Lucitanian
serenebuddha_zps5ab796b8.jpg

The face of compassion

…

5cc2c0ce-1e37-452a-8a80-865fd5f6940c_zps63c9352f.jpg

.
.
.

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
- BUDDHA -

.
.
.

The end of the non-time and the beginning of time

Or was hope the greatest evil in Pandora’s box.
- An essay of thoughts on Friday, December 21, 2012

Today was billed as the end of the world by many but in fact it may well have been the end of an era. Certainly something happened today but it was not the final cataclysmic apocalyptic violence that some people had frightened the innocent into believing might descend upon our little home planet. It is a brilliant day to wish you all the best for a new and exciting future.

A long time ago when I went to Kiel School in Dumbarton, Scotland, they instilled upon me their motto “Persevere in Hope”. The School was founded by Sir William Mackinnon (13 March 1823 - 22 June 1893) a ship-owner and businessman who built up substantial commercial interests in India and East Africa. He founded the British India Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial British East Africa Company. Originally the School was at Southend on the Mull of Kintyre, near Campbletown and gave bursaries to selected Scottish boys to become engineers with “opportunities” in his various business interests.

Although I have followed the spirit of the Kiel motto for most of my life I have since realised that from the industrial revolution on, the purpose of schools have been, in the main, to take “present” oriented little beasts and make them more “future” oriented, as Professor Philip Zimbardo points out in his excellent RSA Animate – “The Secret Powers of Time” or in other words to train generations of little worker bees to take the burden of endless illogical, mindless drudgery and suffer in the hope of some future reward most of which is more likely to be accruing materially to an employer.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "Hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torment of man." Nietzsche was speaking in reference to the myth of Pandora's box, which was given to Pandora by the god Zeus. When Pandora opened the box, all of the evils of the world flew out except for hope (though some renderings of the story have hope leaving the box later). If a man were to encounter one of the evils from the box, he might give up his life, throw up his hands in surrender and die. If he has hope though, he continues to endure the evil. But if it's an evil that can never be endured or outmatched, then the man has lived his entire life in useless misery, a life that has been made much longer by the illusion of hope. Some philosophers would believe, therefore, that if hope distracts you from the truth of your situation, then it's a bad thing.

So, what has become so heavy and burdensome that the evil of hope is only prolonging our suffering or rather, is this day a harbinger of a new era, to bring new and positive hope to the world and why? Well, in these troubled times unfortunately very few people can be called leaders. Most are hemmed in by their own lack of imagination or they are shackled to the status quo they have sworn to serve and conserve. So our economic, political, and every other system behaves like the lunatic that repeats the same actions again and again and always expects a different result. But one leader stands out so I will differ to his wise words to explain the real meaning of hope and change:

Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, called for a new age to begin December 21, 2012. Speaking at the United Nations in September, Morales said the date signals an end to individualism and capitalism and a turn toward the collective good. That's a common theme for Morales, who often speaks of 'vivir bien,' a phrase that can be translated as living well. 'Vivir bien' is often defined by the Andean nation's leaders as pursuing the collective good in balance with the Earth, and contrasted with 'living better,' which is seeking to amass wealth at the expense of the planet or other people.
Below is an excerpt from Morales' speech.

news_evo_morales_zps17acf660.jpg

"I wish to take this opportunity to announce an invitation to an international meeting on the 21 of December this year. A meeting closing the age of non-time and receiving the new age of balance and harmony for Mother Earth. It would take so long to tell you about the knowledge of our indigenous brothers in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, but basically we are issuing this invitation to hold a virtual debate, and also in person, on the following topics:

Number 1: Global crisis of capitalism

Number 2: Mould of civilization, world government, capitalism, socialism, community, and culture of life

Number 3: Climate crisis, relationship of the human being with nature

Number 4: Common energy, energy of change

Number 5: Awareness of Mother Earth

Number 6: Recovery of ancestral uses and customs, natural cosmic calendar

Number 7: “Living well” as a solution to the global crisis, because we affirm once again that no one can only “live better” by plundering natural resources. This is a profound debate that I would like to have with the world
.
Number 8: Food sovereignty of course, security with food sovereignty

Number 9: Integration, brotherhood, community economy, complementary, right to communication, community learning for life, the new holistic human, the end of patriarchy, awakening of self knowledge, and of course health which is so important.

“And I would like to say that according to the Mayan calendar the 21 of December is the end of the non-time and the beginning of time. It is the end of the Macha and the beginning of the Pacha, the end of selfishness and the beginning of brotherhood, it is the end of individualism and the beginning of collectivism – 21 of December this year. The scientists know very well that this marks the end of an anthropocentric life and the beginning of a bio-centric life. It is the end of hatred and the beginning of love, the end of lies and beginning of truth. It is the end of sadness and the beginning of happiness, it is the end of division and the beginning of unity, and this is a theme to be developed. That is why we invite all of you, those of you who bet on mankind, we invite those who want to share their experiences for the benefit of mankind."

