Thankful

What does it mean to be thankful – thankful to whom?

Did it not come out of the deeply held religious belief that we should regularly express our appreciation and grateful thanks to Almighty God for all of His rich blessings we enjoy in this life?

As someone that has had more close calls with death than I care to think about, I never, upon awakening, get out of bed without giving thanks for being alive. Second to being alive, is the gift of truly being free. Such freedom is what fully allows thanksgiving, giving thanks, to be meaningful in all aspects of life.

In time, I can affirm, one becomes a living gift of thanksgiving, of giving thanks, that is shared with everyone and in behalf of all peace-loving gracious people.

--Joe

What Showed Up on the Internet Today.

This is from The Patriot Post:
'I Will Obey the Constitution'
and this is what turned up about the same time on Firedoglake:
Obama Admin Claims to Support Cellphone Unlocking but TPP Leak Shows Opposite

Here's an excerpt of both pages, first The Patriot Post:

“This is part of the theory of George Bush, that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution. I will obey the Constitution of the United States.” In case you needed a reminder, these words were spoken by none-other than then-Senator Barack Obama in May of 2008.

and from Firedoglake:

When you buy something from someone you own it, right? Not if President Obama has his way on cellphones. And by his way, I mean the telecom monopolies that pull his strings’ way. Cellphone unlocking, which allows owners to alter the phone they purchased and use it with other carriers should they so desire, is a front line issue on the fight for rational copyright laws. Telecom companies want the practice of unlocking a cellphone to lead to prosecutions and imprisonment because free competition somehow means government granted monopolies.

While the Obama Administration has publicly backed cellphone users rights to unlock their cellphones  – the information published by Wikileaks on the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) tells a different story.

The leaked treaty draft shows that while the White House was championing restoring free market principles to phones, the U.S. proposed that the TPP lock in the process that allowed the Librarian of Congress to rule this technology as illegal through international law. This would make potential reforms like H.R. 1892 impossible.* It should be noted that Canada did submit an amendment proposal that could allow unlocking, but neither the United States nor any other country supported it.

Surprise. The reason the Obama Administration wanted its TPP positions to be a secret is because they are lying to the public about them. The Most Transparent Administration in History© strikes again.

For the rest of the article continue here.

Your Life Is An Open Book

That's right, folks. Come to Eureka or Arcata with an outstanding warrant for an unpaid parking ticket you forgot all about and you can promptly go to jail. That's the prospect outlined in Tuesday, August 21, 2012 Times-Standard's latest: "License plate scanners expected to help Arcata, Eureka police."

Next we'll be reading where these police departments are fly drones taking pictures and scanning homes and property to augment their battery of cameras plastered all over the city. They claim they don't have the money necessary to adequately enforce traffic laws, but they can buy these kinds of tinkertoys.

The newspaper sub-title says: "Privacy concerns cited by critics of the technology." I'd say it's NOT just the "critics," that have a reason to be concerned. Reading the article, once again we see parsing words and splitting hairs to justify a legal rational to do whatever they want, then come along after-the-fact and tell everyone what they are doing. We're probably lucky we get that much notice.
[Source]

--Joe

Special Delivery for the Times-Standard

HEY! Newspaper Editor do you get it?

Wednesday, July 6, 2011, Times Standard,
Your cartoon by Milt Priggee on page A4 is a perversion that attacks the sensibilities of all free Americans and what is right and just in American Jurisprudence.

In America , everyone is INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty in a COURT OF LAW - don't you know?

PS. Actually, the message of the cartoon IS  accurate and correct for a country ruled by men and NOT by law.

If you don't believe me read the My Word commentary printed just below that so-called cartoon by Jeffrey Schwartz: Search warrant folly: An open letter to Paul Gallegos.

Before a judge signs a search warrant, the judge requires that the DA sign off on the warrant with a statement that the DA believes there is probable cause to issue the warrant. Mr. Gallegos should not sign off on these warrants unless -- and until -- the law enforcement agent answers Mr. Gallegos' simple question: “What facts do you have that suggest the suspected marijuana is an unlawful grow.”

Where is the "law" and the "legal" protection afforded by the law entrusted to judges when a judge issues a search warrant totally upon the worthless opinions or beliefs, whether signed or not, "the DA believes there is probable cause" of some man or woman? What happens to the these judges and district attorneys when it is proven there was NO probable cause? Do they manufacture the "probable cause" after-the-fact?

According to Butler Shaffer "the establishment does not get it. Free individuals are withdrawing their consent to be ruled. And it is free people who create the social condition of liberty, not those who simply mouth bromides." Interesting audio where Lew Rockwell talks to Butler Shaffer on the difference between freedom and liberty, and how to be free regardless of the state.

"Withdrawing consent" -- STOP cooperating.

[UPDATE on Mr. Jeffrey Schwartz]
He lays out the actual reason Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen was fired, but misfires on who is actually responsible.

Gallegos' candid and public position on medical marijuana is a courageous stand where most of his statewide district attorney colleagues and the Humboldt County law enforcement community feel just about the opposite about medical marijuana. Of course, Gallegos' stand on what he thinks is right despite running into a freight train of ingrained Humboldt County backward politics and the fear of change that infects this county is one of the few bright spots that remain in Humboldt County politics after the November election. Think the firing of the forward-thinking Eureka Police Chief Gar Nielsen by the backward thinking David Tyson.

