Tuesday, September 17, 2013

NAVY YARD
 
 
Driving a lot of miles today during work, I listened to the radio a lot. The shooting at the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington, D.C. was the main topic. There were endless musings about how the tragedy could have been prevented. “Newstainers” were concerned with the abrupt halt of a dozen lives. They worried about their loved ones. They worried about the deceased shooter, Aaron Alexis, and his troubled mind. They worried about the level of security. How could such a thing be prevented? Should his overseers have nudged him toward getting help? Should he have been given medical help? They wondered how a fellow with several minor incidents of aberrant behavior under his belt have gotten security clearance to work at this and other military facilities.
Naturally, the subject of gun control came up. Can we expect legislation? Are Americans finally “fed up?”
In all this discussion no one mentioned banning guns from military bases. Naturally, police would still be armed. However, imaging machinery could easily be obtained and used to check for firearms. No one bearing a firearm of any kind could enter a military facility. Such facilities fall under the municipal powers of Congress according to the Constitution, and it is a decided matter of law that Congress has “exclusive legislation power” within its municipal realm. The Constitution cannot constraint Congress acting within this jurisdiction. The Seat of government, military bases, depots, territories and the like fall under this unique power. Therefore, claims of violating the Second Amendment would not be valid within Congress’s municipal jurisdiction.
Banning firearms from general use or possession within a military base makes common sense and would have prevented the slaughter at the Navy Yard. No one on the radio news brought this issue to the listeners’ attention.


Wednesday, September 4, 2013

INHUMANITY

 