(Transcript of Evo Morales Ayma, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, at the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 26, 2012. Full Speech video)

ku-medium_zps8e244ba3.jpg

**The Overview Effect**.
For more than four decades, astronauts from many cultures and backgrounds have been telling us that, from the perspective of Earth orbit and the Moon, they have gained such a vision. There is even a common term for this experience: "The Overview Effect", a phrase coined in the book of the same name by space philosopher and writer Frank White. It refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, the astronauts tell us, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this "pale blue dot" becomes both obvious and imperative. Even more so, many of them tell us that from the Overview perspective, all of this seems imminently achievable, if only more people could have the experience!

So, how does this absolutely necessary and dynamic shift or what would appear to be a much needed monumental change in human mentality come about? What are the blockages in every system that now prevents humanity from changing its economy to deal with our crisis of capitalism, or in our politics, our failure to face a Our Common Future, From One Earth to One World or the absolute failure of COP 18 in Doha earlier in December of 2012 and the dismal future of international climate policy. These common and global problems depend not only on the intransigence of ever larger and more complex institutions which get bogged down in power politics and horse trading compromises but they also depend on the constituent demands of human social behavior. The change needed must come “one human at a time”. But the good news is as human beings we are in fact “hard wired” to survive by cooperation and that “competition” and “aggression” are in fact not our default mode. We don’t need to learn a new way to be human we just have to remember how.

e7a79d33-d523-4112-81c8-e0c0630f013f_zpsb906a9eb.jpg

In yet another animated talk from RSA Jeremy Rifkin presented - The Empathic Civilisation in which he shows these realities in terms of “mirror neurons”, which clearly require us to rethink Evolutionary Biology, Neuro-Cognitive Science, Education, Research and many other fields of discipline.

Probably the area that is in need of most urgent attention is that of education which has in the western world anyway been turned into a sausage factory for economic animals and has very little left in it in terms of the necessary development of human survival skills for the future. I would like to append here what I think is a totally appropriate short exposé on this very question by the brilliant Sir Ken Robinson- Changing Education Paradigms – in which he points out that children today are right not to believe that if they work hard, do well, they will get a job. Spain and Greece are the proof of that sad fact and in many countries education has been debased into a commodity to profit institutions and corporations while starting youth on their path to endless debt slavery but that’s just my opinion.

“I guess there are two kinds of hope, blind hope and enlightened hope. I believe most humans know the truth but their problems are in facing it and their weakness in wishing it away rather than facing it squarely.” - HH the Dalai Lama -

Zionist Forestry, “Only by blood will we get the land”?

An essay written on Zionism

Polynesia_zps84307b7d.jpg
the Zionists established their own Palestine Shipping Company, which bought the German passenger ship the ex "Polynesia" ex "Hohenstein" and renamed it "Tel Aviv." This ship embarked on its first trip from the German port of Bremerhaven to Haifa at the beginning of 1935. On this trip, the ship bore on its stern the Hebrew letters of the new name "Tel Aviv while from the mast fluttered the swastika; "a combination of metaphysical absurdity" wrote one of the passengers later.

We all know the proverb about not seeing the forest for the trees, well sometimes it is called camouflage and having read a little of the history and of what was later called the Holocaust as well as the constant crisis that has plagued the Middle East, it becomes apparent that there is a well orchestrated confusion in the minds of many. It is more than fair to ask the question: To what degree the Zionist movement contributed to the Nazi extermination of Jews in a Criminal Conspiracy? The Zionist project is wrongly attributed by many to all Jews. It in fact has been a blight to many whether they know it or not.

But firstly what is it to be a Jew? Is it religious? Not necessarily, because there are also non-religious Jews, But there is a default religious element because one cannot be another religion and Jewish. Are Jews the Judaic Semites, those exiled in the times of destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem or Second Temple? Not really. The vast majority instead of being descendants of Abraham, Israelites, the Jews from Eastern Europe and Western Asia may well be descended from Mongolians and other Asiatic peoples who had adopted Judaism as their "religion" around the 11th c. and have become known as "Jews". Arthur Koestler who has published “The thirteenth Tribe” affirms earlier scholars, showing that Eastern European "Jews" are neither Israelites nor "Semites," but instead ethnically Khazars, Mongols, and people of Hun descent. Those interested in ethnology can also refer to “The Jews of Khazaria”, by Kevin Alan which traces the development of the Khazars from their early beginnings as a tribe to the decline and fall of their kingdom. It also examines the many migrations of the Khazar people into Hungary, the Ukraine, and other areas of Europe and their subsequent assimilation, providing the most comprehensive treatment of these issues.

It is quite possible that a large part of the present generations of immigrant Jews originating from Northern and Eastern Europe, Iberia, North Africa and the Americas, who migrated to Palestine and later to what is now Israel where not of Semitic ancestry at all. Of the millions claiming that they are “returning” to their ancestral “God Given Land” there are many probably living a myth, an outright lie. An article in "Ha'Aretz" newspaper form Nov. 22, 2001 entitled, "Study finds close genetic connection between Jews, Kurds." said, "The people closest to the Jews from a genetic point of view may be the Kurds”, according to results of a new study at, the Hebrew University.

