I was in 7th grade when my brother left for Vietnam. I remember so clearly, our family, including aunts, uncles and cousins, our pastor, and close neighbors standing between the Toledo airport terminal and the jet that would carry him to his fate as his new wife of only a few months and my parents hugged him in a brief but tearful farewell.
Just as acutely, I recall the rage with which he returned--alive and well, we thought. Across the road from our farm were neighbors and our closest friends. Their oldest son and my oldest brother were classmates and friends. Now the war threatened to divide them. The neighbor and classmate was Mennonite of a stricter church than ours. He spent his duty as a CO in a hospital in Washington state. So while he spent the first year of his marriage with his wife, my brother spent the first year of marriage separated from his. My father, himself a Navy vet of WWII, spelled out how my brother would never heal if he couldn't again befriend his longest and closest friend who returned from Washington to farm in the same township.
I have no idea how long it took my brother to truly reconcile this in his own mind. He remained a proud vet to the end. (A bit too proud it seemed to me for what he endured later). But the neighbor was a true friend and visited and helped my brother through to his death which was not pretty. My brother's relatively safe post as a clerk in Saigon happen to be in a small office in the depot where Agent Orange was stored.
It has always been a reminder to me that regardless of what our nation does or doesn't do, there is perhaps no greater inner peace than forgiveness and understanding. A lesson a young enraged army vet learned well enough.
My father was born in June of 1898 and I have two almost mint 1898 silver dollars (Morgan) that I am going to pass on to my two children. They feature the eagle grasping an olive branch and arrows. In that month of 1898 the Marines landed in Cuba and in Guam. The US House decided to annex Hawaii. The age of the American empire began.
What I think characterizes America most is the drive for more that has been present all along since the founding. Today at Panera, I put in an order for my usual small coffee only to be told that there is no longer a small coffee and I must choose between medium and large. I thought to myself that there could easily be a motto for America - "we don't do small" shown in everything from the Superbowl to huge gasoline engined vehicles as the globe warms, to the epidemic of obesity, to the all out aid of a microscopic country out to take by force and slaughter the land of others.
You mentioned we aren't on any currency standard. That could have been predicted as there is simply no amount of anything physical (by nature limited) that can support the infinite growth of money so we are employing the charade that the standard for the dollar is the dollar.
Of course this will all end, the only questions are how and when. Certainly it can be said change will not come from any rational planning by American leadership. I'd liken it to an accelerating train. You know it can't keep on going faster, but who could possibly say where along the track and at which curve will the derailment happen? We are all hanging on while every politician says the answer to everything is growth (taken almost entirely by the 1%).
We are in the novel situation of the future being completely unpredictable in detail but absolutely predictable in that there will be an end to the system we live under. Is is not surprising that anxiety is felt by all and even science fiction, once a genre full of hope, is now uniformly bleak and ominous.
Like children who want everything, take responsibility for nothing and become angry when denied, we go from day to day. Is change possible? Will it start under a war criminal or a con man from which we must choose in November? I think not.
Not only would the eagle be clutching missiles, it would probably say in Raytheon We Trust under Lady "So-Called Liberty" as well. Good story, Bill, linking it today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Hang on to them and pass them on, there will probably never be a "peace" dollar again...
Thank You for sharing that, Bill; especially Your Dad’s stories. And permit me to offer an answer to Your concluding Question about America’s coinage:
America’s coinage will be a tribute to the end of war and the promise of peace, Bill, when it is no longer made, as You put it, with “base metal"; thus making it the totally “debased currency” that it is today, and has been for a long, long time.
And that’s not even considering the money made of paper. Which leads to the following… :
Given that the United States of America is today, has been for a long, long time, and shows no indication of stopping being:
l. a Bankrupt Debtor State
2. an Imperialist Warfare State
3. a Redistributionist Welfare State
4. a Secrecy/Surveillance/Security/Censorship proto-Police State
5. an Autocratic/Oligarchic/Plutocratic/Patriarchal Deep State
6. a Flailing, Failing Nation State
7. an Overshoot State
and, perhaps most importantly,
8. a People and Nation no longer merely "divided," but fractured~ even to the point of disintegration~ in ways not seen in more than 164 years, since the eve of what will probably end up being merely the First American Civil War… .
