Monday, November 30, 2015

Egyptian Billionaire Offers To Buy A Private Island to House And Feed War Refugees

    NB Commentary:
    Now for some good news. I wonder if Donald Trump thought about doing this for his campaign props. Imagine how many voters would vote him into office if he bought an island for all those immigrants that he says should not be coming into the country. In fact, he could create a nice prison refuge on this already prison refuge and hoard all the Syrian miscreants and Mexicans! Imagine that?

    Donald Trump plans to build a cemetery at Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey’s Bedminster Township

    Well he already bought himself a huge golf course in NJ to bury his old derrière in/on so why not follow in the footsteps of this great billionaire and do the same. In fact, why not let all the billionaires in the world get together and buy a few islands for those folks they feel need to be gotten out of the way of their advancement. I mean this guy is promising to take care of the infrastructure and housing, etc. he just needs some support. What is it better to kill us off and stuff us in mass graves than to give us our own island on this huge planet?? Seriously. You can certainly see how these folks talk out of both sides of their mouths. Their solution to real problems is simply to complain about them or have wars over them, but never to do anything of substance to eradicate the problem. The concept of sharing their wealth is preposterous unless they can gain in some way from it.

    Egyptian Billionaire Offers To Buy A Private Island to House And Feed War Refugees

    By Joseph Gibson on September 7, 2015 in Articles › Billionaire News

    Usually when a billionaire buys a private island, one gets the sense that it's merely for personal pleasure. Frequently, billionaires buy private islands just so they can keep up with their rival billionaire peers who already own one (or several). But today we're learning of an Egyptian billionaire who wants to buy an island for a very unique and incredible reason. Egyptian telecommunications tycoon Naguib Sawiris wants to use his hypothetical private island as a place whereinternational refugees and migrants can live in safety and humanity…
    GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images
    Naguib's idea isn't just a Twitter-fueled flight of fancy, he also talked about his idea during a recent television interview. During the interview, he reiterated his plans to approach the governments of Greece and Italy with his idea, going on to say the island would feature "temporary shelters to house the people, then you start employing the people to build housing, schools, universities, hospitals. And if things improve, whoever wants to go back (to their homeland) goes back." Naguib would front the costs for food, energy, infrastructure and more for as long as was necessary.

    He also said that the current situation for refugees and migrants is unacceptable, saying "The way they are being treated now, they are being treated like cattle."

     Sawiris' outrage about the state of refugees throughout the world was reportedly stoked by a famous photo that recently made headlines. The photo shows the body of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy who drowned when a boat on its way to the Greek island Kos wrecked at sea. The photo showed a single individual who fell victim to poor conditions for immigrants, but it represents a much larger situation that affects many thousands of people every year. Naguib said the he plans to name his island Aylan.

    "My conscience has been awakened by the picture of this child. God put the image of this child in front of us for a reason. He could have been swallowed by the sea… I am serious with my intentions. I want to feel good about having done something good. Provide me with the island and I will do the rest."

    An estimated 2000 refugees or more have been lost at sea on the way to Europe from places like Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan in this year alone. Part of this is also because of a general increase in immigration into Europe – Germany in particular is one of the most welcoming countries in the European Union towards immigrants, expected to take in around 800,000 refugees before 2015 comes to a close. But Germany is somewhat of an exception. Other European nations are not nearly as open to accepting immigrants.


    Given these dire circumstances, hopefully Sawiris will make some progress on his plan for a private island specifically for displaced refugees. But it won't be easy even if he manages to acquire a suitable island (something that would be easier for him than it would be for most other people, with his net worth of some$3 billion). During his aforementioned TV interview, he discussed some of these potential obstacles standing before his dream of an Independence island, like deciding on jurisdictional issues and complying with existing customs laws. But it seems clear that any attempt to improve things toward safer conditions for traveling immigrants and refugees would be a step in the right direction.


The Pretend War: Why Bombing Isil Won't Solve The Problem

NB Commentary: Is it Real Or Is It Memorex?
You just gotta wonder what all the saber rattling is really all about. Is it about peace? Is it about war? Is it about oil? is it about Israeli Secret Intelligence Service? Is it about Islam? Ironically, they want to have stronger gun laws in Western countries while selling high power weaponry and armored vehicles to the so-called moderate rebels who are trying to overthrow their government by any means necessary and they ain't peaceful means, by the way! 