There has been an inordinate amount of study and dispute on these and other theories on genetic basis, in an attempt to establish the theoretical “Jewish Gene” originating in Israel, but these are mostly based on the Y chromosome of male inheritance. However Jewishness is not defined genetically. Other Y-chromosomes can enter the Jewish gene pool through conversion or through a non-Jewish father. Jewish status is determined by the mother. Tribe membership follows the father’s line. For a society it is as unhealthy as the legal need was in Germany in the 30s to genealogically prove ones “Aryanness”.

Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand author of "When and How the Jewish People Was Invented” has proposed another theory as he attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. He proposes that at a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. He suggests "The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

Anti- Semitism has been and continues to be a central and necessary factor to furthering Zionism. Zionism from its outset has used, depended on and in some cases actively caused and stimulated, what is referred to by its deliberately confusing misnomer, Anti-Semitism, meaning Anti-Jewish, but following the myth. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that in fact "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." In December 1991, the General Assembly rescinded this resolution through another Resolution 4686. It was not insignificant that at the time, the Soviet Union, a major sponsor of the "Zionism is racism" doctrine, had completed its rapid collapse and Israel made revocation of resolution 3379 an absolute condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference.

Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl (1860-1904) the founder of Zionist movement was in fact an outright elitist racist intimating great shame of his own ethnicity in relation to sections of the Jewish community. He wrote in his diaries, anti-Semitism, "is an understandable reaction to Jewish defects," and that, "each country can only absorb a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany has already too many Jews." He believed Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, and wrote: "Every nation in whose midst Jews live is, either covertly or openly, anti-Semitic; its immediate cause is our excessive production of mediocre intellects, who cannot find an outlet downwards or upwards. When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat. When we rise, there also rises our terrible power of the purse."

Although Nazis produced an Aryan myth of superiority and laws to support a racist view of German nationalism in 1935 accordingly, the Zionists in fact applauded the “racial” divide which they saw as reinforcing their own identity myth. Instead of being upset by these laws, the head of the German Jewish Community and Head of Germany's Zionist Movement, Mr Georg Kareski gave an interview to the SS magazine 'ANGRIFF' printed on the 23 December 1935 in which he said he had been trying for years to find a method to keep the two races (Germans & Jews) separate, and he considered the race laws from the 15th Sept 1935 supported the Jewish desires. He implied that the Jews had been struggling against assimilation for nearly 2000 years and they needed such laws to support them in their struggle.

When thinking of Zionism it also helps to remember Lincoln’s words about fooling people… First it’s about fooling Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Moroccans, Turks, Iraqis, Iranians, who for hundreds of years had lived in relative harmony with the people around them. Yes, there is no denying that uprisings against Jews and pogroms had occurred, but there were many varying degrees of assimilation of Jews too. Especially in Germany it was a major task involved in transforming the large and by far mostly integrated Jewish population into accepting the hypothesis that they were so “different”, that they were being persecuted, all because of their religion and “race/ethnicity/tribe”. Zionists had to convince the people of what they call their Diaspora, of this, even those who were not religious, and even if they were not generally feeling persecuted. But racism and persecution can be easily called up and organized by stealth. Perhaps the most ardent Zionists collaborator with the German SS was agent Feivel Polkes of the Hagannah (the forerunner of the IDF - Israel Defense Forces) the Zionist underground military organization in British-run Palestine. Polkes availed his services to gather information for Germany that did not conflict with his own political ends. Among other things, he would vigorously support German foreign policy interests in the Middle East and use his influence to secure sources of oil for the German Reich … “if German foreign currency regulations for Jews emigrating to Palestine would be relaxed”.
Polkes wanted the Nazis to use their powers of persuasion to ensure that German refugees only went to Palestine. The Gestapo were happy to do “everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine.” SS files show that in return for information from Polkes on Jewish attempts to kill Hitler, “pressure will be exerted on the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to oblige Jews who emigrate from Germany to go exclusively to Palestine, and not to other countries.” Not only were the Zionists trying to close the doors of Britain and the USA to Jewish refugees: they were pressing the Nazis not to allow anyone to leave unless it was for Palestine, and passing information to the Gestapo.
Theodor Herzl the founder of Zionism was absolutely right when he stated “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies.”

Quoting from “Jews against Zionism”: “The Transfer (Haavara) Agreement (which promoted the emigration of German Jews to Palestine) implemented in 1933 and abandoned at the beginning of WWII is an important example of the cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism. Through this agreement, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930’s to support Jewish development in Palestine and further the Zionist goals.” It boosted the Nazi economy at a time when Jews worldwide were encouraged by other Zionist organizations to boycott German goods. Goods worth a total of 139.5 million Reich mark were transferred by 1939. The Agreement also made it possible to settle a large number of German Jews in Palestine.

