Stay Human

Freedom Flotilla

In a world of ever increasing inhumanity and insanity, staying human becomes the ultimate act of courage.





Of course the Flotilla is a political provocation

Yes, out solidarity is political. Yes, it is provocative. And unlike the racism and oppression of Zionism and its enablers, there is nothing shameful about it.

A little refresher course in Palestinian history for our talking points in the coming days may be useful. Neutralizing the propaganda of media and criminal governments is one small way of staying human.

Broken Wings

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people

Died some, pro patria,*
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Ezra Pound

Claimstakers

From the 1988 LP ... another late great Nashville band 

Broken Wings

This high in the stratosphere

The earth is hazy blue

The sky looks like an emerald

From inside my silver tube

My work is almost surgical

I fight a sterile war

I never see my enemy

Just a target down below

To just punch in positions

Is my method of attack

They never see their murderer

Like I shot 'em in the back

16 miles before we reach the enemy

15 miles everybody check in

14 miles enter pictures from the satellite

13 miles do coordinates fit

12 more miles we're encountering fire

11 more miles I think about home

10 more miles this is something I believe in

9 more miles I see engine smoke

8 more miles there's fire in the cockpit

7 more miles our oxygen quits

6 more miles our radio breaks down

5 more miles our pilot's been hit

4 more miles abandoning target

3 more miles too late to engage

2 more miles we empty our payload

1 more mile over any ole place

As a boy

I dreamed of the day that I would fly

I see airplanes like needles scratch the sky

Now I sit like a prison's over me

Now the eagle can fly with broken wings

Outside the air is freezing

But in my room it's warm

The nurse says Europe's burning

And there's talk of winter storms

I try to watch the weatherman

And his pictures on the screen

Taken from a satellite

Like the kind I used to read

He says the wind chill factor

Tonight is twenty-one

But still my blood runs colder

When I think of what I've done

16 days have I done the right thing

15 days how will I know

14 days now I'm hearin' voices

13 days comin' from below

12 days I couldn't help what happened

11 more days anybody can see

10 more days I'd do anything

9 more days to make 'en fall on me

8 more days before I reach insanity

7 more days the doctor wants proof

6 more days he says it's just trauma

5 more days everybody goes through

4 more days before my nervous breakdown

3 more days there's a letter from home

2 more days everybody's proud son

1 more day we just thought you should know

Music: Steve Boyd

Lyrics: J. Sherraden

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music. 
Ezra Pound

The prospect of a 30 years war is not one to arouse mirth and hilarity even in a flighty, chicken headed and irresponsible people such as the United States of Americans.


You are in it, and Lord knows, who is a goin’ to git you out. The late Lord Rothermere, whose culture was nothin’, as you might say, to write home about, finally decided that the English public was wholly unteachable. I don’t know whether you can learn ANYTHING from history, I don’t know whether you are even yet in the state of mind where you want to learn any thing from history or from any other source whatsoever.


A way to get yourselves OUT, might be discoverable, it might be more discoverable if you first had
the faint inkling of a curiosity as to how you got yourselves IN.


The Honor of the United States of America is NOT concerned with becoming an arsenal.
The men who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those months of intense cold and hunger with
the design, or in the hope that Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, the union of the colonies would one
day be able to stir up wars between other countries in order to sell them munitions.


Whether you intend to be slaves, lifelong slaves, hereditary slaves to machinery and whether you
propose to sell your children and your grand children into long lasting slavery to usurers and to machinery.
I mean you will have to make up your MINDS. YOU can not live on cold iron, you can not live on
airplane spare parts, YOU can not live well without LAWS which even the officials obey.


Gold is a coward. Gold is not the backbone of nations. It is their ruin. A coward, at the first breath of
danger gold flows AWAY, gold flows OUT of the country.


 and every gun was a golden egg, for the Bankers in New York.


The war you ought to be fightin’ is NOT five thousand miles OUTSIDE Boston. Or five thousand miles outside New York, or even outside San Francisco. It is INTERNAL


You can then clear out the crap that journalists BELIEVE along with their fake news, along what the
advertisers LET the OWNERS (so called), let the editors PUBLISH. There is a second layer of crap that
newspapermen believe to be real. BUT it is not grounded on a real knowledge of ANYTHING.
They have NOT gone into the documents. They have not read the real history. They chase one
butterfly after another.
NOW the facts are NOT wholly hidden. There are fifty authors whom you could read, Brooks Adams,
among ’em. You could read the works of the men who fought for the making of the Republic, John Adams,
Jefferson, Van Buren, hidden or kept in shadow by punk propaganda.