Think about that, what would be the US response if, say, Russia sold guns, munitions and armored trucks etc., to the anarchist enclave in the US, or maybe to the New Black Panther Party, or how about a few men who support the Bundy Ranch empire. Heck, sell some guns to the MOORS, or the Sovereignty movement. I quiver to think of the consequence of that kind of meddling in our movements on the ground against a corrupt government!

Then again, when there is buying, isn't there some selling going on? So where are these rebels getting the money to purchase these munitions? Or is the US and the other 40 countries that are arming the so-called moderates, giving their millions of dollars in munitions away to these sorry fools who get a kick out of pretend cutting off heads while the other drugged up compatriots kill, rape women and children. Now how moderate is that? This is starting to sound like a big fat trumped up hoax to sell more weapons and kill and displace a few hundred thousand in the process.

One thing that is for certain, it has definitely fit into the depopulation agenda of the elite. Why not just get folks fighting each other and that will save us. We will have more space to stretch out and since we will have robotics to take care of our every whim, we won't need humans at all after a while.

Maybe they are planning to come back like an Egyptian Pharaoh, and reap the benefits of today's spoils, for surely it will not happen in their lifetime.

Or maybe they are trying to speed it up so it CAN happen in their life time. 

Whatever the case may be, the carnage and destruction is not a pretty picture at all, and somebody needs to rewind the tape back to before Eve gave the apple to Adam.



The Pretend War: Why Bombing Isil Won't Solve The Problem


The deployment of our military might in Syria will exacerbate regional disorder – and it will solve nothing

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Nov. 28, 2015



Not so long ago, David Cameron declared that he was not some ‘naive neocon who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet’. Just a few weeks after making that speech, Cameron authorised UK forces to join in the bombing of Libya — where the outcome reaffirmed this essential lesson.

Soon Cameron will ask parliament to share his ‘firm conviction’ that bombing Raqqa, the Syrian headquarters of the Islamic State, has become ‘imperative’. At first glance, the case for doing so appears compelling. The atrocities in Paris certainly warrant a response. With François Hollande having declared his intention to ‘lead a war which will be pitiless’, other western nations can hardly sit on their hands; as with 9/11 and 7/7, the moment calls for solidarity. And since the RAF is already targeting Isis in Iraq, why not extend the operation to the other side of the elided border? What could be easier?

But it’s harder to establish what expanding the existing bombing campaign further will actually accomplish. Is Britain engaged in what deserves to be called a war, a term that implies politically purposeful military action? Or is the Cameron government — and the Hollande government as well — merely venting its anger, and thereby concealing the absence of clear-eyed political purpose?

Britain and France each once claimed a place among the world’s great military powers. Whether either nation today retains the will (or the capacity) to undertake a ‘pitiless’ war — presumably suggesting a decisive outcome at the far end — is doubtful. The greater risk is that, by confusing war with punishment, they exacerbate the regional disorder to which previous western military interventions have contributed.

Even without Britain doing its bit, plenty of others are willing to drop bombs on Isis on either side of the Iraq-Syria frontier. With token assistance from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, US forces have thus far flown some 57,000 sorties while completing 8,300 air strikes. United States Central Command keeps a running scorecard: 129 Isis tanks destroyed, 670 staging areas and 5,000 fighting positions plastered, and (in a newish development) 260 oil infrastructure facilities struck, with the numbers updated from one day to the next. The campaign that the Americans call Operation Inherent Resolve has been under way now for 17 months. It seems unlikely to end anytime soon.


In Westminster or the Elysée, the Pentagon’s carefully tabulated statistics are unlikely to garner much official attention, and for good reason. All these numbers make a rather depressing point: with plenty of sorties flown, munitions expended and targets hit, the results achieved, even when supplemented with commando raids, training missions and the generous distribution of arms to local forces, amount in sum to little more than military piddling. In the United States, the evident ineffectiveness of the air campaign has triggered calls for outright invasion. Pundits of a bellicose stripe, most of whom got the Iraq war of 2003 wrong, insist that a mere 10,000 or 20,000 ground troops — 50,000 tops! — will make short work of the Islamic State as a fighting force. Victory guaranteed.