Before Hitler came to power, less than 3% of Germany's 500,000 Jews belonged to the Zionist movement.

Himmler's SS cooperated with the Hagannah. Reportedly, Himmler's grandfather was Jewish. (Himmler relative marries Israeli - Israel News, Ynetnews / Eichmann was Jewish) The German SS secretly supplied weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs. (F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 63-64, 105, 219-220.) (aangirfan: The Zionists are in bed with the Nazis).

65eed88a-0c67-416b-a8bb-907c1a8e9dd1_zpsfa8bfc3a.jpg

~"Nazi-Zionist" medallion was issued by the Berlin daily Der Angriff to commemorate a joint visit to Zionist Palestine by SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official Kurt Tuchler.

But let us not digress into the myriads of detailed information readily available in the public domain which shows overt and covert cooperation between the Hitler’s SS and Menachem Begin’s Betar. As chief of the Betar, he preferred the brown shirts of the Hitler gangs, a uniform Begin and Betar members wore to all meetings and rallies - at which they greeted each other, opened and closed meetings with the fascist salute.

Judaism is the forest, and the Zionists are the foresters. There are several ways to manage a forest; transplant selected trees, planting seedlings, pruning and training them as they grow. The latter was done by social conditioning, using psychology techniques that are well studied some might call it “brainwashing” and practiced better in a closed commune like a “Kibbutz” where children can be raised apart from their parents and reinforced by strong bonding such as through military service.

While gaining cooperation with Hitler on the one side in founding of a Eretz Israel in Palestine, some 60% of all capital invested in the settler economy in Palestine between 1933 and 1939 came from Nazi Germany, by June 1937, the largest exporter to Palestine was Germany and that was despite, simultaneously, “The worldwide boycott against Germany in 1933 and the later all-out declaration of war against Germany initiated by the Zionist leaders and the World Jewish Congress (apparently) enraged Hitler so that he threatened to destroy the Jews…” (Rabbi Schwartz, New York Times, Sept. 30, 1997) And so persecution by the Nazis was assured and the uprooting was started. The selection process was, one might say also a “collaborative venture”. Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had arranged the Balfour Declaration and was to become the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit: "The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centred on emigration. I was asked: 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No.' … From the depths of the tragedy I want to save … young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. … Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it."[Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937. Cited in Yahya, p. 55.]

The Zionists had limited success in their drive to relocate German Jews to Palestine. Of the two and a half million Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis between 1935 and 1943, less than 9% went to settle in Palestine. Quoting The Order of the SS (1981), Professor Frederic Reider, "By the end of 1939, 150,000 Austrian Jews had left, by choice, to go to live in Palestine, as had also 120,000 German Jews and 78,000 from Bohemia/Moravia. This emigration had been organised by the Third Reich, with Hagannah’s approval, and was carried out clandestinely by boat, despite the draconian measures taken by Britain to stop it." Many of international treaties normally used by independent states were present in Eretz Israel prior to the establishment of the Israeli State. A good example of such an agency was the establishment of the Mossad in the 1930's which right into the beginning of WW2 had offices in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and London, which were funded by and reported to the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv. (See Jon and David Kimche's book, the Secret Roads)

For these trees to take root in Palestine the Palestinians had to be torn out of the ground. They were the brush and the weeds which had to be removed. Indeed, the large presence of Palestinians led many Zionists to openly advocate their removal. The head of the Jewish Agency's colonization department stated: "there is no room for both peoples together in this country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them: not one village, not one tribe, should be left."[ Director Joseph Weitz of the Jewish National Land Fund, Dec. 19, 1940. , quoted in Bober, A., ed. 1972. The Other Israel. NY: Doubleday: 13. ] But alas I digress, and that is another sad story as they say.

In Kasztner's List: Zionist collaboration in Hungary by Seán Mac Mathúna he writes; “It is clear that there is much evidence that the Zionists took this opportunity not to help the Jewish people as they were being slowly led to the death camps, or alert the world about the plans of the Nazis, but to collaborate with them and use their position to save their own, and not the bulk of Jewry who were being exterminated towards the end of the war. ….. we have proof that the establishment of Zionist state in Palestine was the most important priority of the Zionists - not saving the Jews of Europe from extermination. As Rabbi Moshe Shonfeld, in his book The Holocaust Victims Accuse (1977) commented:
The rescue committee of the Jewish Agency falsely bore the name 'rescue'. It would be more appropriate to call it the Committee for Covering Up, Ignoring and Silencing … the thoughts of Zionist officials and especially the chairman, Greenbaum, were steeped in plots and schemes to use the holocaust and its consequences to build up the national home and to realize the demands for establishing a Jewish State.”

… He refers to the same Zionist leader Yitzhak Greenbaum, who said in a speech in Tel Aviv, Palestine, on February 18th, 1943 that “One should resist this wave to push Zionist activities to secondary importance”. He also said 'One cow in Palestine is more important than all the European Jews'. The motto of the Zionists was Rak B'Dam (Only by blood will we get the land).

