Author: paulm100m

White Helmets and Western Governments call for Bloodbath in Syria..

As the Syrian  government forces and its allies prepare for the final  advance  to  push  the jihadists  from the small  part of  Aleppo  still held by the jihadists, Western  governments and their propaganda arm,  the White Helmets, are upping the PR campaign to push  for the  establishment of  a no-fly zone  across Syria- effectively banning the Syrian  and Russian airforces from the skies.
The PR campaign  alleges that  the only  people  killed in this evil  war  are civilians  killed by  the bombs  from  the sky. For some  reason, the truck-bombs,  tank fire,   artillery, mortars, missile barrages, sniper fire and suicide attacks  from  the jihadist  side, do  not cause any civilian casualties  for the vast majority (1.5  million) of Aleppo civilians sheltering on the government side of the warzone in Aleppo. Part of the issue is that Western media only report on casualty figures provided by  the ‘rebel’  side;  so  we are left to  assume  that  the SAA; -the Syrian  Army, is entirely responsible for all  civilian  casualties;  which,   given the enormous amounts of  firepower provided by  Western  governments, Turkey  and the Gulf dictatorships to the ‘rebels’, would be somewhat  unusual!
The U.S. military  is well  aware that  Al Qaeda affiliates are the major force on the ‘rebel’ side in East Aleppo, and that  Western   interventions against  the Assad government  only strengthen Al Qaeda.
Western governments are also well  aware that  a no-fly zone-  as in  Libya ,  will  create the perfect  opportunity for  Al Qaeda affiliates  and their ‘moderate’  allies  to  defeat  the Syrian  government forces , over-run Damascus in a blood-bath, and  establish  a jihadist  centre of power in  Syria and  the elimination of the more than 26% of the Syrian  population who  are not Sunni  arabs or who do  not subscribe to  the medieval  views of their Gulf state sponsors.
Just  as in  Iraq, with the fictional  incubator babies on Iraqi  bayonets in Kuwait saga, the fictional  viagra supplied to  Gaddaffi’s soldiers in Libya to rape civilians; we are now sold endless fictional  stories of the “last hospital in Aleppo”,  well- framed photos of young men carrying babies through  war-torn  streets,  or babies and young children immaculately  covered  in concrete dust .
Yes, this is a brutal  war;  civilians will  and are dying in  immense suffering on both  sides of the ever shifting frontlines . But the most effective mechanism  to   stop  the barbarity is for Western  governments and their Gulf dictatorship proxies,  to  stop  arming  jihadist  rebels.. The hypocrisy of Western leaders-  particularly the ‘socialist’  premier Hollande, knows no  bounds it would appear.
Go  figure….

Links

Aleppo Media Center ( Western backed media support for jihadists) (use Google translate)

The Self-destruction of Western Societies?

The recent  ‘terrorist’ bombings in European  cities  may need to be  looked at from  a wider  perspective. Is this increasing wave of violence on urban  communities a signal of a deeper malaise?

The ‘terrorists’  who  have perpetrated these attacks  over the past few years ( ie not just  “ISIS’  inspired  killings);  have inevitably be enacted by  dispossessed angry young men   who  predominantly  have no  clear ideology of much  longstanding.  While they  have often attributed the rationale for their attacks to  some formal ideology  like ISIS, I suspect  that   any ideological  excuse would have sufficed for them. The recent killings by  those who  stated their motivations  were in  the name of Allah  and ISIS, were almost all by young men  who  had lacked any consistent  commitment to  Muslim  practice; ie not regularly attending a mosque, and indulged in drinking, drugs , gambling etc.

This indicates that  the rationale for the killing did not come from  idealogical  sources, but rather from their own anger and hurt about their own life experiences.  Undoubtedly however, the  last few years  of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other similar extremist  groups espousing the glories of  the killing of innocents,  have provided a focus  and a ‘rationale’   for that  anger and blood-lust.

This process might be likened to  the Christian  crusades   to  the “Holy Lands” in mediaeval  times, when  Europeans  from  all  walks of life joined  armies  to  supposedly ‘free”  the Holy Lands from  Saracen tyranny, but in  fact used that  license  to indulge in  vast  amounts of rape, pillage and  terror  of  local  populations,   both on their journeys to  Palestine through  Europe and the Middle East , but also  within  Palestine  itself.

What is different this time around however, is that  this is an internal  self-immolation of societies and almost a global  one: predominantly by  young men  who  were born  within European  societies, but at  the same time alienated from them.

What  we see then, is a political  response to these multiple deaths  which labels them as “terrorists’  attacks rather than  an  epidemic of murder/-suicides by  young angry  and hurting men.

Instead of addressing the root causes of that anger;  alienation from  society,  loneliness, poverty,  drugs and perceived inequalities and injustices;  Western  governments have increasingly focussed on more and more draconian responses to  these murders;  an action which   further legitimizes the  imaginary  ideological  fervour of more and more  young men.

