutional cancer spreads through the human patient, what kind of surgeon can cut it away? Is the imprint of accumulated repression so deep it can never be excised.

At first, becoming attuned to our country’s responsibility for the corpses stacked behind transparent cattle-car walls makes handing out leaflets, or writing essays, or arguing for peace with a co-worker, or urging a relative to think twice about paying taxes, or going to a demonstration, or sitting in, or doing civil disobedience, or even taking over a workplace, seem insignificant. But the fact is, these are the acts that the hypothetical God, tired of our behavior, would be calling for if she were to actually parade the “free world’s” corpses down our main streets in killing trains. These are the acts that can accumulate into a firestorm of informed protest that raises the cost of profiteering and domination, of war making and pollution so high that the institutions breeding such behavior start to buckle.   

The fact is, when fighting a behemoth, “You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.” Every loss, understood properly to learn its lessons, is part of the process that leads to transforming institutions so that there can be no people as vile as Hussein or Bush, as Netanyahu or Obama. No more “Good Germans” or “Good Americans.” No more incinerated Jews or decapitated, starved, poisoned, starved, bulleted Palestinians.   

War is invariably unjustly motivated. War is always horrendously harmful. War is an orchestrated atrocity that mandates our militant, unswerving opposition. But so too does exploitation, racism, sexism, the systematic deprivation of any one community at the hands of any other.

But even after the Gaza crimes of the little thug Israel and of its guardian angel the big thug, America, ends, the on-going U.S. war against “free world” people who it has consigned to ride the killing train will, if it continues, remain a enormous crime against humanity. The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs. The power plant of the death, destruction, and generalized deprivation is our basic institutions.

The institutions must become our target.

War in Our Collective Imagination

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.
World Beyond War
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.

The Drums of War are Beating in Syria

by Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer
August 28, 2013
from GlobalResearch Website
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and deputy secretary general of the International Association
of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).
New York attorney Jeanne Mirer is president of the IADL and co-chair of the NLG’s International Committee.
Both Cohn and Mirer are on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign

The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong.
    “What we are talking about here is a potential response… to this specific violation of international norms,” declared White House press secretary Jay Carney.
But a military intervention by the United States in Syria to punish the government would violate international law.

For the United States to threaten to and/or launch a military strike as a reprisal is a blatant violation of the United Nations Charter. The Charter requires countries to settle their international disputes peacefully.

Article 2(4) makes it illegal for any country to either use force or threaten to use force against another country. Article 2(7) prohibits intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in another country.

NATO Using Chemical Weapons

The only time military force is lawful under the Charter is when the Security Council approves it, or under Article 51, which allows a country to defend itself if attacked.
    “The use of chemical weapons within Syria is not an armed attack on the United States,” according to Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell.
The United States and the international community have failed to take constructive steps to promote peace-making efforts, which could have brought the crisis in Syria to an end.

The big powers instead have waged a proxy war to give their “side” a stronger hand in future negotiations, evaluating the situation only in terms of geopolitical concerns. The result has been to once again demonstrate that military solutions to political and economic problems are no solution at all.

In the meantime, the fans of enmity between religious factions have been inflamed to such a degree that the demonization of each by the other has created fertile ground for slaughter and excuses for not negotiating with anyone with “blood on their hands.”

Despite U.S. claims of “little doubt that Assad used these weapons,” there is significant doubt among the international community about which side employed chemical weapons.

Many view the so-called ‘rebels’ as trying to create a situation to provoke U.S. intervention against Assad. Indeed, in May, Carla del Ponte, former international prosecutor and current UN commissioner on Syria, concluded that opposition forces used sarin gas against civilians.

The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war. The illegality of chemical and poisoned weapons was first established by the Hague regulations of 1899 and Hague Convention of 1907.

It was reiterated in the Geneva Convention of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court specifically states that employing,
    “poison or poisoned weapons” and “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices” are war crimes, under Article 8.
The prohibition on the use of these weapons is an international norm regardless of whether any convention has been ratified.

As these weapons do not distinguish between military combatants and civilians, they violate the principle of distinction and the ban on weapons which cause unnecessary suffering and death contained in the Hague Convention.

Under the Nuremberg Principles, violations of the laws of war are war crimes.

The self-righteousness of the United States about the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad is hypocritical. The United States used napalm and employed massive amounts of chemical weapons in the form of Agent Orange in Vietnam, which continues to affect countless people over many generations.

Recently declassified CIA documents reveal U.S. complicity in Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, according to Foreign Policy:
    “In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people.
   
    The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.”
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States used,
        1. cluster bombs
        2. depleted uranium
        3. white phosphorous gas
            § Cluster bomb cannisters contain tiny bomblets, which can spread over a vast area.

Unexploded cluster bombs are frequently picked up by children and explode, resulting in serious injury or death.
            § Depleted uranium (DU) weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast areas of land. In Iraq, there has been a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth defects, probably due to DU.
            § White phosphorous gas melts the skin and burns to the bone.
The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies “willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a grave breach, which constitutes a war crime.

The use of chemical weapons, regardless of the purpose, is atrocious, no matter the feigned justification.

