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Author Archives: Reid Mukai
Lies About Jews, Israel, and the War in Gaza
By Eric Zuesse
Source: The Duran
News-reports are so full of lies and misrepresentations about Jews, Israel, and the war in Gaza, as to be commonly propaganda that conveys falsehoods more than truths.
Two news-reports from Reuters on February 28th will be cited here as examples of such propaganda:
“After threats and abuse, British lawmakers question their safety over Gaza” opened:
It was 10 minutes of shouted accusations of being a “genocide enabler” and having “blood on your hands” that made a British lawmaker fear for his safety over his decision to voice support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
Almost touching noses with his accuser before walking away and warning he would call the police, the opposition Labour Party member said the incident in a town in his constituency was just the latest of several that made him change his behaviour.
He now makes sure he sits near the door on public transport and limits meetings with the public.
“It feels like it could just need one spark to flip from someone giving you tuppence (criticism) in the street to escalating to actual violence,” the lawmaker said.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza, more than 10 British politicians spoken to by Reuters said the abuse directed at them had become more intense. At least one cited this as a factor in deciding not to seek a new term in parliament in an election later this year.
Its underlying presumption (such as in “the Oct. 7 Hamas attack … sparked the war in Gaza,” which is intended to communicate the false impression that this war started on 7 October 2023 and so the aggressor in this war is the Gazans not the Israelis — and NOT at Israel’s founding in 1948 so that the aggressor is the Israelis, and the Palestinians are only reacting against that long-ongoing aggression) is that to be against Israel and to be for Palestinians, is to be anti-Semitic, but many Jews — including Albert Einstein and other prominent ones — have called Israel and its current leadership “racists” and “fascists” against the vast majority of the population in the area that in 1948 became “Israel”, which was originally called “Palestine” not “Israel” and was overwhelmingly Muslim not Jewish before Britain gave this land to the few Jews there and started Israel in 1948. Immediately, the racist-fascist Jews there, self-called “Zionists” as believers in the Jewish Scripture’s (Christian Old Testament’s) myth that ‘God’ gave it to them and ordered them to exterminate the then-current residents, carried out their biblically commanded ethnic cleansing war to clear the land for incoming Jews from European Christianity’s German-led Holocaust. For examples, Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 7:16 and 20:15 -18, have ‘God’ in that Scripture say that when the Israelites enter the promised land they are to exterminate the Canaanites, Hittites, Girgishites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, living there. So, Israel was founded by the far-right subsequently Likud Party leaders of Israel, such as Yitzak Shamir and Menachem Begin, who led the extermination of entire Arab villages in the Nakba or “Catastrophe” as it’s called by Palestinians — the Palestinians’ equivalent to what for Jews the Holocaust had been. The Jews will never forget the Holocaust, just as the Palestinians will never forget the Nakba — but whereas the Nakba has continued with varying degrees of intensity ever since 1948 (culminating now in the Israel-America extermination of Gazans), the Holocaust ended in 1945.
It all goes back to 1948, the creation of Israel. Here’s from a lengthy article “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs” in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on 6 July 2019, about how Israel’s Government cleansed, eliminated, thousands of key documents, which remain unknown, but some scraps of which survived, such as, “And then Ben-Gurion lays down as policy that we have to demolish [the villages] so they won’t have anywhere to return to. That is, all the Arab villages.”
On 24 August 2014, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network headlined “Over 300 Survivors and Descendants of Survivors and Victims of the Nazi Genocide Condemn Israel’s Assault on Gaza” and presented their letter to the world, signed by (at that time) 327 of them:
As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.
We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians, and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.
Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many hundreds of children. Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.
We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!
Consequently: many Jews are anti-Israel even though they profess themselves to be still Jews. Only bigots equate pro-Israel with being not anti-Semitic, and equate anti-Israel as being anti-Semitic (or anti-Jews). There is, in reality, no equation whatsoever between anti-Israel and anti-Jew. Only propaganda claims or implies any such false equation.
Albert Einstein and 26 other prominent Jewish progressives co-signed a letter to the editor of the New York Times published 4 December 1948, condemning Menachem Begin by name as a “fascist,” and saying, of his work (and of his unnamed colleague in that work, Itzhak Shamir, both of whom subsequently became elected Prime Ministers of Israel, and whose follower Netanyahu today leads Israel), that:
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 [1948], terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.
‘News’-reports such as that one from Reuters, which imply that every Jew is a Zionist (supports Israel), and that only anti-Semites condemn Israel, are arrant lies. They deceive for political purposes. That is propaganda. It forced the progressive leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn out of power and out of politics in Britain. So: these are extremely potent lies. This Reuters ‘news’-report opens with a large photo of marchers in Britain holding up the star of David and the flags of Israel and Britain, and “Never Again Is Now” signs, suggesting that to oppose Israel’s genocide of Gazans is to be anti-Semitic — is to be bigoted against Jews. This is mass-mind-control by Reuters, to make Brits think that they ought to side with the Israelis against the Gazans, and to therefore support Israel’s genocide of Gazans (as, somehow, being a justifiable response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas-Gazan attack against Israelis).
A subtler lie in it is that the war in Gaza started on 7 October 2023, instead of in 1948. The reality is that the 7 October 2023 event was the victims’ crying out, to the entire world, to call public attention to their living in the world’s largest (and constantly under siege by their prison-guards) open-air prison, Gaza, that they’re born into and permanently sentenced to, by Israel. It’s not where they want to live, no more than any prison anywhere is. But, after 7 October 2023, Israel decided to eliminate the Gazans and labelled this Israel-America genocide of Gazans partnership a ‘war against Hamas’ — which is yet another lie that the media publish without question, without shame, and purely as propaganda from and about Israel.