Given all that:
The Question no longer is “WILL the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, 819 days from today? And if it does, will the American Peoples be in any condition or mood to celebrate anything?”
The Question now is becoming: “CAN the United States survive… ?”
And given what the United States has become since the end of World War II ~ and particularly since 9/11 ~ and has inflicted on the rest of the Planet, the Real Question is: “SHOULD the United States survive… ?”
Another Question on the minds of some is: “When will The Decline of the American Nation State and Empire end, and when will The Fall begin?”
it seems plausible to suggest, jg, that the chaos, tyranny, and terror have been w/ us from our DNA's inchoate germinations. peaceful non-violent protests are chimeric routes to otiosity, but we, like the MLKs JFKs, RFKs, ghandi and others, are too obtuse to aim our gazes into that bleak void. so the placid persist in switching the channels, but all the channels have a verisimilitude about them. when the MLKs, the JFKs, and the RFKs push placidity aside and become threats, they are assassinated... as are the assanges among our midst, the courageous truth-sayers. they haven't managed to murder assange yet, but they HAVE managed to neutralize him. soon he too will be dead.
REVOLUTION, i say! however, that's a declarative i'm not sufficiently fatiloquent to predict the 'when'of it, if ever we DO manage to launch one. perhaps when obese americans start shedding enough blubber to lift their backsides off their comfy lounge chairs, or can no longer pay for their next big mac, or the streets are bespattered w/ more homeless people than vehicles, or the prisons are too full to accommodate so much as a stray cat, or the TV addicts can no longer pay their monthly netflix bills. or all of the above. it is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but perhaps in my grand bantlings' lifetime.
you have propined us w/ an unalloyed, indisputable, and unadulterated critique of these 3rd-/4th-world countries' medical dystopias, dennis. w/ certitude, they too have been duped by big pharma to believe these otiose drugs are their salvation.
during our years in sierra leone, [1978~1981] i battled against the heinous crimes of omnipresent nestles' fliers, scattered throughout sierra leone, of gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed, robust white babies tucked under the admiring arms of their gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed, robust mothers, bairns who were suckling on a nestles milk-filled bottle of what was actually nutrient-deficient [compared to breast milk], uber-calorie-laden crapulations. in other words, the invidious message was that if an impoverished sierra leonean mother wanted her bairn to resemble a northern european chub-a-lub bairn, all she needed to do was sacrifice what exiguous family income was available to her in order to purchase nestles crap-milk powder. commensurately, in order to stretch their exiguous family budgets, sierra leone mothers diluted the milk powder, subsequently rendering their bairns even more seriously malnourished. it was an invidious, corpdom propaganda crime against the most vulnerable among us.
Hamid Dabashi ~ Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York ~ begins his MIDDLE EAST EYE 3 April 24 piece “US elections: Biden and Trump are two sides of the same murderous coin” with:
“'Genocide Joe' and 'Don the Con' are the morally depraved choices for a sham democracy run for billionaires that slaughters countless innocent people globally. I cannot vote for either.”
And concludes it as follows:
“What is Trump accused of on 6 January 2021? That his ruffian supporters attacked Capitol Hill and tried to prevent Genocide Joe's succession to Don the Con?
“Has Capitol Hill not been under attack by the endless march of one lobby or another - the gun lobby, the fossil fuel lobby, the Israel lobbies, ad nauseam?
“Clean-shaven and clad in business suits, lobbyists walk into the halls of Congress and bribe the legislators to send more arms to Israel to slaughter more Palestinians, sell more arms to insane people to murder schoolchildren, or else disregard the environmental calamities we face and expand on the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
“This is American democracy in a nutshell.
“We should all abandon any false hope in American democracy, and begin from the ruins of Gaza and the slaughtered corpses of Palestinians buried under those ruins and rebuild a new political imagination.
