AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN PREDATOR DRONES, GAZA SIEGE, IRAQ STATUS OF FORCES AGREEMENT, OBAMA NEOCON RETREADS, VETERANS' CONSTITUTION TOO
Afghanistan
Afghani President Hamid Karzai wants an end to all the killing of innocents in Afghanistan. The original deals that put him in place haven't panned out (haven't turned out well, haven't yielded gold, aren't successful). He's been disillusioned again. He apparently didn't realize how drawn out the whole thing would be. He didn't realize that the U.S. neocons would kill so many civilians so carelessly. So now he's grasping. He knows that the U.S. has stepped up its use of predator drones. He knows that Obama is going to bring fresh blood to the fight.
Barack Obama has promised to attack the Pakistani Territories in the hunt down of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Karzai knows that this is going to present a condition that could easily spillover into Afghanistan to only compound Afghanistan's already horrendous problems if not done the way Karzai envisions they should be done (carefully targeted).
Therefore, Karzai has tried to extend an olive branch to Mullah Omar and the Taliban who aren't taking him up on and neither are the Afghan Parliament or the Bush administration.
If no one will listen to him, he should resign and move out of the country for his own safety.
Note: Hamid Karzai has often been linked to tentative plans for oil pipelines running through Afghanistan. This blog has run with such stories even though Karzai and Unocal have since denied any such relationship. A rightwing, militaristic site Global Security claims that the original source of the story may be Le Monde.
Whether or not Hamid Karzai is as the alleged Le Monde mistake has characterized him vis-a-vis Unocal, oil has been central to the issue of Afghanistan.
(See: "Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Bush Administration Strikes Oil in Iraq." "The Iraqi Oil Ministry's New Fave Five: All the Oil News That's Fit to Print (Attn: The New York Times)," by Nick Turse. TomDispatch. July 7, 2008. See also: "The Military-Petroleum Complex," by Nick Turse. Foreign Policy In Focus. March 24, 2008.)
Pakistan and U.S. Predator Drones
The U.S. has really stepped up its use of predator drones {armed UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles)} to track and kill. They are run by a combination of the equipment mounted in and on the drones and by satellites and ground computers and human personnel thousands of miles away in cushy chairs and air-conditioned rooms.
The number of drone attacks is increasing at an alarming rate. The U.S. government is having the military and intelligence agencies use the drones in the sovereign national territories of other countries often apparently against the wills of those countries and regardless of the lack of evidence that the targets are truly terrorists.
Who's to stop the U.S. from doing this? Those countries don't have the technology to shoot down the drones at least not that they are prepared to expend for that purpose for now. They don't want to become targets of drones. They don't want to be lumped in with supposed terrorists the drones are ostensibly tracking, targeting, and killing. They don't want the U.S. to cut off finances. They don't want to get into a spending contest with the U.S. There are numerous variables in the calculus.
This is the new warfare. Track someone, kill him and the people around him, go have lunch at the local fast food place on or near the base in America, go back for more time on the clock, then go home to take it out on the wife and kids who don't know what the Hell kind of evil you're up to, killing people who may not be guilty of anything but hating people who kill innocent people with drones.
Well, these drones are going to precipitate anti-drone weapons. There will be anti-drone drones. There will be fully autonomous drones, meaning completely robotic (no human remote control unless an override is issued). There are laser weapons for shooting down drones and air-to-air and ground-to-air and ship-to-air missiles. It's a spiral. It's a dreadful waste of resources that don't contribute to economic productivity of the renewable kind needed.
Gaza
Why are the Israelis shutting down Gaza's services again and again and again? Why are they always doing something to escalate tensions and violence and then blaming the Hamas for starting the renewed trouble? Why are they being so inhuman toward their fellow human beings? Why are they being so incredibly insensitive about even the little children in Palestine and especially Gaza? As also applies to the U.S., when will Israel as an official government be civilized toward its neighbors? When will that brutality end?
The Israeli approach concerning Gaza is deliberately erratic to throw off observers and to deflect criticism. If they clamp down and let up and then clamp down and let up again, then the policy has more deniability built in. If they say they're going to attack then don't, the same thing applies. When they finally do attack, they claim they showed much restraint, pointing to the back and forth. Also, this entire approach throws the subject off root causes and allows the Israelis to claim they are only, and always, being merely reactive rather than original perpetrators.
So, the Gazans are being reduced to eating cereals, sugar, and oil for refusing to resign themselves to having been forced by violence from their ancestral land.
This is all happening because the Bible says the Jews took the land by force before and then lost it. They were allowed to move back in by the British who thought they were doing something consistent with some notion of a Judeo-Christian religion; however, there is no such thing.
Jesus doesn't hold with the Jews in Israel doing to the Palestinian Arabs what they are doing. Anyone calling himself or herself a Christian who doesn't know that is full of falsehood and ignorance.