Also on February 28th, Reuters headlined “Michigan’s strong ‘uncommitted’ vote shows Israel impact on Biden support” and opened “DEARBORN, Michigan/WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Joe Biden’s campaign and top Democratic officials vowed to double down on efforts to win over voters as the U.S. president aims to solve conflicts in the Middle East, after Michigan registered a stronger-than-anticipated protest vote over his support of Israel.” It included this line from Biden’s campaign — with no question (far less rebuttal) being presented about it: “Biden’s campaign will continue to ‘make our case in the state – to both uncommitted voters and the entire Michigan constituency,’ a senior campaign official said as the results were tallied. ‘The President will continue to work for peace in the Middle East.’” But actually, as Politico had headlined on February 13th, “US won’t punish Israel for Rafah op that doesn’t protect civilians” and it said that the Biden Administration has informed the Netanyahu Administration that if it decides that it has no practicable way to expel the Gazans to foreign lands (which Israel’s Government — assisted by America’s Government — has been trying to do ever since October 16th) then the U.S. Government will not punish Israel if it simply slaughters all of them. “No reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm [Politico’s euphemism for slaughter] civilians without facing American consequences [meaning punishment]. More than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million population has fled to Rafah.” So: that would entail slaughtering 1.15 million Gazans there. The Politico article made no mention of what would be done with the 1.15 million survivors, the Gazans who haven’t yet gotten to Raffah, but if Netanyahu would halt the extermination program at that point, a rationale for discontinuing the operation there would be hard if not impossible to imagine — at least inasmuch as half of Gazans would then already have been slaughtered by Israel.
And this slaughter of Gazans is being done with U.S.-made weapons and military intelligence, and so it is actually a joint U.S. and Israeli operation. As Israel’s Jewish News Service reported on November 27th:
Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
From 7 October 2023 up through 23 December 2023, the U.S. Government shipped to Israel 10,000 tons of U.S. weaponry and ammunition; and Biden has pressed harder on Congress to authorize an additional $14 billion of such assistance to be donated by U.S. taxpayers, to Israel, in order to complete what it’s doing to Gaza — whatever that may turn out to be — than he has ever pressed Congress to approve anything (except donating even more weapons and intelligence to Ukraine too). And, then, on January29th, YNET News, the most popular internet portal in Israel, headlined “Global ammunition shortage forces Israel to limit bombings”, and they reported that “Over 25,000 tons of weapons have been delivered to Israel via approximately 280 aircraft and 40 ships from the U.S. since the onset of the conflict.” So, obviously, Biden, rather than being “The President [who] will continue to work for peace in the Middle East,” is instead actually an equal partner along with Netanyahu, in carrying out this Israel-U.S.-planned genocide. How many of Reuters’s readers know this fact? Furthermore, that Reuters article likewise stated (without pointing out the absurd lie) that “the U.S. president aims to solve conflicts in the Middle East.” How can that be? Perhaps he intends to ship yet more billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made taxpayer-donated weapons to Israel in order to enforce that ‘peace’ — the ‘peace’ of the graveyard. So sayeth Reuters, at any rate. And believeth its readers? But that is the mainstream ‘news’-‘reporting’, and this certainly is NOT. What is the reality? And why does the opposite side hide it? And who are paying them to hide it?
Which people actually control a ‘democracy’: the people who fund political propaganda, or the people whose votes are swayed by it? If a country is controlled by contending factions between the billionaires — such as Democratic ones versus Republican ones — is that a democracy? If it’s instead an aristocracy, is there any way to overthrow and replace it by a democracy, other than to have an authentic revolution?
“WHO OWNS THE WORLD?” A SMALL GROUP OF BIG MONEY
By Peter Koenig
Source: The 4th Media
“Who Owns the World” is the title of an extraordinary documentary, describing how Big-Big Money controls not only every aspect of your life, but has a stranglehold on every government, the political UN body, as well as every UN agency, and all industries and services of this globe.
These largest investors are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.
These same investment groups also control over 90% of the world’s major media. Even Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is majority owned by BlackRock / Vanguard. It is therefore no miracle that hardly any news penetrates the walls of secrecy about these major shareholders of every aspect of human life and life-related activities and businesses.
It is a monopoly that can literally not be opposed by traditional means. They have also invented the “rules-based order” — overruling every international and national law at their will. They know no limits, no ethics and adhere to no human or human rights standard. POWER is them.
The two most powerful investors and investment managers are BlackRock and Vanguard. They are closely linked, to the point where their management is largely inter-changeable. Vanguard is BlackRock’s largest shareholder, meaning that they control BlackRock.
Though Vanguard is not transparent about its own shareholders, Vanguard is owned by the richest families on earth. Vanguard has been created to hide their investments and money transactions.
Through non-profit organizations, like the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, Rothschild Foundation, JPMorgan Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Bush Foundation, Albert DuPont Charity Trust – and so on, billions of “donation” money is transferred – tax-free – to Vanguard, a shield for their potentially criminal transactions and funding.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest funder of WHO. It also controls GAVI, the vaxx-alliance – and is therefore the most influential organization over human health – and death.
These same people, alias Foundations, also own Blackrock – which is why BlackRock and Vanguard are interchangeable or can act as one, if it is to their advantage.
According to Bloomberg, by 2028, the two will own / manage some 20 trillion dollars – about a fifth of the current world GDP.
If joined by State Street, as is often the case, the world’s fourth largest investment manager, you may add another US$ 3 to US$ 4 trillion of managed assets. Sometimes they are joined by Berkshire Hathaway, City Bank, Bank of America, Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs… adding another few trillion of managed assets to their pie.
However, these second or third ranking financial institutions, in turn, are also owned by BlackRock and Vanguard. One might call it an omnipotent vicious circle from which it is almost impossible to escape.
See this one-hour Rumble-video for more details and network of ownership that literally rules the worldhttps://rumble.com/vn7lf5-monopoly-who-owns-the-world-must-see.html .
With that power they can leverage every country in the world, every institution, and every corporation – as they are the largest shareholders of the industrial, military, service and infrastructure investment machine that makes the world turn.
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Please allow just a little detour to Gaza, where the Zionist racist massacre of an entire population has been going on as today for 141 days. Some 30,000 Palestinian have been killed; 70% children and women. Children and women are the prime targets, because children are the next generation and women are the bearer of the next generation – they must be eliminated by the supremacist Zionists.
The horror and inhumanity have no words, cannot be appropriately described with our human vocabulary: Bombs have liquidated an entire family. The mutilated body of a seven-year-old girl, Sidra, is hanging from a wall. Hind, a six-year-old girl, was mercilessly killed by Israeli armed forces, as she was begging for help from an ambulance, surrounded by the cadavers of her killed family. As illustrated by “Hildebrandt”, a Peruvian, renowned non-mainstream news media (23 February 2024).
Tell me, please, are these all-powerful financial conglomerates not powerful enough to stop this massacre at once? They hold entire nations hostage to do their bidding, but they cannot stop Israel, the Zionists behind the State of Israel, from their merciless atrocious killing, murder, massacre of an entire population?
Are they powerful enough to preventing the United States, their Anglosaxon and European puppet governments from halting their money, weapon, and “moral” support of the Zionist onslaught? – Or is their power behind the US veto breaking the UN Security Council’s quest for a Ceasefire in Gaza?