“It is obscene to walk into any voting station and vote for anyone in this fundamentally flawed and irredeemable “American democracy”. We cannot salvage this diabolical political system. We must save our own souls.”
'Iran – Israel: The Inevitable Strike, the Various Scenarios and the Consequences'
Written by Elijah J. Magnier
It is now unequivocally clear that Iran has decided to retaliate directly against Israel, departing from its previous strategy of acting through its allies. This decision comes in the aftermath of the bombing and destruction of the consulate building in Damascus, which under the 1961 Vienna Convention is considered a protected diplomatic installation, inviolable by such acts.
The remaining questions concern the timing of the retaliation and the location of such a strike. Iran’s Foreign Ministery has signalled to the United States through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, the guardian of US interests, its intentions to retaliate to the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate. Tehran has received assurances from Washington that it was not informed of the attack and its neutrality, provided its bases and forces are not targeted.
Moreover, the implications of this act are profound, especially as Israel prepares for a reciprocal response, given the intolerability of any casualties resulting from Iran’s actions.
when the ciders cool and the smoke settles here in the states, that's when the world will be on a path to peace. We be the Genghis Khan of the world....what happended to him will happien to us.
Susan Abulhawa concludes her 18 Mar 24 The Electronic Intifada article REJECT BIDEN AND BUILD A BETTER WORLD as follows:
White-Man Flavors Of Oppression
The so-called “free press” speaks and writes the same verbiage, as if they all share a singular colonial brain.
Social media giants have tweaked their algorithms to censor Palestinian content and ban popular accounts.
Congress is bearing down on free speech under the guise of confronting anti-Semitism, effectively joining forces with ruthless Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America to doxx, harass and destroy the lives of activists who dare to speak up against Israeli apartheid and genocide. At this moment in history when we bear witness to a new holocaust, our politicians are holding hearings against a Palestinian literature festival and university campuses across the country that do not actively engage in the Zionist agenda of silencing popular dissent.
At a moment when the president of the United States is circumventing Congress to send billions of our tax dollars in weaponry, cash and other gifts to Israel while it commits genocide, Congress is concentrating on banning TikTok because young people know and share too much truth.
The ruling class believes it can quell the global public’s moral impulse with these usual mechanisms of suppression and gatekeeping. The Democratic Party is counting on its base to fall in line with the threat of another Trump era.
Ultimately, we have the power to free our imprisoned minds from their propaganda; from the shackles of a two-party system; from a most undemocratic government that answers to a wealthy minority, not the masses, the overwhelming majority of whom want a ceasefire; and from the convenient divisions they impose upon us.
We have the power to create the world we want, one where our government serves the welfare of the nation, not the greedy ambitions of the few.
We have the power to choose morality instead of allowing ourselves once again to be cornered into the binary of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, two white-man flavors of oppression, with the former being outright genocide.
Allowing Biden to serve another term will signal the moral destitution and tragic helplessness of the American people to register a minimal objection to an ongoing holocaust. A second term for Biden will make it clear that the ruling class can do anything it wants to us and to the world, no matter how vile or destructive, and we will remain slaves to the choices it engineers for us each election.
This is our world, and we can take back the reigns of our collective destiny. We can choose life.
We can choose to tread gently on our tortured planet; to reject their endless wars; to divert our public dollars away from the top 1 percent into our collective wellbeing and quality of life; to empower our young people, create community and have faith in each other; to dismantle the infrastructures that keep us ignorant and divided.
The world we want is possible, and it begins by acting now for the long-term future, even if it means short-term pain for the next four years. Ensuring that moral dissent prevails means a definitive loss for the Democratic Party, no matter the alternative.
Bolstering of third-party alternatives would be the most welcome side effect in electoral politics.
PALESTINIAN WRITER EVISCERATES HILLARY CLINTON ON HER ‘GET OVER YOURSELF!’ COMMAND
"She does not belong in the ranks of womanhood or even in the ranks of humanity, frankly. And for her to tell us to get over ourselves, I don't think so."
