A recent photo of Zelensky with a large group of arms manufacturer executives shows what is actually going on. Zelensky understands that these are the people he needs to woo - they basically run the government exchequer. Death, slaughter and utter destruction is the order of the day. Israel's government has no relation to its ancient religion of Judaism ; every move Netanyahu makes is a negation of his purported religion. Here in America it is the same thing; nothing that our government does at home or particularly internationally bears any resemblance to Christianity. Our current behavior in Ukraine and Gaza attests to that. The combination of two utterly heartless and totally ruthless and truthless governments results in the unforgettable sick nightmare we are enabling Israel to pursue on innocent Palestinians whose land Israel stole and forced the inhabitants into an outdoor concentration camp some 50 years ago.
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, called by most of the western world "the son of God", we continue in this activity full force. US and Israel - what a monstrous evil pair we make.
"nothing that our government does at home or particularly internationally bears any resemblance to Christianity".... Oh dear!
The Christian Bible is full of wars, genocides, and power projection! Where God demands the killing of whole races of people, and their cattle and oxen and saving their virgins. Because they have the WRONG thoughts and ideas, and wrong "God".
Dec 23, 2023·edited Dec 23, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
"The Christian Bible is full of wars, genocides, and power projection! Where God demands the killing of whole races of people, and their cattle and oxen and saving their virgins."
Utterly absent from the New Testament (i.e. the part of the Biblical compilation contributed from the Christian era.) Arguably included in the Hebrew Bible- the Old Testament- more in the interest of providing an honest chronicle of events than as a model blueprint of statecraft to be pursued in perpetuity- although sadly, recent events appear to argue otherwise for some factions of Judaism (and for some non-theistic Jews.) The rules of warfare were not very nice in the Middle East and Levant 3000 years ago. (They've since improved somewhat, in some ways- while unequivocally getting even worse, in other ways. Some tactics and behaviors are now widely held to be abhorrent, and actively discouraged. That said, the principle of "best practices in war" has a way of running into a contradiction in terms.) Life was lived much closer to the bone, in all respects. Humans often acted- and continue to act- horribly toward each other. The Jews just happen to have recorded the gory details, not just restricting their accounts to abstract reveries of the glory and triumph of victorious rulers. The supreme being whose wishes the Hebrews and their descendants sought to ascertain was often displeased by their attitudes and their actions, according to the interpretations provided. The writers of many of the books of the Old Testament included that part, too. Written accounts from other civilizations have a marked tendency to pass over the moral quandaries of an evolving relationship with divine entity(s) in silence.
I can't say I'm dismayed by your reaction. I hope that you'll accept reassurance about my absence of alarm over it.
If you were to refrain from delivering your off-topic axe-grinding broadsides in a political forum- now that really would surprise me. And I'd be outright gratified to find you demonstrating some command of historical specifics and detailed insight in regard to the topic at hand. That would be considerably more valuable than continual table-pounding with tedious variations on the theme "Religion Bad."
That must be one of those rhetorical questions. Obviously, I'm not. I have to wonder what's given you the idea that I imagine the case to be otherwise.
Dec 23, 2023·edited Dec 23, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen" (a definition provided by Paul, not Jesus, just to keep the record straight) is not the same as "believing stuff with no evidence."
People who are gravely injured or ill give no outward appearance that they'll ever return to health. Faith in a successful future outcome can mean the difference between healing and withering. The fact that we have a much larger base of medical knowledge than was available 1900 years ago- or 100 years ago- has not diminished the utility of faith one iota in that regard.
In the realm of science and technology, I continually read prognostications about various technological powers held by their boosters to be destined to be achieved, as an inevitability. As a rule I don't preemptively dismiss the notion that those promises could ever be achieved, but in many cases I recognize the predictions for what they are: faith-based, not fact-based. I often find myself taking a position of agnosticism on that score, one might say. People who dismiss agnostic positions a priori- as if agnosticism could only represent intellectual cowardice- are displaying their own absolutist rigidity. The implicit demand of that position is that Everything must be potentially knowable (and hence controllable) by human intelligence (or its constructed artifacts, such as AI learning programs.)
Ironically enough, such radical positivism is not only a faith-based stance, but a particularly obdurate and shoddy one. It's refuted every time the boundaries of knowledge expand in unforeseen directions. The overturning of paradigms previously taken for granted as providing an encompassing basis for both hypotheses and explanatory conclusions has occurred in chemistry, paleoanthropology, geophysics, archaeology, genetics, quantum physics...the empirical record gives no confidence that these upheavals are over with.
Many proponents of scientific materialism appear to me to tacitly hold the purview that 21st century human technology has already achieved so much that we've already accrued most of the knowledge of the material realm necessary for ascent to superhumanity, or some such, and that only a few percent remains to be learned, whereupon all of the mysteries worth solving are revealed. That isn't even a faith-based proposition, much less a fact-based one. It's a conceit.
The radical positivists- the folks who insist that there's no reality beyond the already known, or that which is accessibly knowable through current means of scientific investigation- are on ground as logically shaky as those who insist on the literal scriptural inerrancy of the Bible in spite of the rampant contradictions of the narratives compiled in its pages. There are vast realms of existence that are simply not amenable to replicable controlled experiment. There are logical limits to the deductive power of the scientific method, and also to the reliability of empirical conclusions. Beyond that reside matters of faith as well as falsehood.
There's so much to be agreed on in regard to science and practical material reality. Why not focus on that set of problems and solutions, instead of insisting on some consensus assent to universal foreclosure of the vast array of possibilities that can neither be proven or unproven?
Does the list not highlight the agendas and common ground of Jill Stein (quite forceful in her comments on the Gaza genocide) and Cornell West (longtime advocate for the Palestinians)? Yet, are not both, in the eyes of John and Jane Doe-Public, unelectable? This is one of the (not so) mysterious inter workings of our "democracy:" We despise Congress, the deep state and the MSM, but all we do is vote for the dregs of the two party system again and again. I believe that defines insanity. I thought social media would help propel Stein in 2016 particularly among the young when going up against HRC and Trump. Alas, the only blip she made in the election was for the DNC to blame her and the Russians for their well earned defeat. Already, this is again the sales pitch for Dem's this time around. Any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump.
Cornel West gave up ballot access when he left the Green Party. He appears to be dead in the water.
Jill Stein has many of the right positions, at least in my view. Of course, she's been smeared by the MSM as a Putin puppet and she lacks the charisma to truly take fire. I think she lacks savviness and the ability to connect with lots and lots of people.
I agree completely. Sad though it be. I've listened to Cornell going back to his conversations with Buckley on Firing Line. That said, I can't see him as President. As for charisma, one can hardly give Biden any points in that department! It's a low bar these days. :-)
RFK Jr. seemed to be a possibility until he was attacked for alleged anti-Semitism, which drove him to embrace Israel's right-wing government. He's lost a lot of credibility among independent-minded people.
I'd add Bernie Sanders to your list, Tom. But, of course, we've already seen that the DNC will actively tank any candidacy he attempts, if he tries to run on the Dem ticket.
I was more excited about Bernie's 2016 candidacy than I can remember ever being about any candidate for any office (save my own in 2004 & '08 ). And notwithstanding my expectation that the D-Party would sandbag him, I was somewhat optimistic about his prospects, given his appeal not only to progressives but the younger voters, independents, and even some lifelong Repub's I knew. One, a career FBI officer, had said that while they didn't agree with Sanders on everythiing, "he's honest and we need someone like that now."
Then came what I feared- the obvious rigging to ensure HRC was the nominee.; followed by his bent-knee fealty in contradicting every thing he'd honestly pointed out about her before, endorsing and campaigning for her. Many disillusioned folk would comment afterwards that he betrayed them and was merely a Party sheepdog; but I defended his decisions as at least rationally defensible.
Four years later, though, when he played ever-trusting Charlie Brown to Lucy's deviousness once again, I thought he must be delusional to think the Party would give him a fair chance; and sure enough, in a perfectly scripted and choreographed play, his campaign was again stymied by the Party's directorate and funders. And once again he gracefully bowed out and disappointed yet more of the principled hopeful.
But, as discouraged as I was about his obvious "lesser of evils" prioritizing, I gradually came to really dislike him for his capitulation to the MIC. Once an almost reliable dissenting voice to limitless 'defense' spending and unjustifiable wars, he has become yet another enabler of it all; signing on to the continual arming of Ukraine against that 'evil dictator' Putin,, funding Israel's decades long crimes against Palestinians, and refusing to heed constituents' pleas that he sign on to calls for a cease fire there. Only after repeatedly being called out for this- even by Jewish groups - did he even begin to show support for conditioning Israeli aid to 'better protection' for noncombatant Palestinians.
I came to understand that foreign policy just was not Bernie's strong suit nor of particular interest to him, but these failings made me realize that, while he was certainly a big step above the sleaze that the Party typically puts up, he was still, just another politician, vulnerable and willing to concede to the power elites when push comes to shove. So I wouldn't have given him a dime this time had he entered the race.
Sadly, I can't argue with most of what you say, Roger. The only saving grace I see is that Bernie, though belatedly, has come around to proposing conditions on aid to Israel and to pushing for an end to the atrocities in Gaza.
In terms of his domestic priorities, I'm in agreement with him pretty much across the board. It's for that reason I'd vote for him. I don't think any candidate who ran on a platform of reining in the MIC would have a chance at being elected. If such a candidate would gain popularity, he/she would never survive---politically or perhaps even physically--- to take office.
Yes, the powers controlling the levers of the machine would certainly not tolerate any serious challenge to the continuation of their power. Anyone of deep principle and the spine to stand on it would have to be willing to risk both political career AND loss of life - theirs and/or that of loved ones. Certainly, at a minimum, they'd be smeared; witness Jeremy Corbyn in the UK; Rashida Tlaib in the U.S. House. And if they survived that politically (doubtful, given the thoroughness of the propaganda mill and its corporate voices), they would be eliminated physically, as you say. So many ways for the security state to easily remove them.
Yes, all too well. In fact, one of many prescient dreams I've had was one in which i was extending my hand in greeting to Gary Hart. He responded with, "Can we defer this?" by "this", I inferred, any congratulations or the like- though I was puzzled about its meaning at the time.
That was about a couple weeks or so before a 'sex scandal' was alleged- the one that led to the cessation of his campaign.
In a state struggle where he could have made a decisive difference, Bernie Sanders unconditionally backed the basing of the boondoggle F-35 at Burlington's airport.
The town of Winooski, that sits at the end of the runway, voted by referendum to join a lawsuit against the basing. Despite this, Sanders lined up with real estate interests and the military-industrial-complex to back the basing. Protecting the state's lucrative pipeline to the Pentagon. Telling his constituents to basically fuck off!
The "Bernie Bro" laughingly claimed their boy backed the F-35 to protect Air National Guard jobs. A big fat lie! In reality, Vermont's phony "independent" won't buck the state's ruling class when it comes to cutting off a source of Pentagon funds, and he won't challenge the US war machine.
And he is an ISRAEL FIRSTER.
Some of the biggest criticisms of Sanders have come from opponents of Israeli apartheid. Sanders continues his support for Israel. As Israel tries to justify the ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians - not too much fight out of the Senator for Vermont. When is pushed, he supports aid to Israel, (not Palestinians), and to pushing for an end to the genocide - which he damned well knows will never be passed.
Sanders embraces the sick narrative that the US's Middle East wars, and now Israel's actions, is a fight against Muslim extremists who represent a threat to the U.S.
It was hard to see him capitulate to HRC in 2016. In 2020 I thought he had zero business running. I would have much preferred he try to mentor and support some younger progressive. Like most of the swamp he can't quite let loose of his own importance even when any credibility he held was compromised in 2016 beyond meaningful measure.
It's possible Bernie was brought to heel by threats to prosecute his wife for financial chicanery she may have engaged in as a college president. When Bernie threw his support to Joe Biden in 2020, the stories against his wife quietly went away.
Yes, I agree about 2016. That was very hard to take. I believe that, had he been the Dem nominee, Bernie would have won. But the corporate Shillary was more desirable to donors, as off-putting as she was to voters.
As for why Bernie capitulated, well....he couldn't run on the Dem ticket, obviously, and it was probably too late to run as an Independent at that point. My bet is that he felt it was more important to present a united front against the Republican nominee. And, as Bill points out, there may have been threats against his wife.
Any vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West is wasting your vote.
Let's be pragmatic* here eh!
*dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than wishful thinking.