 "Backward thinking" won the war, but it wasn't backward thinking on David Tyson's fault. The previous city council knew full well the issues confronting Chief Garr Nielsen. Why then didn't the FIRE David Tyson when they had the chance? Did they think, (the operative question) that the "backward thinking" people in Humboldt County and in especially Eureka, that support the Humboldt County law enforcement community wouldn't give them the boot at the first opportunity?

And therein lies the rub, Mr. Schwartz' problem, right along with most everyone else that I know, is that the facts do not support his or their opinions about who actually terminated Garr Nielsen's job and who is actually responsible for issuing bogus search warrants that allows local police agencies to brutalize innocent people without any sort of accountability. In each case it is the peoples' demand to be governed by men rather than law. Free men and women that enforce personal integrity NEVER consent to be governed by such corrupt and lawless people.

--Joe

Blessed FREEDOM

Who said this?

Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us. But I'm not interested in clouding my mind with any of that. I don't care about that. That can be talked about once I'm dead. After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere "birth pangs" on the road to something beautiful.

Back in 2003, I said -- with bloodthirsty sadism rabidly drooling from my mouth -- that the real purpose of the war, what made it the Right Thing to do, was that we needed to make large numbers of Muslims "suck. on. this" in order to show them we mean business, and we randomly picked Iraq because . . . . we could. But now -- to justify the enormous amounts of blood I helped spill and the incalculable amounts of human suffering I helped spawn -- I'm going to pretend that I was motivated by a magnanimous, noble desire to Spread Freedom.

Who did this?

Official dogma: Iraq War a success - Finally! American democracy and freedom.
American-style freedom - Something like the Vietnam veterans brought back home.

--Joe

The Creeping Crud

A police state with doilies and lace curtains

Humboldt County (Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Branch) and local retail merchants are currently conducting classes in how to breed a Police State mentality in the innocent, our children. You militarize their environment and then criminalize them with knee-jerk laws ostensibly* for their protection and benefit. In other word, you make unauthorized and in some cases illegal conduct, common place.

[Some examples that come to mind were the universal 55 mph, mandatory helmet laws, seat belt and recently cell-phone laws, no smoking, growing or selling marijuana laws and lets not forget underage sex laws.]

Case in point however, starting with the Wednesday, March 11, 2009, Times-Standard Editorial: Show you care, show your ID is a classic example of do-gooder knee-jerk mentality that's really a pretense to inure** people to more loss of freedom and rights.

This fine group of people, this "editorial board made up of recovered, recovering and current smokers" says, in part:

It can actually be quantified -- the war against smoking is making headway. Fewer people are smoking, and fewer will be dying, as a result, from smoking-related diseases.

But the war is not over. Each and every time a minor starts puffing, it's the wrong start to a person's life. Immediately they set themselves up for a health disadvantage, and will have to dedicate years, if not decades, to recover, if and when they quit.

Did you notice that this is a "war"? How do they say we should fight this war? By getting "people to show their IDs when buying cigarettes, without being asked." -Make showing IDs common place.

Why?

"The logic is that if clerks start seeing people always showing their IDs when buying cigarettes, they'll begin to expect it. Thus, when a minor can't produce one, or produces one that looks fraudulent, the clerk will be on guard and thereby prevent the youth from buying the tobacco.

The campaign also aims to send a message to kids: You're outlawed from buying tobacco -- take the hint." (Emphasis add)

That editorial was followed up with the article, "County campaign reduces minors' access to tobacco" by Donna Tam where she explains the criminal rewards for selling cigarettes to minors. She identifies a do-gooder organization, Tobacco Free Humboldt and its Project Director Jay McCubbrey. This organization has enlisted use of 15 - 16 year old kids to see who will sell them tobacco and to "get the anti-smoking message out." One of these brilliant 15-year old kids says, "It's telling kids, 'Yes, people are looking for this so you shouldn't try to do it.'"

This is not about "telling kids" anything. This is pure indoctrination of children and adults alike! And it has absolutely nothing to do with anti-smoking. But, if it does, it's only peripheral, if not, incidental.

These teenagers see elder adults showing their ID "just to send a message" and they'll laugh the old fools right out of the store. And that IS the message sent. Certainly NOT what some adolescent teenager's take on life is.

The real crime done to these children, who are surrounded by smokers of every age and size is this statement,

The campaign also aims to send a message to kids: You're outlawed from buying tobacco -- take the hint."

with this nonsense,

We as a community have a responsibility to do the best we can by the next generation, and doing so in this case means making it hard, if not impossible, for a kid to get cigarettes. Let's set the example.

This is how you TALK to kids? By making them criminals? Penalizing everyone that smokes and forcing "store clerks" that have no say in the sale of tobacco to police our children? It was this kind of activity that produced these people, "Hitler-Jugend" 89 years ago, commonly known as "Hitler Youth." (Emphasis add)

This is what you quietly get today, Friday, March 13, 2009:

Updating the Militarization and Annexation of North America

- by Steve Lendman - Here's an excerpt:

... In other words, homeland militarization and occupation are planned using troops trained to kill.

The pretext is national security. In fact, they'll be on-call against another major terrorist attack, real or contrived, as well as civil unrest given the gravity of the economic crisis, its affect on millions, and likelihood that sooner or later they'll react. Armed combat troops will supplement militarized local police in case security crackdowns are ordered or martial law declared.

"Catastrophic Emergency" procedures are in place to react to situations, "natural or manmade," according to DHS/FEMA's March 2008 "Preparedness for the Next Catastrophic Disaster" policy paper. Should conditions warrant, initiatives to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law are in place, but militarizing America for business is also at issue.

It all started somewhere. So, lets set a real example.