What are you fighting for? Fighting for the starvation of Europe? Fighting to spread famine in Asia?
Fighting for vain boast proved false? Fighting for the Sassoonery? Are you fighting for the National
Heritage? For the heritage of wisdom, the heritage of Washington, and of Monroe, of John Adams and
Lincoln?
I’ll say you are not.
You are fighting AGAINST what all these men stood for. And it will take more brains than I got, to
get you out of it prettily.


The Bolshevik anti-morale comes out of the Talmud, which is the dirtiest teaching that any race ever
codified. The Talmud is the one and only be getter of the Bolshevik system.
And if there ARE any Christians in the United State of America, they would do well to consider
Renan’s warning. They would do well to consider the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew parts
of the Bible.
They would do well to look objectively at the record of Hebrew barbarism, and at the nature of
Christ’s revolt, as recorded in the Gospels.
I ask you WHY WAS CHRIST crucified? He was crucified for trying to BUST a racket.


Fake economists are one form of the journalist bacillus. Put out in front to lie, and rising on the
wings or tin toes of ambition, permitted (on the leash and chain system) to get out in front and holler.
Quoted from one press to another, NOT because they ever print anything useful, or tell the truth, or
approach it. They are either men who KNOW NOT, or men who say not, and who put up a word screen, or
esCHEW certain issues; who do NOT make revelations. And whose interest even when quoted
internationally is NOT due to the INTRINSIC meaning of what they actually say. Their blather IS
symptomatic, and is studied and quoted as a symptom of the diseases


The American has the head, evidently of a chicken, he is incapable of political revery.
The existence of a secret and IRRESPONSIBLE government does not worry him. It has been there at
least since 1863 and he takes it as a matter of course. It gets worse daily and hourly.
All the means of intercommunication pass into the hands of the secret and largely Semitic control; and
the American dreams of Thoreau and says, “who am I to interfere in such muchness?”


That question can be put scientifically, just as well as puttin’ it in a hortatory form, or asking what is
nice, or what ought a decent man do. No man will do anything WORTH doin’ till some sense of
“OUGHT” enters his system. Profit motive is silly, in the sense that it ultimately kills the good life; makes
the mare go, yass, makes the mare go, money makes the mare go. And then somebody wakes up crazy.
And that takes JUST long enough, so nobody notices what is going on. Suddenly wake up and find
American abundance has been chucked out of the window.


ALL purchasing power does NOT come from labor. All real wealth comes from natural resources
PLUS labor. The shyster wants to hog natural resources, and sweat the hide of labor. That is the cause of
unpleasantness. There is no wangle or dirty wheeze that the shyster won’t think up and use to get a
monopoly, to violate the just price, to keep labor sweatin’. And the shyster is pizin’. He is the sworn
blasphemer, false swearin’ and cheatin’ FOE to all labor, past, present, and labor to come. And you better
discover this. You better kick him out of your hemisphere. You better invent some bug poison that will
eliminate him from your system.


One kind of shyster succeeds another: shyster penetrates ANY organization, church or state for the
sake of livin’ on the Purchasing Power that DON’t come from labor. Shyster joins EVERY new movement
so as to be there when it gets big and to be at the exploitin’ position. Gangster shysters, medieval orders of
chivalry rose to combat the gangster, to combat universal brutality and injustice in range of the individual
knight. Or the body of chivalry rose to an idea. With these two forces, i.e., gangsterism AND chivalry, the
feudal system developed. As law it was a RESPONSIBLE system. The DUTIES of the overlord were
enormous. They required DISTRIBUTION of wealth. Naturally this annoyed greedy overlords, and weak
overlords, and the shyster entered the system. Ready to sweat out taxes, to sweat the hide off of labor, and
to collect money interest. In fact the shyster is always a rent collector. And the worm ate into the fruit.


You are in black darkness and confusion. You have been hugger-muggared, and carom-shotted into a war,
and you know NOTHING about it. You know NOTHING about the forces that caused it, or you know next
to nothing.


You can keep the ole Constitution. Mostly sailors and landlubbers no longer care, but as a technicality
(if no more than that) I am tellin’ you. Lots of folks want to bust it, so as to fish in the troubled waters, lots
of folks want to keep it rusty and inefficient, so’z it won’t interfere with their various rackets.


You are at war to conceal the fact that a lot of purchasing power, a lot of capital comes from a hoax.
Damn the hoax. But don’t go out and die for just bein’ idiots. Or for your tolerance of being run and ruled
over by dumheads who are pushed on by shysters.