As in  the United States, the  political  response is to further  militarise police forces and restrict  human rights and freedoms, and thereby  increase the likelihood of inappropriate and unjust responses by  the ‘authorities’  to  legitimate  community  conflict  situations. It is plain  that such  actions lead only to  community disintegration.

One might therefore  argue that  the actions by  both parties are symptomatic of a global  community in decline; in  a state of self-immolation, as it  unconsciously acknowledges the  multiple absurd paradoxes of our  global consumer society whilst  we inexorably head towards   an unliveable over-heated  and species depleted  planet.

 

 

Obama and the Baseball Cards

Obama’s legacy; and  this may  well be his prime legacy- and  one he may  remember in his  older years as he stands before the International War Crimes Tribunal, (once its decisions are no  longer controlled by  the U.S.  State Department), was his omnipotent capacity to  decide who shall  live and who  shall   die by  drone anywhere in  the world,  based on  limited pieces of information  provided on baseball  cards. (a kind of  Roman Emperor  type role: – thumbs- up  or down at  the Coliseum)

Baseball Card Kill List DEPICTION
Lawfareblog.com notes ‘This is a mock-up/depiction of what an actual kill-list baseball card looks like. It is not a real baseball card and is not based on any classified information.’

 

Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that Washington’s 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an over-reliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and — due to a preference for assassination rather than capture — an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. They also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how the U.S. has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the process exacerbating the very threat the U.S. is seeking to confront. The Intercept 

One might almost be forgiven therefore  for coming to  the conclusion that  the intent of the U.S. targeted killing process is  not to  eliminate the sources of terror, but to  exacerbate them.

drone operator
Drone operator cabin- Daily Mail Australia

As we have seen in many a colonial  war, those who  ‘hand in’ terrorists to  the colonial  power inevitably have their own  agendas;  feuding families and clans, or perhaps financial   or property interests, but rarely because they  are in  fact  ‘terrorists”.  In addition we  can be certain  that  US military  and State Dept claims of minimal   ‘collateral  damage’ (accidental  killing of civilians who  get in the way  of a  drone  missile’s large detonation area)  are complete fabrications. And we can be certain too  that drone operators have less than minimal  knowledge of foreign cultural  issues- e.g. the difference between a  wedding party celebrating by firing automatic weapons into  the air and a  terrorist  group in weapons training , let alone  their drone “eyes” having sufficient  definition to  pick  up  who  is who  on the ground.

So,  when  dear President Obama  gives the thumbs down  on that particular baseball  card, he really has no  idea what  he is agreeing  to; other than that  his decision will  kill  someone or more likely , quite a few  people, out there . But of course, if  that Hellfire  missile with  its 9kg warhead  just  happens to  kill a few other  ‘military-age males’  in the vicinity of the explosion,  all  to the good.  By  using  remote killing mechanisms  the US president can appear to  take a Herod-like hands-off approach  to  the art of murder, with  the added benefit of limited  capacity of verifying what  carnage has  actually occurred on the ground.

In addition the United States’  penchant for targeting  supposed ‘leaders’ of terrorist  groups, rather than  their supply lines, infrastructure or financial  backers, means that  drones can be used over and over to  kill  the next leader who  takes the deceased’s  place in  the leadership line; or as in  many cases , the United States simply ‘kills’ the same person  over and over again; such  is the usefulness of remote unverified killing.

United States government lawyers have in  the past contorted themselves in  all  sorts of unusual  positions to justify  remote murder by  executive order,  much as their  contracted psychiatrists  managed to  create a lofty argument that  putting  prisoners through  ‘stress positions’  was not in  fact  totally illegal,  inhumane  torture and contravened  international  human  rights on  a grand scale.

President Obama has even been known  to joke publicly about his life and death  decision-making powers, not too  dissimilar from his psychopathic Secretary  of State ,  Hilary Clinton.

I hope I will  be around to  see  them  stand before the International  tribunal.

Links

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-presidents-kill-list

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/2013.05.23_fact_sheet_on_ppg.pdf

https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-presidents-national-security-speech

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/targeted-killing

https://www.aclu.org/foia-collection/targeted-killing-foia-database

https://www.aclu.org/foia-document/joint-targeting-cycle-and-collateral-damage-estimation-methodology

https://theintercept.com/document/2015/10/14/geolocation-watchlist/

https://www.lawfareblog.com/kill-list-baseball-cards-and-targeting-paper-trail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249252/Brandon-Bryant-Drone-operator-followed-orders-shoot-child–decided-quit.html

The Cumulative Footprints of Humans

I often hear people, who   appear to be  otherwise rational  human beings,  adamantly stating that anthropogenic global  warming doesn’t exist-if there is warming they  argue -it has to be some other source than man;  why?