Jill Stein and the goofy Professor will be eaten alive in the Swamp. You might as well vote for Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine.
Realizing the DNC is irredeemably corrupt, go to your local Republican Meetings and present Bill's list to them. Not once, but every meeting. Be a pain in their arse! Tell them they will not be getting your vote again if they do not get behind this list. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
The DNC is indeed irredeemably corrupt. But let's acknowledge the fact that they got that way by following the lead of the GOP. It was Carter's (and especially Clinton-Gore's) "Third Way" , corporate neoliberals who settled on the strategy of triangulation and to attract the same kind of big donor bucks from organized capital that had heretofore been the GOP's advantage. Though there are radicals in the GOP, the Party as a whole still is corrupted by concentrated capital- just like the Dems now are.
I had direct personal experience of that. I ran as a County Commissioner candidate (representing the D-Party) in 2004. It was a "red" county; D's were only 28% of the registered voters and only rarely won. I came within a half percentage point of beating the R incumbent.
So against my better judgment, I consented to run again in '08. Because I was an environmentalist (and peace) activist, the business wing of the Party, which held sway, distrusted me and gave my campaign almost no support either time; but in '08 it really came into play. By midnight on election night it looked like I had won the race; but after 6 weeks the final result showed I'd lost by something on the order of 125 votes.
Anyway, my opponent and I had raised roughly equivalent amounts of campaign funding; mine coming from individual small donors. His came from 1/10th the number of donors - the private interests (land speculation, development, building & selling of real estate, etc.) that typically funded the Repub's campaigns. It works the same at the state and national levels. Only the names of the 'donors' differ from side to side.
My populist -progressive principles - putting the public interests above the private- were what I think allowed me to come so close to pulling the upset as a serious underdog in a then- R-heavy county. But those who control the parties reflect their wealthiest patrons. So I seriously doubt that putting forth such principles to the local GOP would be any more successful than doing that with the Dems. At least the latter will pretend to care, and a few actually do.
The world should read a new book from New Zealand called "Abolishing the Military. Arguments and Alternatives".
New Zealand has not yet decided to follow Costa Rica by stashing its military in a museum. But were it to do so, I suppose we could guarantee that CNN would never cover the story.
The argument for doing so is powerfully laid out in this book and surely applies to tweaking of the military by any nation on Earth.
Peace activist Kiwi's are realizing this week that the new Government they just elected (in a fair and uncorrupted election) is moving toward increasing military spending. Following in the footsteps of our butt-kissing US lapdog cousins across the ditch.
As the new government of nuclear-free New Zealand leans towards joining the AUKUS anti-China bloc, critics warn of weakened sovereignty in a sea of expanding militarization, Mick Hall reports.
Yeah, I was saddened to read that article and learn of the swing to the right including favoring the joining of AUKUS. It appears that partly owes to voters' reaction to culture-war stuff. But the fact that Australian Labor Party leader & PM Albanese has also approved the nuke sub deal and stronger commitment to AUKUS / likely more direction by the U.S. may have been a harbinger of things to come. Washington is, as usual, forcing its 'friends' to choose sides. In the long term, I think both Aussies & Kiwis will come to regret having made a Faustian bargain.
New Zealand became an anti-nuclear nation in 1987, declaring a Nuclear Free Zone. The Disarmament and Arms Control Act banned US nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers from its waters.
New Zealand was then frozen out of the ANZUS security treaty. To many Kiwi's this was a big plus as it allowed New Zealand to develop an independent policy - engaging with the Pacific and the rest of the World on its own terms.
New Zealand now enjoys excellent diplomatic relations with China, now its largest trading partner. Many Chinese students receive their tertiary education at New Zealand Universities'. State run, and equal to any in the World.
Sadly, the hegemon United States is scare mongering a fake security dilemma in the South Pacific as it attempts to contain peer rival China in its own sphere of influence. And doing so by convincing low-information Kiwi's that China is a threat to NZ security. Which is bullshit!
Forcing small nations to pick sides in the great-power competition now playing out. And which the US is losing.
A "Faustian" bargain is a pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral importance, such as personal values, for some promised worldly or material benefit, such as power, or riches.
A "Faustian" bargain is made with a power that the bargainer recognizes as evil or amoral. By their nature self-defeating for the person who makes them - because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.
Merry Xmas Roger.
BTW, the great Aussie elder PM Paul Keating says it's not AUKUS - its USUKA's
Dennis, given that the Repubs have signaled interest in reducing safety net benefits, and that some Dems have in the past signaled their willingness to negotiate such cuts, it seems quite possible that there'd be willingness to legislate the reduction/ suspension or loss of benefits for those guilty of 'crimes'. Given also that there is increasing support for stripping of First Amendment rights of speech, including the false labeling of dissenting views as "hate speech" and or "disinformation"; and now the willingness to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers as criminals fit for hanging, it certainly seems plausible that they'd threaten dissidents with the forfeiture of Social Security benefits and the like.
In any event, the Washington establishment have been steadily narrowing the boundaries on free speech and dissent for some time, readily using economic 'sanctions' both abroad and applying economic pressures at home to curtail it.
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) is ecstatic that Colorado judges have pulled TRUMP's name from the state ballot. She's just sad she can't wave a magic wand and make him go away -- and our democracy along with him!
She literally equates TRUMP and MAGA with Nazi's. No shit!
While I don't share your enthusiasm for The Donald, I do share your disdain for Madcow; and sorry, I can't bear to see or hear her do her thing. She milks the discontent of the identity-liberal Vote Blue NMW crowd as effectively as Trump&Co does that of his fans
WIshing us ALL peace. (Ah...if wishes were horses...I'd win the Kentucky Derby for sure.) Here is a wonderful bit of music from a very fine person and wonderful singer-songwriter/musician I know. He sometimes has sung in grief and rage at what the U.S. does around the world, but this is a deeper, more forgiving tune:
At age 66, I'm used to wasting my vote. I haven't always voted for the loser(s), but every winner I have voted for betrayed every promise for which they earned my vote in the first place. So now, I am an all time loser who tries (and mostly fails) to educate those I love--family and friends. Even there I'm reminded of the 100-year old woman who was asked about her life. She said for the first 90 years she tried to change the world. Then she decided to change herself, stating, "And honey, that ain't easy either!"
The American Federal elections are rigged, as well as the office of the presidency. We could elect Jesus himself and the bankers would figure out a way to impoverish us more.
Collective action. Strikes. Strikes without union management's approval. Workers standing up to power. Workers unifying and directing their anger at the ruling elite. Scaring the elites, showing them we're on to their scam.
No it's not. That's no hope at all. That's simply solidifying, legitimising your slavery and acceptance of them as the masters of your destiny: bringers of all good things, you hope.
Can't you see that?
The problem is a democracy should be run by the people for the people.
But the people want someone else to run it for them, with no input or effort from them.
So naturally they get this.
Now here's the answer, I think: reachable, attainable, doable, possible for the first time in history thanks to technology.
We run ourselves, our own nation, via smartphone apps.
Don't laugh.
Be sensible.
I mean we have whatever apps we need and where an app is not appropriate of course we don't have. Be sensible.
But an app so's we can register our vote at any time and change it at any time and it's rock solid guaranteed to be uncrackable - written open source with topline encryption; all that sort of thing.
That's the biggest problem isn't it? Something like that? That we cannot register our votes confidently and so on. Well an app could fix that. On your humble smartphone. Yep, truly.
And then that app can feed into a perpetual referenda app. One permanent one that keeps tabs of how everyone is voting for the government and/or the head of govt - so's you can actually watch in real time popularity go up and down - and other one/many that do the same with issues of the day: like you want to send bombs to Israel or you want to bomb Israel? That kind of thing.
That'd be another big problem sorted, wouldn't it? Knowing where the people stand on issues and having their voice heard/seen/made public.
What next? What's another big problem in our totally dysfunctional system? Well our reps don't represent us do they? They don't do what we want/say, in fact we never get to tell them and they don't ask us. They are there to do the will of the Party bosses is all.
Well we need an app whereby at the push of a button you send your commands to your rep. As fancy or as simple as you like. But either way as easy and reliable as pushing a button. And the whole thing recorded so's he can never say he didn't get it.
And then the natural other half of that: an app that monitors everything the rep does. Every thing. Every word he speaks in the meeting rooms, every vote he casts. And the app reports it to us. In real time.
And then what should have always have been ours but never has been: a constant information flow back from the rep about issues he has learned of that might/should concern us.
Okay? That sorts that big problem out: our representation.
What's another major problem?
Truth. That's what. We don't know what the truth is any more.
We don't know the truth about stuff like 9/11 or Nordstream and we don't know the truth about covid or vaccinations.
Our clever young men and women of today can vie with each other to put up apps that aggregate the facts from the best sources and check them and validate them and compute, calculate with them where necessary and inform us of the conclusions.
That's about general things we hear.
And that's about every word that comes out of the mouths of these habitually lying politicians, every word they speak or write.
That avenue of approach should do wonders for making the truth accessible and apparent.
Do you see what I mean?
People with their smartphones should be hands-on deliberately actually running our nations. That's us. All of us. Each of us.
How come we still stand around as though we are powerless? As though this were still 18th or 19th Century days?
When we have this power in our pockets, today, right now.
And I am sure it will happen because how are you going to stop the kids, born with a computer in their mouths, simply putting up the apps? And how would you ever stop people using them once they're there to use?
The biggest danger I see today is any suggestion of moves by government to limit access to that direction in any way. For in that direction is emancipation, freedom, progress.
Forget this marching in the streets and violent protests and such rubbish. Rubbish is what that is. Get smart.
Wonderful thoughts. arthur. Thanks for your efforts.
Ever heard of Diia?
Wiki: Diia is a mobile app, a web portal and a brand of e-governance in Ukraine.
Launched in 2020, the Diia app allows Ukrainian citizens to use digital documents on their smartphones for identification and sharing purposes. The Diia portal allows access to over 130-government services. Eventually, the government plans to make all kinds of state-person interactions available through Diia. Great idea eh!
But oh dear! Citizens have been using Diia to provide information about their neighbor. Where he lives. His GPS co-ordinates! And post lies on the app that he is a subversive and a traitor. The secret police come - and that's the last you see of your troublesome neighbour!
Diia has a list of "Enemies of the State". Jimmy Dore and Gleen Greenwald are apparently on it! After the secret police snuffs the victim - their image on Diia has the word "Liquidated", in red letters, superimposed on his photograph on the site.
Judge, Jury and Executioner by cell phone apps!
And folks in Gaza and the West Bank are doing lookout surveillance work and using an app to report "terrorist" activities to the IDF. The IDF's investigation usually ends with some poor innocent civilian dead!
I could go on!
But the danger of this loss of privacy should be anathema to a democratic society eh? OK with Zelensky and Netanyahu though eh!
It sounds similar to a thing we have in Australia and which is continually growing. 'My Gov'. More and more govt services are accessed online there. It grows and it grows more intrusive and it grows kinda more demanding, too: like sometimes it is the only way you can interact.
So maybe I understand a little what your Diia is.
Frankly I find it very hard to believe that last bit though: 'Liquidated' in red letters. That sounds like something from a futuristic horror movie. Surely that's not real?
Overall it is evidence of the power of the internet and the smartphone. Today we ARE our smartphones. We used to have heated arguments about whether we should have identity numbers or not. Today we queue up to get them: your smartphone number IS you. it is how the govt contacts you and how you contact.
So there's no doubt at all that it is ubiquitous, omnipresent, almost omnipotent.
So we have to start using it for our benefit. Step up to the plate. Grab a hold of it.
Either we manage our world with this instrument or the people we leave there managing it in our apathy and ignorance they will manage our world with that instrument and often - you could almost say 'just about always' do us harm with it.
How do the people respond to Diiaa ?
I imagine they don't.
They can't.
There is no way. No avenue. Only phoning or texting or visiting their elected reps and very, very, very few will ever do that. Everyone knows 'it will do no good' so no one bothers to try it.
People are very lazy. And very loving of comfort. And very loving of safety.
If we had our own apps put up by our own people they would be safe. Their safety proven by intensive testing in the early days. By the thousands of professional hackers and such that we have amongst us.
And to 'instruct' the govt via such an app is almost the acme of laziness.
And comfort.
What about the evil doers who report people and get them into trouble?
Well such an app is not what we're talking about here. That's the first thing an oppressive government wants.
It's the last thing a movement to self government via the web and smartphone apps want.
We don't want bad apps.
We want good ones.