And the program of this ENEMY is known, and the action of governments in the hands of the
ENEMY SHOW the nature of the AIM of the enemy. Their aim is not to win war, but to make peace
impossible. These bombings of towns are NOT military, they are done to rouse hate, to be causes of hate.


There is NO freedom without economic freedom. Freedom that does not include freedom from debt is
plain bunkumb.  Debt is the prelude to slavery. And you are now, I ’spose, arrived at the intermezzo. America WAS promises. America today is largely, shall we say, promissory notes that simply can NOT be honored. 


It probably seemed very eccentric that a man, any man should suspend playin’ tennis and trying to
understand the Confucian anthology, and after a long period of years return to America to protest against
ANYTHING, or to offer suggestions to his fellow citizens about anything whatsoever.


The war is PART of the age old struggle between the usurer and the rest of mankind: between the
usurer and peasant, the usurer and producer, and finally between the usurer and the merchant, between
usurocracy and the mercantilist system.
Goods are destroyed rather than exchanged against other WANTED goods, during war time. The ratio
of units of currency, money, to things people want to eat and to wear is altered, i.e., there are more dollars
in circulation in relation to goods, or pounds or other monetary units. Debts mount up. When they have
reached hitherto unprecendented size, the manipulators of currencies “return” to what they have called
“sound money.”


Wars in old time were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is DEBT. Usury
is an instrument for increasing debt, and for keeping the debtor in debt perpetually or at least for the
longest possible period.


Quite apart from military operation, from the results of military operations, from the possible results of any
military operations that may occur, the American people appear to have suffered crashing defeat, at the
hands of the financiers.
There is no understanding of history without some understanding of finance. And nine people, at least
nine people out of ten are ready to tell you proudly that they understand nothing about finance, and that
they do not understand economics. It has become the hallmark of the end of the bourgeois era to proclaim
ignorance of economics.
Yet you can not allocate the responsibility for an event, for a crime, for an accident, until you know
what has happened.


The world was to be enslaved according to plan. Slavery consists in having to do uninteresting work,
at another’s bidding


I suppose if I go on talking to you kids LONG enough I will get something into your heads. If I go on
poundin’ from day to day, every day and in every way, I will finally teach you kids why you got drug into
this war (if you survive it), and when you know that you will know more than your fathers did by the end
of the last one, that is, more than most of ’em ever discovered.

excerpts from “Ezra Pound Speaking”  RADIO SPEECHES OF WORLD WAR II 

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron has died.  His phrase/poem/tune "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is very well known and often used but the man behind it is not a household name. Say what you may about him but he had something to say. Too bad he never got to jam with Jimi Hendrix. That would have been something.


Gil's song about nuclear power plants and nuclear waste, "South Carolina," is still as relevant today as it was 32 years ago when he sang it.

What ever happened to the protests and the rage,
What ever happened to the voices of the sane,
What ever happened to the people who gave a damn.
Didn't they justify the dying in the jungle of Vietnam.


Listen to more Gil Scott-Heron at Wolfgang's Vault.

Gil did a lot of dope and alcohol.  He earned the right to sing honestly about it.

The Body Snatcher Hand's Collection

While I had to refer to the legend several times I was still amazed at how many of the hands I could easily identify. What an awesome idea! (The Body Snatcher Hand's Collection by Nicolas Fong, via Geek-Art)

Previously on Popped Culture...

Hand Prosthetics In Film

Darlin' Don't You Go And Cut Your Hair

Rock Beats Scissors

Merchants of the Myth

Iranian TV 2006.

An Iranian viewpoint of the 'holocaust.' Saved from the soon to be deleted google video. 

For educational and historical purposes only.

 memritv translation. 

"The Farm"

Visible made a reference to Stephen Gaskin today which brought back a flood of memories and since I don't think I've posted anything about The Farm and its cultural influences, it seemed like something positive to do.

Almost 40 years ago Gaskin and his band of 'hippies' came to Tennessee to escape the craziness of San Francisco and begin an experiment in community and sustainability that continues to today.

1971 and their bus caravan stopped and camped on Old Hickory Lake in Sumner County not far from my hometown. The area quickly became a tourist attraction and the road became jammed for a few days with the locals wanting to get a glimpse of real life hippies. Of course we went and talked with some of them and left with the idea that this may be something big. It was but maybe not on the scale that we envisioned.

They soon found land near Summertown and the infamous tale began.