In any case, by not using their power to stop the Zionist war against Palestine, to stop any war, any killing in the world, are they not complicit in the mass-murders in Gaza and around the world by not ending them?
They could. Why are they not doing it?
They are drunk with Power – and as we know, power and money have been derailing humanity for a long time – but now the extent of shame and barbarism has reached a level, where our civilization risks to disappear; and where there is no way to escape – not the traditional ways.
BlackRock / Vanguard are also major shareholders in the secondary and tertiary asset management and banking institutions. So, they control the managed investments of, say, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, City, Chase, Morgan-Stanley – you name it.
If you invest, for example, in a food conglomerate, like Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, most have no idea that they invest in BlackRock / Vanguard, major shareholders of these food corporations, and by doing so, they also invest in the worldwide military industrial (killing) complex which is too is controlled by BlackRock / Vanguard.
BlackRock / Vanguard / State Street are also the powers behind the power – most often invisible. For example, BlackRock has close links with many Central Banks, especially with the Federal Reserve.
They lend money to the FED – and are a principal adviser to the FED and most likely to other central banks, including they advise on computer systems they use and which connects them.
BlackRock, is by far the largest influencer and donor, or “partner”, as they prefer to call themselves, therefore, also “commander”, of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the entire UN system, its political arm, as well as its sub-agencies – and by proxy, also the World Health Organization (WHO) – and not to forget GAVI, the Vaccination Association, physically located just next door to WHO – and by further extension, Big-Pharma, the pharma industry.
Together with their faithful think-alike executer of WEF’s mandates, Mr. Klaus Schwab, as well as the multibillionaires, such as the Gates, Rockefellers, Soros’ of this world, one can easily deduct – they – BlackRock and Co. – control our lives – health and death.
Through their world-domineering ownership of all that moves, shakes, and produces, they are globalists, eugenists and “green-agenda” eccentrics – pushing the climate change lie – come hell or high water. Costs in money and lives do not matter.
Were these financial monsters behind the covid-plandemic idea? What a question!
Their agenda – eugenist, destruction of current economic structures to rebuild according to this small elite’s criteria – is clearly spelled out by the Club of Rome’s (CoR) “Limits to Growth” (1972), and the follow-on Report “The First Global Revolution” (1991) which claims early on in its text that annihilation of the current system is a MUST, to rebuild, bringing the fundamental changes in favor of the elite – with eugenics and absolute control always in the fore.
Is the CoR at the service of the global financial empire? After all, the same powers are behind both.
Not by coincidence, the Rockefeller Group is the inventor of the Club of Rome, today comfortably seated, tax free and with full diplomatic immunity, in Switzerland.
The fake Covid plandemic is the first building block for this all-destructive mechanism, the “corner stone’ of destruction, so to speak. The lockdowns, the inhuman, totally invalid PCR tests, the fear-mongering – the invented covid-death rates – were very effective in manipulating people, but also in laying the groundwork for the overall annihilation of our society and even civilization, in shifting assets from the bottom to the top – and in abolishing the world economy that carries our civilization.
Once the people were shivering from fear, the deadly “vaxxes” were introduced. Lo and behold, by now, despite ever-louder opposition – about 5.7 billion people – out of the world’s 8 billion (more than 70%) have received at least one jab – and most got 2 or 3 injections.
These poisonous injections are in the human bodies and may most likely react sooner or later. According to Mike Yeadon, former VP and Chief scientist of Pfizer – over the next three to ten years, the death-toll will increase probably drastically, but most people will not link it to the “vaxxes” — either because they have been indoctrinated that deaths are due to long or late covid, or because they suffer from and live in cognitive dissonance.
Big Money to own and control it all, must drastically reduce world population. This is propagated by the WEF, and as of this day by the CoR (see this https://www.globalresearch.ca/author-limits-growth-promotes-genocide-86-world-population/5818133 .
WEF’s Chairman, Klaus Schwab’s top advisor, Israeli Professor, Yuval Noah Harari, asks openly what to do with the “useless eaters” when their “raison d’être” has ben replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Giving them a base salary for (temporary) survival, getting them hooked on violent video games to prep them for the future, and to let them gradually “disappear”?
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In addition to severe human injuries and death, the vaxxes also reduce male and female fertility, cause miscarriages, highly aggressive and lethal turbo-cancers, and if course, myocardities and sudden deaths.
Overall excess mortality in the west is as high as 20% in some countries. In the UK, where excess deaths are alarming the common public, they have started modifying statistics to erase surplus mortality.
In parallel, mostly funded by the Soros Open Society Foundation, the Woke movement is ravaging the western world, with promotion of sex changes – and the infamous “multi-letter” agenda – LGBTQIA+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual. WOW! – This is promoted in schools, in some countries with strict bans of parents’ interference in their children’s, as young as 11 years, wishes for sex-change.
This agenda reduces birth rates further.
Endless wars – create chaos, confusion, desperation and, of course, also deaths.
The Money Masters have succeeded in creating the first building blocks. WHO may soon become the most powerful health (life and death) tyranny on earth, if the infamous Pandemic Treaty and the harshly modified International Health Regulations (IHR) are approved at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024.
Knowing who is in possession and control of WHO and the WHA, the world is called upon to exit WHO. Internationally renowned Dr Peter McCullough testified in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, about the social and economic consequences of covid vaxxes, as well as the potentially impending WHO tyranny – concluding with a call on the EU and the US – and the rest of the world to exit WHO.
To retake the world, by We the People, leaving BlackRock, Vanguard & Co. behind, exiting the UN system and WHO – would be the next step. Most important, and possibly the only way defeating this money power, is withdrawing from the current societal system and start afresh.
Small communal economies – as far away as possible from any digitization – with a dynamic cooperation among themselves, evolving naturally and on a higher spiritual level than the low vibrating one which is typical for our material world and the present strive for ever more material goods.
“Only when we are divided, can the elite retain its power over us.”
“The Wound is the Place, where the Light enters You”. By the great Sufi poet, Rumi
Their weapons are blackmail and fear.
WE MUST NOT FEAR.
We are the 99%.
We can do it.
And we MUST do it for survival of humanity.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Quantum Physics And Buddhism – Carlo Rovelli Encounters Nāgārjuna
By David Edwards
Source: Media Lens
Carlo Rovelli is a renowned Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has made important contributions to the physics of space and time. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute, and a core member of Canada’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy of Western University, working mainly in the field of quantum gravity. His short book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014), has been translated into 41 languages and has sold over one million copies worldwide.