The power of bad apps shouldn't frighten us away from apps it should demonstrate to us just how powerful that route, that methodology, is. AND illustrate the need to get onboard and start building the good ones soonest.
The Grayzone reports on the USAID's DC rollout of the dystopian Diia "state in a smartphone" app introduced by the government of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. They discuss how the Ukrainian conflict zone has been turned into a profitable laboratory for corporations seeking to profit from the harvesting of personal data from the war-torn population. How it is used to control and intimidate Ukraine's population, and how this disturbing technology is being exported throughout the global south.
"Ukraine's dystopian digital snitching app premiers in DC"
"We send these folks tons of money we worked hard for, and they have a chill list on us? End times". (note last bit: 'Liquidated' in red letters. Its real Arthur!)
"The digital vaccine passport was implemented in New Zealand with little blowback from the public. While I took the experimental vaccine, I did not want to take the booster shot as doubts grew. But I was FORCED to take it as this was required to fly overseas, or to travel by ship"
All these apps by themselves are not negative. They're able to improve our life.
But when they become negative - is when they're in the hands of corporations, capitalists, crooked governments who want to control you and fascists.
Merry Xmas in Oz, Arthur. I'm posting in New Zealand across the ditch.
It hasn't mattered who won the General Election since John F Kennedy. Not a single candidate would have been inclined or been allowed to move your platform forward, Bill. The "Washington establishment"- National Security State cabal will take out any White House occupant who tries.
JFK was a dead man following his American University Peace Speech in June 1963.
THE ATROCITIES IN GAZA ARE THE PERFECT EMBODIMENT OF ‘WESTERN VALUES’ by Caitlin Johnstone
This is western civilization. This is what it looks like.
When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it.
The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and is itself a perfect embodiment of western values. Not the western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they don’t want you to look at. Not the attractive packaging with the advertising slogans on the label, but the product that’s actually inside the box.
For centuries western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy — all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.
What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school. A much better representation of western civilization than all the art and literature we’ve been proudly congratulating ourselves on over the centuries. A much better representation of western civilization than the love and compassion we like to pretend our Judeo-Christian values revolve around.
It’s been so surreal watching western rightists babbling about how savage and barbaric Muslim culture is amid the 2023 zombie resurrection of Bush-era Islamophobia, even while western civilization amasses a mountain of ten thousand child corpses.
That mountain of child corpses is a much better representation of western culture than anything Mozart, da Vinci or Shakespeare ever produced.
This is western civilization. This is what it looks like.
Western civilization, where Julian Assange awaits his final appeal in February against US extradition for journalism which exposed US war crimes.
Where we are fed a nonstop deluge of mass media propaganda to manufacture our consent for wars and aggression which have killed millions and displaced tens of millions in the 21st century alone.
Where we are kept distracted by vapid entertainment and artificial culture wars so we don’t think too hard about what this civilization is and who it is killing and maiming and starving and exploiting.
Where news cycles are dominated more by celebrity gossip and Donald Trump’s latest mouth farts than by the mass atrocities that are being actively facilitated by western governments.
Where liberals congratulate themselves for having progressive views on race and gender while the officials they elect help rip apart children’s bodies with military explosives.
Where Zionist Jews center themselves and their emotions because opposition to an active genocide makes them feel like they are being persecuted, and where Israel supporters who are not Jewish still kind of feel like they are being persecuted also.
Where a giant globe-spanning empire powered by militarism, imperialism, capitalism and authoritarianism devours human flesh with an insatiable appetite while we congratulate ourselves on how much better we are than nations like Iran or China.
These are western values. This is western civilization.
Ask somebody to tell you what their values are and they’ll give you a bunch of pleasant-sounding words about family and love and caring or whatever. Watch their actions to see what their actual values are and you’ll often get a very different story.
That’s us. That’s western civilization. We say we value freedom, justice, truth, peace and free expression, but our actions paint a very different picture. The real western values, the actual product inside the box underneath the attractive label, are the ones you see acted out in Gaza today.
You’re likely aware that I’m a libertarian. But I’m actually more than a libertarian. I don’t believe in the right of the State to exist. The reason is that anything that has a monopoly of force is extremely dangerous. As Mao Tse-tung, lately one of the world’s leading experts on government, said: "The power of the state comes out of a barrel of a gun."
There are two possible ways for people to relate to each other, either voluntarily or coercively. And the State is pure institutionalized coercion. It’s not just unnecessary, but antithetical, for a civilized society. And that’s increasingly true as technology advances. It was never moral, but at least it was possible, in oxcart days, for bureaucrats to order things around. Today it’s ridiculous.
Everything that needs doing can and will be done by the market, by entrepreneurs who fill the needs of other people for a profit. The State is a dead hand that imposes itself on society. That belief makes me, of course, an anarchist.
People have a misconception about anarchists. That they’re these violent people, running around in black capes with little round bombs. This is nonsense. Of course there are violent anarchists. There are violent dentists. There are violent Christians. Violence, however, has nothing to do with anarchism. Anarchism is simply a belief that a ruler isn’t necessary, that society organizes itself, that individuals own themselves, and the State is actually counterproductive.
It’s always been a battle between the individual and the collective. I’m on the side of the individual.
I simply don’t believe anyone has a right to initiate aggression against anyone else. Is that an unreasonable belief?
Let me put it this way. Since government is institutionalized coercion—a very dangerous thing—it should do nothing but protect people in its bailiwick from physical coercion.
What does that imply? It implies a police force to protect you from coercion within its boundaries, an army to protect you from coercion from outsiders, and a court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to coercion.
I could live happily with a government that did just those things. Unfortunately the US Government is only marginally competent in providing services in those three areas. Instead, it tries to do everything else.
The argument can be made that the largest criminal entity today is not some Colombian cocaine gang, it’s the US Government. And they’re far more dangerous. They have a legal monopoly to do anything they want with you. Don’t conflate the government with America—it’s a separate entity, with its own interests, as distinct as General Motors or the Mafia. I’d rather deal with the Mafia than I would with any agency of the US Government.
Even under the worst circumstances, even if the Mafia controlled the United States, I can’t believe Tony Soprano or Al Capone would try to steal 40% of people’s income from them every year. They couldn’t get away with it. But—perhaps because we’re said to be a democracy—the US Government is able to masquerade as "We the People." That’s an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire.
The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. "We have to obey libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization." No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are a sign that civilization is degrading, that the society is becoming less individually responsible, and has to be held together by force.
It’s all about control. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The type of people that gravitate to government like to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why you get the worst people—not the best—who want to get into government.
Hark back to the ’60s when they said, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" But let’s take it further: Suppose they gave a tax and nobody paid? Suppose they gave an election and nobody voted? What that would do is delegitimize government.
I applaud the fact that only half of Americans vote. If that number dropped to 25%, 10%, then 0%, perhaps everybody would look around and say, "Wait a minute, none of us believe in this evil charade. I don’t like Tweedledee from the left wing of the Demopublican Party any more than I like Tweedledum from its right wing…"
Remember you don’t get the best and the brightest going into government. There are two kinds of people. You’ve got people that like to control physical reality—things. And people that like to control other people. That second group, those who like to lord it over their fellows, are drawn to government and politics.
Some might ask: "Aren’t you loyal to America?" and "How can you say these terrible things?" My response is, "Of course I’m loyal to America, but America is an idea, it’s not a place. At least not any longer…"
America was once unique among the world’s countries. Unfortunately that’s no longer the case. The idea is still unique, but the country no longer is.
I’ll go further than that. It’s said that you’re supposed to be loyal to your fellow Americans. Well, here’s a revelation. I have less in common with my average fellow American than I do with friends of mine in the Congo, or Argentina, or China.
The reason is that I share values with my friends; we look at the world the same way, have the same worldview. But what do I have in common with my fellow Americans who live in the trailer parks, barrios, and ghettos? Or even Hollywood, Washington, and Manhattan? Everyone has to be judged as an individual, but probably very little besides residing in the same political jurisdiction. Most of them—about 50% of the US—are welfare recipients, and therefore an active threat. So I have more personal loyalty to the guys in the Congo than I do to most of my fellow Americans. The fact we carry US passports is simply an accident of birth.
Those who find that thought offensive likely suffer from a psychological aberration called "nationalism"; in serious cases it may become "jingoism." The authorities and the general public prefer to call it "patriotism." It’s understandable, though. Everyone, including the North Koreans, tends to identify with the place they were born. But these things should be fairly low on any list of virtues.
Nationalism is the belief that my country is the best country in the world just because I happen to have been born there. It’s most virulent during wars and elections. And it’s very scary. It’s like watching a bunch of chimpanzees hooting and panting at another tribe of chimpanzees across the watering hole. I have no interest in being a part of the charade—although that’s dangerous.
And getting more dangerous as the State grows more powerful. The growth of the State is actually destroying society. Over the last 100 years the State has grown at an exponential rate, and it’s the enemy of the individual. I see no reason why this trend, which has been in motion and accelerating for so long, is going to stop. And certainly no reason why it’s going to reverse.
It’s like a giant snowball that’s been rolling downhill from the top of the mountain. It could have been stopped early in its descent, but now the thing is a behemoth. If you stand in its way you’ll get crushed. It will stop only when it smashes the village at the bottom of the valley.
This makes me quite pessimistic about the future of freedom in the US. As I said, it’s been in a downtrend for many decades. But the events of September 11, 2001, turbocharged the acceleration of the loss of liberty in the US. At some point either foreign or domestic enemies will cause another 9/11, either real or imagined. It’s predictable; that’s what sociopaths do.
When there is another 9/11—and we will have another one—they’re going to lock down this country like one of their numerous new prisons.
It’s going to become very unpleasant in the US at some point soon. It seems to me the inevitable is becoming imminent.
If this was part of the campaign platform of an actual candidate for POTUS in 2024, it would raise the following questions:
- 1. First and foremost of all, WHO is going to pay for Health Care for all and free college tuition, and HOW are they going to pay for it?
- 2. Directly related to #1: What is the plan for dealing with America’s national, sovereign, Federal government Debt, currently at $33.93 TRILLION and counting? And what is the plan for dealing with this government’s Unfunded Liabilities [Social Security, Medicare Plans A, B, and D, Federal Debt held by the Public, and Federal Employee and Veterans Benefits], currently at $212.55 TRILLION, and counting? See https://www.usdebtclock.org/# for details.
- 3. How many American workers will become unemployed and even unemployable if the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour or more? And how much more will consumers pay for goods, products, and services provided by folks working for a minimum wage?
- 4. Why is marijuana the only drug to be legalized? Why not legalize All drugs and end the so-called “War On Drugs” completely? How would that contribute to reducing America’s prison population?
- 5. What will be required from Congress to reduce national “defense” and “security” budgets? And will spots in the proposed new CCC be reserved for all those folks in the MICC who will lose their jobs because of those hundreds of billions of dollars in military budget cuts?
- 6. “Privacy for the people” ~ the end of warrantless surveillance ~ will involve elimination of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA 702). Again, what will be required of Congress to make that happen? [Note: As regards “transparency of government,” this government is very transparent. It is perfectly obvious to anybody who bothers to look exactly who actually commands and controls America’s elected politicians, entrenched civilian and military bureaucrats, anointed political appointees, and the mouthpiece main stream media.]
- 7. When is the last time ANY President or Congress demonstrated any commitment whatsoever to the Constitution? To cite the most blatant example: How many wars have America’s Presidents waged since the end of World War II? And how many of those wars have been formally declared ~ as the Constitution demands ~ by any Congress in the last 78 years?
The fact that Trump and Biden are the two leading contenders to become the next POTUS should tell every American still capable of thinking for her or himself that the Decline of the American Nation-State and Empire has ended, and that the Fall has begun.
The real question is: Will there even be an election next November? What would it take to cancel it? Another 9/11? Another Pandemic? [With this one killing young and healthy folks, not old and sick ones like the last one.] And if there is an election, will there be a Presidential inauguration and seating of a new Congress in January, 2025?
And then the next ~ and ultimate ~ question is: Will the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, a mere 926 days from today? And if it does, will the American Peoples be in any mood or condition to celebrate anything?
Welcome back, Jeff! I see you're still asking lots of questions. Here are some possible answers:
1. We all pay for health care now, Jeff. Studies show (including those sponsored by conservative groups) that a national health care plan will ultimately be cheaper than the for-profit exploitative plans now in place in America. And note how I didn't say education was to be "free." Only that tuition and fees would be capped at state colleges and universities. Who will pay? Who else? From taxes, especially on the rich and corporations.