Perhaps  partly because  they  cannot  comprehend that  their own small  actions in a big world could  have such  a huge  impact  on  the planet. Which   is in  fact   of course, correct.

It is our capacity  as a  social  species  to  collaborate and cooperate which  is destroying this planet. If James Watt  had invented the steam engine, but  no-one had helped him build the tracks, let alone design and build another-and then another  locomotive;  then  the planet  would  have much more of its natural   green cover on it and  far less carbon  dioxide in  the atmosphere!

It is our capacity to  firstly  manipulate our environment to  suit our immediate needs at  the expense of other species, which  has created what  is looking increasingly likely as  a dead-end street  for ourselves and  the multiple species that  live  with us on this little blue ball.

Secondly it is  our incapacity to  anticipate the cumulative impacts of our actions  on the planet ( one locomotive has no  impact;  100,000  locomotives do; tar-sealing one car-park has little impact on the planet, but 500, 000  mall  car-parks do.) .

Thirdly,  it  is the inherited  presumption that  homo sapiens have a God-given right to  hold domain over the world. A handy  but incredibly foolish assumption for any species to adhere to!- particularly when that  species doesn’t understand  what  it is doing as it manipulates its environment, other  than making  and distributing little shiny baubles  that its members  are attracted to.

And fourthly, it is our short-sightedness;  we do  not see how over time, humans have radically altered for the worse, the liveable bio-sphere on this planet. What  was once, for instance in New Zealand,  several islands almost entirely  covered with tall  trees  and dense vegetation, has been in less than  two hundred years, transformed into millions of acres of  grassland feeding  various animal species  imported from  Europe, for the purpose of slaughtering them and sending the dead bodies overseas or  to extract their milk.

Many many thousands of species have been  destroyed or pushed to  the brink  of extinction in this  process of ‘human progress’, and those ancient forest  trees  are forever gone, except in  a few national parks where humans can get  a small  glimpse of what  the world was like before humans devastated it. No  longer is the dawn chorus of birds deafening,  as it once was when Europeans first  arrived on  those New Zealand  shores 200  years ago: we may be  lucky in  our  urban environments to hear one European blackbird  or a sparrow call as the sun  rises.

Deforestation across the world has been pervasive- both for agricultural  farming and for industrial  exploitation.

In the image below you an see the inexorable deforestation (loss of green) of  Europe -only attenuated briefly by  the Black  Death. That  process of deforestation has been occurring all  over the word at various rates and stages, but is now nearing the point where only a few natural  national parks will  remain across the world. And while they  certainly act  as carbon  sinks, those forested areas were (once) far more than that; they  were areas of intense species  diversity that  vitally kept our planet  alive.

 

'The prehistoric and pre-industrial deforestation of Europe" -Jm Kaplan, KM Krumhardt, and N Zimmerman ( 2009)
‘The prehistoric and pre-industrial deforestation of Europe” -Jm Kaplan, KM Krumhardt, and N Zimmerman (2009)

We have as  a species, perhaps irremediably, lost our way- and sadly all  the other species on  this planet may be lost too as a result.

Postscript

And as Pete Dolack  writes at  Systemic Disorder, environmental  collapse is a major challenge to  the capitalistic system!  How dare our world disintegrate before our eyes when we have the greatest system of profiteering the world has ever seen!

 

Patriotism: The Refuge of Scoundrels

The blog heading is one of Mark Twain’s quotes. But here is  a much  better one from Mr Clemens.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”- with his mouth.
– “The Lowest Animal”- Mark Twain

Today, in my little part of the world; it is once again  Anzac Day, originally  commemorated to  mark  the bloody  failure  of the  British  Empire’s coordinated attack on Turkish  positions in the Dardanelles at  Gallipoli   in World War One, but now, ( supposedly) it ‘acknowledges the sacrifice of all those who have died in warfare, and the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.” Strangely however  this commemoration of all  who  have died in  wars is marked by   artillery salutes, marching uniformed men and much  fanfare about  this country’s patriotism. We are encouraged to  believe that Anzac Day now promotes a sense of unity, perhaps more effectively than any other day on the national calendar. People whose politics, beliefs and aspirations are widely different can nevertheless share a genuine sorrow at the loss of so many lives in war, and a real respect for those who have endured warfare on behalf of the country we live in. (New Zealand Government).

I for one,  am  appalled  that  the majority consensus in New Zealand appears to  be that  ‘plucky little New Zealand’  became a real  country  with its own  identity, and not just  a member of the British  Empire, by  maiming and killing its way through  a series of foreign “adventures”.  The one possible exception to this catastrophic jingoistic litany of murder and mayhem, is New Zealand’s very  real  contribution to  the war  against  Nazi Germany and  Japan  during the Second World War, when  a New Zealand invasion by  the Japanese Imperial Army was a high  probability at  one point.