In his 2021 book, Helgoland – The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics, Rovelli describes a surprising epiphany in his efforts to understand the mysteries of quantum physics:
‘In my own attempts to make sense of quanta for myself, I have wandered among the texts of philosophers in search of a conceptual basis for understanding the strange picture of the world provided by this incredible theory. In doing so, I have found many fine suggestions and acute criticisms, but nothing wholly convincing.
‘Until one day I came across a work that left me amazed.’ (Rovelli, Penguin, e-book version, 2021, p.72)
Remarkably, the book in question is a key 3rd century text of Buddhist metaphysics, The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, by the enlightened mystic Nāgārjuna. Rovelli writes:
‘The central thesis of Nāgārjuna’s book is simply that there is nothing that exists in itself, independently from something else. The resonance with quantum physics is immediate. Obviously, Nāgārjuna knew nothing, and could not have imagined anything, about quanta – that is not the point. The point is that philosophers offer original ways of rethinking the world…’. (p.73)
Rovelli is wrong to describe Nāgārjuna as a ‘philosopher’; he was a mystic. Philosophers seek solutions through thought; mystics seek solutions by transcending thought. If Nāgārjuna was engaged in ‘rethinking the world’, it was in the cause of a truth that can be experienced only when thinking is paused. Rovelli writes:
‘The illusoriness of the world, its samsara, is a general theme of Buddhism; to recognise this is to reach nirvana, liberation and beatitude.’
Here Rovelli is placing the cart before the horse: ‘liberation and beatitude’ are not reached by recognising ‘the illusoriness of the world’; rather, the illusoriness of the way we see the world is recognised as the endpoint of a process of liberation and beatitude.
This process is meditation. The fact that Rovelli does not mention the words ‘meditation’, ‘meditator’, or ‘meditate’ in his book, indicates he is currently limited to an intellectual understanding of nirvana and of the path (which is no-path) by which it is attained. In Buddhism, the ‘wisdom’ aspect of ‘the path’ – intellectually exploring the illusoriness of phenomena – is supported by the ‘method’ aspect of meditation. Together, these are the two ‘wings’ on which the bird of enlightenment takes flight.
In fact, the Buddha did not say the world is an ‘illusion’; he said that the world does not exist in the way it appears to exist to us; that our deep-seated belief that the world is made up of independently existing objects is an illusion. There are many Zen and other stories in which masters tweak students’ noses, or hit them over the head, asking: ‘Is that an illusion?’
Rovelli does a good job of explaining how apparently concrete objects vanish on close inspection. We naturally imagine that a chair, for example, exists as a single object, a unit. In fact, what we call ‘a chair’ is made up of a seat, legs, a back rest and so on. None of the legs is ‘a chair’; nor is the seat; nor is the back rest. None of the parts that make up a chair is ‘the chair’. It turns out that the unitary chair, which seemed so solid, is a mere label applied to a set of parts.
But to say the chair is made of parts is also misleading, because it suggests that the parts, at least, are solid, unitary objects. Alas, the parts also disappear on close inspection. Thus, the seat might be made up of a wooden frame with a cushion in the middle – neither of these are ‘a seat’. And, of course, all such objects are made of atoms. An ‘atom’ is also a collection: of neutrons, protons, electrons and sub-atomic particles. None of these is ‘an atom’. An ‘atom’ is also a mere label applied to a collection. Everywhere we reach out for solid ‘things’ that disappear into thin air that is also just a label.
Why should any of this concern me as an obviously solid, unitary self? If someone shouts abuse at me – it’s happened once or twice on twitter.com – I feel as if I’ve been impacted by an insulting barb. Apparently a solid entity, ‘me’, has been hit. Otherwise, why would I feel pain?
But when I search for a dart board-like entity that has been struck, I find that none of my body parts, none of my thoughts and none of my emotions are a unitary self called ‘me’. This presumed unit is also a mere label. But how can an insulting barb wound a label, a mere idea? Shouldn’t it pass right through? The answer is that it hurts because we believe deeply in a solid self that doesn’t actually exist. We are therefore co-authors of the insult, the pain.
So, is everything really just a collection of mental labels? Is nothing real? Consider dreams: on one level, they are clearly illusions. But they are real as illusions. To be more precise, the awareness that perceives an illusion or dream is real – awareness is required for the dream to be experienced.
Indeed, even if the whole world is a dream, the awareness that perceives the dream is real. And, as discussed, nirvana is not reached merely by intellectually recognising ‘the illusoriness of the world’; it is discovered when the true nature of this awareness, of being, is experienced. But how might that happen?
‘Nothingness’ Is Not Empty
Just as physical objects – chairs, planets, stars – appear in external space, sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions appear in the internal space of awareness. The thoughts, ideas and memories that make up our idea of ‘me’ are all ‘objects’ in this inner space. We think we’re ‘the voice in our head’, but we’re actually the ‘space’, the witness of ‘the voice’.
What is the fundamental nature of this awareness? We know from experience that when angry thoughts and emotions appear in awareness, we suffer. Likewise, when fearful, anxious and jealous thoughts appear. Many of us imagine that awareness without any thoughts, like external space, would be a blank, empty nothingness.
According to the Upanishads, the ancient scriptures of Hinduism dating back to 800 years BC, this is not the case at all. The Upanishads argue that both the internal space of awareness and external space are manifestations of Brahman, the formless, changeless source of all material forms:
‘We should consider that in the inner world Brahman is consciousness; and we should consider that in the outer world Brahman is space.’ (Juan Mascaró trans., The Upanishads, Penguin, 1965, p.115)
This is significant and, in fact, testable, because Brahman is said to be in the nature of awareness and bliss. In other words, consciousness – even the consciousness waiting at a rainy bus stop on a chilly winter’s morning – is in the nature of bliss. But if that’s true, why are we conscious beings so miserable at the bus stop and in so many other situations? The answer is that man and woman were born free but are everywhere in chains of thought.
What we in the West mis-label ‘meditation’ (which actually suggests its exact opposite, thinking) is the art of uncovering the fundamental nature of awareness by reducing and eventually dropping the thought by which it is obscured.
Anyone can relax in a comfortable chair for an hour paying attention to whatever feelings are present in the heart area and lower belly. Naturally, thoughts will blaze away. This is exactly as it should be and is not in any way wrong. Instead of following these chains of thought as usual: ‘He was so patronising… and she didn’t defend me at all… What I should have said is…’ Instead of riding this train of thought, we try to notice the thoughts and return to feeling.
