Paths

Spring In Hallerbos Forest, Belgium

Image credits: Kilian Schönberger

Rhododendron Tunnel in Reenagross Park, Kenmare Ireland

Image credits: Robert Ziegenfuss

Autumn In The White Carpathians

Image credits: Janek Sedlar

Rhododendron Laden Path, Mount Rogers, Virginia, USA

Image credits: David Mosner

Winter Forest Path, Czech Republic

Image credits: Jan Machata

Padley Gorge, Peak District, UK

Image credits: James Mills

Spring In Spencer Smith Park, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Image credits: Shawn Marshall

Spring In Dog Mountain, Washington, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Jacaranda Tree Alley

Image credits: George Veltchev

Cotton Tree Alley In Taiwan

Image credits: Sue Hsu

Mount Rainier, Washington, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Spring In Woodburn, Oregon, USA

Image credits: Danielle Hughson

Dark Hedges In Ireland

Image credits: Stephen Emerson

Taiping Mountain Path in Taiwan

Image credits: Justin Jones

Hitachi Seaside Park Path In Japan

Image credits: nipomen2

Forest Trail In Bavaria, Germany

Image credits: Kilian Schönberger

Russian Forest Path

Image credits: Elena Shumilova

Winter Sunrise On Path In Campigna National Park , Italy

Image credits: Roberto Meloti

Migliarino San Rossore Park Path In Pisa, Italy

Image credits: Andrea Iorio

Bamboo Path In Kyoto, Japan

Image credits: Yuya Horikawa

Autumn Path

Image credits: Lars Van Der Goor

Path Up To The Halnaker Windmill in Sussex, UK

Image credits: Sam Moore

Autumn Path In Kyoto, Japan

Image credits: Takahiro Bessho

Tunnel Of Love, Ukraine

Image credits: Oleg Gordienko

Wisteria Flower Tunnel Path in Japan

Image credits: mindphoto.blog.fc2.com

 Springtime Path In Holland

Image credits: Lars Van De Goor

Path Under Blooming Trees In Spring

Image credits: Emanuel Costinas

Forest Path In Autumn

Roads and paths pervade our literature, poetry, artwork, linguistic expressions and music. Even photographers can’t keep their eyes (and lenses) off of a beautiful road or path. Paths like these have a powerful grip on the human imagination – they can bring adventure, promise and change or solitude, peace and calm. There’s nothing like a walk down a beautiful path to clear your head – or to fill it with ideas! I’ll leave you with an excellent quote from J. R. R. Tolkien’s works while you enjoy these images; “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to."

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

"The real world is where the monsters are."

OneLove

 :::MME::::

'Am I Next?' - Ferguson's Protests Through the Eyes of a Teenager

How did we get to this point? Click here.

OneLove

:::MME:::

In Love With the Darkness: Finding Hope in a Cynical, Burning World by Katherine Cross

These past several weeks have been riddled with news that could douse the flame of even the brightest of spirits.

The relentless bombing of Gaza, the cycle of prejudice and violence that is drawing more and more of the world into its maw, the death spiral of Ukraine and the rise of a muscular Russian militarism that almost certainly played a role in the downing of a civilian airliner, the murder of Eric Garner in New York—his last words “I can’t breathe” seem to speak for all people of color who struggle with militarized policing.

Our world is an ugly one, and its darkest impulses seem to rise newly invigorated from the ashes of each successive tragedy as a monster with a thousand faces, many of them sporting Cheshire grins as they spout the latest trends in memetic prejudice. In the wake of the downing of MH17 we’ve been treated not only to the terrifying spectres a plane crash always summons, but also to the unfortunate reality that some of our fellow leftists seem more interested in providing ideological cover for Russian militarism as a stick in the eye of American militarism (which was as depressing as watching something similar happen with regard to Venezuela).

Times like this are tailor-made for nihilism and bespoke oblivion. Why have hope or optimism when events conspire to make a mockery of it all? Why fight for a better world when the winds of change seem to cheat us at every turn? How can we change the world even as we struggle to battle the puppet-master demons of ideological dogmatism?