Would I have become a vegetarian and organic gardener 38 years ago without the influence of Gaskin and crew's writings and lifestyle? Who knows? Maybe, the ideas were becoming more acceptable but it was evident even then that their presence did help jump start a lot of folks around here to pursue different forms of alternative living. Small natural food stores began opening up all over and I had the opportunity to work in a couple of them. The deliveries of their products by the Farm folks became an opportunity to discuss food and life. Over time even the locals were won over with their hard work and innovation.

Stephen's wife, Ina May, wrote the modern manual on natural child birth, Spiritual Midwifery.  Her teachings still remain invaluable and will be for many years to come. I knew a number of couples who went to the farm to have Ina May and other Farm midwives deliver their babies. Everything always turned out fine.

We would go see the Farm Band with Stephen as the drummer every chance we could. They weren't the best around but they helped to form a philosophy I like ... "What you lack in talent, make up for in intensity."

If you are interested in more Farm history and current events, websites are here and here. Anyone contemplating communal endeavors would do well to study the trials, tribulations, successes, failures and changes of the Farm. 

Permaculture, solar energy, humanitarian efforts and much more are all a part of the Farm's story. You can even get a radiation detector from them if you feel the need.  It's funny but what they've brought to the table is not just for hippies anymore.

I'll close with this still relevant excerpt from Stephen's 1981 book "Rendered Infamous." 

Usury and Sharp Practices

The myth of the free market assumes some parity among the horsetraders. In olden times, there were proscriptions against usury that were in effect from the church, when usury was against the law. Not only usury, but there was a level short of usury which was considered, if not a legal matter, at least an ecclesiastical matter, and people would be warned against the un-Christian nature of "sharp practices." Sharp practices included the kind of farming mentality that confused husbandry with being sure to plant the fruit trees on the side of the property close to the fence, so the shade would fall on your neighbor's property and the fruit would fall on your own.

But the Bible taught that the first two rows along the edge of the road were dedicated to passing travelers who in those days of non-frozen or concentrated foods, could not possibly carry enough food for a very long journey, and probably didn't have any actual money on their persons as they traveled.

These were cultural norms. Some may say that is naive and it was easier then, and there are more people now and times are harder. But two rows alongside the field of a giant complicated farm is virtually insignificant. There are huge quantities of food produced and harvested these days, but two rows could still be done without damage to the industry. It is merely that sharp practices have become "normal", which is to say not right or acceptable, but done by so many people that the curve describing the frequency of that action is near the norm.

High Times Films - Stephen Gaskin



part 2

Continuity

Broken Wings from picasso dreams 






A common thread runs through our history. That of the nameless faceless slaughter of those caught up in the acts of war. Collateral damage often used to send a message that everyone is 'fair game' when all that matters is profit and power.

February 13 is an infamous anniversary that even the mainstream media reminds us of but without going into the details of the whys.

The firebombing of Dresden 66 years ago today should make us bow our heads in shame. Few will care.

According to some historians, the question of who ordered the attack and why, has never been answered. To this day, no one has shed light on these two critical questions. Some think the answers may lie in unpublished papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and perhaps others. History reports that the British and American attack on Dresden left more than 2-1/2 times as many civilians dead as Britain suffered in all of World War II, and that one in every 5 Germans killed in the war died in the Dresden holocaust.

Some say the motive was to deliver the final blow to the German spirit -- that the psychological impact of the utter destruction of the heart centre of German history and culture would bring Germany to its knees once and for all.

Some say it was to test new weapons of mass destruction, the phosphorous incendiary bomb technology. Undoubtedly the need for control and power was at the root. The insatiable need of the dominators to exert control and power over a captive and fearful humanity is what drives acts of mass murder like the Dresden firebombing and Hiroshima.

I think there was also an additional hidden and cynical motive which may be why full disclosure of the Dresden bombing has been suppressed. The Allies knew full well that hundreds of thousands of refugees had migrated to Dresden in the belief that this was a safe destination and the Red Cross had been assured Dresden was not a target. The end of the war was clearly in sight at that point in time and an enormous mass of displaced humanity would have to be dealt with. What to do with all these people once the war ended? What better solution than the final solution? Why not kill three birds with one stone? By incinerating the city, along with a large percentage of its residents and refugees, the effectiveness of their new firebombs was successfully demonstrated. Awe and terror was struck in the German people, thereby accelerating the end of the war. And finally, the Dresden firebombing ensured the substantial reduction of a massive sea of unwanted humanity, thereby greatly lessening the looming burden and problem of postwar resettlement and restructuring.