This goes on and on: we’re managing to focus attention on feeling, we suddenly start riding thought, suddenly realise what we’re doing and return to feeling. If we do this consistently, on a daily basis, one day, after about 40-45 minutes, the mind grows weary of generating thoughts that aren’t being properly appreciated and starts to lose momentum.
Less thoughts are now appearing, and we may have a subtle sense that we are sailing in calmer waters. Following this, actual gaps can start to appear in the thought stream allowing us to focus with clarity on feelings in the heart and lower belly. These gaps – moments of awareness unclouded by thought – are experienced as tiny, golden sparks of love, bliss and peace. This is a revolutionary moment – it is quite astonishing that, having been half-asleep and chaotically distracted, we are suddenly happier sitting doing nothing than we have been in years and decades.
The arising of these sparks is often heralded by unusually generous thoughts; we suddenly have an impulse to be kind to someone in some way, even to an enemy. This is a sure sign that something odd is happening. These sparks then deepen and intensify and may endure for hours or days. Initially, though, they are vulnerable to intense mental activity – a post-meditation Twitterspat will rapidly extinguish them. Enlightened mystics, by contrast, live in a state of permanent ecstasy and love. Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, said:
‘The Tao [love and bliss] doesn’t come and go.
It is always present everywhere,
just like the sky.
If your mind is clouded,
you won’t see it,
but that doesn’t mean
it isn’t there.
All misery is created
by the activity of the mind.
Can you let go of words and ideas,
attitudes, and expectations?
If so, then the Tao will loom into view.
Can you be still and look inside?
If so, then you will see that the truth
is always available, always responsive.’ (Lao Tzu, Brian Browne Walker trans., Hua Hu Ching – The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu, e-book, St Martin’s Press, 2012, p.39)
Be still and look inside – it is as simple as that. But it is advice that has been ignored by most people for millennia.
Rovelli concludes:
‘But Nāgārjuna’s emptiness also nourishes an ethical stance that clears the sky of the endless disquietude: to understand that we do not exist as autonomous entities helps us free ourselves from attachments and suffering. Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.’
Yes, intellectually reflecting on our lack of solidity and impermanence can help dissolve the perceived importance of our attachments. But what reduces our attachments and self-importance to nothing, if only temporarily at first, is the dazzling love and bliss that arise in meditation. The ‘now’ isn’t just precious because it is impermanent; it is precious because the experience of the ‘now’ unobscured by thought is overflowing with ecstasy and love that make all worldly attachments seem trivial. The Indian mystic Osho said:
‘When ego [thought] is not, love comes as a perfume – as a flowering of your heart… With this attitude, when the mind is completely unmoving, something of the divine will lure you; you will have glimpses.
‘Once you know the bliss of such glimpses, you will know the nonsense, the absurdity, and the absolutely unnecessary misery of ambition. Then the mind stops by itself. It becomes completely still, silent, nonachieving.’
The American mystic Robert Adams said:
‘I felt a love, a compassion, a humility, all at the same time. That was truly indescribable. It wasn’t a love that you’re aware of. Think of something that you really love, or someone that you really love with all your heart. Multiply this by a jillion million trillion, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.’ (Adams, Silence of the Heart – Dialogues With Robert Adams, Acropolis Books, 1999, pp.9-10)
Rovelli continues:
‘For me as a human being, Nāgārjuna teaches the serenity, the lightness and the shining beauty of the world: we are nothing but images of reality. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which… there is nothing.’ (p.75)
One can sense the anxiety in these words. Rovelli perceives ‘the shining beauty of the world’, but it is a cold, austere beauty because it appears to him to be a ‘thin and fragile veil’, beyond which lies ‘nothing’. But we have already agreed that ‘there is nothing that exists in itself, independently from something else everything is interdependent’. Indeed so, we are there as the witness of ‘nothing’. (p.73). Osho explained:
‘In English there is no word to translate the Buddhist word shunyata. In that “nothingness” … it is not empty, it is full of your witness, full of your witnessing, full of the light of your witness.’
We are not brains in jars or ivory towers. This paradoxically full ‘nothing’ is not a mere concept for Rovelli to ponder intellectually; it is an existential challenge for him to face and feel. Jiddu Krishnamurti put it well:
‘We have all had the experience of tremendous loneliness, where books, religion, everything is gone and we are tremendously, inwardly, lonely, empty. Most of us can’t face that emptiness, that loneliness, and we run away from it. Dependence is one of the things we run to, depend on, because we can’t stand being alone with ourselves. We must have the radio or books or talking, incessant chatter about this and that, about art and culture. So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of self-isolation.
‘We may have a very good job, work furiously, write books, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women [or men], a dozen things to fill it up, cover it up. If we see that it is absolutely futile to try to cover it up, completely futile, not verbally, not with conviction and therefore agreement and determination, but if we see the total absurdity of it, then we are faced with a fact…. Why don’t I face the fact and see what happens?
‘The problem now arises of the observer and the observed. The observer says, “I am empty; I don’t like it” and runs away from it. The observer says, “I am different from the emptiness.” But the observer is the emptiness; it is not emptiness seen by an observer. The observer is the observed. There is a tremendous revolution in thinking, in feeling, when that takes place.’ (Krishnamurti, The Book of Life, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, p.84)
The crucial point about this ‘nothingness’, then, is that we are standing here as witnesses; it is a witnessed nothing. The witness is not a thing – it is no-thing – but it is existent, real. And it is anything but ‘thin and fragile’. It turns out that the observer is the observed: it is the fundamental nature of the universe and it is in the nature of consciousness, love and bliss.
How remarkable: the next step for quantum physics, for Rovelli himself, is to recognise the ‘nothingness’ within; to see how we stuff it with knowledge; and to experiment in dropping that knowledge, in dropping all thought, in the cause of facing that abyss.
Such a confrontation could herald a revolution in human consciousness: a union of physics and mysticism, of science and love.
Saturday Matinee: A Bittersweet Life
By George Karystianis
Source: Film Mining 101
Kim Jee-woon’s career is a peculiar one. Filled with masterpieces from his native country (South Korea) and excluding a rather tame Hollywood debut (“The Last Stand” (2013)), he always manages to surprise through his creative outputs due to a chameleonic ability to transcend genres the same way Kubrick, Tarantino and Scorsese (among others) can do.
