Monday, April 28, 2014

John Kerry admits Israeli Apartheid; and 5 Ways he is Understating It

John Kerry admits Israeli Apartheid; and 5 Ways he is Understating It (via http://www.juancole.com)
(By Juan Cole) In a closed-room meeting of the Trilateral Commission last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry warned that Israel is on the verge of becoming an Apartheid state, according to a recording obtained by The Daily Beast. The remark will…

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Children - Truth and God

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." - Matthew 19:14 NIV

Don't you just love them?
--Joe

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Cold War - Hot War - Obama's Brilliant Advisors

[UPDATE III :: Tuesday, May 6, 2014] - The Crisis in Ukraine - What can be done
by FLOYD RUDMIN - Tromsø, Norway."The crisis in Ukraine is serious.  At some point soon, reality needs to become the priority.  No more name-calling.  No more blaming.  If there are any adults in the room, they need to stand up.  The crisis in Ukraine is going critical, and that is a fact.
[UPDATE II :: Saturday, April, 19, 2014] - On Nazis, Jews & Ukraine ‘de-escalation’
"For all of what passes for Western ‘intelligentsia’ carping on Putin as a Stalin remix, the ‘sick Russian bear’ and stupidities of the same ilk, a strategy lesson is evolving. The Kremlin does have a vision, the will and the means to pursue it, perseverance, and a carefully calibrated method. Sun Tzu would approve it. Don’t provoke; wait. Be patient, but not inactive. Accrue your potential. Then retake the initiative. Strike only when the right convergence presents itself. And then the ‘tactician’ on the other side, already blinded because he does not respect you, will be left clueless, wondering what hit him."
 - Works for me.

[UPDATE :: Thursday, April, 17, 2012] - Kiev: Military operation in Ukraine southeast to go on despite Geneva agreement]

Stephen Cohen: A New Cold War Is Already Underway

“For the first time in my lifetime, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, hot war with Russia is imaginable,” Nation contributing editor Stephen Cohen told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman on Thursday. Cohen, a Russia historian and expert on US-Russia relations, slammed the Obama administration for suggesting that the crisis in Ukraine was exclusively due to “Putin’s meddling,” and warned against a build-up of NATO forces near Russia’s borders. In an effort to end the crisis, Russia, Ukraine, the US and the European Union will begin talks today in Geneva. “Putin will compromise at these negotiations,” Cohen warned, “but he will not back off if confronted militarily.”
Sam Adler-Bell — The Nation

Here is the complete interview on Democracy Now:

"We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis

As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. The killings came just after the unraveling of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings from pro-Russian separatists. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss" and refused to rule out sending forces into Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land," Rasmussen said. We are joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. "We are not at the beginning of a new Cold War, we are well into it," Cohen says, "which alerts us to the fact 'hot war' is imaginable now. It’s unlikely, but it’s conceivable — and if it’s conceivable, something has to be done about it."

Read the complete interview here.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Washington Drives the World Toward War

[UPDATE :: Tuesday, April 15, 2014]