Palestinian novelist and activist Susan Abulhawa warns that electing Biden would be the “biggest mistake we could ever make” because of the signal “allowing a genocidal war criminal to be reelected,” would “send to the political elite and to the ruling class.”
She discusses her the piece she wrote at the ELECTRONIC INTIFADA ‘Reject Biden and Build a Better World’ and reacts to Hillary Clinton’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon where the Madame Secretary tells people upset by the choice between Trump and Biden to “get over yourself.” [ https://electronicintifada.net/content/reject-biden-and-build-better-world/45216 ]
Susan replies, “This is the woman who went and tweeted and was so up in arms about the Barbie movie and the fucking Oscars. And meanwhile, Palestinian women are being raped. They're having miscarriages. They're malnourished. They're getting bombed. And not a single word of solidarity of compassion. She does not belong in the ranks of womanhood or even in the ranks of humanity, frankly. And for her to tell us to get over ourselves, I don't think so. I think we need to find a way to make it clear to her and people like her that “no, you need to get the fuck over yourself because we're not going to keep playing this game.”
It is worth reflecting on, Bill. What value does the US place on peace? 1920s versus 2020s? Have the values changed? If so, why? The answer will smack one in the side of the head.
Nice sentiment and certainly a very nice story. I just wish your pre 1941/45 thinking of a peaceful America were true. To debunk this fantasy one only needs to re-read study the actual history of America and get off the shelves Smedley Butler’s 1935 “classic” WAR IS A RACKET. I don’t have to repeat what you already know already as an historian.
Not many people 48 years ago, could foresee these controversial words published by The Kansas City Times September 13, 1976 quoting me, unfolding in the US and the World Today.
“He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the World, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church dome. “The gold dome is the symbol of BABYLON,” he said.” [...] He wanted to bring to the Public’s attention an “idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a War with Russia.”
And even more exact and specific, that September 13, 1976 Historical Newspaper record published an event will happen 30 months in the Future, 2-1/2 years into the Future and it happened EXACTLY 30 months later exactly as the 1976 Newspaper said it would.,
"There are 30 months before the fate of the world will be sealed with EITHER Destruction OR the Universal Brotherhood of Man,¨ he said. ¨The 30 month figure concerned a Treaty between Israel and Egypt.¨
NOTE: This does not say Armageddon happens in 30 months from the article.
Not 29 or 31, but exactly 30 months later, in March 1979, history shows a Treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed. The Camp David Accord.
History shows talks broke down on the 12th day and no Treaty was to be signed. Begin and Sadat were leaving.
It was on the 13th Day, as in the date of the Article and the picture accompanying it, an unexpected window of opportunity appeared and opened the way for the Treaty to be signed.
This signified the Universal Brotherhood part of the quote.
The Iranian Revolution happened in the previous month and if we're going to be Realistic, after all, US Western Media prefaced everything reporting anti-US-Israel activity in the Middle East with "Iran backed proxies."
Israel just ESCALATED HOSTILITIES in the Abraham-Jewish-Christian-Islam Intensely Religious Middle East, by attacking the Sovereign Iranian Diplomatic Territory in Damascus, assassinated High IRANIAN Government Officials. That's an ACT of WAR Israel brought to Iran, expecting the US will back Israel, so get ready for the Unexpected!
Unless the Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment that became the Israeli government with Netanyahu a year ago January, has a moment like the extreme anti-Christ Jewish Pharisee Saul had on the Road to Damascus, much worse will come, not only to the Middle-East, but this Material World!
I was in 7th grade when my brother left for Vietnam. I remember so clearly, our family, including aunts, uncles and cousins, our pastor, and close neighbors standing between the Toledo airport terminal and the jet that would carry him to his fate as his new wife of only a few months and my parents hugged him in a brief but tearful farewell.
