Many people live near someone who can bake sinfully delicious cakes, cookies and pastries. This master household baker is often an older person living under economically challenged conditions. He or she would be delighted to earn a little extra money producing up a batch of baked goods. Besides the taste the purchaser would also be delighted with the quality of the goods free from palm oil, synthetic sugar, conservatives and other junk. Nobody however requests the service and the baker doesn’t offer it. This win-win arrangement has other advantages but it withers away while corporate products ”Baked with Love”—of profit—dive into shopping carts.
This example of a simple people2people, community strengthening arrangement is a mere leaf in a forest of possibilities. Beyond this dessert-like action lies meals themselves. Many struggling families and individuals could benefit from providing meals, functioning as a micro restaurant for an occasional evening or a couple of hours. Enormous and beneficial possibilities of helping one another with the basic and daily need of nourishment stretch before us.
We can help each other in uncountable ways from exchanging services to common community projects. WE can. We don’t need an authority or a bureaucracy to permit us or interfere with us. Not only can we, we must. We either grow our own healthy community or we wither away under the greed of the rulers.
How can we improve the world if we can’t improve the conditions for ourselves and the people around us?
“Trying to take a step larger than we can manage will result in a fall.
Taking one suitable step at a time, we can, step by step,
climb to the heights of heaven.”
Dartwill Aquila
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A goon is a gangster, thug or hired gun, particularly one to deal with or eliminate opposition. Pepe Escobar in ICH Oct 16, 2014 uses no other name to refer to IS or the Caliph’s forces. These armed fighters might very well be goons. Might!
Soldiers, young men formerly powerless now enhanced with death-dealing machinery, tend toward goon-like behavior, especially when emerged in combat circumstance. All soldiers. Always. Everywhere. Except, it seems, the soldiers of the NAE (North Atlantic Empire.)
Have you ever heard of an American soldier referred to as a goon, or any other negative label? Soldiers, troops, units, forces, boots-on-the-ground, brigades or any other sterile military description will do. These are the good guys. In contrast, nothing but negative attributes are attached to the enemies of the NAE, the bad guys. This consistent mass media protocol applied with broad strokes combined with the enormous arsenal of Hollywood’s and TV’s red-white-and-blue heroes and superheroes blasting away at injustice and saving the world time and again, consolidates the impression that American soldiers are, for all practical purposes, ladies and gentlemen with guns.
You don’t really believe that, Dorothy, do you!? Escobar mentions “the triangle of death in those hardcore days of American occupation.” This was when the foreign, invading aggressors occupied small towns, roads, private houses and schools outside Bagdad. The Iraqis were so desperate to strike back at the barbaric occupiers that they were blowing themselves up as bombs. Are we supposed to believe that these invading forces from a distant and strange culture were less goony than the present domestic forces?
It’s a question of semantics. Executing an individual quickly and painlessly by cutting their throat is “an act of a goon”. Shocking-and-awing a city, destroying 100s of building and 1000s of people with massive firepower, including DU weapons that will cause cancer and deformed babies for years to come, is “an operation.”
To see the true nature of goonery, let’s move out of the battlefield. A woman in the Philippines was killed last week by a U.S. Marine. A newspaper informs us that “there is a long history of the U.S. military committing heinous acts against people in the Philippines and not really being brought to justice because military agreements more or less protect them (= the goons.)”
If we move north a bit to Japan we can learn (in a Review by undergraduate students at Harvard’s Institute of Politics) that “Scandals involving rape, vehicular homicide, and other violent crimes perpetrated by U.S. service members against Japanese civilians have been commonplace. Between 1954 to 2000, over 200,000 violent crimes involving U.S. troops were recorded on Japanese soil”. One outstanding incident occurred in 1995 when “two U.S. Marines and one U.S. sailor kidnapped and gang-raped a twelve-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl”. It doesn’t get much goonier than that!
Note that the goons just mentioned were stationed in friendly countries in times of peace. They represent two of the 700 bases in over 150 countries throughout the world. All the other countries have their own records of violent crimes by US goons.
If we need conclusive evidence of USA goonery, we needn’t go to war zones or foreign countries. Documented reports show that American service women are raped and gang-raped by their co-soldiers and superior officers regularly. “More than 70 members of the US Military encounter coerced and abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault or are raped every day. That’s three every hour.” From Soraya Chemaly’s article in Huff Post.
Two things to keep in mind.
War always involves goonery on both sides.
The worst goons are always part of the foreign or occupying forces.