If the Jews are the forest and Israel the trees where does the nation of Israel end? The blurring of that answer has been the work of the Zionist forester managing the estate for so many years. In building myths and wars of continued territorial expansion, in designs, deceptions and abuses to conceive a nation the forester has lost perspective and blighted his trees with a perversion. The historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand wrote; “In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied,”

For more interesting reading on this subject see : "The Secret Contacts - Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933 - 1941"

civilization-collapse_zps6c7979b8.jpg

civilization collapse

The Great Conspiracy, and Hope for an Enlightened Humanity.

My mother, now 96, has a devoted helper Madelena, a Christian in the true sense of love and sacrifice, and a reported discussion between them about what are the causes of the general depression we feel was the inspiration for this essay. It was they who reminded me of the real meaning of Christ’s birth. It is easy to forget that the Christian saviour was born in an occupied territory, where a tyrannical imperial government from far away imposed its reign, collecting unjust taxes and maintaining power through corrupt officials and oppressive institutions, while juggling sectarian conflicts. Much like today you might say but it took those hardships, the miseries and suffering they caused for a very few people to open their hearts to a new beginning. Over time a small sect of only a few people in a small corner of the world, ironically in what is today the occupied territories of the Palestinian people, asked questions of their teachers and leaders, accepting the need for fundamental change, not just in political or economic semantics, but a change which meant the redefinition of the “meaning of life” for them and all mankind.

By getting back to the causes of our depression today, analysing it may suggest some clue as to its elimination. Have you, like me, been asking yourself that same question? “What is wrong with everybody these days?” People seem to be going around in their own bubbles of insecurity and depression, or is it just me? One of the causes I feel is “thoughtlessness”, but not in the sense it is most often used, but in fact just not thinking. Believe it or not, there is a great conspiracy afoot to make you not think and by not thinking, regress to a child-like state of “reacting”. This makes you more readily controllable. Like bread and games for the masses in Roman times. It is a form of brain-washing, used in propaganda and commercial advertising. In this age of jingles and buzz-words, in fact, if you try to think deeper it becomes painful, because by thinking you have to face the consequences of logic, or those of the lack of it in where we find ourselves. Deeper thought leads to the unravelling of complexities of the truth out there that surround you, as well as your own frailties and limitations in dealing with it all.

What does this mean? A manual for a gas heater can illustrate the problem. Here in the European Union it is written in 5 languages with all the warnings about the distances that inflammable objects must be kept from the front, the ventilation required, protection of infants and children, etc. You would think that these matters would be taken care of by “common sense”, but for legal reasons and others which I will try to touch on here, the manufacturer has to more or less assume, that although the purchaser is able to read the manual at hand and understand its contents, he or she has zero cognitive learning capacity, virtually comes from another planet in which gas heaters are rare, and is completely devoid of any common sense. By the number of accidents with gas heaters and their causes, such assumptions are not too far from the truth.

So for safety’s sake, these days, bottles are made child proof cars are made crash proof, speed limits are enforced by radars with cameras and people around the world “dumb down” to follow the complex systems without thought or question, while “authorities” invent regulations on the next human activity that needs to be controlled to make life “better” and so the tyranny of the mindless goes on to an ever lower common denominator supported by the most famous of all lines “Don’t ask me, I just work here!”. On that basis human beings are generally treating themselves and being treated by each other more like cattle, digits, or statistics, so they feel helpless and exasperated trying to understand or fulfil some senseless regulation of their local government, for example on one end of the scale, or on the other end, when uneducated, and brainwashed soldiers commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in the name of the defending a state saying, “We’re just following orders”. The psychologists and psychiatrists will tell you that all the mental conflicts experienced don’t disappear but are sublimated, or put where we don’t think about them but where they still have an effect on us and contribute to stresses and aggressive attitudes.

The problem with thinking is that the brain and its common sense are like muscles, yet more complex. If we don’t use them, we loose their use. From birth through adulthood, and as society changes and develops, we go through a process of socialization; adaptation to the demands of social interaction to facilitate the peaceful functioning of the individual in society. Through contact with family, environment, peers, and institutions, the human being, with all his or her wondrous capability and potential, unfortunately is often not at all encouraged to develop the use of their magnificent gifts and sensitivities. Humans are often inhibited to understand nature, capture the abstract, plummet the depths of philosophy, understand the concepts of relativity of all existence, and create applications for human betterment through thought, science, technologies and arts. Rather, human development is more or less stunted in its growth by being put into a very limited space, a mental straight jacket, trained and fed all the answers as in repeated practice for multiple choice exams, and thereby “programmed”. The TV gives you the news you need to know and all the opinions you need to have. Everything is laid out that will be needed to enable a lifetime without thought or deduction, just competition with fellow humans to succeed, in the endeavour to produce and consume, as economic cyber units controlled by the social and political-economic system and the limitations that are applied. You are free to choose only between predefined options. In other words the unthinking individual is allowed to subsist on a credit harness working on diminished pre-frontal cortex functions only; sustenance, comfort, sex and other pleasure being 95% of motivation, thereby he or she is closer to a horse except for the addition of training for aggressive competition and tribalism, imparted in developed economies by the education systems through teaching of “patriotism” and “competitive sports”. What these systems do not support however is real education which requires asking basic and uncomfortable questions and playing with ideas, necessary elements to change and progress, nor do these systems teach us understanding of mutual reliance, interdependence and cooperation in all things, the essence of “society” nor do they teach the real and spiritual web of causes and effects of our existence. We are only trained to be effective competitive producers and consumers. Is it any wonder that the fabric of society and civilization is disintegrating and nearly 1 in 5 adults in Europe are taking prescription drugs for depression?