---

Joe Blow, just to be clear, is for reasonable laws and law enforcement. Legislating morality, using laws, the police and juries to send messages and educating our youth with a club is out. Children learn the truth by observing who and what we are and comparing what we do by what we say. If you don't want your kids smoking tobacco then teach them what self-respect and personal responsibility means. Then give them the tools they need to be able to use that self-respect and be responsible. Problem is, you can't teach what don't have or don't know.

---

Creeping Crud : Malaise:
1. a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.
2. a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.

* Ostensibly:
1. Outwardly appearing as such; professed; pretended: an ostensible cheerfulness concealing sadness.
2. Apparent, evident, or conspicuous: the ostensible truth of their theories.
** Inure:
To habituate to something undesirable, especially by prolonged subjection; accustom

--Joe

Eureka SWAT - Business As Usual?

If this doesn't give every law-abiding conscientious homeowner in Humboldt County pause for thought, I don't know what will.

Yeah! We know. It's carte-blanche for the police when it comes to the proliferating criminal element and all the low-life scummy trash-types. But, what happens when you're not a criminal, never were a criminal and support the law, judicious law enforcement and believe in the universal right to self-defense and someone falsely accuses you? Now it's open season on you buddy! You, your family and your poor dog, if you're unlucky enough to have one or two.

---

Maryland Senate Holds Hearings on SWAT Transparency Bill

Last week, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee held hearings on a new bill that would require every police agency in the state with a SWAT team to issue quarterly reports on how often the teams are deployed, why they were deployed, what happened during the warrant service, and what was found. It is a small but vital step toward allowing for a proper assessment of just how often paramilitary-style tactics are being used in Maryland, how often things go wrong, and whether they’re being used as advertised.

Several witnesses at the hearing described yet more terrifying wrong-door raids, in cases never before reported.

Karen Thomas told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee that she heard Howard County police shoot and kill her dog in her Ellicott City living room in September 2007, while she lay upstairs on the floor, surrounded by police who had not identified themselves.

“In my mind, terrorists had just killed my son and they were going to kill me next,” she told committee members.

Thomas said that police were searching for drugs, but none were found…
Choking back tears, Boyd Petit told committee members that during an April 2008 raid on his Highland home, a police tactical team had handcuffed him and his family outside his home, at gunpoint and in front of his neighbors, while other officers searched his house.

“Our collective lives flashed before our eyes,” he said.

Petit claimed the raid on his house was prompted by a former customer, who made false allegations about him to police. He said police were searching for a specific weapon, but it was not found.

Right now, it looks like the bill will get through committee. It’s being pushed by Cheye Calvo, the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor who was subjected to a particularly violent but mistaken raid on his home. (Compliments of the Agitator)

--Joe

When Self-Defense is No Defense

What is so difficult to understand about self-defense? America's legitimate right to exist was formulated and argued to the world in the original document, The Declaration of Independence. None of those arguments apply to the Zionist Jew. After 61 years the whole world sees Israel exactly for what it is. There is always hope for a just and sane world when a few are able to see what is and have the courage to speak up. Here's an example.

Israeli-Palestinian problem can destroy the world peace
Letter to the editor
Posted: 02/03/2009 01:16:28 AM PST

J. Porsley's “My Word” and Donald Edwards' letter bring out the dilemma Americans are facing. Like Mr. Edward, I am neither a Jew nor an Arab; but a Muslim of a type whose community feels much safer and freer in Israel than in many Muslim countries.

However, as an American, there is a reason for me, and for all of us, to analyze this conflict dispassionately. It has potential of starting an Armageddon the pain from which will be felt by everyone. A just solution is needed.

Hamas has no right to fire rockets and Israel has no right to continue to occupy the Palestinian lands. The assumption that Israel left Gaza is not genuine. Gaza is a high security prison with its borders, land, air and sea controlled by Israel. It is a human cage.

Israel has the right to defend itself and so have the Palestinians. If one can import planes, tanks, phosphorous bombs, and even possess nuclear weapons it is unjust to deny the same to the other party.

When Israel blocks the free inflow of food and medicines and the world stands by in awe of Israeli might, then the Palestinians have no alternative to digging tunnels to reach those necessities of life.

It is time to bring peace to both the sides and help the weak obtain justice. History shows that irrespective of religion unjust people and the connivers thereof are sooner or later seized by a terrible divine punishment.

Abdul Aziz

Self-Defense is No Defense when you're accused being either evil, a criminal, or a terrorist. That would be when you are an enemy of the state. Enemy's of the state are anyone that doesn't go along with or objects to the states' right to enforce their will upon you in any way they see fit.

A good example of this are Zionist Jews deciding that they wanted legitimate recognition as a people to slow down their extermination, so they (a considerable number of them) all moved to Palestine to get the land they needed to become a nation and by force of arms imposed their will upon the Palestinian people. When the Palestinian people refused to submit or surrender their land they were accused of being a form of life that wasn't fit to occupy that sacred land anyway. We have 61 years of history to prove who is and is not fit to own or occupy that land.

An ancient Jew spoke about his people today, a people that wanted the same thing then as the Zionist Jews want today, when he said:

They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

--Joe

Eat This Eric Kirk - SoHum Parlance

Latest Addendum :: Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Joe Blow Calls Eric Kirk Names BAD! BAD!

Click the link and it will take you to his blog thread. Then you tell me who was doing the name-calling. Everything he said in response to my posts were derogatory, excoriating, insulting and abusive. Here you will find the classic example of what Jesus Christ was talking about when he said to NOT cast pearls before pigs or holy to dogs. “Do not give what is holy to dogs, neither throw your pearls before swine, that they may never trample them under their feet and turn around and rip you open.”