For the Night is Dark, And Full of Hope

Rebecca Solnit is perhaps the left’s most eloquent tribune for hope, in all of its unknowing glory. In a 2009 essay about Virginia Woolf’s strange optimism, she explained why it is precisely our lack of knowledge about the future that should give us comfort in difficult times. “The future is dark,” wrote Woolf in a private journal, “which is the best thing the future can be, I think.” Solnit is positively in love with the line, because it succinctly conveys the pregnancy of unknown tomorrows.

Pessimism and cynicism make claims upon the future that defy reason. As Solnit puts it so well,

  “Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it; despair is a confident memory of the future, in [writer Laurence] Gonzales’ resonant phrase.”

The unknown is activism’s medium. We dare to imagine the unthinkable. These are not confident designs about what the future will be, but rather our hopes given form, turning them into cynosures that guide us through the troubled waters of the present. We do not preach the comfortable triumphalism of progress that pretends the future makes itself. That would be truly naive. What we believe, instead, is that the future is uncertain and thus we have a chance at shaping it for the better. Rather than confident proclamations about what tomorrow holds, we, at our best, celebrate the possibility of what it might one day hold, what it could be.

Through the open seam of that uncertainty, we can drive a movement.

Politics, goes the old saw, is the “art of the possible,” but feminism has always imagined something grander for itself—much as every liberation movement of the last two centuries has, as our collective imagination aspired to heavens beyond the grasp of our ancestors. Feminist movements have aspired to the unimaginable, to the impossible, to the unthinkable.

We did not allow ourselves to be bowed by the staggering terrors of our present. We knew that somewhere in the shadows of tomorrow lurked the elusive source of our hopes. We had faith that our labours would, one day, bear the fruit our children deserve. Time and again, this is what has moved us. The darkness of the future yet concealed stars that were just waiting to shine.

The Wages of Cynicism
It seems cheap to say that we need to have hope simply because of that basic human limitation of not knowing what the future holds. It may be, in Solnit’s words, “too early to tell” whether we have truly succeeded or failed in our efforts.  But that feels, in its way, deeply unsatisfying. When measured against the damage done by the U.S. Supreme Court to the promise of democracy for women and people of color, does that darkness really portend anything other than yet more pain?

My answer to that is that relinquishing the future to our fevered nightmares is less an acceptance of reality than an unwitting effort at shaping it.

Cynicism is the greatest enemy we face in our struggles, even above and beyond the terrors of oppression, because it robs us of the energy we need to actually change our circumstances.

Cynicism is what individuates us, isolating us from one another, stilling our political action. It is what drives down voter turnout, keeps us away from protests, makes us all too eager for fatal compromise rather than meaningful change. Cynicism in the face of our challenges constitutes the final victory of our society’s myriad terrors, for it surrenders the independence and brightness of our imaginations to the brutal logic of the present.

This, at last, is what is rotting liberal democracy from within: a sirensong that seduces us into thinking that our political participation, the very lifeblood of the system, is a waste of time. Radicals and leftists manifest their own variants of this, of course, which take the shape of withering declamations of hope itself: every supposed political victory, they say, is merely a Trojan horse of fatal compromises. Every “reform” begets newer, more sophisticated oppression. There is no escape. Nevermind that this sort of cynicism is a perfect fit with the aspirations of the privileged, who need to monopolize the levers of political influence and control and find useful allies in radicals who demand we voluntarily abscond from democratic engagement.

Here, the activists are prisoners of their lofty aspirations, scorning the long and winding staircase that we must ascend to reach our dreams.

Neither the political-apathetic nor the embittered radical puritan offers a real solution to our problems. They merely attempt to discipline the future into a knowable shape, to tame the terror by making it predictable.

Instead of embracing the uncertainty we face, we see it as validation of our worst fears, especially when it feels like the world is collapsing around us.

Though the Heavens Fall

An old Latin legal phrase beloved of jurists and popularly misquoted or misspoken in the U.S. is some variant of fiat justitia ruat caelum, “let justice be done though the heavens fall.” In mainstream use, it is interpreted to mean that justice, as defined by the speaker, must be done regardless of its consequences. In other words, even if the carriage of justice makes the heavens fall, it must be done. This has always struck me as unforgivable arrogance, to say nothing of enabling the “ends justify the means” mentality that has lead us to tragedy so many times in the past.