“What’s the use of staring fascism in the face
when you are blinded by its shiny bullshit?”
Dartwill Aquila
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Most people hearing of a superior race with the right to rule over other races have no problem recognizing the face of evil. Most people. Those who identify with the superior race are often blinded by the glow of their delusions of superiority. They cozy up in the warmth of the glow.
Instead of a race, a nation can be regarded as superior, with the right to rule over other nations. There’s no significant difference between a superior Aryan race with a right to conquer the world, and an indispensable nation with a right to rule the world. That is to say, there is no significant difference between the ideology of Nazi Germany and present day USA.
Leading Americans spit the venom of exceptionality from their stars-and-striped tongues all the time.
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation.” Madeleine Albright
“The United States is exceptional, and will always be the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” Barack Obama
“One indispensable nation”! Logically that means that all the other nations are dispensable. Read between the lines and it says that you had better do what the indispensable nation demands or find out what dispensable means.
Empires have always, without exception, considered themselves superior to all other peoples and nations. Always. The NAE (North Atlantic Empire/USA) is no different. Unfortunately, those who identify themselves as members of the superior NAE fail to see the implications and consequences of this “indispensable” superiority. The future will judge them on the same scales as those used to weigh the good German citizens under Hitler’s regime. The good Americans, like the good Germans, like the good subjects of every empire that cast its formidable, but temporary, shadow upon the earth, will plead both innocents and ignorance when their world lies in shatters and contempt flows down upon them from former victims of their imperial hubris. Their pleas will serve to intensify the contempt. When leaders speak openly of being exceptional, indispensable and superior, all lack of resistance qualifies as an admission of complicity in the crimes of the leaders, particularly those who stipulate the conditions, “You’re either with us or against us.”
“Pebbles, dust and sand,
the remains of greatness in history’s hand.”
Dartwill Aquila
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“It’s impossible to follow the golden rule
while dancing round the golden calf.”
Dartwill Aquila
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The UK intends to and Sweden will recognize the state of Palestine.
Let trumpets sound fanfares and drums roll like thunder. The circus can begin. Bring on the media clowns and commentator jugglers. Watch the pundits swing on the trapeze and expert elephants stand on their hind legs and blow loud prophesies. A good time shall be had by all and the public shall feel as though something has happened.
It hasn’t!
It’s a great show, an extravagant circus to
1. make the public feel good
2. wash the stains of hypocrisy from the government
3. help Israel
4. distract from reality.
The people in general including those in the folds of the NAE (North Atlantic Empire) were disappointed and outraged at the lame reaction of their government to Israel’s murderous barbarity against the people of Gaza. The media smoke screen of ”disproportionate response” couldn’t hide the horror or stop the sight of innocent blood flowing from under the rubble of homes, schools and hospitals.
Claiming to recognize or planning to recognize Palestine sent a message to the people that the government was doing something for the Palestinian people. By giving a bandage to a mutilated victim they hope to erase the stigma of hypocrisy and the shame of their passivity in the face of butchery.
We can ask ourselves, where is this state of Palestine to be recognized? Sweden’s Prime Minister claims that “the conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be solved with a two-state solution” as though it were a law of nature, when, in fact, this ”only” solution died years ago due to Isael’s continued expansion by annexation of Palestinian territory. He also claimed that this solution should be “negotiated in accordance with international law.” He seems not only blind to Israel’s obvious aversion to negotiate solutions, but glaringly ignorant of Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law. His seemingly progressive position of recognizing Palestine, absolves Israel of the crimes they have committed and hides the aggressive nature of their politics. The recognition of a non-existent Palestine state helps the Israeli criminals more than the Palestinians.
UK’s spokesman, Tobias Ellwood (parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs) is more candid in his treachery, “It is crucial that the Palestinian Authority return to Gaza to provide services and security.”
With what right does a British politician tell the people of Gaza who is to govern them. The people democratically elected Hamas and clearly rejected the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians in general, including those on the West Bank, regard the Palestinian Authority as the choice of the Israelis.
Should there be any doubt about the position of T. Ellwood, the following statement should obliterate that doubt. “The Palestinians must also take steps to address Israel’s legitimate security concerns.” That’s the equivalent of asking a woman to take steps to insure that an eventual rapist doesn’t get scratched.
This covers the first three reasons for a recognition of Palestine. The fourth is the most important. These declarations grabbed all the news and left no room for the findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. The Russell Tribunal has a rock solid repuation for integrity, impartiality, expertise, accuracy and justice. Several of the witnesses, for example, were Israelis, both journalists and soldiers. The Tribunal was categorically certain in its findings that Israel was guilty of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.”