We may never know what was in the psyche of those in power or all the motives that unleashed such horrific destruction of civilian life - the mass murder of a defenseless humanity who constituted no military threat whatsoever and whose only crime was to try to find relief and shelter from the ravages of war. Without the existence of any military justification for such an onslaught on helpless people, the Dresden firebombing can only be viewed as a hideous crime against humanity, waiting silently and invisibly for justice, for resolution and for healing in the collective psyches of the victims and the perpetrators. {more}

Also on this day in 1991, U.S. bombs  killed 314 civilians including 130 children inside a shelter in Baghdad as 'Desert Storm' gave us a hint of things to come.

Today it's drone attacks, 'suicide' bombings and false flag attacks still taking out more civilians that only want to live their lives in peace and there's no end in sight.

Millions of people walked into their 'churches' today. Most of whom have simply forgotten, if they ever knew, what they are there for. 

The Damned Human Race

Optimus magister bonus liber - The best teacher is a good book

The Damned Human Race

by: Mark Twain

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work. …

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl — that, and to provide some fresh meat for his larder. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl — if any — I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter’s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: He is avaricious and miserly; they are not.

In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals. …

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity — these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is “The Animal that Laughs.” But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No — Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it — or has occasion to. …

The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.

Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.

Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man’s slave for wages, and does that man’s work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” — with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete — as per the telegrams quoted above — he will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: Whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.

In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh — not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable.

I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never have been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.

Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity — to enable man to do wrong — it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease. Rabies enables a man to do a thing which he could not do when in a healthy state: kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite. No one is the better man for having rabies. The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What, now, do we find the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it.

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor — some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance — insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirchless innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development — namable as the Human Being. Below us – nothing. …

Mark Twain and Joseph Jefferson in Nikola Tesla's South Fifth Avenue Laboratory, 1894, Tesla's image is blurred between them.

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla: Thunder and Lightning

Mark Twain Project

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010) Full Text

Silent film footage taken in 1909 by Thomas Edison at Stormfield (CT) at Mark Twain's estate.

What If?

50 years ago today was the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. One one level, for many of us, it was the beginning of a lifetime of "what if" questions. 

What if JFK had lived? The Federal Reserve crushed and the U.S. issued its own debt free currency? The CIA broken into a thousand pieces? The Vietnam War never ramped up and the military industry complex held at bay? Israel's nuclear ambitions thwarted and maybe they could have been convinced to change their course of actions? More basically, what if Kennedy didn't ride around in a convertible all the time? The assassination plans would have still gone on but who knows what would have happened.

Moot points. 

Backward looking "what ifs" may make for interesting discussions but what do they do for today? Possibly give us philosophical points to use when trying to effect positive changes for the present and future? Maybe. 

On a personal level we all have plenty of historical "what ifs." We could make those lists and run them over and over in our minds but to what end?

An acquaintance of mine runs a "what if" over in his mind every day. What if he had not encouraged his son to join the military? It would make him a man he said. It did, a dead man. He wishes him alive, maybe married, maybe have a kid, maybe even happy. It's too late. We don't get to go back on our "what ifs." 

The rambling point of all this is that we can't dwell on what might have been. JFK didn't make it. There is no Camelot. That doesn't mean there can't be. Our decisions not only materialize in overt events right in our face but also effect what doesn't happen, what we don't see, what we don't even know. 

JFK's legacy or legend as some call it is still important in the sense that it gives us a point of reference.  The idealism of that time, although unrealized,  is not lost. It's just been put on the back burner due to the ever increasing control of liars and psychopaths for the last 50 years.

"What if?" Two words that can take us in many directions. It's misdirection that holds us in check.

"Time is tight."  It always has been.

"If you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school"

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, has now moved on from this vibrational plane. 


To most folks his music was an acquired taste and best appreciated in the altered states of the day but the legend and tall tales of his life make for a story to be remembered.

His death is not important in the overall scheme of today's world you may say. True, but the footnotes of history sometimes provide a little diversion and stoke some long lost memories... and that's not always a bad thing.

This 1982 video was rejected by MTV. A compliment in hindsight.

Israel Protests Against Middle East Peace Proposals (August 2001)

The next month the peace proposals faded, killed, in the chaos of the 9/11 psyop. Remember the fake video shown on 9/11 and for days afterward that was claimed to be Palestinians celebrating the attack? That pre-planned bit of Israeli propaganda worked very well. It stirred up a lot of negative emotions against the Palestinians and I don't think the main stream media ever issued a correction.