I call his blog a WHOREHOUSE because that's just what it is. (Of course, you know what that makes him.) He invites you in to share in his communion and the next thing you know you've been communing with a sick whore. In other words they've enticed you into making an agreement with them that they have the right to say anything they want about you, to denigrate, abuse, and tell you what kind of a human being they think you are and expect you to go along with their judgments. Then, if you should try to defend yourself from these kinds of people, people Jesus Christ calls "pigs" and "dogs" you're accused of calling them "names." "Hypocrites" and "liars" is something Jesus Christ called the same kind of whoremongers. If it was good enough for Jesus Christ is certainly is good enough for me.

You know why Jesus called these kinds of people "pigs" and "dogs" don't you? Because pigs wallow in their own crappy sewer and dogs return to eat their own vomit. Jesus identified these kinds of people as carnal, non-humans because that is their manifest personality; they think and act like rabid, vicious animal. The Dictionary defines vicious as:

1. addicted to or characterized by vice; grossly immoral.
2. given or readily disposed to evil.
3. reprehensible; blameworthy; wrong.
4. spiteful; malicious: vicious gossip; a vicious attack.
5. unpleasantly severe.
6. characterized or marred by faults or defects; faulty; unsound: vicious reasoning.
7. savage; ferocious.
8. (of an animal) having bad habits or a cruel or fierce disposition.

All in all, Joe figures he keeps good company. Jesus Christ wasn't popular with these same kinds of people either. He certainly wasn't averse to telling people or calling them for what they were when they were arrogant, self-righteous hypocrites, vipers, blind guides, liars, or whitewashed graves .

That's what you'll find on Eric Kirk's SoHum Parlance II. Do beware!

--Joe

---

“When leaders of competing Palestinian factions make maximalist claims to appeal to hardline constituencies, it’s extremism. But when Israeli leaders do it, it’s politics. If the goal of the U.S. and Israel is to strengthen Palestinian moderates like Abu Mazen against Hamas — and people keep telling me that’s the goal — it’s hard to see how this helps.”
Livni Promises To ‘Maintain Maximum Settlers’»

---

Israeli Foreign Minister Backtracks On Commitment To Force Jewish Settlers Out Of The West Bank»

President Obama has said that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is going to be a top priority for his administration. During an interview with Al-Arabiya last week, Obama said the Israel-Palestine issue is “interrelated” with “what’s happening” throughout the region. He also offered support for the so-called two-state solution. “I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state,” Obama said, adding, “But it is not going to be easy.”

No it will not be easy. As CBS reporter Bob Simon noted on 60 Minutes last week, “hundreds of thousands” of Jewish settlers would have to withdraw from the West Bank for it, along with the Gaza Strip, to be part of a Palestinian state. But also during Simon’s report, this two-state

solution may have received a small boost. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is in the running to become the country’s next prime minister, told Simon — bluntly — that in order to achieve peace and advance a Palestinian state, the Israeli government would force the settlers to leave the West Bank:

SIMON: Can you really imagine evacuating the tens of thousands of settlers who say they will not leave?

LIVNI: It’s not going to be easy, but this is the only solution.

SIMON: But you know that there are settlers who say, “We will fight. We will not leave. We will fight.”

LIVNI: So this is the responsibility of the government, of the police to stop them, as simple as that. Israel is a state of law and order.

This is the end . . .

Addendum to the peace viper :: Monday, February 2, 2009

Israel rules out Hamas contacts, threatens force

By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer

If you want to know why there is no prospect for peace, just read what this guy has to say. The root cause of the problem is right there for anyone to see that cares to look. The problem has absolutely nothing to do with a difference of opinions. It has everything to do with that woman and this guy, Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu and all their kind.

ADDENDUM :: Thursday, February 5, 2009

The corrupt continue to pervert as the noose tightens around the collaborators.

Olmert approves transfer of NIS 170 million to Gaza Strip

Just hours after a top Hamas official was caught by Egyptian authorities trying to smuggle millions of dollars and euros into the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave permission for the Palestinian Authority to transfer NIS 170 million from the West Bank to Gaza to pay government officials there.

The Prime Minister's Office said it agreed to transfer the funds in accordance with a request by PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

The officials to be paid are mostly Fatah members.

Israel agrees to let $43 mln into Gaza for Abbas

---

Israel seizes Gaza freighter

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora condemned the action.

"Those who commit massacres against innocent civilians in Lebanon and Gaza will not stop themselves from assaulting, in front of the world, a ship carrying humanitarian supplies," he said. "I express my utmost condemnation for this blatant attack."

--Joe

Time for More Gems

Any of these little GEMS work for you?

1. A man can't be judge of his neighbor's intelligence. His own vital experience is never his neighbor's.
2. Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed and seek out the constituents of the future.
3. Social good is what brings peace to family and society.
4. The body is the shrine of divinity.
5. We mustn't confuse mastery with mimicry, knowledge with superstitious ignorance.
6. Always watch and follow nature.
7. People bring about their own undoing through their tongues.
8. To know means to record in one's memory, but to understand means to make part of oneself.
9. All thought comes from within, but the master gives the keys.
10. Everyone finds himself in the world where he belongs.
11. A man's heart holds his own truth.
12. Organization is impossible unless those who know the laws of harmony lay the foundation. [*]
13. Sound skepticism is necessary condition for the discovery of truth.
14. If you are searching for beauty, observe nature.
15. The first step to knowing wisdom is knowing your ignorance.
16. It is the passive resistance from the helm that steers the boat.
17. Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed and pick out the constituents of the future.
18. If you search for the laws of harmony, you will find knowledge.