A government’s use of such weapons against its own people is particularly reprehensible. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the purported attack by Assad’s forces,
    “defies any code of morality” and should “shock the conscience of the world.”
He went on to say that,
    “there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Yet the U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used,
        ○ Agent Orange
        ○ depleted uranium
        ○ napalm,
…and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury.

This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens. The people of Vieques have lived under the colonial rule of the United States now for 115 years and suffer from terminal health conditions such as elevated rates of cancer, hypertension, respiratory and skin illnesses and kidney failure.

While Secretary Kerry calls for accountability by the Assad government, the U.S. Navy has yet to admit, much less seek atonement, for decades of bombing and biochemical warfare on Vieques.

The U.S. government’s moral outrage at the use of these weapons falls flat as it refuses to take responsibility for its own violations.

President Barack Obama admitted,
    “If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it…”
The Obama administration is studying the 1999,
    “NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations,” the New York Times reported.
But NATO’s Kosovo bombing also violated the UN Charter as the Security Council never approved it, and it was not carried out in self-defense.

The UN Charter does not permit the use of military force for “humanitarian interventions.” Humanitarian concerns do not constitute self-defense. In fact, humanitarian concerns should spur the international community to seek peace and end the suffering, not increase military attacks, which could endanger peace in the entire region.

Moreover, as Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies and David Wildman of Human Rights & Racial Justice for the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church wrote,
    “Does anyone really believe that a military strike on an alleged chemical weapons factory would help the Syrian people, would save any lives, would help bring an end to this horrific civil war”?
Military strikes will likely result in the escalation of Syria’s civil war.
    “Let’s be clear,” Bennis and Wildman note. “Any U.S. military attack, cruise missiles or anything else, will not be to protect civilians – it will mean taking sides once again in a bloody, complicated civil war.”
Anthony Cordesman, military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, asks,
    “Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes. Can you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer would be no.”
The United States and its allies must refrain from military intervention in Syria and take affirmative steps to promote a durable ceasefire and a political solution consistent with international law.

If the U.S. government were truly interested in fomenting peace and promoting accountability, it should apologize to and compensate the victims of its own use of chemical weapons around the world.

Pasted from <http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_middleeast107.htm>

Mother’s Worst Nightmare: Sons Killed on the Way to Graduation Ceremony

NANA’S COMMENTARY:

This story creates a shift in our self pitying paradigm and shakes us to the reality that we must not tarry to long. We must move outside of our mono-focused “all about me” world and “reach out and touch somebody’s” hand.

It may sound weird but that’s what this story did for me. It broke my focus on my own worries and pushed me to send “Healing Love & Light” vibrations to this family. Life & Death are both equally strong aspects of the experiential soul, however, it is how we engage the lessons and challenges that define our relationship to “Source”, “All In All”, “Creation” or whatever you want to call “God”.

The journey of life is filled with many twists & turns, ups and downs. Sometimes another’s sorrow, another’s loss is a wake-up call for others. Sometimes, as we sit bemoaning our individual fate; stressing about how to get out of a particular situation and grieving over our own losses; something like this happens and it seems to jolt us out of our own misery to acknowledge another’s sorrow. We are given a moment in which we can release our own sorrow and turn our attention and support to another.

Instinctively, we run towards another offering them compassion. This is healing. This is true concern for our fellow human being. This is true Love. Like a smack in the face, it wakes us up to the bigger issues we  must confront living on this planet. If this smack can move us outside of our own mono-focused realities; then maybe we could spread that around to all those who suffer on this planet. Maybe we can be more pro-active in being gentler, more caring, more conscientious and less willing to allow senseless aggression/violence against our planet and the life-forms that inhabit it.

As living soul beings, we are teachers and students on the path of life.  

Mother’s Worst Nightmare: Sons Killed on the Way to Graduation Ceremony as She Waits in the Audience

Filed under: BizTechNews | 
BrothersKilled

By Yolanda Spivey
WINDSOR, NC- A mother’s worst nightmare came into fruition as she sat in the audience of her 17 year old son’s graduation only to be pulled away from the ceremony to hear devastating news.  Her two sons, 17 year old Deonta and 24 year old Anthony had been in a fatal car accident on their way to the ceremony.
Sandra Williams McGlone, and a host of other family members, were waiting to see her son Deonta Whitaker walk across the stage at his Bertie High School graduation to get his diploma, but instead she was told of the tragedy.
“I just can’t describe it.  It’s unbelievable.  It’s like it’s a dream that I want to wake up from,” said Williams-McGlone.
The family is devastated by this tragic news. Deonta’s aunt, Tamare Cherry told WBTW News 13, “This is such a difficult time for us.  It was just devastating.  Our minds were all over the place.”
Highway Patrol troopers said that the older brother Anthony was driving the younger brother Deonta to the high school graduation ceremony when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into trees on the road they were traveling.  It is suspected that both young men died on impact.
The mother, Williams-McGlone stated that Deonta was headed to Elizabeth City State University and he was a scholar.  He received numerous scholarships to attend the University.  The oldest son Anthony was a graduate of Bertie County High School and was employed by UTI Global Logistic as a Technician. He leaves behind a 3 year old daughter.
Deonta’s best friend accepted his high school diploma on behalf of Deonta and his family.
The brother’s funerals will be held at the very same high school they were headed to.  They will be laid to rest in Ahoskie, N.C.