2. I support a balanced budget amendment.
3. I don't believe unemployment rates will soar if wages are raised. And if prices go up on goods, so be it. Workers deserve $30K a year ($15 an hour) for a full-time job.
4. Start with marijuana. Move on from there.
5. Nothing is required from Congress except a spine. Yes, some jobs may be lost in the short term. But conversion of jobs from the military to the private sector, e.g. construction for infrastructure, will ultimately create more jobs. Many studies prove this.
6. Eliminate it. Give Congress a spine.
7. Elect me president and they'll be no undeclared wars. My first job as president will be teaching every American their constitutional rights. And responsibilities.
Yes, there's going to be an election. Yes, we'll be here in 2026.
Thanks Bill. It’s nice to be back. And just for the record, the day i stop asking lots of questions will be the day i die. As i have noted before:
We Americans are a curious people.
As such, we demand, we need, we hunger and thirst for, we live and die by Answers. And not Questions.
We depend ~ for our livelihood and wellbeing, for our sanity and security, for our sense of our Self and the Real ~ we depend on the expert, the anchorman, the spokesperson, talk show host, reliable source, and, ultimately, The Leader [or hero, savior, guru} who provides us with All the Answers.
This way, we can make an immediate determination as to whether or not his [seldom her} Answers agree with ours. And, if they don't, then, without having to bother with the process of thinking, we can dismiss his Answers out of hand and continue our search for The Answers that agree with Ours.
A curious people indeed... .
A gnome, a pitiable creature of sorts, stopped looking for the right Answers to The Terror Event of September 11 when he realized just exactly how ready and able the government and its media were to provide exactly those Answers. That happened on the morning of September 12.
And that happened again with Saddam's WMDs in 2003, the 2008 financial "¢risi$," The COVJD Event, January 6, Ukraine, and most recently, Gaza.
So instead, he chose to focus on finding the right Questions. Because, he reasoned, if you can ask the right Questions, you will ultimately get to The Truth. Because out of the right Questions, The Truth must inevitably emerge.
If, on the other hand, your focus is on finding the right Answers, all you can get are the Answers you were looking for in the first place. And what you will get are the Answers that the Answer Man on the White Horse intends for you to embrace.
Re Your responses to my questions:
1. Can You cite any of those specific studies about the advantages of a national health care plan and system? And on what Constitutional authority would the POTUS have the power to put a cap on state college and university tuitions and fees? And finally and most importantly, how do You plan to get Congress to tax their owners, operators, commanders, and controllers, the rich and corporations? By giving them a spine?
2. A balanced budget amendment does nothing to address the US government’s already existing and growing daily national, sovereign Debt or its Unfunded Liabilities, or how that Debt is to be paid off and those Unfunded Liabilities funded.
3. You wrote “If prices go up, so be it.” As a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, that’s easy enough for You to say. How much will prices go up for all those folks who got that “deserved” minimum wage raise? And for everybody who doesn’t get a wage or pay raise to offset the inflation?
4. Will the ultimate decision on which drugs are no longer illegal be made solely by the federal government? Or will the States have any say in the matter?
5. Again, can You cite some those “many studies” that prove that jobs will be created by cutting defense budgets and putting the money into infrastructure? And how many people currently working in the MICC are capable of doing infrastructure work; of building stuff instead of destroying it? And what is Your plan for “giving Congress a spine” when it comes to defense and security budget cuts?
6. Where will Congress get its spine from when it comes to revoking Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act? The same place it will get its spine to tax corporations and the rich?
7. While You are POTUS, if there are any undeclared wars, will You resign? And finally, as regards Your “first job as President” of teaching every American their Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities: Is Health Care a Right? Is a College Education a Right? Is a $15/hour minimum wage a Right?
As regards Election2024: What would it take to cancel it? Another 9/11? Another Pandemic, but one that kills young and healthy folks, not old and already sick folks like the last one? And even if there is an election in November 2024, will there be a Presidential inauguration and seating of a new Congress in January 2025? Or will it be January 6 Redux?
And finally and again: If America does somehow make it still intact to July 4, 2026, will the American Peoples be in any mood or condition to celebrate anything, especially a 250th birthday?
Great to see Jeff back - and not lost any of his vim* I see!
Totally agree with 6 of your 7-pts, Bill.....except no.7!...LOL
Americans just cannot get their arms around the fact that Universal Single Payer Healthcare (MEDICARE4ALL) will actually be cheaper for all citizens than the current chaotic American model.
For such a candidate to have a chance they would need the consistent support of the MSM. The senior editors at the NY Times and the Washington Post would be a start.
I think that "the powers that are but shouldn't be" will take the easy way, and simply 'fudge' the 2024 election too. I'm in the camp of those who believe that 'politicians are not elected but selected'. How else could one account for some of the election results and consequences we have seen in 'democratic' countries?
What's really needed is a Constitutional amendment for a national popular vote for President, accompanied by ranked choice voting so that voters don't feel constrained to vote for the lesser of two evils, rather than voting for the third-party candidate of their choice. Of course, both the Dems and Repubs oppose ranked choice voting, but Maine and Alaska use it, as well as many cities, municipalities, and other organizations. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would elect the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide without requiring a Constitutional amendment, would be one step in the right direction, and has been adopted by 16 states and Washington, DC., but doesn't address the "lesser of two evils" strategy.
Unfortunately, I totally agree with you. The two major parties are far more concerned with maintaining power, than with moving toward democratic ideals.
You are absolutely spot on about the changes needed to the process. I'd add one more. We need the debates to go back to the League of Women Voters or some other non-partisan organization. Freezing out the competition even from the conversation isn't democracy in action.
A perfect president in every way would not be able to change the corruption of our entire political process by huge private money donations to election campaigns followed by "we can help you with that" advice to the elected on legislation by lobbies. Citizens United must be made moot by legislation and I have not seen that on any priority list or as a topic on any news/discussion program. As long as big money/lobbies rule, we the people will be only going through the motions and for a lot of us, in blind rage, voting for Trump, as pure a member of the 1% as one can find, proud of posing in his gilded Manhattan penthouse with no clue of how revolting it is. But we see Joe Sixpack rooting for Donald. Blind rage. Let's throw a wrench into the works.
Thus, America will continue spiraling downward whoever wins the presidential race, for what group of politicians in Congress will stand up to have his/her future their destroyed? Which brings me to a possible opening.
I hope that this wide open for all to see slaughter by Israel that shows that tiny country running US foreign policy with loud acclaim from Congress, will so repulse people that one of the biggest lobbies, that of Israel, will now be under close observation. All Americans need to join the Jews of Jewish Voice for Peace and allied Jewish groups to shout NOT IN OUR NAME, but by that meaning not in the name of liberty and justice for all, which Zionism flouts just as much as it does Judaism.
Vietnam - millions dead, nothing learned
Iraq and Afghanistan - hundreds of thousands dead, nothing learned
Now we have Israel running wild in 2023, supporters actively attempting to stifle all criticism of a tiny foreign country with less than 2% of the US population in a land where speech is supposedly free, as the supine and robotic President says "we stand with Israel." Some people are in the streets demonstrating, I've joined them, and at last we have the truth coming through outside of MSM and on occasion even from the mouths of MSM anchors.
I am very happy to see that there are no displays of Israeli flags on cars and in yards. Perhaps a few synagogues are rethinking their signs that proclaim "US and ISRAEL - TOGETHER FOR GOOD" Perhaps a slaughter is not something to cheer about even when done by the 51st state. I feel a change in the wind. Maybe, just maybe something is being learned.
Clif, since World War II, that's over 70-years now, during a supposed golden age of peace, the US military has killed it is estimated 20-million people, overthrown at least 36-governments, interfered in at least 86-foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50-foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30-countries.
Since 2001, the United States has been systematically destroying a region of the globe, bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, not to mention the Philippines. Did I leave any out?
The United States has “special forces” operating in two-thirds of the world’s countries and non-special forces in three-quarters of them. And 900-overseas bases "protecting Americas interests" they say!
The U.S. government provides weapons, military training, and military funding to almost every dictatorship and oppressive government on earth. Israel being the latest horrific example.
"An organism that is at War with itself is doomed"...-- Carl Sagan "Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the "Momentary" masters of a "Fraction of a "Dot" Carl Sagan, his Pale Blue Dot speech Cornell Lecture-- his magnum opus Cornell Univ.
"There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
There is one way in which Israel and the US are identical twins...their official spokespersons lie without batting an eye. I recall Jimmy Carter saying "I'll never lie to you." At least it was a nice thought.
Bill, we seem to have gone off the subject you wrote about, and I apologize for adding to that, but I feel I need to mention one thing. I suddenly realized, Jesus was a Palestinian! At least he was born there in Bethlehem so it does make him at least sort of a Palestinian. And here we are assisting the government of Israel/Palestine to kill all the Palestinians just as we are about to celebrate world wide the birth of the most famous and important Palestinian of all time. The irony is unbelievably powerful- especially since he spent his life working for peace and love and brotherhood, and our government along with Israel/Palestine is working full time to do the opposite.
Is it odd that our MSM does not mention this? I mean I suppose they have, but I haven't seen it on any of the news shows or papers I have watched or read. Have you, or your other readers? I'm talking MSM here, not other sites like substack , Jimmy Dore etc. which I suppose has mentioned it.
The only way Biden can win is if the runs against an empty ballot, Garland Nixon tells George Galloway. And that seems to be the plan eh, using an ancient Civil War Law.
A recent photo of Zelensky with a large group of arms manufacturer executives shows what is actually going on. Zelensky understands that these are the people he needs to woo - they basically run the government exchequer. Death, slaughter and utter destruction is the order of the day. Israel's government has no relation to its ancient religion of Judaism ; every move Netanyahu makes is a negation of his purported religion. Here in America it is the same thing; nothing that our government does at home or particularly internationally bears any resemblance to Christianity. Our current behavior in Ukraine and Gaza attests to that. The combination of two utterly heartless and totally ruthless and truthless governments results in the unforgettable sick nightmare we are enabling Israel to pursue on innocent Palestinians whose land Israel stole and forced the inhabitants into an outdoor concentration camp some 50 years ago.
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, called by most of the western world "the son of God", we continue in this activity full force. US and Israel - what a monstrous evil pair we make.
"ruthless and truthless" -- well put!
"nothing that our government does at home or particularly internationally bears any resemblance to Christianity".... Oh dear!
The Christian Bible is full of wars, genocides, and power projection! Where God demands the killing of whole races of people, and their cattle and oxen and saving their virgins. Because they have the WRONG thoughts and ideas, and wrong "God".
Sound familiar ranney?
George Carlin - "We only Bomb Brown People."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTvAs-Us7gA
How about.... "most things that the US government does at home and internationally - exactly mirrors what is in the Christian Bible"?
"Religion poisons everything" - Christopher Hitchens.
-
Jesus is only a myth in a very old book of fiction my friend.
And the imaginary Christian God started all this horror and genocide in the first place.
When one party comes armed with their Bible and a 2,000-year-old promise from their IMAGINARY GOD, rational thinking goes out the window.
The issue will only be settled on the field of battle with iron and rivers of blood.
Thousands slaughtered in the name of imaginary GODs.
As it has been done since man invented GOD's.
There will be no winners.
Every religion claim's that theirs is the only true God!
What evidence do Israelis, or Palestinain's have that their religion is not just other false religion?
Why are their "Gods" real and all the others are not?
When they understand why they dismiss ALL the other possible "Gods", only then will they understand why the non-religious dismiss theirs.
"The Christian Bible is full of wars, genocides, and power projection! Where God demands the killing of whole races of people, and their cattle and oxen and saving their virgins."
Utterly absent from the New Testament (i.e. the part of the Biblical compilation contributed from the Christian era.) Arguably included in the Hebrew Bible- the Old Testament- more in the interest of providing an honest chronicle of events than as a model blueprint of statecraft to be pursued in perpetuity- although sadly, recent events appear to argue otherwise for some factions of Judaism (and for some non-theistic Jews.) The rules of warfare were not very nice in the Middle East and Levant 3000 years ago. (They've since improved somewhat, in some ways- while unequivocally getting even worse, in other ways. Some tactics and behaviors are now widely held to be abhorrent, and actively discouraged. That said, the principle of "best practices in war" has a way of running into a contradiction in terms.) Life was lived much closer to the bone, in all respects. Humans often acted- and continue to act- horribly toward each other. The Jews just happen to have recorded the gory details, not just restricting their accounts to abstract reveries of the glory and triumph of victorious rulers. The supreme being whose wishes the Hebrews and their descendants sought to ascertain was often displeased by their attitudes and their actions, according to the interpretations provided. The writers of many of the books of the Old Testament included that part, too. Written accounts from other civilizations have a marked tendency to pass over the moral quandaries of an evolving relationship with divine entity(s) in silence.