The interpretation I prefer, very different from the arrogant mainstream meaning, is exemplified by an admittedly unusual source: Samara, a character in Mass Effect 2 and 3. Samara, an alien justicar who lives by a rigid code of ethics and laws, righting wrongs across the galaxy, is found, in the third game, investigating an interstellar monastery that has fallen eerily silent. Her own offspring, she fears, could be the cause. She carries out this investigation in the midst of a galactic invasion, knowing that what transpired at the monastery may well be related, and demand a response. It is, she says, “my responsibility, and it is one that cannot be abandoned, even as our galaxy crumbles.”

Therein, for me, lies the better, more humble truth behind fiat justitia ruat caelum: We do not make the heavens fall, but justice remains our responsibility even if it does. Perhaps most especially so. All around the world, the heavens do seem to have opened up and crumbled to earth. Tragedy after tragedy plays out on our streets, in bombed out hospitals, at 32,000 feet, in austere courtrooms.

But that is all the more reason for us to not abandon our responsibility to dream and fight for the forgotten futures that these tragedies threaten to rob from us. What we as activists bring is that hope in the midst of the heavens’ collapse, to those who seek shelter amid the gloom.

Our memory of the future must be gloriously uncertain, hazy, and chaotic; out of that disordered cyclone comes hope. It is that thought of the glorious darkness before us that must sustain us.

Even as our world crumbles.

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OneLove

::::MME::::

#LastWords - A Powerful Tribute to Victims of Police Brutality

(which one is next?)

At one point, Guzman says, he spoke to Sean Bell and said, “S, I love you, son.” He says Bell said, “I love you too.” Then Guzman says Bell “stopped moving.” -abclocal.go.com

Mehserle testified that he meant to zap Grant with his Taser in an Oakland station – but instead pulled his .40 caliber handgun and blasted the man. -newyorkdailynews.com

“A man was watching him,” said Rachel Jeantel, 19, who was on the phone with Martin just before he was fatally shot. “He said the man kept watching him. He kept complaining that a man was just watching him.” -cnn.com

The officer demanded that the two “get the f—k on the sidewalk," Johnson says. His exact words were "get the f—k on the sidewalk.” -gawker.com

New York City police officers shot and killed 16-year-old Kimani Gray in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. -afreesociety.org

They said they thought McDade was armed because … he clutched his waste band as they chased him onto a dimly lit neighborhood street. -pasadenastarnews.com

Jonathan never had an opportunity to reply. He had bullets in him before he could ever hit the ground. So there was not sufficient warning. No one ever told him to stop. He didn’t have time to react. -huffingtonpost.com

He was at the video games playing videos and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were. And the next thing I know, he said ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him. And I could hear him just crying and screaming. I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human. -msnbc.com

The medical examiner’s office later ruled Garner’s death a homicide, caused by the officer’s chokehold as well chest and neck compressions and prone positioning “during physical restraint by police.” -newyork.nbclocal.com

Diallo was shot outside his Bronx apartment. The police officers had mistaken him for a serial rapist, who was later apprehended. -pri.org


OneLove

::::MME:::

MME's (Double) Jam of the Day

Sometimes classic songs get new life when remixed in the right way. These two remixes are badass! Check out more of the eternally smooth and instantly recognizable stylings of Smokey Robinson here.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Language as a Weapon of Tyrants

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

"Eyes blinded by the fog of Things
 cannot see Truth.
Ears deafened by the din of Things
 cannot hear Truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of Things
 cannot think Truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of Things
 cannot feel Truth.
 Throats choked by the dust of Things
cannot speak Truth."