Every  other war  we have fought, we have fought at  the behest  of others-  from  the genocide inflicted on the Boers during the Boer Wars as part of the British  Imperial  Army’s need to maintain  control of South African assets, the First  World War’s bizarre clash of European monarchies , the  staggering level  of genocide  inflicted on Koreans  by  the “Allies’ (including New Zealand naval  bombardment  of civilian areas) during the Korean War, our implicit involvement in American  genocide in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, our explicit connection to  rendering of Afghan suspects to   U.S. torture centres in Afghanistan, and our ongoing  complicity in the Five Eyes  intelligence project,  which  currently serves American  and U.K. interests in  promoting terrorism  around the world and destroying  human rights.

All in all,  it is not a record I for one am proud of.  Our ongoing subservience to  the  paranoid and psychopathic American  war machine and its  business interests, serves no-one’s interests  on this planet, other than  a few  crazed right wing  American  idealogues and the military/industrial  complex.

I was proud of my country  when our prime minister of the time, Norman Kirk, sent frigates to  Muroroa Atoll  in the south Pacific,  to protest  the French  destroying that island with nuclear bombs and contaminating the environment for thousands of miles.  I was proud when  our prime minister of the day,  David Lange, announced we would henceforth  be a nuclear-free nation, and even a little proud when prime minister Helen Clark refused to send   significant ground troops to Iraq  to  support the American  invasion there.  But we have sunk to new lows since those times, in obsequiously following our U.S.  masters into Iraq once more, to   fight a stupendously foolish  war  in Afghanistan,  and to  mouth support for America’s duplicitous  ‘war on terror’   while  unconditionally  supporting the key  centres of terror in the world; Saudi Arabia and Turkey,  along with support for the 60  year  old  brutal  Israeli  occupation of Palestine .

Despite successive  New Zealand governments’ posturings that  we are now a sovereign nation  because of Anzac Day, when are we truly going to be a proud and  independent nation  who  stands in truth  for peace and international justice?

 

 

The Brussels Bombers

The Brussels nail  bombing  attacks occurred on  the morning of March  22nd 2016;  two in the departure area of Brussels international airport near  the town of Zaventem seven miles from Brussels and one in the Maelbeek metro station in the centre of the city.  28 victims and three suicide bombers were killed, and 330 people were injured. Another bomb was found during a search of the airport. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

We now know that  Turkey   ‘deported’ the presumed key  instigator of  the Brussel’s attack  to  Amsterdam in the Netherlands,  rather than to Belgium.  Which  meant,  that  rather than being detained as a terrorist in Belgium upon  leaving the plane, he was instead permitted to   drive back  to  Belgium  from  Amsterdam’s  Schiphol  Airport because he was not on any Netherlands wanted list.  Poor bad luck? or was it-as has been  suggested, a cosy arrangement between  Turkey  and the   Israeli   owned  security firm   ICTS International  (owned by ‘former’ Shin Bet intelligence agency  personnel) managing the  security at  the airport.  You will  perhaps recall  that  ICTS International  is the same security agency  that  escorted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day  2009 , without a passport or ticket, to  a  First Class seat on  Northwest flight 253  at  Schiphol Airport, and who  then  attempted to   detonate  plastic explosives hidden inside his trousers.

But the  key issue that Western  media consistently ignore, is  their and their political  masters’ support for anti-Assad  rebel  groups;  who are in  fact,   terrorists. Their ‘moderate’  terrorists have been trained  by Western  intelligence  and sited in Jordan and Turkey  to  inflict  terror on Syrian  populations.  Hillary  Clinton’s  psychopathic need to  kill  and destroy  is reflected in her  weird emails using agents like Google and the Qatari terrorist supporting Al Jazeera media outlet.  Now that , with a little help  from  Russian bombers,  Assad ‘s military is inflicting serious losses on these terrorists groups in Syria- many are rushing  ‘home’ to  safety. But with all  that  training and nowhere to go-whats a good terrorist  to  do  but blow up  something  close to home?

This all  suits the US vacuous political  and military   establishment  very  well. Heightening fear and loathing  about these ‘Islamic’ groups  in European communities, and encouraging right wing imbecilic xenophobia, is incredibly useful  to ensure  that  the Eurozone limits its citizens freedoms, expands its military  and supports NATO  weirdness.

To ensure we all  believe that America is in fact  attempting to  destroy terrorists ( ie the long long looong war!)    the US military   prioritises  killing  heads of terrorist organizations-  the  key advantage  of such vaunted actions is that they can never be corroborated – (unless  of course ISIS agrees that  their man has been killed)!, as opposed to  destroying terrorist supply lines, banking activities, training camps, weapons supply  routes etc,  which can all be independently  verified. The evidence  is mounting that  these fundamentalist Islamic   terrorists are in  fact nothing but mercenaries who  can   conveniently use the  fear of Islamism to  increase their impact on  gullible Western populations.