As I listen to the "news, weather and traffic” radio station of my choice, I often hear representatives of the president, as well as out-takes of President Obama’s speeches, fervently decrying the use of poisonous gas by the el-Assad regime in Syria. Republican often seem to chide the president for his timidity in the face of horrible crimes against “his own people.”
Repeatedly, the Obama administration has asserted irrefutable proof of Bashar El-Assad’s guilt. Since this proof has not been presented by the Obama Administration to the citizens for independent analyses, once again, the American people have to take the matter on faith.
Parenthetically, as I believe that in Marxist political schemes, the party functions as a god-surrogate, the stance taken by President Obama was perfectly consistent with the Marx-Lenin-Gramsci strategy. One must believe in the party and work for its ideals. If that included deceit, then deceit must be embraced as a welcome “comrade tool.”
American presidents have often been less than forthright. Western leaders seem to be at one with this practice. It has been an ancient practice. Consider the man, Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince, as cited by Vincent Barnett:
Machiavelli recommended that ‘a prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage … Because men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you, you need not keep your word to them’. Machiavelli then recommended that ‘one must know how to colour one’s actions and be a great liar and deceiver’. Further on, Machiavelli explained that a prince who neglected what was actually done by people for what (by rights) should be done was doomed to self-destruction. Someone who always acted virtuously would quickly come to a sticky end among the multitude who were not at all virtuous. Hence the successful political statesman must learn how and when to act in a dishonest and immoral way, and must be much better at acting dishonourably than those around him.”
I believe that American presidents have generally adhered to this formula. Still, there happens to be another reason why American presidents might not call honesty a friend: Most have been Freemasons.
The iconic French figure, Voltaire (Francis Mary Arouet) was a prominent figure in Freemasonry. He had been initiated into Freemasonry in England and again in France. Different lodges would apparently widened his range of influence. Voltaire, as cited by John Daniel in volume one of his three-volume set on Masonry, “…defended lying as a virtue when practiced for the ‘good’ he advocated. Dillon quotes Voltaire as saying, ‘Lying is a vice when it does evil. It is a great virtue when it does good. Be therefore more virtuous than ever. It is necessary to lie like a devil, not timidly and for a time, but boldly and always.’ Commander Carr, in The Conspiracy, likewise shows Voltaire justifying all kinds of falsehood, telling his fellow enlightened, ‘We must make them [the populace] lavish promises and use extravagant phrases….The opposite of what we promise may be done afterwards…that is of no consequence.’”
My point is that it is common among Western statesmen and politicians to cloak the real facts, if that furthers their goals. A good example was the George W. Bush Administration’s actions in regard to 9/11 and the subsequent attack on Iraq. Atrocity stories and assertions of terrible weapons of mass destruction flooded America by means of the hydra-headed media spouts.
In the radio reports to which I have been listening, the partisanship in favor of the mixed multitude of rebels, revolutionaries and mercenaries has been pronounced. The Bashar el-Assad regime is always presented as “evil.” Presently, he is the premier choice of the media-politicians-intelligence complex for demonization. Ardent spokesmen for “the rebels” beg the American people to support them against the evil el-Assad regime. There has never been equal time given to supporters of the el-Assad regime to make a case for maintaining the secular (Baathist) el-Assad regime.
When war-drums are beating, there is no time for equal treatment provided to the side that “must go.”
President Obama showed himself to be foolish when he initially announced a “red line” the crossing of which by the Bashar el-Assad regime would provoke United States intervention in some unspecified action. He then made himself and the country hostage to a multitude of devious players in the Levant. Nor do I exclude “perfidious Albion” from the list of potential mischief-makers in the Syrian national struggle.
There is reason to believe that the Israelis, who apparently provide much of the “intelligence” on Syria to the United States, have reason to want Syria splintered into a cluster of minor states. Using the United States as its “beast of burden” in this effort at least makes sense for them. Luring the Americans into the Syrian civil war would be easier if ordinary Americans thought children were being gassed.
Furthermore, there is an ongoing need to emphasize the horrors of gassing by the Israelis to buttress their claims for sympathy for the “gassing of six million Jews” during World War II. This claim has reaped vast sums in reparations and sympathy for Jewish claims of “moral authority.” The latter claim has been sharply criticized, based on numerous technical considerations by historians and scientists.
At the outset of this blog, I spoke of the organized pose of outrage in regard to the incident(s) of poisonous gas used against people in the rebel-controlled section of Syria. If it occurred, then the United States should condemn the use of toxic gas in warfare and indicate clearly a devastating reprisal would be launched against the party that instigated such use against the American nation or its navy/merchant marine fleet. It should not become actively involved as a partisan in a “snake-pit” nation. If it cannot be certainly determined what party was involved, then interference would be even less advisable. Since the United States intelligence organizations, separately or together, could manufacture in the language of Syrians any “radio” report they desire, they could certainly provide bogus evidence.
Why would they want to do this? They would certainly do it in furtherance of a mutual goal of America’s present leaders and those of Israel. For Israel it would certainly be the creation of a zone of influence that would be the predecessor to “Greater Israel.” For America it would be the achievement of geopolitical command of the globe, due to its control of Levantine oil. It would seal United States global hegemony. The United States could preach to the world, while cloaking “dirty deeds done dirt cheap.”
As distasteful as poisonous gas may seem to Americans daily preached at by partisan media figures, America itself has used poisonous gas for many years to kill individuals in capital cases. Whether toxic chemicals are immoral or not, they have been regularly used as an alternate to the electric chair and the firing squad. The use of toxic chemicals injected into the individuals to be killed in capital cases has surpassed the use of toxic chemicals in gas form, the electric chair and firing squads. However, the individual to be executed still may have the option of choosing the means by which the state will ultimately kill him in some cases.
Further, I cannot for the life of me see how one is worse off being killed by gas or by being riddled with shrapnel or by the effects of improvised explosives. The United States used depleted uranium extensively in Iraq, and the health issues and lingering death sentences resulting there from have not been acknowledged by the United States.
Furthermore, the United States freely and extensively rained napalm down on enemy belligerents and civilians alike in Vietnam during that war. In case people aren’t aware of it, napalm is a chemical. One might say that it wasn’t internationally agreed upon and made illegal by a treaty of the United Nations, but it cannot be successfully argued that it is moral to roast a human alive but immoral to force them to breath toxic gas.
Please attend:
"Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine," said Kim Phúc, a napalm bombing survivor known from a famous Vietnam War photograph. "Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (212°F). Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius (1,500-2,200°F)."[21]

When used as a part of an incendiary weapon, napalm can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal) to the skin and body, asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. In this implementation, napalm fires can create an atmosphere of greater than 20% carbon monoxide[2] and firestorms with self-perpetuating winds of up to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h).

One of the main anti-personnel features of napalm is that it sticks to human skin, with no practical method for removal of the burning substance.”

In 1980 a treaty was indeed signed at the United Nations outlawing the use of napalm gel on large gatherings of civilians. However, in a civil war where one side has no specific uniform, identifying whether groups were citizens or active belligerents might be a challenge.
Given the vast range of killing devices possessed by America’s military/intelligence organizations, the fastidious perspective on correct modes of killing other human beings possessed by America’s leaders lends itself well to accusations of hypocrisy.
And let’s not even talk about nuclear weapons, and the only country on Earth to have employed them against huge gatherings of civilians. Nor let us consider what nation is still prepared to use nuclear weapons against “enemies.”
Israeli dogs on Capitol Hill and in the media may demand for President Obama to enter the killing fields of Syria in behalf of gassed dead and the “forces of liberty,” but he should simply preach peace and democracy as a better road than the present costly, bloody road. He should not leap between two fighting dogs. He should not be a dog.