While other contemporary directors from South Korea (e.g., Bong Joon-ho) include sharp socio-economic commentary and heavy metaphors of emotional allegories, Jee-woon’s films are on a different plane altogether. Bearing genuine traits of auterism, his flicks feature dark stories, complex characters, ambiguous morality and inevitable outcomes.
Following outputs on black comedy (“The Quiet Family” (1998)) and psychological horror (“A Tale of Two Sisters“ (2003)), “A Bittersweet Life” (2005) sees the prolific filmmaker taking a stab at the much established neo-noir action drama with hearty dosages of all your favorite gangster and revenge tropes. Coming hot after the international success of Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” (2003), some comparisons might be unavoidable but the only common element for both films is the revenge centric plot.
Embracing a more stylish take on action, Jee-woon’s direction relishes on sudden outbursts of choregraphed violence heading towards a climatic finale that owes a lot to John Woo. Yet “A Bittersweet Life” is at its best when Kim Sun-woo’s stylish, silent and stoic enforcer is on screen. A brilliant (roughly) antihero, he kicks copious amounts of ass under a slick black suit that would make John Wick blush when he is not contemplating how empty his life is (and has been). Delivering a stand out performance, Lee Byung-hun demonstrates what an exceptional actor he is building up a resume filled with challenging roles which demand less talk, more emotion and interesting dramatic layers.
Split into two halves, the moment the inevitable story of betrayal unfolds, Sun-woo consumes the scenery, a human stark contrast against his more emotionally involved cast. Whether he is beating down goons, or escapes narrowly with his life, there are not any moral dilemmas to be answered or cute romances that might take this antihero out of the gangster abyss. No, this is pure old fashioned revenge, packaged gorgeously under Jee-woon’s stylistic flourishes who would go on bigger and more outrageous pastures (Byung-hun on his arm, e.g., “The Good, the Bad, and the Weird” (2008)). A particular fight or die skirmish inside a warehouse is appropriately tense and thrilling bearing stakes and playing interesting against traditional conventions.
There are some minor glimpses of the other life which Sun-woo could have had mostly through the surrogate relationship of “protection” with a talented cellist who acts as the catalyst for the action but the script never fully encapsulates this aspect. We see everything through Kim’s eyes and his perspective of violence and structure is perhaps the only one he has known. Thus, the few loose subplots involving oppositional crime bosses and the cellist herself could initially confuse someone although they are ultimately resolved by the time the credits roll.
“A Bittersweet Life” might not be a genre breaking entry but it is expertly made and aims to please fans of the genre with stand out performances, great action, beautiful shots and an interesting choice of Spanish guitar infused soundtrack that gives a melancholic aura, wholly suitable for such a protagonist. It is a pleasing nail bitter from start to finish and a vehicle to showcase t the acting talents of Byung-hun.
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Watch A Bittersweet Life on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/13436028
Gaza: Genocide by Starving
By Jamal Kanj
Source: Global Research
Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It’s dinner time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the propane cooking cylinder empty, no food, no electricity, or drinking water.
Your youngest child, Manar, cries, “I’m hungry. We haven’t had food for the last four days.” She rubs her dry bluish hands together, “Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf, … I’m cold.” The words escape her chattering teeth.
You, let’s say your name is Nader, look at Manar’s feeble body, her pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a month.
Ahmad asks his wife, “Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for the dry food?”
Noora took a deep breath, “More than ten times, our kitchen is as empty as our stomachs.” She looked at the cold floor in despair, her face twisted into a sorrowful mask.
“Press this against Manar’s stomach,” he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. “It’ll help her sleep, again.”
It wasn’t the first night they put their children to sleep with a sack of sand on their stomach. This has become a common method for Gazans to suppress hunger. It was after midnight when Manar stopped crying, only then Nader and Noora had a chance to close their eyes, not knowing how more miserable the next day would be.
Unsure of the time, Nader jumps from the floor mattress to a strong pounding at the door. Loud pandemonium and commotion outside, he looks at his watch, 3:45 am. His first thought, the Israeli military ordering residents to vacate the building before blowing it up, as they had done dynamiting blocks of buildings in his neighborhood a week earlier. Noora and the children awake. Manar crawls to the corner with her siblings, wraps herself around her mother.
Nader leaped to the door to find his neighbor brother, Ali, on the other side panting for air.
“Come Nader … come, let’s go.” He stopped to catch a breath after running up the stairs. “Flour trucks.” His chest ballooned and deflated several times, “trucks arriving at the Nabulsi roundabout.” Ali moved sideways to make way for neighbors clumping down the stairs.
The children’s faces lit up. Their eyes like laser light, at Nader, wide open, waiting for his response.
“There were Israeli tanks at the roundabout. They ordered me home yesterday and didn’t allow me to bring water,” Nader said.
“The UN is distributing the flour. The Israelis allowed the trucks in.” Ali looked down the stairs, “Let’s go before it’s too late.” He urged Nader.
Nader turns his head toward his children, Manar’s laser focused eyes turn into a vacant stare, open mouth. He clenched his teeth, pulled the winter coat from the hook, closed the door behind and followed his older brother Ali, down to the street.
The above is not a work of imagination, but a reality of life endured by thousands of individuals in Gaza for more than 150 days. It is exactly what happened in the Flour Massacre on February 29 to thousands of starving fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in north Gaza. Where Israel used aid trucks to lure, murder and injure almost 900 hungry civilians. The blood of the starving, young and old, man and woman, drenched the flour sacks meant to feed hungry children.
In its efforts to render life in Gaza uninhabitable, Israel has not only targeted essential infrastructures such as hospitals, universities, water treatment plants, and roads but has also directed attacks towards civilian police. This deliberate targeting of police aimed to exacerbate the suffering and provoke a collapse of law and order. Despite warnings from the U.S. against targeting civilian police who maintained public safety and managed the orderly distribution of food, Israel dismissed such concerns, seeking to create lawlessness and chaotic conditions to worsen starvation and justify its actions as in the case of the Flour Massacre.
In covering the story, the Gaza absent Western media became willing outlets to market Israel disinformation cloaked in euphemisms to obscure the grim reality on the ground. Outlets like CNN along with other print media and the BBC for example referred to the death of 112 and the injuring of 760 hungry human beings as “Gaza food aid carnage” or “a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops,” blaming the death on stampedes and truck drivers. They then broadcasted, unquestionably, Israeli-manipulated videos showing the product of the Israeli designed chaos and claiming the hungry crowd posed a threat to its soldiers.