Just as acutely, I recall the rage with which he returned--alive and well, we thought. Across the road from our farm were neighbors and our closest friends. Their oldest son and my oldest brother were classmates and friends. Now the war threatened to divide them. The neighbor and classmate was Mennonite of a stricter church than ours. He spent his duty as a CO in a hospital in Washington state. So while he spent the first year of his marriage with his wife, my brother spent the first year of marriage separated from his. My father, himself a Navy vet of WWII, spelled out how my brother would never heal if he couldn't again befriend his longest and closest friend who returned from Washington to farm in the same township.
I have no idea how long it took my brother to truly reconcile this in his own mind. He remained a proud vet to the end. (A bit too proud it seemed to me for what he endured later). But the neighbor was a true friend and visited and helped my brother through to his death which was not pretty. My brother's relatively safe post as a clerk in Saigon happen to be in a small office in the depot where Agent Orange was stored.
It has always been a reminder to me that regardless of what our nation does or doesn't do, there is perhaps no greater inner peace than forgiveness and understanding. A lesson a young enraged army vet learned well enough.
My father was born in June of 1898 and I have two almost mint 1898 silver dollars (Morgan) that I am going to pass on to my two children. They feature the eagle grasping an olive branch and arrows. In that month of 1898 the Marines landed in Cuba and in Guam. The US House decided to annex Hawaii. The age of the American empire began.
What I think characterizes America most is the drive for more that has been present all along since the founding. Today at Panera, I put in an order for my usual small coffee only to be told that there is no longer a small coffee and I must choose between medium and large. I thought to myself that there could easily be a motto for America - "we don't do small" shown in everything from the Superbowl to huge gasoline engined vehicles as the globe warms, to the epidemic of obesity, to the all out aid of a microscopic country out to take by force and slaughter the land of others.
You mentioned we aren't on any currency standard. That could have been predicted as there is simply no amount of anything physical (by nature limited) that can support the infinite growth of money so we are employing the charade that the standard for the dollar is the dollar.
Of course this will all end, the only questions are how and when. Certainly it can be said change will not come from any rational planning by American leadership. I'd liken it to an accelerating train. You know it can't keep on going faster, but who could possibly say where along the track and at which curve will the derailment happen? We are all hanging on while every politician says the answer to everything is growth (taken almost entirely by the 1%).
We are in the novel situation of the future being completely unpredictable in detail but absolutely predictable in that there will be an end to the system we live under. Is is not surprising that anxiety is felt by all and even science fiction, once a genre full of hope, is now uniformly bleak and ominous.
Like children who want everything, take responsibility for nothing and become angry when denied, we go from day to day. Is change possible? Will it start under a war criminal or a con man from which we must choose in November? I think not.
Not only would the eagle be clutching missiles, it would probably say in Raytheon We Trust under Lady "So-Called Liberty" as well. Good story, Bill, linking it today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Hang on to them and pass them on, there will probably never be a "peace" dollar again...
Thank You for sharing that, Bill; especially Your Dad’s stories. And permit me to offer an answer to Your concluding Question about America’s coinage:
America’s coinage will be a tribute to the end of war and the promise of peace, Bill, when it is no longer made, as You put it, with “base metal"; thus making it the totally “debased currency” that it is today, and has been for a long, long time.
And that’s not even considering the money made of paper. Which leads to the following… :
Given that the United States of America is today, has been for a long, long time, and shows no indication of stopping being:
l. a Bankrupt Debtor State
2. an Imperialist Warfare State
3. a Redistributionist Welfare State
4. a Secrecy/Surveillance/Security/Censorship proto-Police State
5. an Autocratic/Oligarchic/Plutocratic/Patriarchal Deep State
6. a Flailing, Failing Nation State
7. an Overshoot State
and, perhaps most importantly,
8. a People and Nation no longer merely "divided," but fractured~ even to the point of disintegration~ in ways not seen in more than 164 years, since the eve of what will probably end up being merely the First American Civil War… .
Given all that:
The Question no longer is “WILL the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, 819 days from today? And if it does, will the American Peoples be in any condition or mood to celebrate anything?”