Joe says, "Watch out for the 'Dominator Hierarchy'." They think they are unique, exceptional people God gave the right to lord it over everyone else.

These are the people that moralize the right to butcher innocent women and children because they say "terrorists" hide among them. They justify their obscene existence by saying the deaths were caused by a bomb or two that landed in the "wrong place".

--Joe

The Roots of War

Mr. Bronner lays out a very revealing commentary about the disparaging ways of thinking that justifies Zionist Israel's right to exist and defend that existence in any way they so choose. Mr. Bronner and The Joe Blow Report share a common reality; life's experiences speak to the truth. Judgmental, worthless opinions expounded as false, lying accusations used to establish one's illegitimate right to exist by controlling, compromising and occupying their neighbor's space, can only produce war. Mr. Bronner defines these "roots" this way: "...because their belief in their own view is so overpowering that anything that contradicts it becomes a minor detail."

---

Gaza Notebook - Bullets in my In-Box
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: January 24, 2009 by the New York Times

GAZA — Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian leader who died at the start of this decade, used to tell a story about his first visit to Israel. The 1967 war had just ended, borders were suddenly opened and he took a drive to Tel Aviv, where at some point he found himself detained by an Israeli policeman. Questions and answers ensued. At one point the policeman said to him, “As a proud Zionist, I must tell you ....” At which Mr. Husseini burst out laughing.

What’s so funny? the policeman asked. “I have never in my life,” Mr. Husseini replied, “heard anyone refer to Zionism with anything but contempt. I had no idea you could be a proud Zionist.”

I have written about the Arab-Israeli conflict on and off for more than a quarter-century and have spent the past four weeks covering Israel’s war in Gaza. For me, Mr. Husseini’s story sums up how the two sides speak in two distinct tongues, how the very words they use mean opposite things to each other, and how the war of language can confound a reporter’s attempts to narrate — or a new president’s attempts to mediate — this conflict in a way both sides can accept as fair.

Among Israel’s Jews, there is almost no higher value than Zionism. The word is bathed in a celestial glow, suggesting selflessness and nobility. But go anywhere else in the Middle East and Zionism stands for theft, oppression, racist exclusionism.

No place, date or event in this conflicted land is spoken of in a common language. The barrier snaking across and inside the West Bank is a wall to Palestinians, a fence to Israelis. The holiest site in Jerusalem is the Temple Mount to Jews, the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims. The 1948 conflict that created Israel is one side’s War of Independence, the Catastrophe for the other.

After Israel’s three-week air, sea and land assault in Gaza, aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire, it is worth pausing to note how difficult it has been to narrate this war in a fashion others view as neutral, and to contemplate what that means for any attempt by the new Obama administration to try to end it.

It turns out that both narration and mediation require common ground. But trying to tell the story so that both sides can hear it in the same way feels more and more to me like a Greek tragedy in which I play the despised chorus. It feels like I am only fanning the flames, adding to the misunderstandings and mutual antagonism with every word I write because the fervent inner voice of each side is so loud that it drowns everything else out.

George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader who is Mr. Obama’s new special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, could find something similar when he arrives here.

Even though an understanding crystallized a decade ago over the outline of an eventual solution here — Israel returning essentially to its 1967 borders and a Palestinian state forming in the West Bank and Gaza — the two sides’ narratives have actually hardened since attempts to reach a peace foundered.

So Mr. Mitchell, who once led a commission tasked with finding a solution to the conflict, will begin this latest effort grappling with two separate wars fought here, based on two very different sets of assumptions.

Opponents of Israel feel the Gaza fighting has demonstrated (again) everything they have always believed — that Israel is a kind of Sparta that dehumanizes the Palestinians and will do anything to prevent their dignified self-determination. The ways in which Israel attacked — the overwhelming force, the racist graffiti left on walls — are what one has come to expect of that state, they say; those Hamas rockets were no challenge to the Israeli military behemoth, and, after all, who could blame the resistance fighters for launching them to protest the blockade and everything else about Israel’s longstanding occupation?

Those for whom Israel is the victim and never the aggressor likewise saw in this war a reaffirmation of their beliefs — that Hamas, an Islamist terror group, hides its fighters behind women and children; that Israel’s army was an exemplar of restraint and respect, holding its fire when civilians were in sight, allowing tons of humanitarian aid in even while at war (what other army would be so decent?).

Abroad, people care deeply about this conflict. That should make it easier for a reporter to cover, because the actors and place names and history are familiar. But it turns out that like the actors themselves, the audiences have utterly distinct and contrasting sets of assumptions. Every time I fail to tell the story each side tells itself, I have failed in its eyes to do my job. That adds up to a lot of failure.

What’s more, the competing war narratives are part of a larger narrative disconnect.

One side says that after thousands of years of oppression, the Jewish nation has returned to its rightful home. It came in peace and offered its hand to its neighbors numerous times only to be met with a sword. Opposition to Israel, this side argues, stems from Muslim intolerance, nationalist fervor and rank anti-Semitism, all fed by envy at the young state’s success. Every time I write an article about the conflict that does not mirror this story line — if, for example, I focus on Palestinian suffering or alleged Israeli misdeeds or quote a human rights group like Amnesty International — I have proven myself to be a secret sharer with the views of the enemy.