It is difficult and confusing to face a time of economic disintegration when politicians tell citizens on the one hand to spend in order to help the economy and at the same time to save more, all with the money they don’t even have, while governments for their part write blank cheques to their friends and fellow elite in large corporations and financial institutions, expecting some future children and great grand children of citizens now facing unemployment or even homelessness, to pay the costs. We abide mindless wars and destruction while mammoth corporations accumulate gargantuan windfall profits. Fisherman are turned to pirates when the licenses to fish and pollute their costs are handed out for gain to foreign corporations by gangsters in a puppet “interim government” as was the case in Somalia, supported only by the CIA and US missiles in the “War on Terror” aided by the paid surrogate invading Ethiopian army, a band of rapists and murderers, all covered by a fig leaf of a UN resolution which defied even its own precepts. Again and again we are faced with having to look at our fellow humans as either “them” or “us” the tribal mentality, don’t think, don’t ask questions “just following orders”, "might is right", “God is on our side”, black is white and there are no greys. We are already there, where entire villages of “pirates” are wiped out, including baby pirates and little 5 year old girl pirates, by NATO bombing, pirates, terrorists, insurgents… It’s all the same. How did they manage to drag them into the mess they made? Yet again it will be reported unintended “collateral damage”. The Palestinians, Afghans, Pakistanis, and Iraqis know how it works already. The suffering goes on everywhere in different forms in different places. Most have forgotten Burma and Tibet. The media coverage has been made more difficult there.

So where does the joy of the birth of Christ come into it. The fact is that a few hundred people a couple of thousand years ago in an occupied land gave meaning to the birth of a child, their saviour, despite being condemned by their fellow Jews at the time, eventually Jesus was acknowledged far and wide as a prophet, even by Mohamed. A miraculous birth if only for what it brought to the word; it transformed empires, a renewal of life, similar in many ways too, to another birth relayed in the story of the Buddha.

All the religions and philosophies of the world tell us to open our hearts and think of something greater than ourselves. Whether through belief in God or through study of science and philosophy, the truth is out there, and it does set us free. There are many ways to the same summit. When the world consists of one’s ego, then problems and suffering may take up most of the world, but the more one sees and dreams beyond, and learns to have compassion for the suffering of others and can see its causes, the smaller one’s own problems become. They become nothing. The good news is that in this day and age knowledge of troubles is widely and generally transmitted through multiple communication resources all over the world, allowing us all to become more deeply aware of each other, bringing us closer together. It may not be happening for everyone yet, but it has started. Some people are thinking and learning to decipher news from propaganda. We know that not all Muslims are terrorists not all Americans are war criminals. The limitations of the systems run by greed and egos are being patently demonstrated on a global backdrop of banks and stock exchanges. We all know that we need a new “system” to replace self serving greed protected by machines of war, but for this we need an enlightened humanity to invent it. The ignorance that supports the ego has to be removed like a veil falling away. We know the truth is out there. The truth knows no class, nor religion, nor colour, nor boundaries of prestige, wealth, education or status. There are not just hundreds but millions of people who are thinking, and are actively preparing for a meaningful and dynamic future. Unfortunately like two thousand years ago, again this change may not be without pain, and to overcome it we need to help each other.

The good news is also that it is not by pressure that people find truth, but more often it is through hardship and suffering that they eventually ask themselves the necessary questions which lead them to discover that the needs of others are greater than their own, and that the world is so much bigger than their ego, or that their heart can hold love for one or two more people, or as many as all the world’s and its sentient beings and the weight is not a feather more. People, their minds like a vacuum search, sometimes unconsciously, for answers to their suffering, and although the answers are no instant panacea, they make the suffering less by degrees, making lives worth living, and affording less room for what is generally called evil. Taking away the Jingle Bells, the Santa Claus, the turkey, the presents, and all the accessories of modern materialism, for me this is the meaning of Christmas and its truth and we need it more than ever.

Finally two quotes from Jalal ad-Din Rumi the great 13th century Sufi mystic:

“Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.”

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

oussama-ben-laden_zps3205edcd.jpg

Thoughts on the assasination of Osama Bin Laden

I think it is important to remember who Osama Bin Laden was and to remember that the FBI in the USA categorically stated that the 9-11 events were not attributed to Bin Laden in their summary of charges, as posted on their site, because they did not have sufficient evidence to link him to that crime.