- Harald Bell Wright, “The Uncrowned King”

***************

OneLove

::::MME::::

MKULTRA: They Intended to Use Drugs for “Everything” by Jon Rappoport

Drugs to transform individuals…and even, by implication, society.
Drug research going far beyond the usual brief descriptions of MKULTRA.
The intention is there, in the record.
A CIA document was included in the transcript of the 1977 US Senate Hearings on MKULTRA, the CIA’s mind-control program.
The document is found in Appendix C, starting on page 166. It’s simply labeled “Draft,” dated 5 May 1955.
It begins: “A portion of the Research and Development Program of [CIA’s] TSS/Chemical Division is devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods:”

What followed was a list of hoped-for drugs and their uses.
First, a bit of background: MKULTRA did not end in 1962, as advertised. It was shifted over to the Agency’s Office of Research and Development.
John Marks is the author of the groundbreaking book, Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which exposed MKULTRA. Marks told me a CIA representative informed him that the continuation of MKULTRA, after 1962, was carried out with a greater degree of secrecy, and he, Marks, would never see a scrap of paper about it.
I’m printing below, the list of the 1955 intentions of the CIA regarding their own drug research. The range of those intentions is stunning. All statements are direct quotes from the “Draft” document...

• The CIA wanted to find substances which would “promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness.” Serious consideration should be given to the idea that psychiatric medications, food additives, herbicides, and industrial chemicals (like fluorides) would eventually satisfy that requirement.

• The CIA wanted to find chemicals that “would produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way.” This suggests many possibilities—among them the use of drugs to fabricate diseases and thereby give the false impression of germ-caused epidemics.

• The CIA wanted to find drugs that would “produce amnesia.” Ideal for discrediting whistleblowers, dissidents, certain political candidates, and other investigators. (Scopolamine, for example.)

• The CIA wanted to discover drugs which would produce “paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.” A way to make people decline in health as if from diseases.

• The CIA wanted to develop drugs that would “alter personality structure” and thus induce a person’s dependence on another person. How about dependence in general? For instance, dependence on institutions, governments?

• The CIA wanted to discover chemicals that would “lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men.” Sounds like a general description of the devolution of society.

As you read the list yourself, you’ll see more implications/possibilities.
Here, from 1955, are the types of drugs the MKULTRA men at the CIA were looking for:

• Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.

• Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.

• Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.

• Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.

• Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.

• Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.

• Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.

• Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.

• Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.

• Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.

• Substances which will produce “pure” euphoria with no subsequent let-down.

• Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.

• A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.

• Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.

• Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.

• A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.

• A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever.

That’s the list.
At the end of this 1955 CIA document, the author [unnamed] makes these remarks: “In practice, it has been possible to use outside cleared contractors for the preliminary phases of this [research] work. However, that part which involves human testing at effective dose levels presents security problems which cannot be handled by the ordinary contractors.
“The proposed [human testing] facility [deletion] offers a unique opportunity for the secure handling of such clinical testing in addition to the many advantages outlined in the project proposal. The security problems mentioned above are eliminated by the fact that the responsibility for the testing will rest completely upon the physician and the hospital. [one line deleted] will allow [CIA] TSS/CD personnel to supervise the work very closely to make sure that all tests are conducted according to the recognized practices and embody adequate safeguards.”
In other words, this was to be ultra-secret. No outside contractors at universities for the core of the experiments, which by the way could be carried forward for decades.
A secret in-house facility.
Over the years, more facilities could be created.
If you examine the full range of psychiatric drugs developed since 1955, you’ll see that a number of them fit the CIA’s agenda. Speed-type chemicals, which addle the brain over the long term, to treat so-called ADHD. Anti-psychotic drugs, to render patients more and more dependent on others (and government) as they sink into profound disability and incur motor brain damage. And of course, the SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft, which produce extreme and debilitating highs and lows—and also push people over the edge into committing violence.
These drugs drag the whole society down into lower and lower levels of consciousness and action.
If that’s the goal of a very powerful and clandestine government agency…it’s succeeding.

Schooling the World

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

OneLove :::MME:::

Robots to Replace White-collar Jobs by 2035

(yep, you may be replaced by this AI m*f* in a couple of decades)

A report recently presented by the Pew Research Centre in the US predicts that professional roles such as doctors, lawyers and accountants could be replaced by artificial intelligence by the year 2025. This could have huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics.  


Many supermarket checkouts in Britain are no longer manned by an assistant. Paying in cheques at a bank no longer requires a cashier. You can even check yourself in for a flight at an airport without having any interaction with a human being until border control. It is also possible to return on a biometric passport for a machine ready with retina recognition software ready to verify your identity.

These are all examples where artificial intelligence and machines have superseded the need for a human being to carry out an administrative job.