The Question now is becoming: “CAN the United States survive… ?”
And given what the United States has become since the end of World War II ~ and particularly since 9/11 ~ and has inflicted on the rest of the Planet, the Real Question is: “SHOULD the United States survive… ?”
Another Question on the minds of some is: “When will The Decline of the American Nation State and Empire end, and when will The Fall begin?”
it seems plausible to suggest, jg, that the chaos, tyranny, and terror have been w/ us from our DNA's inchoate germinations. peaceful non-violent protests are chimeric routes to otiosity, but we, like the MLKs JFKs, RFKs, ghandi and others, are too obtuse to aim our gazes into that bleak void. so the placid persist in switching the channels, but all the channels have a verisimilitude about them. when the MLKs, the JFKs, and the RFKs push placidity aside and become threats, they are assassinated... as are the assanges among our midst, the courageous truth-sayers. they haven't managed to murder assange yet, but they HAVE managed to neutralize him. soon he too will be dead.
REVOLUTION, i say! however, that's a declarative i'm not sufficiently fatiloquent to predict the 'when'of it, if ever we DO manage to launch one. perhaps when obese americans start shedding enough blubber to lift their backsides off their comfy lounge chairs, or can no longer pay for their next big mac, or the streets are bespattered w/ more homeless people than vehicles, or the prisons are too full to accommodate so much as a stray cat, or the TV addicts can no longer pay their monthly netflix bills. or all of the above. it is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but perhaps in my grand bantlings' lifetime.
you have propined us w/ an unalloyed, indisputable, and unadulterated critique of these 3rd-/4th-world countries' medical dystopias, dennis. w/ certitude, they too have been duped by big pharma to believe these otiose drugs are their salvation.
during our years in sierra leone, [1978~1981] i battled against the heinous crimes of omnipresent nestles' fliers, scattered throughout sierra leone, of gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed, robust white babies tucked under the admiring arms of their gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed, robust mothers, bairns who were suckling on a nestles milk-filled bottle of what was actually nutrient-deficient [compared to breast milk], uber-calorie-laden crapulations. in other words, the invidious message was that if an impoverished sierra leonean mother wanted her bairn to resemble a northern european chub-a-lub bairn, all she needed to do was sacrifice what exiguous family income was available to her in order to purchase nestles crap-milk powder. commensurately, in order to stretch their exiguous family budgets, sierra leone mothers diluted the milk powder, subsequently rendering their bairns even more seriously malnourished. it was an invidious, corpdom propaganda crime against the most vulnerable among us.
Hamid Dabashi ~ Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York ~ begins his MIDDLE EAST EYE 3 April 24 piece “US elections: Biden and Trump are two sides of the same murderous coin” with:
“'Genocide Joe' and 'Don the Con' are the morally depraved choices for a sham democracy run for billionaires that slaughters countless innocent people globally. I cannot vote for either.”
And concludes it as follows:
“What is Trump accused of on 6 January 2021? That his ruffian supporters attacked Capitol Hill and tried to prevent Genocide Joe's succession to Don the Con?
“Has Capitol Hill not been under attack by the endless march of one lobby or another - the gun lobby, the fossil fuel lobby, the Israel lobbies, ad nauseam?
“Clean-shaven and clad in business suits, lobbyists walk into the halls of Congress and bribe the legislators to send more arms to Israel to slaughter more Palestinians, sell more arms to insane people to murder schoolchildren, or else disregard the environmental calamities we face and expand on the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
“This is American democracy in a nutshell.
“We should all abandon any false hope in American democracy, and begin from the ruins of Gaza and the slaughtered corpses of Palestinians buried under those ruins and rebuild a new political imagination.
“It is obscene to walk into any voting station and vote for anyone in this fundamentally flawed and irredeemable “American democracy”. We cannot salvage this diabolical political system. We must save our own souls.”
Full article at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-election-biden-trump-two-sides-murderous-coin .