As one recent complainer wrote, “To read your paper, all the questions and criticism are directed at Israel, and it is all based on a collection of anti-Semitic organizations masquerading as humanitarians.”

The other side tells a different story: There is no Jewish nation, only followers of a religion. A group of European colonialists came here, stole and pillaged, throwing hundreds of thousands off their land and destroying their villages and homes. A country born in sin, Israel has built up an aggressive military with help from Washington in the grips of a powerful Jewish lobby.

Every time I fail to allude to that story — when, for example, I examine Israel’s goals in its Gaza war without implicitly condemning it as a massacre, or write about Israel in ways that do not call into question its legitimacy — I have revealed my affiliation and can no longer be trusted as a reporter.

Since the war started on Dec. 27, I have received hundreds of messages about my coverage. They are generally not offering congratulations on a job well done.

“Thanks to you and other scum like yourself,” said one, “Israel can now kill hundreds and you can report the whole thing like it was some random train wreck.”

“Bronner ,” said another, “you’re back to your usual drivel about only the poor filthy Arabs — who voted for the Hamas people who got them into this predicament — with incessant indiscriminate rocket fire on innocent Israelis.”

There are also blogs and chat sites on both sides that spend time accusing all the journalists here of having agendas because our articles mention facts or trends that they consider a diversion from the real story.

Because Israel barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza until the war ended, The New York Times relied on my Palestinian colleague here, Taghreed el-Khodary, for on-the-ground coverage of the fighting.

We would speak several times a day as she cautiously went out. Her first stop was usually Shifa Hospital to get a sense of civilian casualties. Early in the war, at the hospital, she witnessed the murder of an alleged Israeli collaborator by Hamas gunmen. They shot him in the skull more or less in front of her. One of the gunmen told Taghreed that she should never mention what she saw to anyone. She told him there was not a chance she would stay silent, then made some calls to find out about other such events and sent me the information, which we published the next day.

A couple of Arab bloggers went after Taghreed with the worst insult they could come up with — Zionist. She was a Palestinian Uncle Tom doing the bidding of her white-man bosses at a newspaper that, as one reader said in an e-mail message, “is fully complicit in the atrocities that Israel commits against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. You make it sound guiltless and reasonable. That’s your assignment.”

At the same time, Israeli officials and their backers declared that keeping reporters out of Gaza was the right move because no independent journalism could possibly occur in an area run by Hamas, which controls every utterance here. Have any of these people ever read Taghreed’s work? Or any of our work out of here?

Many have but it doesn’t matter because their belief in their own view is so overpowering that anything that contradicts it becomes a minor detail. As another reader put it, “Basically, you are aiding terrorists and causing the increase in bloodshed while telling one-sided stories, totally ignoring the whole picture.”

He did say one thing I agree with: “You should not be a reporter if you are not telling the whole story, not just the parts that sell.”

I would offer a mediator the same advice.

The Sins of Our Fathers

While a few locals debate and Erik Kirk (SoHum Parlance II) moralizes and justifies the obscenity of these religious bigots here, and here, and here ad nauseam, the wanton butchery and deprivation of Israel's war on the Palestinian people, primarily in Gaza, we offer the latest number of people massacred by American weapons:

Rights Group Puts Gaza Death Toll At 1,284 as of Friday, January 23, 2009 according to CBS News.

The condensed version at Earth Times:
Gaza City - A leading Palestinian human rights group Thursday put the final Palestinian death toll of a 22-day Israeli offensive in Gaza at 1,285, saying nearly 70 per cent of the fatalities were civilians. Of the 894 civilians killed, 280 were minors and 111 were women, said the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre For Human Rights (PCHR), whose field workers have been recording the impact of the Israeli onslaught since a fragile truce took effect early Sunday.

In addition, 168 members of Hamas' "civilian" police force were killed, it said in a statement sent to journalists.

That would leave the number of Hamas and other combatants killed at 223.

The human rights centre put the number of injured at 4,336, of whom 1,133 were minors and 735 were women.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza had thus far put the Palestinian toll at more than 1,400 killed and over 5,500 injured.

According to the PCHR field workers, more than 2,700 buildings throughout Gaza were destroyed or damaged.

They include 60 police stations and 28 public office buildings used by the Hamas regime in Gaza, among them ministries, municipalities, governorates and Gaza City's parliament building. But it said they also include at least 2,400 houses, 490 of which were destroyed in air strikes.

Thirty mosques were destroyed and 15 were damaged, it said. Israel has said Hamas used these mosques to store some of its large rocket arsenal, believing that as religious insitutions they would be immune from attacks.

The PCHR called for the establishment of a commission of inquiry to investigate alleged crimes committed by the Israeli military against civilians in Gaza.

Thirteen Israelis were killed during the offensive, launched by Israel to curb Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza at its southern towns and villages

---

The Sins of Our Fathers
. . . and our mothers is a pox on us all.

---

Addendum :: Friday, January 23, 2009
UN releases Gaza attack photos

UN pictures show what appears to white phosphorus 'wedges' raining down on one of its compounds in Gaza

UN representative likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto

There is more than enough evidence that Israel committed war crimes in its three week-long offensive into Gaza, says a UN investigator.

--Joe

Bright Light of Truth, Sacred and Holy - a Pearl

[What makes a man or a woman a sacred or holy pearl? You might find the answer contained within some of Joe's Rules. The Rules speak for themselves.]