Iraq and the U.S. Occupation's Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
This agreement is being rushed into place so that the incoming Obama administration will have something to point to when it starts taking huge criticism from the left in America for prolonging the occupation of Iraq. The U.S. oligarchs have no intention of leaving Iraq completely. They want the oil contracts to go forward. That's the primary reason the U.S. went into Iraq. The U.S. spent hundreds of billions to get those contracts locked up. It isn't going to just walk away.
Obama and Neocon, Clinton-Retread Advisors
The list of people surrounding Barack Obama is just the same right-of-center group that controlled under Carter and Clinton and brought us Waco, NAFTA, the mess in Yugoslavia, the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children murdered under the sanctions regime, the Rwandan genocide, the Somalia military disaster, the dot-com bubble, the war on welfare recipients, the economic shock of Paul Volker, continued deregulation, and on and on.
They are not a team assembled to solve problems. They are a team assembled to continue them.
Why is Larry Summers, for instance, being considered for a high economic position by Barack Obama when that same Larry Summers wrote that the industrialized nations should ship toxic waste to Africa because the people there are worth less than in the industrialized and developed nations? He also said women are inherently inferior. He further presided over the utter failure of Lithuania. He ran that country into the ground. He helped to ruin Russia where he helped guide the oligarchs into power with devastating consequences. I wouldn't let the unrepentant Larry Summers balance my personal check book let alone run the largest economy in the world as U.S. Treasury Secretary. He's right there with Rahm Emanuel, able to raise millions from Wall Street's neoliberal Washington Consensus types (investment bankers) while also being a neocon (political and religious Zionist).
U.S. Constitution Ignored
Why have 15 U.S. veterans been charged with the crime of exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceably assemble to ask for the redress of their grievances? What is wrong with America that it can't seem to get anything right? Why is it so corrupted? When will it be civilized? When will the brutality end?
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Tom Usher
Standing Comment, all posts and pages:
To all homosexuals and their supporters, condoners, promoters, accepters, confirmers, and the like:
Unless you have something completely new that hasn't already been refuted, don't bother. It won't show up.
Rehashing what has already been refuted is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm not interested in casting pearls before swine, giving the children's bread to the dogs, or rebuking a forever scorner.
Learn or go away: There is zero wisdom in homosexuality. Homosexuality is wrong. Nothing any homosexual or anyone else can say or do will alter it. No one needs the Bible to know it either. It's prima facie. There's no such thing as an unrepentant-homosexual Christian. There never has been and never will be. That's the way of it. If you don't like it, change.
Do site searches on the various topics concerning homosexuality to determine if your "point" has already been handled. Currently, I provide three different search methods. The "WordPress" search is still the most thorough.
The same can be done regarding militarism, capitalism, coercion, and many other main issues and themes.
TREATMENT, RUDENESS, POLITENESS, OFFENSE, TRUTH
Many times over the course of this website's existence, I've had commentators complain about how I've treated them and/or others. Much less frequently has anyone taken exception to those commentator's comments. I assume that's because for one, I appear to be holding my own.
Often, I have raised the fact that Jesus called certain people "serpents." I've often also mentioned how he cleaned the temple with whip in hand, not that he used it on anyone. It certainly doesn't say that he did, and neither was he charged with it in the kangaroo court of the serpents who ended up murdering him by proxy just for, among other wonderful things, speaking out and speaking truth.
If I say that those who are engaged in serpentine behavior are the New Testament "serpents," then why take offense at my saying it rather than standing with Jesus and me about it?
If others don't like it that I treat others or them the way I have in this regard, why don't they take it up with the serpents and/or their own consciences and God?
If I wanted to catch flies, I'd use honey. I don't want flies on this level. Human beings aren't to be on the level of flies. If the truth is bitter as vinegar, then ask yourself why and learn to taste it as sweet but not sickeningly so. Why attack the message and messenger, as the serpents did, and become a serpent by so doing?
The issue is not "name calling" on some bratty, childish level. When Jesus said "serpents," he was not being as a brat. His level was completely adult to adults and children. He dared say that the children understood the clear and plain truth before the adults who, afterall, had been abused and socialized by the serpents. He still calls adults back. Those who hear him and know his voice (truth) turn around and do the other required things together as well.
What is it for a human being to be more serpentine or reptilian than what God initially gave? What was and remains Jesus's point? What is the reptilian brain versus the vastly higher human brain with its cerebral cortex and frontal and temporal lobes and specific areas of altruistic sentiments and abilities? What are those higher areas before they are damaged, before the communication pathways to them and between them are diminished by evil that is always some form of abuse? How are those pathways reestablished or created where they never were in this fleshly life?