Not interested my friend.
Try your word salad about "supreme beings' on someone else - Sorry.
And when you say...".but, but, but that's the Old Testament" - I'm done. Sorry
Evolving relationships with divine entity(s).....pppppppffft!
I can't say I'm dismayed by your reaction. I hope that you'll accept reassurance about my absence of alarm over it.
If you were to refrain from delivering your off-topic axe-grinding broadsides in a political forum- now that really would surprise me. And I'd be outright gratified to find you demonstrating some command of historical specifics and detailed insight in regard to the topic at hand. That would be considerably more valuable than continual table-pounding with tedious variations on the theme "Religion Bad."
Are you the moderator of this comment thread my friend?
That must be one of those rhetorical questions. Obviously, I'm not. I have to wonder what's given you the idea that I imagine the case to be otherwise.
"Did Jesus Even Claim to be God?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2STiabRV8TE&t=860s
It's enjoyable to listen to a civilized discussion, with no fake drama.
This is an hour well spent.
BTW Ray, how can anything be JUSTIFIED BY FAITH?
Faith is just believing stuff with no evidence, eh?
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen" (a definition provided by Paul, not Jesus, just to keep the record straight) is not the same as "believing stuff with no evidence."
People who are gravely injured or ill give no outward appearance that they'll ever return to health. Faith in a successful future outcome can mean the difference between healing and withering. The fact that we have a much larger base of medical knowledge than was available 1900 years ago- or 100 years ago- has not diminished the utility of faith one iota in that regard.
In the realm of science and technology, I continually read prognostications about various technological powers held by their boosters to be destined to be achieved, as an inevitability. As a rule I don't preemptively dismiss the notion that those promises could ever be achieved, but in many cases I recognize the predictions for what they are: faith-based, not fact-based. I often find myself taking a position of agnosticism on that score, one might say. People who dismiss agnostic positions a priori- as if agnosticism could only represent intellectual cowardice- are displaying their own absolutist rigidity. The implicit demand of that position is that Everything must be potentially knowable (and hence controllable) by human intelligence (or its constructed artifacts, such as AI learning programs.)
Ironically enough, such radical positivism is not only a faith-based stance, but a particularly obdurate and shoddy one. It's refuted every time the boundaries of knowledge expand in unforeseen directions. The overturning of paradigms previously taken for granted as providing an encompassing basis for both hypotheses and explanatory conclusions has occurred in chemistry, paleoanthropology, geophysics, archaeology, genetics, quantum physics...the empirical record gives no confidence that these upheavals are over with.
Many proponents of scientific materialism appear to me to tacitly hold the purview that 21st century human technology has already achieved so much that we've already accrued most of the knowledge of the material realm necessary for ascent to superhumanity, or some such, and that only a few percent remains to be learned, whereupon all of the mysteries worth solving are revealed. That isn't even a faith-based proposition, much less a fact-based one. It's a conceit.
The radical positivists- the folks who insist that there's no reality beyond the already known, or that which is accessibly knowable through current means of scientific investigation- are on ground as logically shaky as those who insist on the literal scriptural inerrancy of the Bible in spite of the rampant contradictions of the narratives compiled in its pages. There are vast realms of existence that are simply not amenable to replicable controlled experiment. There are logical limits to the deductive power of the scientific method, and also to the reliability of empirical conclusions. Beyond that reside matters of faith as well as falsehood.
There's so much to be agreed on in regard to science and practical material reality. Why not focus on that set of problems and solutions, instead of insisting on some consensus assent to universal foreclosure of the vast array of possibilities that can neither be proven or unproven?
Way above my pay grade my man!
Sorry.
Does the list not highlight the agendas and common ground of Jill Stein (quite forceful in her comments on the Gaza genocide) and Cornell West (longtime advocate for the Palestinians)? Yet, are not both, in the eyes of John and Jane Doe-Public, unelectable? This is one of the (not so) mysterious inter workings of our "democracy:" We despise Congress, the deep state and the MSM, but all we do is vote for the dregs of the two party system again and again. I believe that defines insanity. I thought social media would help propel Stein in 2016 particularly among the young when going up against HRC and Trump. Alas, the only blip she made in the election was for the DNC to blame her and the Russians for their well earned defeat. Already, this is again the sales pitch for Dem's this time around. Any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump.
Cornel West gave up ballot access when he left the Green Party. He appears to be dead in the water.
Jill Stein has many of the right positions, at least in my view. Of course, she's been smeared by the MSM as a Putin puppet and she lacks the charisma to truly take fire. I think she lacks savviness and the ability to connect with lots and lots of people.
I agree completely. Sad though it be. I've listened to Cornell going back to his conversations with Buckley on Firing Line. That said, I can't see him as President. As for charisma, one can hardly give Biden any points in that department! It's a low bar these days. :-)
So who does that leave to vote your "conscience' for Bill?
I'm writing in "Dennis Merwood"
Astore/Merwood ticket then!
My wife refuses to be FLOTUS to my POTUS
Wise woman!
We could write in Astore! It would be a big step up from our choices. :-)
RFK Jr. seemed to be a possibility until he was attacked for alleged anti-Semitism, which drove him to embrace Israel's right-wing government. He's lost a lot of credibility among independent-minded people.
RFK Jr completely lost me with his absurd comments on the genocide in Gaza. No evidence?! Palestinians as the most pampered people?!
Same with Vivek Whatshisname!
I'd add Bernie Sanders to your list, Tom. But, of course, we've already seen that the DNC will actively tank any candidacy he attempts, if he tries to run on the Dem ticket.
I was more excited about Bernie's 2016 candidacy than I can remember ever being about any candidate for any office (save my own in 2004 & '08 ). And notwithstanding my expectation that the D-Party would sandbag him, I was somewhat optimistic about his prospects, given his appeal not only to progressives but the younger voters, independents, and even some lifelong Repub's I knew. One, a career FBI officer, had said that while they didn't agree with Sanders on everythiing, "he's honest and we need someone like that now."
Then came what I feared- the obvious rigging to ensure HRC was the nominee.; followed by his bent-knee fealty in contradicting every thing he'd honestly pointed out about her before, endorsing and campaigning for her. Many disillusioned folk would comment afterwards that he betrayed them and was merely a Party sheepdog; but I defended his decisions as at least rationally defensible.
Four years later, though, when he played ever-trusting Charlie Brown to Lucy's deviousness once again, I thought he must be delusional to think the Party would give him a fair chance; and sure enough, in a perfectly scripted and choreographed play, his campaign was again stymied by the Party's directorate and funders. And once again he gracefully bowed out and disappointed yet more of the principled hopeful.
But, as discouraged as I was about his obvious "lesser of evils" prioritizing, I gradually came to really dislike him for his capitulation to the MIC. Once an almost reliable dissenting voice to limitless 'defense' spending and unjustifiable wars, he has become yet another enabler of it all; signing on to the continual arming of Ukraine against that 'evil dictator' Putin,, funding Israel's decades long crimes against Palestinians, and refusing to heed constituents' pleas that he sign on to calls for a cease fire there. Only after repeatedly being called out for this- even by Jewish groups - did he even begin to show support for conditioning Israeli aid to 'better protection' for noncombatant Palestinians.
I came to understand that foreign policy just was not Bernie's strong suit nor of particular interest to him, but these failings made me realize that, while he was certainly a big step above the sleaze that the Party typically puts up, he was still, just another politician, vulnerable and willing to concede to the power elites when push comes to shove. So I wouldn't have given him a dime this time had he entered the race.
Sadly, I can't argue with most of what you say, Roger. The only saving grace I see is that Bernie, though belatedly, has come around to proposing conditions on aid to Israel and to pushing for an end to the atrocities in Gaza.
In terms of his domestic priorities, I'm in agreement with him pretty much across the board. It's for that reason I'd vote for him. I don't think any candidate who ran on a platform of reining in the MIC would have a chance at being elected. If such a candidate would gain popularity, he/she would never survive---politically or perhaps even physically--- to take office.
Yes, the powers controlling the levers of the machine would certainly not tolerate any serious challenge to the continuation of their power. Anyone of deep principle and the spine to stand on it would have to be willing to risk both political career AND loss of life - theirs and/or that of loved ones. Certainly, at a minimum, they'd be smeared; witness Jeremy Corbyn in the UK; Rashida Tlaib in the U.S. House. And if they survived that politically (doubtful, given the thoroughness of the propaganda mill and its corporate voices), they would be eliminated physically, as you say. So many ways for the security state to easily remove them.
Exactly so, Roger. Remember Gary Hart and Howard Dean?
Yes, all too well. In fact, one of many prescient dreams I've had was one in which i was extending my hand in greeting to Gary Hart. He responded with, "Can we defer this?" by "this", I inferred, any congratulations or the like- though I was puzzled about its meaning at the time.
That was about a couple weeks or so before a 'sex scandal' was alleged- the one that led to the cessation of his campaign.
In a state struggle where he could have made a decisive difference, Bernie Sanders unconditionally backed the basing of the boondoggle F-35 at Burlington's airport.
The town of Winooski, that sits at the end of the runway, voted by referendum to join a lawsuit against the basing. Despite this, Sanders lined up with real estate interests and the military-industrial-complex to back the basing. Protecting the state's lucrative pipeline to the Pentagon. Telling his constituents to basically fuck off!
The "Bernie Bro" laughingly claimed their boy backed the F-35 to protect Air National Guard jobs. A big fat lie! In reality, Vermont's phony "independent" won't buck the state's ruling class when it comes to cutting off a source of Pentagon funds, and he won't challenge the US war machine.
And he is an ISRAEL FIRSTER.
Some of the biggest criticisms of Sanders have come from opponents of Israeli apartheid. Sanders continues his support for Israel. As Israel tries to justify the ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians - not too much fight out of the Senator for Vermont. When is pushed, he supports aid to Israel, (not Palestinians), and to pushing for an end to the genocide - which he damned well knows will never be passed.
Sanders embraces the sick narrative that the US's Middle East wars, and now Israel's actions, is a fight against Muslim extremists who represent a threat to the U.S.
It was hard to see him capitulate to HRC in 2016. In 2020 I thought he had zero business running. I would have much preferred he try to mentor and support some younger progressive. Like most of the swamp he can't quite let loose of his own importance even when any credibility he held was compromised in 2016 beyond meaningful measure.
It's possible Bernie was brought to heel by threats to prosecute his wife for financial chicanery she may have engaged in as a college president. When Bernie threw his support to Joe Biden in 2020, the stories against his wife quietly went away.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-jane-vermont-burlington-college-219114
It is pretty clear, "they" have a 100 ways to make you heel.
Yes, I agree about 2016. That was very hard to take. I believe that, had he been the Dem nominee, Bernie would have won. But the corporate Shillary was more desirable to donors, as off-putting as she was to voters.
As for why Bernie capitulated, well....he couldn't run on the Dem ticket, obviously, and it was probably too late to run as an Independent at that point. My bet is that he felt it was more important to present a united front against the Republican nominee. And, as Bill points out, there may have been threats against his wife.
Any vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West is wasting your vote.
Let's be pragmatic* here eh!
*dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than wishful thinking.
Jill Stein and the goofy Professor will be eaten alive in the Swamp. You might as well vote for Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine.
Realizing the DNC is irredeemably corrupt, go to your local Republican Meetings and present Bill's list to them. Not once, but every meeting. Be a pain in their arse! Tell them they will not be getting your vote again if they do not get behind this list. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
The DNC is indeed irredeemably corrupt. But let's acknowledge the fact that they got that way by following the lead of the GOP. It was Carter's (and especially Clinton-Gore's) "Third Way" , corporate neoliberals who settled on the strategy of triangulation and to attract the same kind of big donor bucks from organized capital that had heretofore been the GOP's advantage. Though there are radicals in the GOP, the Party as a whole still is corrupted by concentrated capital- just like the Dems now are.
I had direct personal experience of that. I ran as a County Commissioner candidate (representing the D-Party) in 2004. It was a "red" county; D's were only 28% of the registered voters and only rarely won. I came within a half percentage point of beating the R incumbent.