An equitable peace process is still dead over nine years later.

video from IranContraScumDid911 

______________


One of my favorite people, Deanna Spingola, interviews Gilad Atzmon.

Two Hours @ Deanna Spingola's Radio Show

Discussing different issues to do with Palestine, Zionist brutality and Jewish lobbying.

Around 16.30 minutes into the 2nd hour, Gloria, an Israeli American lady called the station and spoke about the invaluable importance of David Irving, Michael Hoffman and other revisionists. It is the 'revisionists who help us to understand and question our past'  she said.

 Deanna's writings

The Pearl Harbor Deception

All war is by deception. Even those we are taught were "good."


Dec. 7, 1941 was "a day of infamy," in more ways than one.








FDR and the making of a war

by Srdja Trifkovic

The "mother of all conspiracies."


The claims can be summarized as follows: President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to enter the war in Europe, especially after the fall of France (June 1940). In this desire he was supported by the old elite of Anglophile Wasps and by the increasingly influential Jewish lobby. In June 1941 they were joined by the assorted leftists who cared about the Soviet Union more than about America. After meeting FDR at the Atlantic Conference (August 14, 1941) Churchill noted the "astonishing depth of Roosevelt's intense desire for war." But there was a problem: the President could not overcome the resistance to "Europe's war" felt by most Americans and their elected representatives.

The mood of the country was a problem, and Roosevelt therefore resorted to subterfuge. He systematically and deliberately provoked the Japanese into attacking the United States. His real target was Hitler: Roosevelt expected the German dictator to abide by the Tripartite Pact and declare war on America, and hoped that Hitler's decision would be facilitated by a display of America's apparent vulnerability. Accordingly, even though Roosevelt was well aware of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, he let it happen and was relieved, even pleased, when it did. The evidence is circumstantial, of course, and chronologically its more important elements proceed as follows:

1. In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt ordered the Pacific to relocate from the West Coast to Hawaii. When its commander, Admiral Richardson, protested that Pearl Harbor offered inadequate protection from air and torpedo attack he was replaced.

2. On October 7 1940 Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an eight-point memo for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S., including an American oil embargo against Japan. All of them were eventually accomplished.

3. On 23 June 1941 - one day after Hitler's attack on Russia - Secretary of the Interior and FDR's Advisor Harold Ickes wrote a memo for the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia."

4. On 18 October Ickes noted in his diary: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."

5. The U.S. had cracked key Japanese codes before the attack. FDR received "raw" translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941 Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence HQ in Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not warned.

6. Sixty years later the U.S. Government still refuses to identify or declassify many pre-attack decrypts on the grounds of "national security"!

7. On November 25 Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said an attack was likely within days, and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."

8. On November 25 FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan and it resulted in Secretary of State Hull's deliberately provocative ultimatum of 26 November 1941 that guaranteed war.

9. On November 26 Washington ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible". This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already inadequate fighter protection. On the same day Cordell Hull issued his ultimatum demanding full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to Japan called this "The document that touched the button that started the war."

10. On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8 ("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier.

11. On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were getting signals west of Hawaii.

12. On 5 December FDR wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next four or five days will decide the matters."

Particularly indicative is Roosevelt's behavior on the day of the attack itself. Harry Hopkins, who was alone with FDR when he received the news, wrote that the President was unsurprised and expressed "great relief." Later in the afternoon Harry Hopkins wrote that the war cabinet conference "met in not too tense an atmosphere because I think that all of us believed that in the last analysis the enemy was Hitler... and that Japan had given us an opportunity." That same evening FDR said to his cabinet, "We have reason to believe that the Germans have told the Japanese that if Japan declares war, they will too. In other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically brings..." - at which point he was interrupted, but his expectations were perfectly clear. CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow met Roosevelt at midnight and was surprised at FDR's calm reaction. The following morning Roosevelt stressed to his speechwriter Rosenman that "Hitler was still the first target, but he feared that a great many Americans would insist that we make the war in the Pacific at least equally important with the war against Hitler."

Jonathan Daniels, administrative assistant and press secretary to FDR, later said "the blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price." Roosevelt confirmed this to Stalin at Tehran on November 30, 1943, by saying that "if the Japanese had not attacked the US he doubted very much if it would have been possible to send any American forces to Europe."