As Pepe Escobar notes, NATO headquarters is less than  2 kilometers from the  site of the Brussels  terror;  why  choose a metro  station to  create an impact , rather than  the  central supposedly core of Western values sited at  NATO headquarters? Soft targets are of course easy  targets, but they  clearly have less impact  on Western  political  actions than hard targets….

If we are to believe the quoted media response from  ISIS,  that; ‘let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake part in the crusader campaign … [with] their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets.’, then  this soft target response to  the ‘11,111 air strikes launched by Western and Gulf states against targets in Syria and Iraq’, then this supposed  ISIS response is certainly  a circuitous route to conquering the crusaders.

Sibel Edmonds, ex-FBI operative, argues however that  the proximity of the  attacks   to  NATO headquarters is no coincidence, and simply forms part of a long sequence  of CIA/NATO sponsored Gladio  attacks in Europe-  or in Belgium, the ‘stay-behind’ Gladio  units were known  as S.D.R.A. VIII , with  strong connections to  far-right organisations.

Despite his  genetically ingrained Russophobic  tendencies, Craig Murray makes the very  good point that  terrorists can in  fact attack  any soft target  at will. Current  anti-terrorist measures , such as at  airports are a complete farce, largely useless,  and result in  long, vulnerable to  attack,  queues.

We live in  a bizarre world of lies, disinformation, half-truths and extraordinary  events where   individuals with  limited intelligence  have accumulated great power,  and  are quite prepared to kill any number of innocents for their own  foolish  ends.

Links

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/03/25/erdogan-to-belgium-screw-you-we-will-do-it-again/

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/03/roundup-of-current-news-on-syria.html

ICTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICTS_International

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordans-king-accuses-turkey-sending-terrorists-europe-1687591648

http://www.haaretz.com/israeli-firm-blasted-for-letting-would-be-plane-bomber-slip-through-1.261107

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2016/03/24/probable-cause-with-sibel-edmonds-belgium-bombing-the-missing-context-facts-interests/

http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/operation_gladio.htm

The Earth is NOT Our Playground

For the past two  hundred years since the British  Industrial  Revolution and the rise of consumerism, the Western  World and now the Eastern  and Third Worlds, have adopted a mantra that  says;  ‘we can  do  anyhing we like to  this world- destroy  other species, the natural  environment as much  as we want  in  our pursuit of profit and  things to  consume’.

A few humans are now coming to the realisation that  this mantra is rapidly and progressively destroying this planet- that  we, and the billions of other species on this planet , are doomed  very  soon, to  annihilation, unless we rapidly reverse this hedonistic view of  life.

In my little ‘green  and clean’  country   of New Zealand alone, we mercilessly kill many many millions of other animals we ‘farm’ each year. Each  of those animals, (as every  pet owner well  knows) , just  like us;  has thoughts, feelings and intense fear as they  approach  their deaths by  humans who must  construct  careful  thought patterns to  ensure they  are not unduly themselves destroyed by  the  pain  and psychopathic cruelty they  are inflicting on  each  animal they  encounter for killing. There are harrowing stories in  the links below of animals coming to  their murderers for  comfort  and reassurance before the moments of their deaths.toadstillinthegrass

There are stories too  of the  enormous psychological damage inflicted on  those butcherers by  their  killings  day  after day. And yet incredibly,  we see educated  ‘authorities’  extolling  diets which  endorse and enthuse over those killings. The  so-called ‘paleo’ diet-  where supposedly our prehistoric ancestors somehow had enough time and energy  to  go  on killing sprees and consume vast  amounts of meat. One has to  wonder which    killing corporation is sponsoring such  a diet?

In reality, we  in our early years, like our  fellow  primates, did kill   a few other animals, but predominantly ate  what   came to us in our  travels,  fruit, grains,  roots in  the ground and some times a lucky kill  of another animal.

We are  not ‘predestined’  to be killers in our genes- despite the animal killing industries best  protestations;  we are essentially omniverous animals- and we can  choose not to inflict  cruelty and death  on our fellow species.

But the killing industry is just  a small  part of what  we humans  are blindly doing to  destroy our planet. It is all  part of a vast  and intensely ignorant ‘understanding’,  that  we as humans,  are superior beings who  consequently have the right  to  do  what  we like on this planet.

Nothing could be further from the truth!. We are in  no way  superior beings- we have unique talents,  as many species do, but they  in no  way  equate to  ‘superiority’- whatever  that might mean.

Even humans should be able to recognise that self-definition of superority using those traits  that  that species excels in,  has rather a large flawed element of self-fulfillment. The inherent stupidity of such  an  argument should be visible to  any human;- sadly , it is not.