I think it is important to hear what Bin Laden actually said about the matter. On September 28, 2001, Osama Bin Laden was interviewed by the Karachi Ummat, an Urdu language newspaper. The US Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a component of the CIA, translated:

“… I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel. There is also a warning for those Muslim countries, which witnessed all these as a silent spectator. What had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya, and Bosnia? Only one conclusion could be derived from the indifference of the United States and the West to these acts of terror and the patronage of the tyrants by these powers that America is an anti-Islamic power and it is patronizing the anti-Islamic forces. Its friendship with the Muslim countries is just a show, rather deceit. By enticing or intimidating these countries, the United States is forcing them to play a role of its choice. Put a glance all around and you will see that the slaves of the United States are either rulers or enemies [of Muslims]. The US has no friends, nor does it want to keep one because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others. Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates […] Who ever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed […] The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive […] Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taliban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of $40 billion. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance. Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other US President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.”

Immediately after the alleged targeted assassination of Osama Bin Laden news seekers around the world were again bombarded with misinformation, contradictions, and just plain, spin, in order to develop a vacuum of truth and the information environment was deliberately seeded with speculation. This then allows authorities through whatever channels also to put out wild theories and rumour that they could then consolidate and deny along with the truth as pure speculation “conspiracy theories” just as they did after 9-11. Never the less this alleged killing of Bin Laden poses too many questions that are ignored by the main stream media. Even the likes of Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Press TV regurgitated the hourly changing and conflicted press releases from US authorities as fact. But the question I think that still needs to be asked is “Why should he have died when he did?”. I feel it is important and may give a clue to the truth.

I wrote “alleged” because there are obvious reasons to doubt what the US government said on the event not least because of the lack of tangible evidence presented, yet again. It is difficult to accept that this time their declarations have any more veracity than what they, the US government, puts out any other day of the week, or what they put out after 9-11. At least one can grow better roses in what horses produce.

Firstly let us be absolutely clear, OBL was a CIA operative at least until two months before the 9-11 incidents which were attributed to him, when he was visited at the American hospital in Dubai by two CIA agents, on more than one occasion during a ten day stay there. This was according to a report in Le Figaro and attributed to French military intelligence. These visits in July of 2001 were long after Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya and the attack on the USS Cole.

One also has to ask why and how OBL could go from being of such critically importance as to cause wars, to just so unimportant in terms of the US government leader.

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01

To

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
and
“I am truly not that concerned about him.”
- G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden’s whereabouts,
3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)

OBL was most likely killed or died in 2001:
In his book “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California’s Claremont School of Theology, claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan. His burial took place within 24 hours, in accordance with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom.

Also in a November 02, 2007 interview with David Frost, Benazir Bhutto was asked about the previous attempted assassination on her in October. In her response Ms. Bhutto said she had told Peveis Musharraf that she suspected the involvement of Pakistan’s security services in that previous bombing attempt on her life. She remarked that one security agent she suspected of being involved, she said, “had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” Less than two months after this interview, on December 27th 2007, Bhutto was assassinated.

On December 26, 2001 the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd reported that a prominent official of the Afghan Taliban had announced that Osama Bin Laden had been buried on or about December 13.

“He suffered serious complications and died a natural, quiet death. He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the grave,” said the report.

Here is a further partial list of others who have said OBL was dead:
• President Musharraf of Pakistan;

• Dale Watson, the head of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit;

• Oliver North, who said: “I'm certain that Osama is dead… And so are all the other guys I stay in touch with”;

• President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan;

• Sources within Pakistani intelligence, who “confirmed the death of … Osama Bin Laden” and “attributed the reasons behind Washington's hiding news on the death of Osama Bin Laden to the desire of the hawks of the American administration to use the issue of al-Qaida and international terrorism to invade Iraq.”

So if he really was dead why stage this elaborate show?

With the proliferation of disinformation and in the absence of evidence one can only speculate, but my opinion is that the reason for the elaborate show was to revive the war on terror, which had been flagging, and with it an attempt was made by the US to revive its domination, assertion and hegemony in a combination of open and clandestine operations. It leads one to ask, to what extent the US will go on in this endeavour to revive a fictitious enemy and conflict. Will the assassination of an irrelevant bygone cartoon like “bad-guy” icon to gain some brownie points with the naïve indoctrinated citizenry help the diminished ratings of a marionette president? Was it enough, giving some local short term hoopla to the dumb-down right and the other childishly delusional patriots who believe the official version of the 9-11 conspiracy scenario, or was their a deeper more ominous and sinister plan to re-initiate a next phase of “false flag” attacks, for which we were being warned to expect by CNN, ABC and FOX and even the BBC, as retaliation for Bin Laden’s killing. Or, was the idea to find sufficient cause to extend the war by further complicating, debilitating and finally overrunning Pakistan’s already weak government and creating an explosive backlash of militancy in a “failed state”?

From early in 2011 we could find reports from leaked classified Guantanamo files saying there would be increased terror attacks if Osama was killed and one week later, he is killed.