Hitherto eminently establishmentarian historian Jonathan Toland has made it possible for Pearl Harbor "conspiracy theorists" to become more respectable "revisionists" with his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath [1981]: "Was it possible to imagine a President who remarked, 'This means war,' after reading the [thirteen-part 6 December] message, not instantly summoning to the White House his Army and Navy commanders as well as his Secretaries of War and Navy? ... Stimson, Marshall, Stark and Harry Hopkins had spent most of the night of December 6 at the White House with the President. All were waiting for what they knew was coming: an attack on Pearl Harbor. The comedy of errors on the sixth and seventh appears incredible. It only makes sense if it was a charade, and Roosevelt and the inner circle had known about the attack."

Churchill later wrote that FDR and his top advisors "knew the full and immediate purpose of their enemy": "A Japanese attack upon the U.S. was a vast simplification of their problems and their duty. How can we wonder that they regarded the actual form of the attack, or even its scale, as incomparably less important than the fact that the whole American nation would be united?"

The real target, Adolf Hitler, duly walked into the trap on December 10, 1941, thus committing the greatest blunder of his career and ensuring Germany's defeat. The rest, as they say, is history. The ensuing fury gave birth first to a superpower, then to an empire. It swept away doubters and isolationists, it legitimized a total war for unconditional surrender. It created nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the military-industrial complex, the "intelligence community," and today's benevolent global hegemony. The people who run the American Empire today will as strenuously deny the existence of a Pearl Harbor conspiracy as their predecessors denied it half a century ago. But in their hearts they'll admit that, even if there had not been one, it should have been invented.

Much more at apfn

Pearl Harbor - Mother of all Conspiracies


Fascism and False Flags = War By Deanna Spingola


Pearl Harbor - Conspiracy


A National Security Agency (NSA) Study rules out Pearl Harbor conspiracy - 2008

Well of course, any admission might lead to more questioning of 9/11 .....

The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics

Thoughts for a Sunday morning

What we call "History" is written by the winners, by the masters of empires, by generals who devastate men's lands, by the financiers who loot the world's wealth and subjugate the genius of great scientific and technical inventors, putting it at the service of their economic or military domination.

French philosopher Roger Garaudy has exposed some of the Zionist myths in his book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics – challenging the official Holocaust story and citing the Jewish role in the western media.


By Roger Garaudy

Introduction

Part I: Theological Myths

1. The Myth of the "Promise": Promised Land or Conquered Land?
   
   a. In Contemporary Christian Exegesis
   
   b. In the Prophetic Jewish Exegesis
   
   
2. The Myth of the "Chosen People"
   
   
3. The Myth of Joshua: Ethnic Purification
   
   
   

Part II: The Myths of the 20th Century

1. The Myth of Zionist Antifascism
   
   
2. The Myth of the Justice of Nuremberg
   
   
3. The Myth of the Holocaust
   
   
4. The Myth of "A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land"
   
   
   

Part III: The Political Use of the Myth

1. The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in the United States
   
   
2. The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in France
   
   
3. The Myth of the Israeli Miracle: The External Financing of Israel
   

Conclusion

more

pdf version

hat tip: Uprooted Palestinians

History Lessons

The Conception of the Doctrine of War on Terror

link

Although the doctrine of War on Terror was announced by G.W. Bush following the events of 9/11, the real architect of that doctrine is Benjamin Netanyahu. While most people think that Netanyahu is an Israeli politician, he is also an author of a few books on terrorism and is the real father of the War on Terror doctrine. One of his early works on terrorism "International Terrorism: Challenge and Response" dates back to 1979. His major definitive work "Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism" was published in 1995. He has also been promoting his War on Terror doctrine in his speeches. One such speech was delivered at the Jewish Agency Assembly Plenary meetings held in Israel on 24th June 2001. The main points of that speech are:

1. The Palestinians are to blame for the conflict in the Middle East, and specifically Yasser Arafat.
2. It is legitimate for established states to engage in wars, because the societies are imperfect.
3. Palestinians are not waging a legitimate war (like established states using regular armies) and are terrorists.
4. The Palestinian terrorists deliberately attack civilians.
5. The Israelis are responding in self-defense.
6. When the Israelis respond, they respond against combatants.
7. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel.
8. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are using the illegitimate and criminal means of terrorism.
9. The Palestinian are wrong and the Israelis are right.
10. Terrorism invariably comes from terrorist regimes.
11. Terror is useful, only if the cost of waging terrorism, the cost of that regime is lower than the benefits of waging terrorism.
12. To stop terrorism, one must make the terrorist regime pay very very heavily.
13. The root core of the Middle East conflict is the existential opposition by a great many in the Arab world still, and certainly by the Palestinian leadership to Israel's very existence.
14. The first way of ensuring Israel's existence is that the Arabs simply understand that Israel is so powerful, so permanent, so unconquerable in every way that they will simply abandon by the force of the inertia of Israel's permanence all opposition to Israel.
15. The second way [of ensuring Israel's existence] is for the forces of democratization get to the Arab regimes.
16. Using propaganda techniques, like broadcasting American television serials (which Netanyahu sees as subversive material) will ultimately bring down regimes like the Ayatola regime and the Khoumeni regime in Iran.
17. In the 21st century, you cannot achieve a military victory unless you achieve a political victory to accompany it; and you cannot achieve a political victory unless you achieve a victory in public opinion; and you cannot achieve a victory in public opinion unless you persuade that public that your cause is just.
18. It doesn't make any difference if you are on the side of the angels or on the side of the devil. Anyone fighting in the international arena for public opinion must argue the justice of his cause. Hitler argued for the justice of his cause and Stalin argued for the justice of his cause. They all had propaganda machines. Whether you are right or you are wrong you must argue the justice of your cause.

Although this speech was delivered some two months before the events of 9/11, one can see in it all the main points advanced by G.W. Bush in his speeches on War on Terror, which followed the 9/11. But at the time of the delivery of the Netanyahu speech, the interest in the Netanyahu "War on Terror" doctrine was limited to a narrow circle of professional Greater Israel Zionists and Middle East experts. It was also obvious that the Netanyahu doctrine could not be implemented by Israel alone without involving into it the full military and financial might of the USA. At the time such involvement seemed an unlikely prospect which could only be achieved through some kind of miracle.

But this "miracle" did not take long to happen.{more at WTC Demolition}

George Bush Sr, JFK and the Men Who Stole America

Anyone lying about the JFK assassination is, as far as I am concerned, suspected of covering up the crimes of murder and high treason that were committed on November 22, 1963. Who lies about a crime but those who are guilty or profiting, in any way, from the cover up? Lying about and covering up a crime is probable cause to suspect the liar of having participated in whatever crime is lied about. Guilt is the most powerful motive to lie about a crime. Conversely, innocent people are powerfully motivated to tell and/or get at the truth.

Like 911, we were and remain targeted to receive a fusillade of lies, the purposes of which are to distract and confuse. Those guilty of the crime are always those who benefit from the lies. Similarly, those who lie about the crime are almost always guilty of it.

Nothing silences a potential witness more effectively than death. The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by known mobster Jack Ruby was entirely too timely, too convenient. It effectively shut Oswald up. Accused of murdering JFK, Oswald protested that he had been set up, that he had been 'a patsy'. Indeed, Oswald had to die. {more - Len Hart}

Halsell: What Christians don't know about Israel

by Grace Halsell 

pictured with Lyndon Johnson

-  If Americans Knew (originally written for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998)

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? American Presidents as well as most members of Congress support Israel — and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere — among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel — and Zionism — often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify “news” depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, “How come I didn’t know this?” Or someone might ask, “But I haven’t read about that in my newspaper.” To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post — and most of our nation’s print media – are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel — and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions — including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ — stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.
In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.

The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does — even wanton murder — as orchestrated by God.
{more at Uprooted Palestinians} 

Ruby Ridge Investigation - Sept. 6, 1995 C-SPAN

Go to the 52 minute mark in the video for Randy Weaver's testimony.



The subcommittee heard testimony about the 1992 FBI shootout at the cabin of Randy Weaver and his family in northern Idaho that resulted in the deaths of Weaver's wife, son and a federal marshal. Senator Craig, while not a member of the Judiciary Committee, made a statement as the "home state" senator. The door of the cabin with a bullet hole in the glass was displayed. Testifying about the events for the first time in public, Mr. Weaver said he was the victim of a vengeful government campaign. He believed his wife was shot intentionally. Earlier this year the FBI agreed to a settlement in Mr. Weaver's civil suit against them by agreeing to pay $3.1 million to the family.

C-Span archives

Waco Massacre - April 19, 1993 C-SPAN

Waco was a part of the history of the U.S. government killing it's own. From this to the April 19, 1995 OK City bombing to Sept. 11, 2001. It can and most likely will happen again.


Mass Suicide says the criminal Janet Reno. Mass murder of American citizens is what it really was.



Clinton continued the cover up the next day

FBI footage of a 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian compound 

News conference to reporters after the FBI's siege of an armed religious cult in Waco ended earlier in the day when the compound burnt to the ground. 

Call in April 19, 1993

C-Span archives