This self-fulfilling prejudice means that  humans can,  without a qualm, destroy  countless  individual  and total  fellow-species for any reason  the human brain  can come up  with.   Thus we can  pave over the living and breathing earth, create cancerous  concrete growths we call  cities on top  of  the natural  world, destroy billions of acres of forest to   maintain  monocrops  endlessly and increasingly sprayed with poisons -or ‘genetically engineered’  to  self-destruct  and destroy those species relying on them in the process. We can pave the planet  with increasing  labyrinths of tar  we call  roads  or ‘essential  services’, we can  desperately retrieve  more  and more of the stored earth-bound energy   on this planet  to keep  our so-called ‘civilisation’  running;  but, all  for what?

Global  warming is but one small  symptom of this incredible stupidity. Oh yes, certainly one that  will  kill  millions of humans and many billions more of our fellow species, but nothing in  comparison  with  our ongoing hell-bent ride to  destroy the planet we live on with  every   avail able tool  we have  created  since the Industrial  Revolution.

Do  we really hate ourselves this much?

Links

http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists

http://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/

http://werewolf.co.nz/2016/02/killing-for-a-living/

https://verdict.justia.com/2014/05/21/dilemma-humane-execution-humane-slaughter

https://www.rebelpress.org.nz/files/cleangreencrueltyfree.pdf

A Conflagration in the Middle East?- Syria on the Brink

The recent decision by Turkey and Saudi Arabia to agree on joint military operations within Syria with the aim of toppling President Assad, has considerably upped the ante of the possibility of a major war between forces with significant military assets, including nuclear ones.

One might argue that things were going swimmingly for President Erdogan and the Saudi’s support for ISIS and other wahhabist terrorist groups in Syria, until Russia (with the approval of the Assad regime/government) began an unexpectedly successful (to Assad’s opponents) air campaign against ISIS, Al Nusra and the rest of the ‘moderate’ Al Qaeda affiliated opposition in Syria six months ago. Erdogan’s dream of a new Turkic empire extending far into what is now Syria (but which was once part of the huge Ottoman Turkic Empire), while also enriching his family with   income received from Syrian oil transported across the Turkish border by ISIS, looked an incipient possibility – dreams now shattered.

For the Saudi dictatorship, their ongoing goal has always been to break the power (and if possible, exterminate) the Shi-ite ‘heretics’ of Syria and Iran and Iraq, in line with the primitive vision of the Wahhabi clerics that has underpinned the Saudi claim to Mecca for the past 200 years.

And in tandem with these dreams of power and riches and glory, add into the mix, the duplicitous influence of U.K, (think Lawrence of Arabia) and U.S. intelligence agencies, determined to create a power vacuum in the Middle East that only ‘their man’ (Israel) can fill; on the somewhat dubious assumption that the crazies in the Israeli Knesset and Army -let alone the settlers – are in fact controllable), whilst at the same time, maintaining their oil lines and profits for posterity. Now with the added bonus of taking a swipe at any Russian attempt to re-establish itself as an international player of any significance, and simultaneously keeping Iran in ‘check’.

While the Assad regime at the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring”, apparently did respond in a brutal fashion to some of the peaceful demonstrations calling for its overthrow, there is mounting evidence of considerable “investment’ by foreign powers and ‘human rights’ agencies in that not so peaceful uprising. Syrian government forces continue to hold much of the populated areas of Syria, while most of the country-side and desert (with a section of industrial Aleppo and parts of Damascus) has, until now, been held by the rebels. And in fact, where there is Syrian support for the rebels, it largely comes from the Sunni rural areas who have long held sectarian views about their Kurdish, Christian, Alawite or Shi-ite neighbours.

The cosmopolitan citizens of Damascus and Aleppo in the main, have little sympathy and much fear of those religious extremists. So, despite the Assad regime’s many failings and its historical brutality, Assad would undoubtedly be elected overwhelmingly as president in a free and fair election. (not something that the US , UK France and Turkey and the Gulf States would want to see!) Additionally, as rebel supply lines are cut and their troop gathering and command centres targeted, the option of ‘guerrilla tactics” and melting into the local population will be denied to them. Much of the Syrian population will have little sympathy for their cause and their ignorance and brutality.

Things have seriously gone awry for the Syrian destabilisation project. Along with Russian bombing of rebel /terrorist command centres and communication lines, has gone the bombing of the oil supply route into Turkey and now, working in tandem with Syrian ground and air forces, the destruction of rebel military positions. Both Kurds and Syrian ground forces are steadily closing the Turkish /Syrian border to   rebel supply and support; something that Turkey is desperate to prevent.

The House of Saud is desperate also to re-establish some credibility as a significant Middle East player. Their genocidal war in Yemen (with the full support of the United States and innumerable mercenary groups including Blackwater) is going disastrously wrong against Houthi and ex-Yemen government troops; despite their overwhelming superiority in equipment and resources. Playing the ‘Iran card’ in the Yemen is increasingly visibly obvious to the international sector as one more act of dishonesty by the House of Saud, and the incompetence of their military leadership is plain to see.  U.K. involvement in Saudi Arabia , Qatar and Bahrein, and UK  not-so-tacit support of Saudi Wahhabi  extremism  as a “useful  tool” to  promote arm sales and extend UK military   and oil supply influence in the Gulf, goes right back  in an unbroken  line  of command  to  the British Foreign Office’s decision in 1917  to  destabilise the  Turkish Ottoman Empire in the Arabian Peninsula, by  supporting  Saudi  tribesmen  through  the liaisons of T.E. Lawrence.