“‘Nuclear hellstorm’ if bin Laden caught: 9/11 mastermind
Apr 25, 2011 at 22:45
[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged organiser of the September 11, 2001, attacks,… had warned that Al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe that will unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is captured, leaked files have revealed.(AFP/File)]…”

Was this “selectively leaked or selectively published” on April 25?

If the next false flag event is nuclear it would certainly make the mindless masses cringe and do as they are told by their “big brothers” and masters. A dirty bomb would be an easier origin to hide, but never the less if the above has some sense behind it…..

Quoting from the blog “Warning Signs March 6th 2011”:
““AXIS OF EVIL” NUKES/BLAIR’S VISIT
Libya, in partnership with Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, began developing chemical and germ warfare capabilities. These WMDs were used by the South African forces in Angola and elsewhere, thousands died. Libya funded one of the largest chemical and biological weapons programs in the world, rivalling the former Soviet Union in size, a program thought to be in place as late as 2004. During the same period, a year after the American invasion of Iraq to end a WMD program now proven non-existent, Libya, with Israeli help, developed a nuclear capability and is said to control several “Hiroshima” style weapons, uranium based fission devices.
As part of this combined program, South Africa built 10 nuclear weapons at their Pelindaba facility between 1975 and 1980.

The three nations performed one successful weapons test, an 18.2 kiloton uranium weapon on September 22, 1979 on Prince Edward Island in the seas north of Antarctica. This test was observed and verified by both US and Soviet nuclear intelligence services and a “weapons signature” was developed. South Africa ended its program in 1990, shipping 6 of the remaining weapons to the US for dismantling. Three were sold and then transferred to British control and eventually shipped to Oman but disappeared in transit.

One of these weapons exploded in North Korea in 2009, their only successful nuclear test. Two are missing.”
—-

It may be more accurate to say that they are not missing per se, but more likely up the sleeve of history and ready to be attributed to the next “axis of evil” nation like Iran, or even better for the propagation of endless faceless war, a non nation terrorist group to be defined……

And finally there is the question of the legality of this apparent tactical strategic strike by American Forces’ Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Who else in the world can now follow the advice of Harold Hongju Koh, legal adviser at the US state department who told the American Society of International Law? “Some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing.

“But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.
“The principles of distinction and proportionality that the US applies are …implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law.”

Watch the clock. It will only be a matter of time before DPRK (North Korea), Iran, or Kazakhstan use exactly the same justification. In fact India could well complicate the immediate situation and further expand hostilities as it seems to be getting closer to suggesting, if on the same basis it should consider to “take-out” a few members of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

Quoting from a BBC article “The killing of Osama bin Laden near Islamabad is proof that “terrorists belonging to different organisations find sanctuary in Pakistan”, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram says.

President Obama’s statement that the Al-Qaeda leader was killed in Abbotabad “deep inside Pakistan” was a matter of “grave concern”, he said.

The minister urged Pakistan to arrest those behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
India has blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group.

After initially denying the charge, Pakistan later admitted that some of the attacks were planned on its territory.”

So what is the world being set up for? The only things transparently clear comings out of Washington these days are illegal deadly violence sent anywhere in the world, lies, inflammatory half truths, and warnings to heighten fear, altogether in one word, terrorism. As its empire wanes America’s only remaining tools, it seems, left in their limited and ever diminishing box of tricks are global financial havoc and this dull and heavy hammer of war; a provoked and expanded war to insure disaster capitalism on a global scale.

One way or another, one has to ask the question, why?

Post Script

Anatomy of an Al Qaeda “Conference Call”

Dubious sources feed national-security reporter Eli Lake a fraudulent story for political purposes — once again, By Ken Silverstein

Two years ago, following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, a number of journalists wrote dramatic accounts of the Al Qaeda leader’s last moments. One such story, co-authored by Eli Lake in the Washington Times, cited Obama administration officials and an unnamed military source, described how bin Laden had “reached for a weapon to try to defend himself” during the intense firefight at his compound, and then “was shot by Navy SEALs after trying to use a woman reputed to be his wife as a human shield.” It was exciting stuff, but it turned out to have been fictitious propaganda concocted by U.S. authorities to destroy bin Laden’s image in the eyes of his followers. Based on what we know now, the SEALs met virtually no resistance at the compound, there was no firefight, bin Laden didn’t use a woman as a human shield, and he was unarmed. The White House blamed the misleading early reports on the “fog of war,” but as Will Saletan pointed out in Slate, “A fog of war creates confusion, not a consistent story like the one about the human shield. The reason U.S. officials bought and sold this story is that it fit their larger indictment of Bin Laden. It reinforced the shameful picture of him hiding in a mansion while sending others to fight and die. It made him look like a coward.” Many reporters uncritically rushed the government’s account into print. For Lake, though, it fit a career pattern of credulously planting dubious stories from sources with strong political agendas.

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/08/anatomy-of-an-al-qaeda-conference-call/

.

.

Add a New Comment
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License