'Iran – Israel: The Inevitable Strike, the Various Scenarios and the Consequences'
Written by Elijah J. Magnier
It is now unequivocally clear that Iran has decided to retaliate directly against Israel, departing from its previous strategy of acting through its allies. This decision comes in the aftermath of the bombing and destruction of the consulate building in Damascus, which under the 1961 Vienna Convention is considered a protected diplomatic installation, inviolable by such acts.
The remaining questions concern the timing of the retaliation and the location of such a strike. Iran’s Foreign Ministery has signalled to the United States through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, the guardian of US interests, its intentions to retaliate to the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate. Tehran has received assurances from Washington that it was not informed of the attack and its neutrality, provided its bases and forces are not targeted.
Moreover, the implications of this act are profound, especially as Israel prepares for a reciprocal response, given the intolerability of any casualties resulting from Iran’s actions.
when the ciders cool and the smoke settles here in the states, that's when the world will be on a path to peace. We be the Genghis Khan of the world....what happended to him will happien to us.
Al Jazeera hour long Documentary on their Investigation of what actually happened October 7:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0atzea-mPY
I can only do what I can, and I could do this;
Ray Joseph Cormier
@JakeSullivan46 @RichardHaass @JustinTrudeau @CanadianPM @Pontifex @Franklin_Graham
@AymanMSNBC @andersoncooper @wolfblitzer
The Jewish Settlers terrorizing and killing West Bank Palestinians with impunity are the latest incarnation of Hitler's Brown Shirts!
Susan Abulhawa concludes her 18 Mar 24 The Electronic Intifada article REJECT BIDEN AND BUILD A BETTER WORLD as follows:
White-Man Flavors Of Oppression
The so-called “free press” speaks and writes the same verbiage, as if they all share a singular colonial brain.
Social media giants have tweaked their algorithms to censor Palestinian content and ban popular accounts.
Congress is bearing down on free speech under the guise of confronting anti-Semitism, effectively joining forces with ruthless Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America to doxx, harass and destroy the lives of activists who dare to speak up against Israeli apartheid and genocide. At this moment in history when we bear witness to a new holocaust, our politicians are holding hearings against a Palestinian literature festival and university campuses across the country that do not actively engage in the Zionist agenda of silencing popular dissent.
At a moment when the president of the United States is circumventing Congress to send billions of our tax dollars in weaponry, cash and other gifts to Israel while it commits genocide, Congress is concentrating on banning TikTok because young people know and share too much truth.
The ruling class believes it can quell the global public’s moral impulse with these usual mechanisms of suppression and gatekeeping. The Democratic Party is counting on its base to fall in line with the threat of another Trump era.
Ultimately, we have the power to free our imprisoned minds from their propaganda; from the shackles of a two-party system; from a most undemocratic government that answers to a wealthy minority, not the masses, the overwhelming majority of whom want a ceasefire; and from the convenient divisions they impose upon us.
We have the power to create the world we want, one where our government serves the welfare of the nation, not the greedy ambitions of the few.
We have the power to choose morality instead of allowing ourselves once again to be cornered into the binary of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, two white-man flavors of oppression, with the former being outright genocide.
Allowing Biden to serve another term will signal the moral destitution and tragic helplessness of the American people to register a minimal objection to an ongoing holocaust. A second term for Biden will make it clear that the ruling class can do anything it wants to us and to the world, no matter how vile or destructive, and we will remain slaves to the choices it engineers for us each election.
This is our world, and we can take back the reigns of our collective destiny. We can choose life.
We can choose to tread gently on our tortured planet; to reject their endless wars; to divert our public dollars away from the top 1 percent into our collective wellbeing and quality of life; to empower our young people, create community and have faith in each other; to dismantle the infrastructures that keep us ignorant and divided.
The world we want is possible, and it begins by acting now for the long-term future, even if it means short-term pain for the next four years. Ensuring that moral dissent prevails means a definitive loss for the Democratic Party, no matter the alternative.
Bolstering of third-party alternatives would be the most welcome side effect in electoral politics.