So against my better judgment, I consented to run again in '08. Because I was an environmentalist (and peace) activist, the business wing of the Party, which held sway, distrusted me and gave my campaign almost no support either time; but in '08 it really came into play. By midnight on election night it looked like I had won the race; but after 6 weeks the final result showed I'd lost by something on the order of 125 votes.
Anyway, my opponent and I had raised roughly equivalent amounts of campaign funding; mine coming from individual small donors. His came from 1/10th the number of donors - the private interests (land speculation, development, building & selling of real estate, etc.) that typically funded the Repub's campaigns. It works the same at the state and national levels. Only the names of the 'donors' differ from side to side.
My populist -progressive principles - putting the public interests above the private- were what I think allowed me to come so close to pulling the upset as a serious underdog in a then- R-heavy county. But those who control the parties reflect their wealthiest patrons. So I seriously doubt that putting forth such principles to the local GOP would be any more successful than doing that with the Dems. At least the latter will pretend to care, and a few actually do.
The world should read a new book from New Zealand called "Abolishing the Military. Arguments and Alternatives".
New Zealand has not yet decided to follow Costa Rica by stashing its military in a museum. But were it to do so, I suppose we could guarantee that CNN would never cover the story.
The argument for doing so is powerfully laid out in this book and surely applies to tweaking of the military by any nation on Earth.
https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/abolishing-the-military/
Pretty depressing Roger.
Peace activist Kiwi's are realizing this week that the new Government they just elected (in a fair and uncorrupted election) is moving toward increasing military spending. Following in the footsteps of our butt-kissing US lapdog cousins across the ditch.
As the new government of nuclear-free New Zealand leans towards joining the AUKUS anti-China bloc, critics warn of weakened sovereignty in a sea of expanding militarization, Mick Hall reports.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/15/new-zealand-leaning-to-controversial-aukus-alliance/
Yeah, I was saddened to read that article and learn of the swing to the right including favoring the joining of AUKUS. It appears that partly owes to voters' reaction to culture-war stuff. But the fact that Australian Labor Party leader & PM Albanese has also approved the nuke sub deal and stronger commitment to AUKUS / likely more direction by the U.S. may have been a harbinger of things to come. Washington is, as usual, forcing its 'friends' to choose sides. In the long term, I think both Aussies & Kiwis will come to regret having made a Faustian bargain.
New Zealand became an anti-nuclear nation in 1987, declaring a Nuclear Free Zone. The Disarmament and Arms Control Act banned US nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers from its waters.
New Zealand was then frozen out of the ANZUS security treaty. To many Kiwi's this was a big plus as it allowed New Zealand to develop an independent policy - engaging with the Pacific and the rest of the World on its own terms.
New Zealand now enjoys excellent diplomatic relations with China, now its largest trading partner. Many Chinese students receive their tertiary education at New Zealand Universities'. State run, and equal to any in the World.
Sadly, the hegemon United States is scare mongering a fake security dilemma in the South Pacific as it attempts to contain peer rival China in its own sphere of influence. And doing so by convincing low-information Kiwi's that China is a threat to NZ security. Which is bullshit!
Forcing small nations to pick sides in the great-power competition now playing out. And which the US is losing.
A "Faustian" bargain is a pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral importance, such as personal values, for some promised worldly or material benefit, such as power, or riches.
A "Faustian" bargain is made with a power that the bargainer recognizes as evil or amoral. By their nature self-defeating for the person who makes them - because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.
Merry Xmas Roger.
BTW, the great Aussie elder PM Paul Keating says it's not AUKUS - its USUKA's
The new Argentinian Government threatens protestors with having their welfare and retirement benefits stopped! OMG. Can this be true?
Is this where America is going Roger?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dB7nDTSVHI
Dennis, given that the Repubs have signaled interest in reducing safety net benefits, and that some Dems have in the past signaled their willingness to negotiate such cuts, it seems quite possible that there'd be willingness to legislate the reduction/ suspension or loss of benefits for those guilty of 'crimes'. Given also that there is increasing support for stripping of First Amendment rights of speech, including the false labeling of dissenting views as "hate speech" and or "disinformation"; and now the willingness to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers as criminals fit for hanging, it certainly seems plausible that they'd threaten dissidents with the forfeiture of Social Security benefits and the like.
In any event, the Washington establishment have been steadily narrowing the boundaries on free speech and dissent for some time, readily using economic 'sanctions' both abroad and applying economic pressures at home to curtail it.
Merry Xmas Roger my friend,
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) is ecstatic that Colorado judges have pulled TRUMP's name from the state ballot. She's just sad she can't wave a magic wand and make him go away -- and our democracy along with him!
She literally equates TRUMP and MAGA with Nazi's. No shit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK1lNLAP8Kk
TRUMP 2024
Merry Xmas to you, too, Dennis.
While I don't share your enthusiasm for The Donald, I do share your disdain for Madcow; and sorry, I can't bear to see or hear her do her thing. She milks the discontent of the identity-liberal Vote Blue NMW crowd as effectively as Trump&Co does that of his fans
WIshing us ALL peace. (Ah...if wishes were horses...I'd win the Kentucky Derby for sure.) Here is a wonderful bit of music from a very fine person and wonderful singer-songwriter/musician I know. He sometimes has sung in grief and rage at what the U.S. does around the world, but this is a deeper, more forgiving tune:
Bruce Cockburn, "Us All" :
Live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2wn0oHAElQ
Studio version w/ lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lUUX3JzG2I
At age 66, I'm used to wasting my vote. I haven't always voted for the loser(s), but every winner I have voted for betrayed every promise for which they earned my vote in the first place. So now, I am an all time loser who tries (and mostly fails) to educate those I love--family and friends. Even there I'm reminded of the 100-year old woman who was asked about her life. She said for the first 90 years she tried to change the world. Then she decided to change herself, stating, "And honey, that ain't easy either!"
The American Federal elections are rigged, as well as the office of the presidency. We could elect Jesus himself and the bankers would figure out a way to impoverish us more.
Collective action. Strikes. Strikes without union management's approval. Workers standing up to power. Workers unifying and directing their anger at the ruling elite. Scaring the elites, showing them we're on to their scam.
That is our only hope.
If Jesus were elected, they'd crucify him again.
Come on Ray - play fair my friend.
No subtle digs eh! I thought we agreed to that!
You know that Dennis does not even think Jesus exists.
So how could I demonize him?
Take care!
No it's not. That's no hope at all. That's simply solidifying, legitimising your slavery and acceptance of them as the masters of your destiny: bringers of all good things, you hope.
Can't you see that?
The problem is a democracy should be run by the people for the people.
But the people want someone else to run it for them, with no input or effort from them.
So naturally they get this.
Now here's the answer, I think: reachable, attainable, doable, possible for the first time in history thanks to technology.
We run ourselves, our own nation, via smartphone apps.
Don't laugh.
Be sensible.
I mean we have whatever apps we need and where an app is not appropriate of course we don't have. Be sensible.
But an app so's we can register our vote at any time and change it at any time and it's rock solid guaranteed to be uncrackable - written open source with topline encryption; all that sort of thing.
That's the biggest problem isn't it? Something like that? That we cannot register our votes confidently and so on. Well an app could fix that. On your humble smartphone. Yep, truly.
And then that app can feed into a perpetual referenda app. One permanent one that keeps tabs of how everyone is voting for the government and/or the head of govt - so's you can actually watch in real time popularity go up and down - and other one/many that do the same with issues of the day: like you want to send bombs to Israel or you want to bomb Israel? That kind of thing.
That'd be another big problem sorted, wouldn't it? Knowing where the people stand on issues and having their voice heard/seen/made public.
What next? What's another big problem in our totally dysfunctional system? Well our reps don't represent us do they? They don't do what we want/say, in fact we never get to tell them and they don't ask us. They are there to do the will of the Party bosses is all.
Well we need an app whereby at the push of a button you send your commands to your rep. As fancy or as simple as you like. But either way as easy and reliable as pushing a button. And the whole thing recorded so's he can never say he didn't get it.
And then the natural other half of that: an app that monitors everything the rep does. Every thing. Every word he speaks in the meeting rooms, every vote he casts. And the app reports it to us. In real time.
And then what should have always have been ours but never has been: a constant information flow back from the rep about issues he has learned of that might/should concern us.
Okay? That sorts that big problem out: our representation.
What's another major problem?
Truth. That's what. We don't know what the truth is any more.
We don't know the truth about stuff like 9/11 or Nordstream and we don't know the truth about covid or vaccinations.
Our clever young men and women of today can vie with each other to put up apps that aggregate the facts from the best sources and check them and validate them and compute, calculate with them where necessary and inform us of the conclusions.
That's about general things we hear.
And that's about every word that comes out of the mouths of these habitually lying politicians, every word they speak or write.
That avenue of approach should do wonders for making the truth accessible and apparent.
Do you see what I mean?
People with their smartphones should be hands-on deliberately actually running our nations. That's us. All of us. Each of us.
How come we still stand around as though we are powerless? As though this were still 18th or 19th Century days?
When we have this power in our pockets, today, right now.
And I am sure it will happen because how are you going to stop the kids, born with a computer in their mouths, simply putting up the apps? And how would you ever stop people using them once they're there to use?
The biggest danger I see today is any suggestion of moves by government to limit access to that direction in any way. For in that direction is emancipation, freedom, progress.
Forget this marching in the streets and violent protests and such rubbish. Rubbish is what that is. Get smart.
Wonderful thoughts. arthur. Thanks for your efforts.
Ever heard of Diia?
Wiki: Diia is a mobile app, a web portal and a brand of e-governance in Ukraine.
Launched in 2020, the Diia app allows Ukrainian citizens to use digital documents on their smartphones for identification and sharing purposes. The Diia portal allows access to over 130-government services. Eventually, the government plans to make all kinds of state-person interactions available through Diia. Great idea eh!
But oh dear! Citizens have been using Diia to provide information about their neighbor. Where he lives. His GPS co-ordinates! And post lies on the app that he is a subversive and a traitor. The secret police come - and that's the last you see of your troublesome neighbour!
Diia has a list of "Enemies of the State". Jimmy Dore and Gleen Greenwald are apparently on it! After the secret police snuffs the victim - their image on Diia has the word "Liquidated", in red letters, superimposed on his photograph on the site.
Judge, Jury and Executioner by cell phone apps!
And folks in Gaza and the West Bank are doing lookout surveillance work and using an app to report "terrorist" activities to the IDF. The IDF's investigation usually ends with some poor innocent civilian dead!
I could go on!
But the danger of this loss of privacy should be anathema to a democratic society eh? OK with Zelensky and Netanyahu though eh!
Wadda yuh think?
Hi, and thanks.
No, I've never heard of Diia.
It sounds similar to a thing we have in Australia and which is continually growing. 'My Gov'. More and more govt services are accessed online there. It grows and it grows more intrusive and it grows kinda more demanding, too: like sometimes it is the only way you can interact.
So maybe I understand a little what your Diia is.
Frankly I find it very hard to believe that last bit though: 'Liquidated' in red letters. That sounds like something from a futuristic horror movie. Surely that's not real?
Overall it is evidence of the power of the internet and the smartphone. Today we ARE our smartphones. We used to have heated arguments about whether we should have identity numbers or not. Today we queue up to get them: your smartphone number IS you. it is how the govt contacts you and how you contact.
So there's no doubt at all that it is ubiquitous, omnipresent, almost omnipotent.
So we have to start using it for our benefit. Step up to the plate. Grab a hold of it.
Either we manage our world with this instrument or the people we leave there managing it in our apathy and ignorance they will manage our world with that instrument and often - you could almost say 'just about always' do us harm with it.
How do the people respond to Diiaa ?
I imagine they don't.
They can't.
There is no way. No avenue. Only phoning or texting or visiting their elected reps and very, very, very few will ever do that. Everyone knows 'it will do no good' so no one bothers to try it.
People are very lazy. And very loving of comfort. And very loving of safety.
If we had our own apps put up by our own people they would be safe. Their safety proven by intensive testing in the early days. By the thousands of professional hackers and such that we have amongst us.
And to 'instruct' the govt via such an app is almost the acme of laziness.
And comfort.
What about the evil doers who report people and get them into trouble?
Well such an app is not what we're talking about here. That's the first thing an oppressive government wants.
It's the last thing a movement to self government via the web and smartphone apps want.
We don't want bad apps.
We want good ones.
The power of bad apps shouldn't frighten us away from apps it should demonstrate to us just how powerful that route, that methodology, is. AND illustrate the need to get onboard and start building the good ones soonest.