This wasn’t different from an earlier misinformation propagated by CNN Wolf Blitzer, when hosting Mark Regev, the Israeli version of the German Joseph Goebbels, in his show, The Situation Room, on November 15, 2023 where he started the show by saying “Happening now, the Israeli military says it uncovered Hamas weapons and a command center inside Gaza’s largest hospital.” Needless to say, it was all false. In spite of Regev’s abject disregard to basic truth, the Israeli Goebbels was brought again to CNN this week to market the flour truck massacre spinning lies, unchallenged, and claiming no Israeli involvement in the gunfire and blaming the shooting on “Palestinian armed groups.”
Unarguably, CNN, much like most of the American and European news outlets, have become a platform for disinformation with Israeli embedded hosts such as Blitzer who honed his journalistic prowess as a pro-Israel propogandist working for America Israel Public Affairs Committee, serving as an editor for its Near East Report in the mid 1970s.
It wasn’t until Al Jazeera aired a video showing the “chaotic” scene amidst heavy gunfire around the food truck, along with footage revealing bullet injuries in the upper bodies of victims, when some U.S. outlets, such as the New York Times, who espouses a faux professionalism, couldn’t continue ignoring the flagrant Israeli lies. The paper revisited the Israeli drone video that was made available to the compliant U.S. media outlets. After careful review the newspaper concluded that the footage had been altered with “multiple clips spliced together.” The edits conveniently erased the events just before the crowd dispersed in all directions, evading bullets, scrambling over trucks, seeking cover behind vehicles and structures, and falling to the ground from direct gunshot wounds.
It is important to point out, the targeting of aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout is neither the first nor the last of Israeli attempts to obstruct the delivery of food aid in Gaza. Approximately three weeks prior, on February 6, Israel fired upon a crowd gathering at the Kuwaiti roundabout, while naval gunboats targeted UNRWA humanitarian food trucks. More recently, or three days following the Flour Massacre, on March 3rd, Israel once again opened fire on a hungry crowd awaiting food trucks at the Kuwaiti roundabout, resulting in the deaths and injuries of several civilians.
The submissive prostration of Western media, providing unchallenged platforms to Israeli PR spokespersons, is unprecedented in the so called “free world.” By agreeing to Israeli directives restricting media access into Gaza, Western mainstream media has no presence to report from the theater. Gone AWOL, the media has been transformed into an active participant in whitewashing Israeli genocide where the Gaza coverage has been regulated, directly and indirectly, by an Israeli hasbara manifested by the managed evidence and narrative of the Flour Massacre. Or to paraphrase the original Goebbels, Western mainstream media has become a “keyboard on which Israel plays.”
In fact, Western, and particularly American genuflection to Israel extends beyond the media. Case in point, almost two weeks ago, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, John Kirby, disparaged his own U.S. army, praising the Israeli forces for taking actions to protect civilians, stating that he was “not sure our own (American) military would take” similar actions.
When asked about the murdering of the hungry civilians in Gaza, Kirby’s boss, Joe Biden pled ignorance stating “There’s two competing versions of what happened. I don’t have an answer yet.”
In avoiding answering the question, the U.S. president accorded equal credence to the Israeli disinformation machine. In keeping up with his standing, Biden is consistent in his anti-Palestinian bias hyperbolizing Israeli victimhood, while downplaying Israeli crimes against Palestinians under the pretext of not having enough information.
This week and after five months of pleading for Israel to allow more aid trucks into Gaza, Biden joined other inept Arab dictators in an inconsequential gesture dropping 38,000 meals to 2,4 million in Gaza. A stunt by the incompetent leaders which is aimed more at mollifying international outrage against Israel than a genuine desire to alleviate the mounting starvation levels in Gaza.
The made for TV theatrical air drop of mere 38,000 meals was like a grain of sand on the beach of Gaza. The parachuted meals were equivalent to providing a minuscule 0.005 of the daily meal for every Gazans, or the equivalent of offering 5 loaves of bread per 1000 individuals. This is a farce and rings hollow from an Administration that plans to send Israel almost $15 billion, in addition to the weapons and political cover that empower Israel to carry out the very siege the air drops purportedly intend to mitigate. The starvation in Gaza is not due to a drought or a natural disaster, but an Israeli made catastrophe enabled by Biden, Western governments, and blessed by Arab dictators.
As you read this, remember Nader, who joined his brother Ali to feed his hungry child, Manar. He would have been most likely one of those killed or injured in the February 29, Flour Massacre. His children, if alive, are still hungry and cold at home, watching through a broken window (U.S.) aid parcels parachuting from the skies alongside the roar of an American-made jet delivering 2000-pound bombs over their heads.
Manar, if she wasn’t among the more than 15 children who tragically perished this week from malnutrition and dehydration, will always recall how the Israeli-made starvation drove her father to death.
NATO Is Preparing and Plotting Strategy to Invade Russia: War Is Insanity
By Gary D. Barnett
Source: GaryDBarnett.com
” The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.”
William Ellery Channing
The cursed evil of war, all war, is the sole possession of humankind. Many would claim that it is the sole possession of the State, but they would be mistaken, for if the masses did not support wars, they would never take place. If the soldiers refused to kill on orders, no war could continue. If mothers and fathers refused to allow their sons and daughters to be used as cannon fodder, who would fight the wars? It would never be the politicians or their children, as they are only willing to sacrifice the blood of others and their families in order to satisfy their lust for money and power. If those who plot and sanction war, those who vote to approve and fund war, those who gain great wealth due to war, those who demand war in the name of ‘country,’ and those who applaud war in the name of ‘exceptionalism,’ were responsible for fighting the wars, war would cease to exist on this earth. Kings, princes, monarchs, presidents, and politicians do not actively wage war, they do not risk their own lives, they just fatten their cowardly bellies on the carnage of conflict.
As I write this, the largest NATO war exercise ever to take place since the Cold War is being conducted in Eastern Europe. This is a multi-month exercise through May of this year, that is being staged as preparation for war with Russia. According to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) (actually Offense) this exercise called “Steadfast Defender 24, is based on a ‘fictitious’ Article 5 scenario due to a ‘fictitious’ attack against a NATO member. While the DOD stresses that these exercises “are not directed against any country,” it goes on to say:
“Still, Russia has launched the largest war in Europe since World War II, attacking neighboring Ukraine. since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, NATO has strengthened defense and deterrence on the continent. While Steadfast Defender has been planned for years, the exercise incorporates defense plans based on Russia’s actions. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine will shape our understanding of conflict for years to come. NATO is observing the conflict in Ukraine closely in order to improve our readiness and refine our future training capabilities and innovation.”