Shi-ite Iran too, has much to lose if the tide turns again in the Wahhabist groups’ favour. Wahhabi extremism is anathema to Iran’s religious and political movement. A Wahhabi victory could potentially lead to genocide against Shi-ites throughout the Middle East. (note that Shi-ite ‘sects” do not share a similar prejudice against Sunni ‘sects’) Iran has therefore invested heavily in supporting the Assad regime ( popularly known in the West, but inaccurately, as a Shi-ite Alawite regime, but in fact largely secular) with a large number of military advisors and now Hezbollah troops from Lebanon.

As “The Saker” notes, the Russians are currently spread thin on the ground in Syria. The Turkish military is well equipped with NATO and locally produced   hardware and has been actively fighting their Kurdish “terrorists” (read; a community which wants its own autonomy) for many years now – not however with a great deal of success. A full-scale invasion across the Turkish border would not be able to be contained by the Syrians or the Russians and Iran/Hezbollah. The problem would however be maintaining Turkish supply lines once the invasion is complete and the possibility of Russia either upscaling its support for the Kurds inside Turkey, or delivering an invasion across the Black Sea border with Russia into Turkey. Such an invasion would likely lead to military involvement from Turkey’s NATO allies- something that Erdogan is counting on in his brinkmanship style. It is unlikely that Russia would risk such a n invasion, although Russia has been strongly signalling Turkey that its airborne divisions are ready to go in such an event.

And where does China sit with all of this? Syrian pro-government analysts have long been signalling China’s intent to become involved in the conflict, but current Chinese official media responses suggest otherwise. The Chinese government tends to hold a very pragmatic trade-based view of international conflicts. However, should Turkey’s invasion into Syria increase the boldness of the Turkish supported Uighur nationalist movement in Xinyang province in China- then all bets are off.

Then there is the complete unpredictability and schizophrenic approach of the United States to the whole war. On the one hand its intelligence forces have been   supplying training and funding terrorists in Syria or in their training stations in Turkey and Jordan, for at least five years, and actively supporting the overthrow of the Assad regime; while knowing full well, that the only Assad opponents with the capacity to take the place of the Assad military and government institutions, are the jihadists – al Nusra and ISIS- a recipe for hell on earth in Syria;  while on the other hand, talking about democracy and freedom and a secular state. One can only assume that the United States policy and intelligence arms are not completely stupid or crazy, and have assessed that this state of absolute chaos and terror is the scenario they have been aiming for in their years of support for Assad’s overthrow.  One can  assume this from the responses of U.S. politicians like  Senator “Mad Dog” John McCain and psychopathic U.S. politicians like ‘we came, we saw, we brutally murdered Ghaddafi’, Hilary Clinton- but is this really mainstream U.S. policy?

Let us hope some sanity prevails

Postscript

The answer , as noted in  Moon of Alabama’s commentary on the  Syrian  ‘peace’ talks, is clearly no;  sanity is not going to  prevail. The United States and U.K. official policies are to  support Al Qaeda affiliates like Al Nusra in the Syrian  war.  Clearly  there are  significant  strategic gains for the U.K. and the U.S.  in  supporting terrorists over the Assad government.  Perhaps, as with  their unique efforts in Afghanistan , Iraq and Libya,  it  is  simply the creation of complete murderous  chaos in the whole of the Middle East.

Links

https://elijahjm.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/the-gates-of-hell-will-be-open-in-the-coming-months-in-syria/

http://southfront.org/turkish-involvement-in-syria-oil-smuggling-business-and-imperial-ambitions-leads-to-global-war/

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/02/the-race-to-raqqa-is-intensifying.html

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941125001484

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mythology of Emotion

Over the millenia  humans have celebrated the power and pleasures of emotions; the  bliss of love, the power of anger and revenge, the  truth  of duty  and many others. And along with that  celebration, has gone the malediction of less favoured emotions;  jealousy, uncontrolled anger, fear and cowardice to name just  a few.

And over the millenia,  emotions of all  kinds have been  seen to be spontaneous uprising s of something deep  within  the psyche of that  person. But what  if all  those feelings were simply productions; simply artefacts of a  sentient  being’s process of thought?.

Many  philosophical  religions like Hindusim, Taosim and Buddhism  have long argued that meditation  aims to reduce the ego  so  that  one can obtain  at  least  a glimpse of the eternal. Rarely is it  stated that  the ego  is in  fact  simply the productions of thoughts. Without thought; simply being,  there is no  ego; but a state of no-thought  that  very  very  few human beings have attained.