See David Sheen’s testimony
That’s what the recognitions were all about: burying the findings of the Russell Tribunal. Sweden and the UK, in other words, recognized Palestine to protect Israel. It was quite an accomplishment. It took a whole circus to pull it off.
“If you don’t want them to find it,
don’t look for a good hiding place,
make sure they don’t go looking for it.”
Dartwill Aquila
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War is a great and complicated enterprise that includes economic, political, military, cultural, ideological, psychological and diplomatic components connected and coordinated with communications and logistics. Soldiers, for instance, must be recruited, trained, clothed, fed, housed, equipped, transported, organized, commanded and paid. Soldiers spend a tiny percentage of their military lives fighting, that is to say, in armed conflict. When war is considered in its entirety, the military aspect, the armed conflict part of the whole, accounts for a minor portion.
Captain Kate
Conducting war without a military, without weapons and violence, streamlines and rationalizes the enterprise of conflict. It becomes less expensive, more flexible and unlocks the power of creativity giving it a strategic potential far greater than conventional warfare.
I’ve already discussed the ”water weapon”, see
A Wet Dream Storm – Your Chance
Yesterday, I alluded to the potential of trusting love as a method of defusing fashion:
Great Revolutionaries Rang the Bell of Love
A key strategy of 6W aims at damaging the culture of consumerism. This culture fuels the economic strength of the 1%. This ”fuel” also plays a dominant role in global warming. Bottled water (including the sugared, colored, flavored and chemicalized kind) and fashion are two major UNNECESSARY consumer industries. Fashion magazines alone have been shock-and-awing forests for decades. The color on their pages alone represent mega-tons of physical substances and wasted energy.
The junk-food chains damage health, destroy the soil, torture animals, contaminate the atmosphere and capitalize on underpaid workers. Eating at a fast-food chain should be as sacrilegious as tearing a page out of a Bible to wipe your ass in a church toilet.
Paying for a mainstream media publication (paper or digital) gives money to corporate commanders so that they can glorifying their world to you and guide you into the arms of commercial advertisers.
Many targets of unnecessary consumption can be attacked in the struggle against the prevailing (money/consumer oriented) order, but be aware that this order is powerfully entrenched in our culture. I offer one example.
The cosmetic and personal hygiene industry is bloated with unnecessary and harmful products and ingredients. Underarm deodorant, for example, causes more odor than it eliminates and can have serious health hazards to the body, particularly to shaved (microscopically torn) underarms. Such is the power of persuasion however that most people won’t even attempt to prove this to themselves. Using deodorant under one arm for a week or so and comparing the scent under the respective sides of clothes should convince anyone of the foolishness of using chemicals to inhibit the body’s breathing metabolism. Who convinced you, Dorothy, that (relatively clean) humans smell bad to humans?
Humanity wants you to go to war without weapons for a world without war. Join the battle against unnecessary and environmentally harmful consumption.
“Sick souls need beauty, not medicine
justice, not aid
love, not surgery.”
Dartwill Aquila
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When the Beatles sang All You Need is Love they struck at commercial interests and sent them reeling. The message of love was exemplified with hair styles that were not styles and outrageous clothes that ridiculed the fashion industry. Appearance lost value while love stocks soared. The dictates of the fashionistas and trend commendantes found fewer and fewer ears. Forget the trimmings, all you need is love. It worked. The youth walked on petals of flower power in comfortable shoes with hair growing naturally wild. They wore recycled clothes adorned with homemade beads and naked smiles. Love had knocked fashion to its knees. Consumerism was bleeding. Panic spread through the corridors of power.
Corporate power survived and struck back with vengeance. Not only did fashion, beauty contests and high-heel shoes make a comeback, skin had to be decorated and pierced and body parts surgically enhanced. The dancers and lovers in fields and parks became herds roaming the shopping centers.
Progress, I guess, means hiding love under a designer-brand logo.
“There is no proof of a connection between the heating of the atmosphere,
the flood of texting
and the increase in dried-up relationships.”
Dartwill Aquila
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”I think she/he protests too much.”
This expression, derived from Shakespeare, means that the protester is hiding something.
This comes to mind because of an article by Medea Benjamin, ”Why Are The Media Playing Lapdog And Not Watchdog – Again – On War In Iraq?” (ICH, Oct. 11)
She writes, ”The media not only regurgitated official US messages but packaged them better than the government itself ever could. /—/
Obsessed with maintaining access to power, the mainstream media just keeps handing their megaphone to the powerful and self-interested.”