This is what is referred to as doublespeak, contradiction, hypocrisy, and propaganda, all rolled into one. The initial aim of NATO’s founding treaty, was meant to create a mutual assistance pact (warmongering document) to counter so-called risk from the Soviet Union, so the ‘fictitious’ Article 5 reference that this is not directed at any country, is completely bogus, just as the DOD’s language reveals.
This is very serious business, and it is being done in my opinion to solicit a reaction. The entire Middle East is in turmoil, Zionist Israel with total complicity and support of the U.S., is committing mass genocide (a Holocaust) against all Palestinians, while conflict between Israel and Egypt is getting ever closer. This U.S. led NATO operation, a blatant act of force in the region, is a direct threat to Russia and Iran, who have done nothing to warrant any such belligerent and aggressive ‘exercise’ in their own back yard.
This so-called ‘exercise’ will involve almost 100,000 troops from 31 NATO countries and Sweden. It will take place in Finland, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Most of these countries border either Russia or Ukraine, which puts most of this operation right next door to Russia. To put this into perspective for those Americans who have never seen a world map or have no concept of geography, this is akin to a huge Russian military operation in both Canada and Mexico, right on the U.S. border. Try to imagine the insanity that would create, especially considering that this world nearly ended in the 60s simply because the Soviet Union (Russia) was thought to have missiles in Cuba.
What thought process could have possibly been considered in planning such an action as this? There certainly is no basis whatsoever for this kind of combative and hostile challenge to a world power with nuclear capabilities, especially in such a dangerous time in that entire region. The U.S. is surrounding Russia with American military bases, while expanding NATO to include more and more of their direct neighboring countries, and at the same time, is running huge military operations on their border. This is either complete idiocy, or some other plot is being pursued. Either way, the risk is definite, and anything can happen if the proverbial fuse gets too short.
This nation-state called America is the most aggressive empire that has ever existed on earth, has fomented and prosecuted unwarranted war throughout its entire history, all of them, has been responsible for tens, if not hundreds of millions of deaths around the world, and has attempted to rule the entire planet in one way or another under the claim of asinine ‘exceptionalism.’ Now the U.S. is on the verge of total bankruptcy, possible loss of its reserve currency, has unimaginable debt, has become generally speaking, an immoral society, and is threatening more war and killing apparently in order to stoke more fear into the hearts and minds of its blind and dumb citizenry. How else can totalitarian control be preserved in a failing nation?
Watch this situation closely, as it has all the markings of a nation on the verge of collapse attempting to create one more major war in order to survive a bit longer. Any who have the ability to think clearly, would look at this situation and understand that this is the absolute worst way to approach impending doom, and in fact is backward.
There may be other things going on of which we are not aware, but how on earth can this end well? How can actions such as these bring about anything good? I can tell you, they cannot. Only hell comes from aggression and war, and hasn’t there been enough killing in this world to last an eternity?
“War is not a means but an end. It makes violence respectable and makes sadists look like heroes”
Mary Horlock
US State Allows a US Dissident to be Murdered then Focuses on a Foreign Traitor as Champion of “Democracy”
By Steve Brown
Source: The Duran
Deserted by the criminal Coup Class who litter the halls of US governmental power at the behest of their debauched and murderously corrupt trillionaire masters on Wall Street, US citizen and dissident Gonzalo Lira died at the hands of an equally corrupt Kiev regime, known mainly for its own corruption and perpetrating war on the Donbass from 2014.
The only real interest the failed/former United States has in the Ukraine is to offload its obsolete weaponry and inflationary dollars to be vaporized on the battlefield, instead of in people’s pockets. But that ‘plan’ has not really worked either. The outright treachery of the former USA — and its duplicitous CIA-controlled trillionaire media — knows no bound, where the murder of US dissident Gonzalo Lira by its vassal Ukraine ‘state’ serves as one concise example.
It seems that nothing the central government in Washington has ever worked for — in excess of 1/2 century — has succeeded except perhaps for destabilizing the globe… where the primary Washington intent is to perpetuate the continuing corruption of the Biden regime and Wall Street’s own criminal military-industrial agenda. To do so, the CIA has co-opted major media based on US Presidential Directive PDD-68 and must push its imperial core narrative globally, whenever opportunity allows — even if the subject is a foreign traitor with no links to the west at all, except for his hatred for Russia.
Never a viable opposition candidate in Russia, the western collective latched on to Navalny as its ‘great white hope’ for regime change in Russia, something that the west has worked unsuccessfully and assiduously for since the end of World War 2.
Meanwhile the criminal Coup Class commonly known publicly as US Congress (bankrolled, promoted, and underwritten by trillionaire incorporated US Oligarchs) should be indicted for murder via its complicity in the murder of Gonzalo Lira – a US citizen – by the Ukraine — or what’s left of that abomination of a rump beggarly state. That’s because not a single US political “leader” – whether inside the US central government or without – raised any concern about Lira’s captivity by Kiev’s Obersturmbannführer’s while suffering from pneumonia in vile conditions, worthy of Torgau or any Nazi FSG camp of WW2. Lira was treated brutally by a terminally corrupt and brutal Kiev regime, known mainly for its avaricious corruption.
As such, country-404’s crimes perfectly mirror the outrageous duplicity of the former United States and its (largely) US-owned major media. A major media which sports such vile characters as Mika Brzezinksi, Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, and Jake Tapper (for example) as being media heroes, by launching their tirades of hate versus Russia, at behest of their debauched and depraved Oligarch corporate masters who pay their blood-money salaries.
But ultimately this article is about Gonzalo Lira, a US dissident berated by some and admired by others. As imperfect as we all may be, whatever citizen Lira’s faults, he did not deserve to die in a Ukraine prison cell ignored and forgotten by the terminally corrupt central government of the failed and former United States, with not one official governmental word said in his honor. And as US Citizen Lira is forgotten by the west, a traitor to Russia is continuously honored and promoted by the western collective’s failed media.
Yes, the former United States is of course former. That’s because the Constitutional Republic of the United States as founded no longer exists. We see this at the border; via its many filthy wars, and in US support for a murderous genocidal regime in Israel, as well as the Ukraine; and the Oligarchical manner of political rule by the US Coup Class.
The failed and former United States has been co-opted by depraved trillionaires of the foulest, most vile sort, installing their political candidates at the very highest levels of Executive and Congressional power. In memory of Gonzalo Lira:
May God help us all…
After the Crash 