Meanwhile a report recently presented by the Pew Research Centre in the US predicts that professional roles such as doctors, lawyers and accountants could be replaced by artificial intelligence by the year 2025.

Futurologist Ray Hammond told VoR: "I think they’re going to eat away at the middle classes - the administrative functions like insurance companies and banks. I think it’s highly unlikely by 2025 that they’ll be taking over from doctors and lawyers…but by 2035, that’s a different matter entirely."

But, Ray Hammond predicts that blue collar jobs, traditionally working class roles will be saved from being taken over by robotic technology:

"Funnily enough, blue collar jobs are safer, they are very flexible. A carpenter won’t do the same job twice. It’s the admin jobs which are more at risk."

The Pew Research Centre asked 1,900 technology experts whether they thought that Artificial Intelligence and robots would displace more jobs than they would create by 2025. They agreed and disagreed in equal measure.

A recent report by the International Federation of Robotics suggests that between 2008 and 2011, robotics created up to 80,000 jobs in the electronics sector. The report based on data from research firm Metra Martech, concluded that for every robot deployed, 3.6 jobs are created. By 2016, robotics is expected to account for an additional 110,000 electronics jobs across the world.

However, futurologist Ray Hammond predicts a very different future:

"The human cost is considerable and it’s worrying me for the first time in the 30 odd years that I’ve been looking at the future.

"Unemployment is a very bad thing, it’s bad for humans not be wanted to work, and I’m worried about it.

I think for the first time we are facing technological unemployment which is what the economist John Maynard Keynes forecast a century ago. He said by 2030 we’re going to have significant technological unemployment and I think he’s going to be proved right."

But the president of the International Federation of Robotics says the worldwide demand for smartphones, computers and video game consoles depends on robotic automation.

Hammond’s concern is that demand will be met by a supply of robots, leaving large scale unemployment.

"Out of large scale unemployment, even if there are benefits, you get immense social unrest and it’s something of great concern.

"No doubt about the economic outlook - it’s very good indeed, but not necessarily the social outlook. There’s a greater inequality creeping up in the western world than we’ve ever really seen its almost going back to the Victorian periods of capital accruing more capital and working people getting less than a share of it."
Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University Professor Nick Bostrom says the development of artificial intelligence poses one of the biggest risks to humanity this century.

"It’s one of the greatest existential risks that humanity will confront in this coming century. All the risks will arise out of human activity from certain technological development in this technology, synthetic biology, nano techno and artificial intelligence."

Nick Bostrom recently published a book called ‘Superintelligence’.

"I think what’s needed now is what in the book I call the control problem. If and when you had the ability to create the human equivalent of general intelligence, how can you ensure it would care about human values so that when you get the first superintellgence you have welfare at its heart.

"This control problem has to be solved before will solve the problem of how to build a general intelligence in the first place and how to create AI and how to make it safe. It’s crucial we solve them in the correct order.

"The superintelligence, once it’s created, is likely to be an extremely powerful thing. Like humans today. Our brains give us more general intelligence, so the same thing that exceeded our general intelligence will be able to shape the future. We have one advantage, we get to build the AI, but we only get one chance to set things up, and it’s crucial we don’t squander that chance."
For futurologist Ray Hammond, the development of superintelligence needs to be addressed – and the question asked whether computers and machines will be in control of human beings, or if human beings will be in control of them.







                        

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OneLove




   
:::MME::::

Beware the World’s Leading War-Monger and Terrorist Organization by Dave Lindorff

There’s an old adage that goes: “You can judge a man by the company he keeps.”

If that’s the case, then applying it to nations, the world has to judge the US to be a truly wretched and repugnant country, and should be steering clear of it.

Look at the company we Americans are “keeping” these days:

* In Ukraine, the US is backing a thuggish regime, installed through a bloody coup that overthrew a democratically elected government. That regime, since taking power, been using indiscriminately shelling cities, and using fascist thugs re-classified as National Guardsmen to slaughter civilians and separatist rebels in the eastern part of the country. It is also becoming increasingly clear, as even the main English-language newspaper in Malaysia is reporting, that this thuggish regime based in Kiev was likely responsible for the deliberate downing of a Malaysian airline which killed all 283 passengers and crew (though the Obama administration continues to claim, on the basis of no evidence, that it was the separatists’ doing).