'The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul, thy whole mind, and thy whole strength.' (Mark 12:29, 30 WNT)
The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29, 30 WNT)

`The first of all the commands [is], Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God out of all thy heart, and out of thy soul, and out of all thine understanding, and out of all thy strength -- this [is] the first command;
the second [is] like [it], this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; -- greater than these there is no other command.' (Mark 12-29-31 YLT)

"A new commandment I give you, to love one another; that as I have loved you, you also may love one another. It is by this that every one will know that you are my disciples--if you love one another." (John 13:34, 35 WNT)

“Now this is the basis for judgment, that the light has come into the world but men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were wicked. For he that practices vile things hates the light and does not come to the light, in order that his works may not be reproved. But he that does what is true comes to the light, in order that his works may be made manifest as having been worked in harmony with God.” (John 3:19-21 NWT)

1. “Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant.” ( Galatians 6:7 GNT)
2. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (NIV)
3. (“Do not be misled: God is not one to be mocked. For whatever a man is sowing, this he will also reap; because he who is sowing with a view to his flesh (idolatry, homosexuals, murderers, liars, hatreds, etc.) will reap corruption from the flesh, but he who is sowing with a view to the spirit will reap everlasting life from the spirit. (Legitimate individuality, a living soul)

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6 NIV)
(“Do not give what is holy to dogs, neither throw your pearls before swine, that they may never trample them under their feet and turn around and rip you open.” -NWT)

“Stop judging that you may not be judged; for with what judgment you are judging, you will be judged; and with the measure that you are measuring out, they will measure out to you.” (Matthew 7:1, 2 NWT)
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (NIV)

“No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house.” (Matthew 5:15 CSB)

“So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and may glorify your Father who [is] in the heavens.” (Matthew 5:16 YLT)

Four Agreements:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
(by don Miguel Ruiz)

Some Proverbs:

1. The wise are glad to be instructed, but babbling fools fall flat on their faces. (Proverbs 10:8 NLT)
2. To hide hatred is to be a liar; to slander is to be a fool. (Proverbs 10:18 NLT)
3. The godly give good advice, but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense. (Proverbs 10:21 NLT)
4. The godly speak words that are helpful, but the wicked speak only what is corrupt. (Proverbs 10:32 NLT)
5. Without wise leadership, a nation falls; with many counselors, there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14 NLT)
6. The LORD hates people with twisted hearts, but he delights in those who have integrity. (Proverbs 11:20 NLT)
7. A woman who is beautiful but lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig's snout. (Proverbs 11:22 NLT)
8. If you search for good, you will find favor; but if you search for evil, it will find you! (Provers 11:27 NLT)
9. The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush, but the words of the godly save lives. (Proverbs 12:6 NLT)
10. Fools think they need no advice, but the wise listen to others. (Proverbs 12:15 NLT)
11. A fool is quick-tempered, but a wise person stays calm when insulted. (Proverbs 12:16 NLT)
12. The LORD hates those who don't keep their word, but he delights in those who do. Proverbs 12:22 NLT)
13. Wise people don't make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their folly. (Proverbs 12:23 NLT)
14. Arrogance leads to nothing but strife, but wisdom is gained by those who take advice. (Proverbs 13:10 CSB)
15. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy. (Proverbs 13:12 NLT)
16. Wise people think before they act; fools don't and even brag about it! (Proverbs 13:16 NLT)
17. If you refuse to discipline your children, it proves you don't love them; if you love your children, you will be prompt to discipline them. (Proverbs 13:24 NLT)
18. Do not answer anyone stupid according to his foolishness,m that you yourself also may not become equal to him. (Proverbs 26:4 NWT)
19. Have you seen a man wise in his own eyes: There is more hope for the stupid one than for him. (Proverbs 26:12 NWT) or,
20. Trembling at men is what lays a snare, but he that is trusting in Jehovah will be protected. (Proverbs 29:25. NWT

Some simple truths plagiarized by Joe:

1. Every man is rich in his excuses to safeguard his prejudices, his instincts and his opinions.
2. Social good is what brings peace to family and society.
3. A man's heart hold his own truth.
4. Each truth you learn will be for you, as new as if it had never been written.
5. Envious greed must govern to posses and ambition must posses to govern.
6. Seek the source of truth not the image of it.
7. What you are doing does not matter so much as what you are learning from doing it.
8. Every man must be in the rhythm of his time, such is wisdom.
9. The honest stage a society can reach is when its leaders are chosen by their ability instead of their wealth (or color of their skin).
10. In every vital activity it is the path that matters.
11. A man's heart hold his own truth.
12. Leave him in error who loves his error.
13. True sages are those who give what they have, without meanness and without secrets!
14. A man must learn the fact that everything he does will have its consequences.
15. Sound skepticism is the necessary condition for the discovery of truth.
16. The best and shortest road towards knowledge of truth is nature.
17. Popular beliefs must be examined in order to discover the original thought.
18. A seed can't reach its potential without receiving corresponding energies from the sky
19. There are two kinds of error: blind credulity and piecemeal criticism.
20. What reveals itself to me ceases to be mysterious for me alone, if I unveil it to anyone else, they hear mere words.
21. Growth doesn't depend on the will of the intellect, but on the intensity of the inner urge.
22. Never believe a word without putting its truth to the test.
23. To gain knowledge you must first gain peace.
24. Listen to your convictions, even if they seem absurd to your reason.
25. Judge by cause, not effect.
26 Peace is the fruit of activity, not of sleep.
27. People bring about their own undoing through their tongues.
28 Love is one thing, knowledge is another.
29. To know means to record in one's memory, but to understand means to make part of oneself.
30. Exuberance brings action, but the inner light grows in silence and concentration.