Most  consistent meditators know that  as their practice deepens, they become calmer, less ruffled by  the buffets of day  to  day  events, and less prone to  consequent  unfortunate actions. Too  often  this state of calmness is portrayed as some mystical  state of entry  into  spiritual bliss and   enlightenment, rather than   simply a gentle reduction in thought processes, and an  opening for the mind to see how it always directly connects to  the world without  grasping or judging..

What  if, for those of us who  have endured adverse childhood events in  our lives, some negative thought-patterns become entrenched and circular, leading the person  to  view all  future events through  the thought processes of the past? A ‘lens of discontent’ if you like. One can  hypothesise that  if we had mental  health  clinicians who  were skilled in teaching their patients how to  break out of those circular thought processes, to focus instead on the everyday  joys of life in the here and now, many mental  health patients would be able to live fulfilled and even contented lives without psychotropic medication. Those who  were suicidally depressed and hopeless could also  learn those skills, leading to  a huge reduction in  the trauma and further suicides in   countless families and communities around the world.

Of course, being content with  what  one has, being happy simply to be here and now and not need to  buy the next  thing, visit the next  place of the bucket list  or compete with others, would mean   our  acquisitional   global  culture  would start  to  disintegrate. Product  advertising would be laughed at  for the myth  that it is. You  must be sold something you dont recognise you need- capitalism  would largely disappear, and we might begin  to learn to  co-exist  with our fellow species.

The power otoadstillinthegrassf government fear campaigns, ideologies, corporatism  and  divisive religions , will begin to  fade away.

A revolutionary process indeed!

Will  we see the end of love?  While the romanticism of love  would be seen for what  it is;  simply powerful  thoughts, often   drawn automatically  from  deep  within  the childhood thought patterns of the person, our species capacity to love both our own, and  all  other living things, will  be greatly enhanced.

Love therefore will be seen for what it is- a state of mind, rather than  something mysterious and sublime.  The 4000  year old Chinese I Ching, or the Book  of Divinations puts it beautifully:

No matter how close to them he may be, if his center of gravity depends on them, he is inevitably tossed to and fro between joy and sorrow. Rejoicing to high heaven, then sad unto death-this is the fate of those who depend upon an inner accord with other persons whom they love.

Here we have only the statement of the law that this is so. Whether this condition is felt to be an affliction of the supreme happiness of love, is left to the subjective verdict of the person concerned. I Ching; Hexagram Chung Fu ( Inner Truth), six in the third.

The mysteriousness of ‘falling in love’ can be ascribed to  the mysteriousness of our thoughts; their source, the pool of thoughts that  populate our unconscious and dreams, but arising directly from our formative experiences and those who  wielded power over us when we were young impressionable and vulnerable, and the consequent thought patterns that   were  cemented in  place at  that time.

To  be continued…..

Return to simplicity

Understand that all your emotions are directly related to what you think. Think angry thoughts and you feel angry, think happy thoughts and you feel happy….

Is this real? No, these are just thoughts fashioned from the accumulation of your life’s experience since you were born. The way you think about something is completely conditioned by all the previous experiences and thoughts and messages you have had.

So who are you really behind all that?

That, is your mission in life to find out! – and thinking about it won’t get you there!)

Formalised religions won’t get you there either- their doctrines and writings  are simply accumulations of someone else’s thought patterns – they are no closer to the truth than you are now. The more they tell you their path is the only path, the more you know they have no path at all.

flower budsThe truth is within you-behind that veil of thoughts where, even now, your being absorbs and is part of everything around you in a complete and total way. Where simply being in the here and now is total truth.

Does that mean you lose your senses to get to the truth? No, you are simply able to recognise your thoughts for what they are: your mind racing off once again on another wild goose chase to nowhere- let it run!

All those plans, those bucket lists, those important futures you need to work on – throw them away: let the world come to you when it needs to; and be open to its requests. Acceptance is peace; and takes discipline and openness.

So how do ‘you’ get there?- to this place of peace and truth   where simply being is pure joy?

Find the meditation tool that ‘feels’ right for you and stick to it. Meditate regularly every day. Meditation teaches the mind to focus, to gently and progressively still the incessant thoughts that chase each other around your brain.

It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen at all if you don’t discipline yourself to stick to it regularly. This is not about thinking yourself into a quiet space- that’s impossible, and you will tie your head up in knots trying to achieve that. This is simply gently bringing your thoughts back to that one thought you have agreed upon, over and over and over again, until you find that still place… (in another year or two or…?)

You’re using a thought to catch your thoughts!

And don’t pretend when you sit there, that you can keep that one thought while your mind rambles everywhere else- it doesn’t happen: you’re either in that one thought space, or you’re not. Simple as that!

Go to it!