The Grayzone reports on the USAID's DC rollout of the dystopian Diia "state in a smartphone" app introduced by the government of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. They discuss how the Ukrainian conflict zone has been turned into a profitable laboratory for corporations seeking to profit from the harvesting of personal data from the war-torn population. How it is used to control and intimidate Ukraine's population, and how this disturbing technology is being exported throughout the global south.
"Ukraine's dystopian digital snitching app premiers in DC"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLulMeO3yA0
How do the people respond to Diia you ask ?
"This is so Orwellian! I just can’t believe I’m living this in real time, even if it’s a nightmare."
"DIIA makes it easier for corrupt officials to exhort kickbacks from workers using the app."
"Minister of digital transformation? Woah! I definitely don't care for the sound of that!"
"I wonder if there are other more insidious uses including human trafficking, bio tech research and money laundering?"
"U.S. Elites Testing Ukraine War Funding App. SOCIAL CONTROL Coming Next?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVivi-MtwiQ
"We send these folks tons of money we worked hard for, and they have a chill list on us? End times". (note last bit: 'Liquidated' in red letters. Its real Arthur!)
"The digital vaccine passport was implemented in New Zealand with little blowback from the public. While I took the experimental vaccine, I did not want to take the booster shot as doubts grew. But I was FORCED to take it as this was required to fly overseas, or to travel by ship"
All these apps by themselves are not negative. They're able to improve our life.
But when they become negative - is when they're in the hands of corporations, capitalists, crooked governments who want to control you and fascists.
Merry Xmas in Oz, Arthur. I'm posting in New Zealand across the ditch.
Yeah the idea that revolution can begin via smartphone or any tech literally owned by the very people we're fighting is ludicrous.
It hasn't mattered who won the General Election since John F Kennedy. Not a single candidate would have been inclined or been allowed to move your platform forward, Bill. The "Washington establishment"- National Security State cabal will take out any White House occupant who tries.
JFK was a dead man following his American University Peace Speech in June 1963.
I fear you're right about this, Gene.
I'm hopeful that a younger electorate isn't buying the US corporate warstate. And the National status quo narrative is becoming a harder sell.
Khrushchev called it “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.”
Off topic but I ran across this: https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/withdraw-us-troops-from-syria-and-iraq
THE ATROCITIES IN GAZA ARE THE PERFECT EMBODIMENT OF ‘WESTERN VALUES’ by Caitlin Johnstone
This is western civilization. This is what it looks like.
When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it.
The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and is itself a perfect embodiment of western values. Not the western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they don’t want you to look at. Not the attractive packaging with the advertising slogans on the label, but the product that’s actually inside the box.
For centuries western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy — all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.
What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school. A much better representation of western civilization than all the art and literature we’ve been proudly congratulating ourselves on over the centuries. A much better representation of western civilization than the love and compassion we like to pretend our Judeo-Christian values revolve around.
It’s been so surreal watching western rightists babbling about how savage and barbaric Muslim culture is amid the 2023 zombie resurrection of Bush-era Islamophobia, even while western civilization amasses a mountain of ten thousand child corpses.
That mountain of child corpses is a much better representation of western culture than anything Mozart, da Vinci or Shakespeare ever produced.
This is western civilization. This is what it looks like.
Western civilization, where Julian Assange awaits his final appeal in February against US extradition for journalism which exposed US war crimes.
Where we are fed a nonstop deluge of mass media propaganda to manufacture our consent for wars and aggression which have killed millions and displaced tens of millions in the 21st century alone.
Where we are kept distracted by vapid entertainment and artificial culture wars so we don’t think too hard about what this civilization is and who it is killing and maiming and starving and exploiting.
Where news cycles are dominated more by celebrity gossip and Donald Trump’s latest mouth farts than by the mass atrocities that are being actively facilitated by western governments.
Where liberals congratulate themselves for having progressive views on race and gender while the officials they elect help rip apart children’s bodies with military explosives.
Where Zionist Jews center themselves and their emotions because opposition to an active genocide makes them feel like they are being persecuted, and where Israel supporters who are not Jewish still kind of feel like they are being persecuted also.
Where a giant globe-spanning empire powered by militarism, imperialism, capitalism and authoritarianism devours human flesh with an insatiable appetite while we congratulate ourselves on how much better we are than nations like Iran or China.
These are western values. This is western civilization.
Ask somebody to tell you what their values are and they’ll give you a bunch of pleasant-sounding words about family and love and caring or whatever. Watch their actions to see what their actual values are and you’ll often get a very different story.
That’s us. That’s western civilization. We say we value freedom, justice, truth, peace and free expression, but our actions paint a very different picture. The real western values, the actual product inside the box underneath the attractive label, are the ones you see acted out in Gaza today.
Source: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-atrocities-in-gaza-are-the-perfect
ON ANARCHY AND VOLUNTARYISM by Doug Casey
You’re likely aware that I’m a libertarian. But I’m actually more than a libertarian. I don’t believe in the right of the State to exist. The reason is that anything that has a monopoly of force is extremely dangerous. As Mao Tse-tung, lately one of the world’s leading experts on government, said: "The power of the state comes out of a barrel of a gun."
There are two possible ways for people to relate to each other, either voluntarily or coercively. And the State is pure institutionalized coercion. It’s not just unnecessary, but antithetical, for a civilized society. And that’s increasingly true as technology advances. It was never moral, but at least it was possible, in oxcart days, for bureaucrats to order things around. Today it’s ridiculous.
Everything that needs doing can and will be done by the market, by entrepreneurs who fill the needs of other people for a profit. The State is a dead hand that imposes itself on society. That belief makes me, of course, an anarchist.
People have a misconception about anarchists. That they’re these violent people, running around in black capes with little round bombs. This is nonsense. Of course there are violent anarchists. There are violent dentists. There are violent Christians. Violence, however, has nothing to do with anarchism. Anarchism is simply a belief that a ruler isn’t necessary, that society organizes itself, that individuals own themselves, and the State is actually counterproductive.
It’s always been a battle between the individual and the collective. I’m on the side of the individual.
I simply don’t believe anyone has a right to initiate aggression against anyone else. Is that an unreasonable belief?
Let me put it this way. Since government is institutionalized coercion—a very dangerous thing—it should do nothing but protect people in its bailiwick from physical coercion.
What does that imply? It implies a police force to protect you from coercion within its boundaries, an army to protect you from coercion from outsiders, and a court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to coercion.
I could live happily with a government that did just those things. Unfortunately the US Government is only marginally competent in providing services in those three areas. Instead, it tries to do everything else.
The argument can be made that the largest criminal entity today is not some Colombian cocaine gang, it’s the US Government. And they’re far more dangerous. They have a legal monopoly to do anything they want with you. Don’t conflate the government with America—it’s a separate entity, with its own interests, as distinct as General Motors or the Mafia. I’d rather deal with the Mafia than I would with any agency of the US Government.
Even under the worst circumstances, even if the Mafia controlled the United States, I can’t believe Tony Soprano or Al Capone would try to steal 40% of people’s income from them every year. They couldn’t get away with it. But—perhaps because we’re said to be a democracy—the US Government is able to masquerade as "We the People." That’s an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire.
The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. "We have to obey libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization." No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are a sign that civilization is degrading, that the society is becoming less individually responsible, and has to be held together by force.
It’s all about control. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The type of people that gravitate to government like to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why you get the worst people—not the best—who want to get into government.
Continued….
What about voting? Can that change and improve things? Unlikely. I can give you five reasons why you should not vote in an election (see this article at https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-caseys-top-five-reasons-not-to-vote/ . See if you agree.
Hark back to the ’60s when they said, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" But let’s take it further: Suppose they gave a tax and nobody paid? Suppose they gave an election and nobody voted? What that would do is delegitimize government.
I applaud the fact that only half of Americans vote. If that number dropped to 25%, 10%, then 0%, perhaps everybody would look around and say, "Wait a minute, none of us believe in this evil charade. I don’t like Tweedledee from the left wing of the Demopublican Party any more than I like Tweedledum from its right wing…"
Remember you don’t get the best and the brightest going into government. There are two kinds of people. You’ve got people that like to control physical reality—things. And people that like to control other people. That second group, those who like to lord it over their fellows, are drawn to government and politics.
Some might ask: "Aren’t you loyal to America?" and "How can you say these terrible things?" My response is, "Of course I’m loyal to America, but America is an idea, it’s not a place. At least not any longer…"
America was once unique among the world’s countries. Unfortunately that’s no longer the case. The idea is still unique, but the country no longer is.
I’ll go further than that. It’s said that you’re supposed to be loyal to your fellow Americans. Well, here’s a revelation. I have less in common with my average fellow American than I do with friends of mine in the Congo, or Argentina, or China.
The reason is that I share values with my friends; we look at the world the same way, have the same worldview. But what do I have in common with my fellow Americans who live in the trailer parks, barrios, and ghettos? Or even Hollywood, Washington, and Manhattan? Everyone has to be judged as an individual, but probably very little besides residing in the same political jurisdiction. Most of them—about 50% of the US—are welfare recipients, and therefore an active threat. So I have more personal loyalty to the guys in the Congo than I do to most of my fellow Americans. The fact we carry US passports is simply an accident of birth.
Those who find that thought offensive likely suffer from a psychological aberration called "nationalism"; in serious cases it may become "jingoism." The authorities and the general public prefer to call it "patriotism." It’s understandable, though. Everyone, including the North Koreans, tends to identify with the place they were born. But these things should be fairly low on any list of virtues.
Nationalism is the belief that my country is the best country in the world just because I happen to have been born there. It’s most virulent during wars and elections. And it’s very scary. It’s like watching a bunch of chimpanzees hooting and panting at another tribe of chimpanzees across the watering hole. I have no interest in being a part of the charade—although that’s dangerous.
And getting more dangerous as the State grows more powerful. The growth of the State is actually destroying society. Over the last 100 years the State has grown at an exponential rate, and it’s the enemy of the individual. I see no reason why this trend, which has been in motion and accelerating for so long, is going to stop. And certainly no reason why it’s going to reverse.
It’s like a giant snowball that’s been rolling downhill from the top of the mountain. It could have been stopped early in its descent, but now the thing is a behemoth. If you stand in its way you’ll get crushed. It will stop only when it smashes the village at the bottom of the valley.
This makes me quite pessimistic about the future of freedom in the US. As I said, it’s been in a downtrend for many decades. But the events of September 11, 2001, turbocharged the acceleration of the loss of liberty in the US. At some point either foreign or domestic enemies will cause another 9/11, either real or imagined. It’s predictable; that’s what sociopaths do.
When there is another 9/11—and we will have another one—they’re going to lock down this country like one of their numerous new prisons.
It’s going to become very unpleasant in the US at some point soon. It seems to me the inevitable is becoming imminent.
###
The source for this article is https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-anarchy-and-voluntaryism/ .
If this was part of the campaign platform of an actual candidate for POTUS in 2024, it would raise the following questions:
- 1. First and foremost of all, WHO is going to pay for Health Care for all and free college tuition, and HOW are they going to pay for it?
- 2. Directly related to #1: What is the plan for dealing with America’s national, sovereign, Federal government Debt, currently at $33.93 TRILLION and counting? And what is the plan for dealing with this government’s Unfunded Liabilities [Social Security, Medicare Plans A, B, and D, Federal Debt held by the Public, and Federal Employee and Veterans Benefits], currently at $212.55 TRILLION, and counting? See https://www.usdebtclock.org/# for details.
- 3. How many American workers will become unemployed and even unemployable if the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour or more? And how much more will consumers pay for goods, products, and services provided by folks working for a minimum wage?
- 4. Why is marijuana the only drug to be legalized? Why not legalize All drugs and end the so-called “War On Drugs” completely? How would that contribute to reducing America’s prison population?
- 5. What will be required from Congress to reduce national “defense” and “security” budgets? And will spots in the proposed new CCC be reserved for all those folks in the MICC who will lose their jobs because of those hundreds of billions of dollars in military budget cuts?
- 6. “Privacy for the people” ~ the end of warrantless surveillance ~ will involve elimination of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA 702). Again, what will be required of Congress to make that happen? [Note: As regards “transparency of government,” this government is very transparent. It is perfectly obvious to anybody who bothers to look exactly who actually commands and controls America’s elected politicians, entrenched civilian and military bureaucrats, anointed political appointees, and the mouthpiece main stream media.]