If you made it this far, good for you. Joe lives by these rules and applies, as he see's fit, the simple truths contained that make a bright pearl. How many of you can say the same?

--Joe

The Antichrist Declares War On Majority Rights

On a sunny Sunday morning as I sat down to savor my morning brew, I was confronted with this Times-Standard headline: "A CHANGING LANDSCAPE" followed by, "Half of eucalyptus trees along Highway 101 corridor to be cut" and "The new civil rights movement." A changing landscape alright; a destructive change.

Here's your declaration of war right, from the mouths of civil terrorist:

Local businesses and individuals that contributed to the “Yes on 8” campaign were also targeted at Saturday's protest, with some speakers calling for boycotts.

”Support the businesses that supported us,” Susan McGee urged the crowd, drawing loud cheers of support.

Linda Atkins, who won a city council seat representing Eureka's 2nd Ward on Election Day, also urged those in the crowd to use their power as consumers to effect change.

”We have a big economic impact on this state -- let's use it,” she said.

Atkins told the crowd that the proudest moment of her life came when she recently married her wife at the Humboldt County Courthouse.

Included in this is the posting on the Humboldt Herald, for one, the names and addresses of those and I quote: "SUPPORTERS OF PROP H8te (ARCATA & EUREKA):"

The will of the people means nothing to the thug bully. All he or she cares about is getting his or her way. There's usually only one way to deal with bullies and these people, and I use the word "people" loosely, would be wise to remember that when they go military on their relatively peaceful neighbors.

It's one thing to take Democracy into other parts of the world and force them to convert, destroying their culture and religious beliefs held for thousands of years, depriving them or causing the to forfeit their legitimate right to exist. It is an all together different situation when you try to force a depraved sub-culture on your own people, destroying or at least trying to destroy the very basis for their and your existence.

These "people" are not interested in civil rights, or any other right you can think of. They want legitimacy and equality to all other members of society. Unfortunately, they are fighting a losing battle no matter how many people think or believe "these people" are endowed with unalienable Rights. That God or Universe our founding fathers believed granted all "people," excluding women, blacks and homosexuals of course, has spoken. A plague is upon them and they are a cancer in our society. When you vote such "people" into office you bring the very essence of corruption into halls of government. The lines are being drawn and drawn deeply.

So goes the eucalyptus trees, so goes the people; mostly young people, I'd say.

--Joe

Joe Took A Nap

Yep! He took a nap. He got tired of listening to all the blather and just tuned out for awhile.

Problem was, he didn't realize that the world had changed while he was napping. Unfortunately, the lunatics are still hogging our streets, pedestrians and bicycle riders are still threatened daily, not to mention the hungry homeless. Our homes and businesses aren't worth as much as they were, but our garbage is.

Joe is always amazed at how the poor and middle-class Americans beg the Republican Elite to take their money and their children's money too. Guess they didn't expect to be thrown out into the street did they?

Oh well, just do a little rioting for food and they'll all find themselves in a concentration camp somewhere in S. Palin's Alaska.

--Joe

Does The US Constitution Matter?

Welcome to the New American Monarchy

Wikipedia begins its definition of the US Constitution adopted and ratified in 1787-1789 by saying: "The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America." The purpose of that Consitution, or so we were told, was to replace the supreme power of the English Monarchy. A despotic, corrupt supreme law that had and used that power to "jail civilians indefinitely."

Court: US Can Jail Civilians Indefinitely

A federal appeals court has ruled President Bush can order the indefinite jailing of civilians imprisoned in the United States. The five-to-four decision effectively reverses last year’s ruling that the administration cannot label US residents “enemy combatants” and jail them indefinitely without charge. The ruling came in the case of the only person still held as an enemy combatant on US soil. Ali al-Marri was arrested six years ago at his home in Peoria, Illinois, where he lived with his wife and five children. He was initially charged with credit card fraud and lying to federal agents. But in June 2003, President Bush declared him an enemy combatant and ordered him into military custody. He has spent the last four years in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Al-Marri’s attorney Jonathan Hafetz said, “This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country—citizen or legal resident—and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial.”

You can read more about this here. Also, at the New York Times.

Lies and False Accusations Rule!

What Value Words of Truth?

United States Declaration of Independence
1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy from Wikipedia

America's legitimate right to stand or exist as nation co-equal to all other nation's on the earth including its patriarchal adversary, England and its aristocratic ruling monarchy, was founded on the legal premise expounded in the Declaration of Independence. These men, the architects of this long lost Republic, argued their right to overthrow the rule of a despotic parent that refused to recognise their offspring's right to legitimate existence did so by invoking God's recognition. Hence, these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Those men not only spoke and wrote such words, they put their lives on the line for treason for making such a Declaration. They didn't hope nor offer hope in some angry, senile old man or some word-hack spouting sanctimonious ideas about hope and trust in vague promises of a new direction.

If you need someone to tell you what to do, how to do it and to speak for you, take some time and read the book by an American historian and political scientist, Howard Zinn published in 1980, A Peoples History of the United States. Herein lies the history of a free people that knew how to speak for themselves and how to act for themselves.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These words became their truth.

All men may have been created equal, but very few act like they are, actually believe that equality is a self-evident truth, with the rare exception of the kind of people Mr. Zinn wrote about, perhaps. Joe Blow, like he says, is just a nobody. So, he celebrates the Fourth of July the only way he knows how to celebrate life, like nobody, but like any first-class citizen, he votes with his feet.

What value are your words of truth?