* In Israel, we have a government and the ironically named Israeli Defense Force (IDF) slaughtering nearly 2000 Palestinians — over 400 of them children — trapped in the massive open-air prison and ghetto called Gaza. For over a month, the IDF has been relentlessly bombing, shelling and rolling tanks and bulldozers over the world’s most crowded prison camp and its 1.8 million people, deliberately shelling schools, hospitals, sewage treatment and water plants, and the only power generating facility, creating an incomprehensible humanitarian crisis. Israel is the single largest recipient of US financial and military aid, and most of the death and destruction in Gaza is the direct result of US-provided arms — weapons that include flesh-shredding anti-personnel shells and bombs, toxic gas and illegally used white phosphorus incendiary weapons. In fact, the US rushed more such deadly weapons to Israel as the IDF ran its stocks down in this one-sided assault on the walled-in Gaza-wide free-fire kill zone.

* Over in Syria, where the US has been covertly supplying arms to an assortment of fanatic Islamic jihadists intent on overthrowing the dictator Bashar al Assad, we now know that it was those very jihadists, and not the Assad government, that cooly launched a deadly Sarin gas attack on a suburb of Damascus last year, killing hundreds. They did this monstrous crime in an attempt to throw blame on Assad and lure the US into joining the war against his regime — and came within a day of succeeding. More recently we learn that those jihadists, many of whom were trained by the CIA at secret camps in Jordan, have been stoning women in Syria to death for “adultery,” often forcing local villagers unwilling to participate in such horrors to watch this medieval atrocity.

* Those same jihadis, trained by the US, are also sweeping across much of Iraq now, taking control of even large cities like Mosul, and slaughtering many of those in areas they conquer. There the US has been forced by this “blow-back” from its earlier support to turn on its trainees, much as it had to do a decade ago in Afghanistan, to begin bombing its wayward proteges to slow their advance. But let’s not forget that the people the US is now attacking in Iraq are the very people whom it earlier armed and trained to fight against Assad in neighboring Syria.

Of course, the US has many other vicious and unsavory “friends” all around the globe, in Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador and Bolivia, Honduras and Colombia for example. But just judging by these three groups that it is backing — the Ukraine government, the Israeli government and the Islamic rebels in Syria — one can only conclude that the US is a truly global menace and leading source of international mayhem and terror.

The countries of Europe that are still part of the anachronistic, Cold War-era North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should listen to the growing voices of anger and alarm among their citizens who recognize that the United States, far from providing them with security, is stirring up conflict all around the globe (not to mention spying on, and probably extorting, their compromised leaders). Particularly in Ukraine, along Russia’s southern border, and in Palestine, these actions pose threats that could ultimately drag Europe into violent conflagrations that have not been seen since the end of World War II, nearly 70 years ago.

Israel’s ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, and its continued brutal occupation and usurpation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, will surely lead to a new explosion of violence and anger across the Middle East, which will almost certainly spill over into Europe. Meanwhile, one push too far — and we may be nearing that point — and the US and it’s “friends” in Kiev may trigger a Russian invasion of Ukraine in defense of the embattled Russian minority in that country. With over 20,000 heavily mechanized and well-trained Russian troops already on the border with Ukraine, and a huge modern airforce at the ready, the stage is set for such a cross-border action. If the US and its NATO “allies” were to attempt to block such a Russian action, World War III would be just one incident away.

The best action to take when someone is known to consort with thuggish or unsavory friends is to cut off contact with that person. Likewise, it would be wise for the nations of the world, and especially those currently linked to Washington through membership in NATO, to cut their ties with the world’s leading terror organization and perpetrator of violence: The United States of America.




                                                  *******************



Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

A group of African American women visited the President following his inauguration in 2009. After the meeting, the disappointed women told a black activist, “this man has no moral center.”

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This universal and timeless ethical law is the glue of every civilization. Should this glue melt, the civilization will come to perish on its own sword. If the folks in the Obama administration paused to consider this tried and true moral maxim, they would realize that their drone campaign will inevitably unleash never-ending bloodshed, whether in defense or retaliation.



Stay alert. 

OneLove

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