The Attack on Russia is Mounting
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The CIA director was sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression of the Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine, former Russian territories for the most part that were foolishly attached to the Ukraine in the early years of Soviet rule.
Washington’s plan to grab Ukraine overlooked that the Russian and Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not likely to go along with their insertion into the EU and NATO while submitting to the persecution of Russian speaking peoples.  Washington has lost Crimea, from which Washington intended to eject Russia from its Black Sea naval base. Instead of admitting that its plan for grabbing Ukraine has gone amiss, Washington is unable to admit a mistake and, therefore, is pushing the crisis to more dangerous levels.
If Ukraine dissolves into secession with the former Russian territories reverting to Russia, Washington will be embarrassed that the result of its coup in Kiev was to restore the Russian provinces of Ukraine to Russia.  To avoid this embarrassment, Washington is pushing the crisis toward war.
The CIA director instructed Washington’s hand-picked stooge government in Kiev to apply to the United Nations for help in repelling “terrorists” who with alleged Russian help are allegedly attacking Ukraine. In Washington’s vocabulary, self-determination is a sign of Russian interference. As the UN is essentially a Washington-financed organization, Washington will get what it wants.
The Russian government has already made it completely clear some weeks ago that the use of violence against protesters in eastern and southern Ukraine would compel the Russian government to send in the Russian army to protect Russians, just as Russia had to do in South Ossetia when Washington instructed its Georgian puppet ruler to attack Russian peacekeeping troops and Russian residents of South Ossetia.
Washington knows that the Russian government cannot stand aside while one of Washington’s puppet states attacks Russians.  Yet, Washington is pushing the crisis to war.
The danger for Russia is that the Russian government will rely on diplomacy, international organizations, international cooperation, and on the common sense and self-interest of German politicians and politicians in other of Washington’s European puppet states.
For Russia this could be a fatal mistake. There is no good will in Washington, only mendacity. Russian delay provides Washington with time to build up forces on Russia’s borders and in the Black Sea and to demonize Russia with propaganda and whip up the US population into a war frenzy.  The latter is already occurring.
Kerry has made it clear to Lavrov that Washington is not listening to Russia. As Washington pays well, Washington’s European puppets are also not listening to Russia. Money is more important to European politicians than humanity’s survival.
In my opinion, Washington does not want the Ukraine matters settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way. It might be the case that Russia’s best move is immediately to occupy the Russian territories of Ukraine and re-absorb the territories into Russia from whence they came. This should be done before the US and its NATO puppets are prepared for war. It is more difficult for Washington to start a war when the objects of the war have already been lost. Russia will be demonized with endless propaganda from Washington whether or not Russia re-absorbs its traditional territories. If Russia allows these territories to be suppressed by Washington, the prestige and authority of the Russian government will collapse. Perhaps that is what Washington is counting on.
If Putin’s government stands aside while Russian Ukraine is suppressed, Putin’s prestige will plummet, and Washington will finish off the Russian government by putting into action its many hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs that the Russian government has so foolishly tolerated.  Russia is riven with Washington’s Fifth columns.
In my opinion, the Russian and Chinese governments have made serious strategic mistakes by remaining within the US dollar-based international payments system. The BRICS and any others with a brain should instantly desert the dollar system, which is a mechanism for US imperialism. The countries of the BRICS should immediately create their own separate payments system and their own exclusive communications/Internet system.
Russia and China have stupidly made these strategic mistakes, because reeling from communist failures and oppressions, they naively assumed that Washington was pure, that Washington was committed to its propagandistic self-description as the upholder of law, justice, mercy, and  human rights.
In fact, Washington, the “exceptional, indispensable country,” is committed to its hegemony over the world. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of Washington’s hegemony and are targeted for attack.
The attack on Russia is mounting.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.

Mirrored from CounterPunch. 

UPDATE: The Obama Game - Is Putin Being Lured Into a Trap?


I posted the article, in part, as a response to local blogger and lawyer Eric Kirk and his Brownshirts. If you don't know, "Brownshirts are a collection of thugs who get quite annoyed at those who oppose" them, their judging, their propaganda, wanton personal hyperbolic attacks and their sick never-ending filthy lies. In the real world of yesterday they were nothing more than a gang of bullying political murderers that paraded around in all their glorious self-righteous impunity. Today, none of them are of the 1% oligarchic plutocracy, but they serve them just the same as the "Brownshirts."

[Picture Source]

--Joe

Sunday, April 6, 2014

The Four Natural Enemies of a Man of Knowledge


by Carlos Castaneda

As I was getting ready to leave, I decided to ask him once more about the enemies of a man of knowledge. I argued that I could not return for some time, and it would be a good idea to write down what he had to say and then think about it while I was away. He hesitated for a while, but then began to talk. 

"When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning. "He slowly begins to learn... bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.



I am living proof that what Carlos Castaneda says here is true. I fought a lifetime of these battles, and continue to fight that new battle - old age. Even now, as I struggle with this last enemy - how well I know these words:
"This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won’t be able to defeat completely, but only fight away. "This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind... a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge."
[Thank you for the post Kenny. - Source - It's good to know that you don't always walk alone.]
--Joe