The snake lays its eggs. The eggs hatch. The snake parent doesn't nurture or raise the offspring. It's every snake for itself. Human parents and family are not designed to be that way. Humans hand down the learning of nurturing. Many people get better training than do others, and many people have a greater aptitude for learning and predisposition for the higher and highest virtues. Many are less abused. People can change for the better and best though, no matter where the starting point. They only can't if they don't — if they reject it.
Snakes, of course, also come in venomous varieties and in strangling varieties, etc., such that they have been attackers and even devourers of humans for eons, guilty and innocent alike.
Now, Jesus knew that most people could relate to what were, and still are, largely considered "good" parenting skills and "good" "family" relations. He regularly used those concepts to get people to consider the wider implications for the whole of humanity. He did know that many would refuse. He let them go. He didn't demand secular or false-religion legislation to rein them in with threats of violence and imprisonment. He was not and is not coercive. Even his Church is a voluntary place to be.
What he still teaches (through the written words in the New Testament and as those connect with the Old and also teaches through the Holy Spirit he definitely sent as he said he would) is, among many other things, that "good" is vastly better than has been commonly accepted and that real "family" is everyone left after all the rest have rejected the higher and highest good. He raised the standards far above the Old Testament and far above the "modern" standard.
The American Empire and the American people in general aren't even touching the hem of his garment, let alone even attempting to stand upright and side-by-side with him.
I point out that Jesus was, and is, a Real Liberal Christian. He is the one who brought back this censored truth that is the light. After he had spoken it and lived it and was murdered for doing so, the censors set about to re-censor it and did. They couldn't put it out though — couldn't completely extinguish the truth. I wouldn't be saying it now again with all credit to God, just as Jesus, if they had been able to completely block it.
I point out that each of those terms ("real," "liberal," and "Christian," along with "Church") are actually redundant terms — synonyms that are so close that they become one. The term "liberal" here is not the common usage, which common usage is a deliberate corruption of the term. There is no harm in real liberalism. There is no vileness in it. There is only beneficence. "Real" may be understood as the opposite of false-hearted, dark side, and dead of the Holy Spirit. Christian is both real and liberal in those senses. To arrive at living, doing, being those full senses requires what Jesus lives, does, and is in the highest. Finally, the Church is the whole.
Who are they who want to drag it down, censor it, work against it, lessen it, ignore it, etc.? Well, who sides with Jesus and who sides against him? Did the serpents side with him then? Do they now?
We call war-mongers "hawks." We call "peacemakers" blessed and "doves." Why do the hawks not take offense at "hawks" but do take offense at "serpents"? "Hawks" is not yet as telling to the general public, but I must tell you that all hawks are serpents. Why do some say, "Greed is good" but take offense at "serpents"? I tell you there is no difference between the selfish and the serpents. Why do people take offense at serpents when they do not take offense at homosexuality? I tell you the homosexual spirit also comes out from the dark side. It is a choice. It is harmful. Many are abused with it. Many never overcome it. Their very brain matter is transformed by it. Then they claim it is good when it remains confusion and definitely wrong and harmful.
Many arguments were put forth in support of tolerance. I understood that Jesus "tolerated," as in he did not execute wrath but rather told the truth and let the blind follow the blind (blind to the truth) into the ditch of their own making. I have watched while the movement has been corrupted into condoning what was once only to be tolerated. I have watched further while it has moved from condoning to promoting even to the youngest children to get to them before the truth does. I have seen evil at work, and I sound the alarm. I face censorship and other negative reactions for it.
As the American Empire claims to be a light to the world, it murders innocent babies by Hellfire missiles fired from predator drones controlled by armchair, video-gaming serpents in uniform. It tortures those who are not even suspects. It spies on its own without even probable cause or reasonable suspicion. It lies its way into wars for spoils and control. It neglects its poor, whom it treads down for the sakes of the superrich — for the sake of the massive flow of mammon from the bottom up (no trickledown — trickledown is a farce and always has been). All is claimed to be okay in America though — that America is headed in the right direction — because soon, even "don't tell, don't ask" will be a thing of the quaint past and homosexuals may be able to sleep together and have sex in the barracks with the "blessing" of the Empire while they practice murdering the innocent for the sake of homosexual, greedy plutocrats who own them and who, in turn, are owned by the dark-side spirit named by God and Jesus as Satan.
Whose side are you on? I speak truth to warn. I don't tell the secular government what to do other than occasionally to say what at least would be less hypocritical within their fallen, unenlightened system. I do so for spiritual reasons. What I want is the Christian Commons.
Now, if you submit a comment:
What you write here against the Real Liberal Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ will mark you in the Biblical sense unless you show that you have turned and are repenting in time to escape the damnation of your own choosing. That's the way of it. Don't be tempted by the devil to stand opposed to the call of righteousness. Overcome such evil temptation. Help others to help yet others to come to righteous behavior through-and-through.
Check out how even after reading this, people will still take it out of context and twist it to an evil end.