- 7. When is the last time ANY President or Congress demonstrated any commitment whatsoever to the Constitution? To cite the most blatant example: How many wars have America’s Presidents waged since the end of World War II? And how many of those wars have been formally declared ~ as the Constitution demands ~ by any Congress in the last 78 years?
The fact that Trump and Biden are the two leading contenders to become the next POTUS should tell every American still capable of thinking for her or himself that the Decline of the American Nation-State and Empire has ended, and that the Fall has begun.
The real question is: Will there even be an election next November? What would it take to cancel it? Another 9/11? Another Pandemic? [With this one killing young and healthy folks, not old and sick ones like the last one.] And if there is an election, will there be a Presidential inauguration and seating of a new Congress in January, 2025?
And then the next ~ and ultimate ~ question is: Will the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, a mere 926 days from today? And if it does, will the American Peoples be in any mood or condition to celebrate anything?
Welcome back, Jeff! I see you're still asking lots of questions. Here are some possible answers:
1. We all pay for health care now, Jeff. Studies show (including those sponsored by conservative groups) that a national health care plan will ultimately be cheaper than the for-profit exploitative plans now in place in America. And note how I didn't say education was to be "free." Only that tuition and fees would be capped at state colleges and universities. Who will pay? Who else? From taxes, especially on the rich and corporations.
2. I support a balanced budget amendment.
3. I don't believe unemployment rates will soar if wages are raised. And if prices go up on goods, so be it. Workers deserve $30K a year ($15 an hour) for a full-time job.
4. Start with marijuana. Move on from there.
5. Nothing is required from Congress except a spine. Yes, some jobs may be lost in the short term. But conversion of jobs from the military to the private sector, e.g. construction for infrastructure, will ultimately create more jobs. Many studies prove this.
6. Eliminate it. Give Congress a spine.
7. Elect me president and they'll be no undeclared wars. My first job as president will be teaching every American their constitutional rights. And responsibilities.
Yes, there's going to be an election. Yes, we'll be here in 2026.
Don't forget to vote for me. :-)
Thanks Bill. It’s nice to be back. And just for the record, the day i stop asking lots of questions will be the day i die. As i have noted before:
We Americans are a curious people.
As such, we demand, we need, we hunger and thirst for, we live and die by Answers. And not Questions.
We depend ~ for our livelihood and wellbeing, for our sanity and security, for our sense of our Self and the Real ~ we depend on the expert, the anchorman, the spokesperson, talk show host, reliable source, and, ultimately, The Leader [or hero, savior, guru} who provides us with All the Answers.
This way, we can make an immediate determination as to whether or not his [seldom her} Answers agree with ours. And, if they don't, then, without having to bother with the process of thinking, we can dismiss his Answers out of hand and continue our search for The Answers that agree with Ours.
A curious people indeed... .
A gnome, a pitiable creature of sorts, stopped looking for the right Answers to The Terror Event of September 11 when he realized just exactly how ready and able the government and its media were to provide exactly those Answers. That happened on the morning of September 12.
And that happened again with Saddam's WMDs in 2003, the 2008 financial "¢risi$," The COVJD Event, January 6, Ukraine, and most recently, Gaza.
So instead, he chose to focus on finding the right Questions. Because, he reasoned, if you can ask the right Questions, you will ultimately get to The Truth. Because out of the right Questions, The Truth must inevitably emerge.
If, on the other hand, your focus is on finding the right Answers, all you can get are the Answers you were looking for in the first place. And what you will get are the Answers that the Answer Man on the White Horse intends for you to embrace.
Re Your responses to my questions:
1. Can You cite any of those specific studies about the advantages of a national health care plan and system? And on what Constitutional authority would the POTUS have the power to put a cap on state college and university tuitions and fees? And finally and most importantly, how do You plan to get Congress to tax their owners, operators, commanders, and controllers, the rich and corporations? By giving them a spine?
2. A balanced budget amendment does nothing to address the US government’s already existing and growing daily national, sovereign Debt or its Unfunded Liabilities, or how that Debt is to be paid off and those Unfunded Liabilities funded.
3. You wrote “If prices go up, so be it.” As a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, that’s easy enough for You to say. How much will prices go up for all those folks who got that “deserved” minimum wage raise? And for everybody who doesn’t get a wage or pay raise to offset the inflation?
Here are a couple of links that explore the positive and negative effects of increasing the minimum wage: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets-economy/090516/what-are-pros-and-cons-raising-minimum-wage.asp and https://www.lendingtree.com/business/minimum-wage-increase-effects/ . And here is a link that details exactly why increasing the minimum wage is a bad idea: https://fee.org/articles/5-reasons-raising-the-minimum-wage-is-bad-public-policy/ .
4. Will the ultimate decision on which drugs are no longer illegal be made solely by the federal government? Or will the States have any say in the matter?
5. Again, can You cite some those “many studies” that prove that jobs will be created by cutting defense budgets and putting the money into infrastructure? And how many people currently working in the MICC are capable of doing infrastructure work; of building stuff instead of destroying it? And what is Your plan for “giving Congress a spine” when it comes to defense and security budget cuts?
6. Where will Congress get its spine from when it comes to revoking Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act? The same place it will get its spine to tax corporations and the rich?
7. While You are POTUS, if there are any undeclared wars, will You resign? And finally, as regards Your “first job as President” of teaching every American their Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities: Is Health Care a Right? Is a College Education a Right? Is a $15/hour minimum wage a Right?
As regards Election2024: What would it take to cancel it? Another 9/11? Another Pandemic, but one that kills young and healthy folks, not old and already sick folks like the last one? And even if there is an election in November 2024, will there be a Presidential inauguration and seating of a new Congress in January 2025? Or will it be January 6 Redux?
And finally and again: If America does somehow make it still intact to July 4, 2026, will the American Peoples be in any mood or condition to celebrate anything, especially a 250th birthday?
Jeff, I appreciate the questions, but some if not most of them can be readily answered with some easy Internet searches. So, for example, health care: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money/
For jobs and the military, see the National Priorities Project: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/whats-new/2023/11/9/us-splurges-militarism-not-enough-for-communities/
If there are any questions you can't answer yourself with some basic research, please let me know.
Glad You appreciated the questions, Bill; albeit some obviously more than others. Have a Great holiday.
Great to see Jeff back - and not lost any of his vim* I see!
Totally agree with 6 of your 7-pts, Bill.....except no.7!...LOL
Americans just cannot get their arms around the fact that Universal Single Payer Healthcare (MEDICARE4ALL) will actually be cheaper for all citizens than the current chaotic American model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TViKbB57NIQ
And a Nobel prize economist says higher minimum wages generate more economic activity, spurring growth and reducing unemployment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_z335j1a3M
*energy; enthusiasm:
"in his youth he was full of vim and vigour"
For such a candidate to have a chance they would need the consistent support of the MSM. The senior editors at the NY Times and the Washington Post would be a start.
I think that "the powers that are but shouldn't be" will take the easy way, and simply 'fudge' the 2024 election too. I'm in the camp of those who believe that 'politicians are not elected but selected'. How else could one account for some of the election results and consequences we have seen in 'democratic' countries?
What's really needed is a Constitutional amendment for a national popular vote for President, accompanied by ranked choice voting so that voters don't feel constrained to vote for the lesser of two evils, rather than voting for the third-party candidate of their choice. Of course, both the Dems and Repubs oppose ranked choice voting, but Maine and Alaska use it, as well as many cities, municipalities, and other organizations. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would elect the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide without requiring a Constitutional amendment, would be one step in the right direction, and has been adopted by 16 states and Washington, DC., but doesn't address the "lesser of two evils" strategy.
Not going to happen.
Unfortunately, I totally agree with you. The two major parties are far more concerned with maintaining power, than with moving toward democratic ideals.
You are absolutely spot on about the changes needed to the process. I'd add one more. We need the debates to go back to the League of Women Voters or some other non-partisan organization. Freezing out the competition even from the conversation isn't democracy in action.
A perfect president in every way would not be able to change the corruption of our entire political process by huge private money donations to election campaigns followed by "we can help you with that" advice to the elected on legislation by lobbies. Citizens United must be made moot by legislation and I have not seen that on any priority list or as a topic on any news/discussion program. As long as big money/lobbies rule, we the people will be only going through the motions and for a lot of us, in blind rage, voting for Trump, as pure a member of the 1% as one can find, proud of posing in his gilded Manhattan penthouse with no clue of how revolting it is. But we see Joe Sixpack rooting for Donald. Blind rage. Let's throw a wrench into the works.
Thus, America will continue spiraling downward whoever wins the presidential race, for what group of politicians in Congress will stand up to have his/her future their destroyed? Which brings me to a possible opening.
I hope that this wide open for all to see slaughter by Israel that shows that tiny country running US foreign policy with loud acclaim from Congress, will so repulse people that one of the biggest lobbies, that of Israel, will now be under close observation. All Americans need to join the Jews of Jewish Voice for Peace and allied Jewish groups to shout NOT IN OUR NAME, but by that meaning not in the name of liberty and justice for all, which Zionism flouts just as much as it does Judaism.
Vietnam - millions dead, nothing learned
Iraq and Afghanistan - hundreds of thousands dead, nothing learned
Now we have Israel running wild in 2023, supporters actively attempting to stifle all criticism of a tiny foreign country with less than 2% of the US population in a land where speech is supposedly free, as the supine and robotic President says "we stand with Israel." Some people are in the streets demonstrating, I've joined them, and at last we have the truth coming through outside of MSM and on occasion even from the mouths of MSM anchors.
I am very happy to see that there are no displays of Israeli flags on cars and in yards. Perhaps a few synagogues are rethinking their signs that proclaim "US and ISRAEL - TOGETHER FOR GOOD" Perhaps a slaughter is not something to cheer about even when done by the 51st state. I feel a change in the wind. Maybe, just maybe something is being learned.
Clif, since World War II, that's over 70-years now, during a supposed golden age of peace, the US military has killed it is estimated 20-million people, overthrown at least 36-governments, interfered in at least 86-foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50-foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30-countries.
https://davidswanson.org/warlist/
Since 2001, the United States has been systematically destroying a region of the globe, bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, not to mention the Philippines. Did I leave any out?
The United States has “special forces” operating in two-thirds of the world’s countries and non-special forces in three-quarters of them. And 900-overseas bases "protecting Americas interests" they say!
The U.S. government provides weapons, military training, and military funding to almost every dictatorship and oppressive government on earth. Israel being the latest horrific example.
Can a leopard change its spots you reckon?
"An organism that is at War with itself is doomed"...-- Carl Sagan "Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the "Momentary" masters of a "Fraction of a "Dot" Carl Sagan, his Pale Blue Dot speech Cornell Lecture-- his magnum opus Cornell Univ.
Sagan was right.
"There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Hail Sagan!!!
There is one way in which Israel and the US are identical twins...their official spokespersons lie without batting an eye. I recall Jimmy Carter saying "I'll never lie to you." At least it was a nice thought.
Bill, we seem to have gone off the subject you wrote about, and I apologize for adding to that, but I feel I need to mention one thing. I suddenly realized, Jesus was a Palestinian! At least he was born there in Bethlehem so it does make him at least sort of a Palestinian. And here we are assisting the government of Israel/Palestine to kill all the Palestinians just as we are about to celebrate world wide the birth of the most famous and important Palestinian of all time. The irony is unbelievably powerful- especially since he spent his life working for peace and love and brotherhood, and our government along with Israel/Palestine is working full time to do the opposite.
Is it odd that our MSM does not mention this? I mean I suppose they have, but I haven't seen it on any of the news shows or papers I have watched or read. Have you, or your other readers? I'm talking MSM here, not other sites like substack , Jimmy Dore etc. which I suppose has mentioned it.
Yes, Jesus was a Jew, born in Juda or Judea, part of Palestine.
It's funny, though, that this doesn't correspond to "Palestinian" today, which is usually limited to Palestinian Arabs.
I wonder why that is?
In a world not controlled by criminal cartels, your proposal makes sense.
Unfortunately, in the real world, such a candidacy, even if elected, would not lead to any substantive change.
America is now a post-constitutional republic about to transition to something which will be internationally conceived and managed.
So, sadly, your admirable suggestion must be filed under 'too little too late'.
INTERVIEW: Biden gets down and dirty.
The only way Biden can win is if the runs against an empty ballot, Garland Nixon tells George Galloway. And that seems to be the plan eh, using an ancient Civil War Law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv4zp1Ci_5k
Yeah, well, you've got my vote. When you gonna stand?
Imagine asking a government to do its job!
Radical!