The-media-not-doing-their-job thesis dances front stage regularly on the scene of government critics, progressive pundits and leftist protesters. It’s costumed in conventional wisdom. We are told that if not for the subservient (mainstream) media the public would be enlightened and equipped to take appropriate action.
Me thinks they protest too much! The media is doing exactly what it is supposed to do as the voice of corporate power. It’s a corporate organization, owned and controlled by corporate executives who are members of the 1%. Why should anyone expect the media to act against the interests of the people controlling them? They don’t keep handing their megaphone to the powerful, they are the megaphone of the powerful.
Medea claims that ”the credit for selling Obama’s war on ISIS must go to the mainstream American media.” She’s correct, but implies that the media is at fault. It’s supposed to be ”free” and should therefore be the object of our protests. She, like a significant section of the ”left”, is conspicuously silent about who owns and controls the media. They protest the fist and neglect the puncher.
If we admit the obvious, that corporate power controls the media—and the government—we would have to admit that the USA is a fascist state. Fascism = a political regime ideologically based on a relationship between business (corporations) and a centralized government.
We wouldn’t want to do that, would we? (sarcasm) It’s preferable—particularly for those who live comfortably under the prevailing (fascist) order—to protest and protest and hope that no one notices that it’s a bit too much.
“Pink is passion diluted with innocence.”
Dartwill Aquila
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Not enough horrors
Not enough attention
Not enough news
Not enough electricity
Not enough drinking water
Not enough medicine
Not enough food
Not enough fuel
Not enough building material
Not enough freedom
Not enough justice
Not enough flowers
Were it not for an excess of determination
and love of life
the policy of camouflaged step-by-step genocide
with the support of imperial hypocrisy
would have succeeded by this time.
Never underestimate the power of determination
and love.
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“Israel is one of the most racist societies in the Western world”
Shlomo Sand, professor of history at Tel Aviv University.
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“One day doubtless, a historian will coin a word to describe Israel’s unique strategy of incrementally destroying the Palestinian people. Sadly, by then it may be too late to help the Palestinians.”
Jonathan Cook
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EXTRA – Russell Tribual on Palestine
After hearing testimony from journalists, eyewitnesses, legal scholars and physicians present during the onslaught, the twelve-member jury, made up of world-renowned intellectuals and international law experts, found Israel guilty of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
Though it was virtually ignored by both mainstream and progressive media outlets, the tribunal was significant in that it did what the so-called international community has time and again refused to do. The Russell Tribunal put Israel on trial for its crimes against Palestinians.
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Revised Saturday rerun from 2013-02-20
FUCK ‘EM!
Fuck the blacks and fuck the whites
and fuck the greens, blues, reds, browns, yellows and rainbows.
Fuck the feminists, chauvinists, communists, capitalists,
conservativists, extremists, traditionalists and shitlistists.
Fuck the buddhists, the jews, the christians, the hindus, the moslems
and every other worshiper of segregated holiness.
Fuck the flag wavers, team brayers, yes sayers, no sayers
and all the wishy-washy go-any-wayers.
Fuck all the goody-goodies with their pathetic baskets of oh-my-goodness crumbs of pity.
Fuck the positive thinkers pretending to rule reality with perfumed mind smoke choking doing.
Fuck the my-groupers and we-herd troopers.
Fuck the elites with minds covered with sheets.
And fuck the me-me-me-me me-ers, the blind beyond the mirror see-ers.
Fuck the moneyed nobility and fuck their titled knights.
Double fuck them because they’re the lords of war, the devil’s favorite whores.
Fuck them for stealing from the starving to destroy the lives of the striving.
Fuck all the warriors of inaction fighting current attractions with hot-worded abstractions.
Fuck every single mind-twisted dingle who cannot see the dignity of humanity.
Fuck every diluted soul who turns away from the goal of making humanity whole.
Fuck every rabbit-hearted committee captain obsessed with a false rival
instead of the struggle for our common survival.
Fuck ’em!
Fuck ’em for dimming the vision of beauty.
Fuck ’em for muffling the song of freedom.
Fuck ’em for souring the taste of justice.
Fuck ’em for fouling the scent of love.
Fuck ’em for choking the pulse of truth.
Fuck ’em, fuck ’em…
Fuck ’em!
“The devil loves racism, nationalism, prejudice and exclusive religion.
He serves them generously
heavily spiced with ceremonies
on political plates of golden promises.”
Dartwill Aquila
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System Humanity 