Full article at https://electronicintifada.net/content/reject-biden-and-build-better-world/45216 .
From Mark Taylor’s DeMOCKracy.ink:
PALESTINIAN WRITER EVISCERATES HILLARY CLINTON ON HER ‘GET OVER YOURSELF!’ COMMAND
"She does not belong in the ranks of womanhood or even in the ranks of humanity, frankly. And for her to tell us to get over ourselves, I don't think so."
Palestinian novelist and activist Susan Abulhawa warns that electing Biden would be the “biggest mistake we could ever make” because of the signal “allowing a genocidal war criminal to be reelected,” would “send to the political elite and to the ruling class.”
She discusses her the piece she wrote at the ELECTRONIC INTIFADA ‘Reject Biden and Build a Better World’ and reacts to Hillary Clinton’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon where the Madame Secretary tells people upset by the choice between Trump and Biden to “get over yourself.” [ https://electronicintifada.net/content/reject-biden-and-build-better-world/45216 ]
Susan replies, “This is the woman who went and tweeted and was so up in arms about the Barbie movie and the fucking Oscars. And meanwhile, Palestinian women are being raped. They're having miscarriages. They're malnourished. They're getting bombed. And not a single word of solidarity of compassion. She does not belong in the ranks of womanhood or even in the ranks of humanity, frankly. And for her to tell us to get over ourselves, I don't think so. I think we need to find a way to make it clear to her and people like her that “no, you need to get the fuck over yourself because we're not going to keep playing this game.”
Full article at https://mark192.substack.com/p/cartoon-palestinian-writer-eviscerates .
It is worth reflecting on, Bill. What value does the US place on peace? 1920s versus 2020s? Have the values changed? If so, why? The answer will smack one in the side of the head.
Nice sentiment and certainly a very nice story. I just wish your pre 1941/45 thinking of a peaceful America were true. To debunk this fantasy one only needs to re-read study the actual history of America and get off the shelves Smedley Butler’s 1935 “classic” WAR IS A RACKET. I don’t have to repeat what you already know already as an historian.
Not many people 48 years ago, could foresee these controversial words published by The Kansas City Times September 13, 1976 quoting me, unfolding in the US and the World Today.
“He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the World, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church dome. “The gold dome is the symbol of BABYLON,” he said.” [...] He wanted to bring to the Public’s attention an “idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a War with Russia.”
And even more exact and specific, that September 13, 1976 Historical Newspaper record published an event will happen 30 months in the Future, 2-1/2 years into the Future and it happened EXACTLY 30 months later exactly as the 1976 Newspaper said it would.,
"There are 30 months before the fate of the world will be sealed with EITHER Destruction OR the Universal Brotherhood of Man,¨ he said. ¨The 30 month figure concerned a Treaty between Israel and Egypt.¨
NOTE: This does not say Armageddon happens in 30 months from the article.
Not 29 or 31, but exactly 30 months later, in March 1979, history shows a Treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed. The Camp David Accord.
History shows talks broke down on the 12th day and no Treaty was to be signed. Begin and Sadat were leaving.
It was on the 13th Day, as in the date of the Article and the picture accompanying it, an unexpected window of opportunity appeared and opened the way for the Treaty to be signed.
This signified the Universal Brotherhood part of the quote.
The Iranian Revolution happened in the previous month and if we're going to be Realistic, after all, US Western Media prefaced everything reporting anti-US-Israel activity in the Middle East with "Iran backed proxies."
Israel just ESCALATED HOSTILITIES in the Abraham-Jewish-Christian-Islam Intensely Religious Middle East, by attacking the Sovereign Iranian Diplomatic Territory in Damascus, assassinated High IRANIAN Government Officials. That's an ACT of WAR Israel brought to Iran, expecting the US will back Israel, so get ready for the Unexpected!
Unless the Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment that became the Israeli government with Netanyahu a year ago January, has a moment like the extreme anti-Christ Jewish Pharisee Saul had on the Road to Damascus, much worse will come, not only to the Middle-East, but this Material World!