Fake Video Footage: The West’s Propaganda War on Syria Exposed Once Again

Indeed, the video was a complete hoax – a literal production filmed in Malta, not Syria, and consisting of actors, actresses, and special effects. The UK Mirror in its article, “Footage of Syrian ‘hero boy’ dodging sniper’s bullets to save girl revealed as FAKE,” would finally admit:
Lars Klevberg, 34, from Oslo, devised the hoax after watching news coverage of the troubles in Syria.
He told BBC Trending: “If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope.
“We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator.
“The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta.”
Not the First Time
Source

No sweat.
And who knows? Notwithstanding their record of dubious military prognostications, the proponents of invade-and-occupy just might be right — in the short term. The West can evict Isis from Raqqa if it really wants to. But as we have seen in other recent conflicts, the real problems are likely to present themselves the day after victory. What then? Once in, how will we get out? Competition rather than collaboration describes relations between many of the countries opposing Isis. As Barack Obama pointed out this week, there are now two coalitions converging over Syria: a US-led one, and a Russia-led one that includes Iran. Looking for complications? With Turkey this week having shot down a Russian fighter jet — the first time a Nato member has downed a Kremlin military aircraft for half a century — the subsequent war of words between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin gives the world a glimpse into how all this could spin out of control.

The threat posed by terrorism is merely symptomatic of larger underlying problems. Crush Isis, whether by bombing or employing boots on the ground, and those problems will still persist. A new Isis, under a different name but probably flying the same banner, will appear in its place, much as Isis itself emerged from the ashes of al-Qaeda in Iraq.............. 
Read More click here

Andrew J. Bacevich is a retired US colonel, and author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, due out in April.

‘ISIS managed to sell oil to Turkey on black market at less than 50% of global prices’ – Iraqi MP

‘ISIS managed to sell oil to Turkey on black market at less than 50% of global prices’ – Iraqi MP




NB Commentary:
A member of the Iraqi Parliament, Dr Mowaffak al Rubaie, tells RT how ISIS manages to earn millions of dollars selling oil on the black market in Turkey and reveals that wounded terrorists are being treated in Turkish hospitals.

Dr. Mowaffak al Rubaie appears to be exposing Turkish complicity but falls very short of exposing them completely.  It has been reported fairly widely that they are also giving military support as well.

This is turning out to be rather stinky. Folks are telling in each other.  The rats are being flooded out of their hiding places by the very ones who hid them. If only it could now be over. But, alas, human beings have war cells for brains so they will simply find something else to drop bombs on each other for.


Friday, November 27, 2015

Celebrating Genocide – The Real Story of Thanksgiving

Nana's Commentary:
Of all the Western Holidays in full swing in American culture, Thanksgiving is one of the hardest ones for me to decline participation in. I thoroughly love the harvest foods that are part of the celebration, although lately, Turkey has become Murkey in that it does not have the same tastes as it once did while I was growing up. It's mushy and has little or no flavor. Poor boogers probably never see the light of day. Makes you wonder how many Turkeys have to die in order to keep this Holiday going.
It was also one of the few times, that my Mother cooked a full delicious meal, with the sweet potato casserole covered with marshmallows. I remember stuffing myself till I could barely stand, and Mom would always say, "I cooked, you get to wash the dishes." That only applied when it was her turn to cook.
Then one day, it was revealed to me, what really happened and that made a significant difference in my perspective of this beloved Holiday. I guess we could rationalize and say, well, it ain't happening now, now we can re-invent it and make it stand for something good instead. But it always seemed a selective amnesia for certain things and for other things, and events, well, nobody forgets those.
So, for many, many years now, I decline to celebrate. I remain thankful all year round, hardly ever eat turkey and just wish we had a more peaceful world to live in.
For those of you who are out there, I wish you safe travels. be careful and remember that Thanksgiving is a very wonderful thing to do on a daily basis!

Celebrating Genocide – The Real Story of Thanksgiving

By WakingTimes November 26, 2015



Thanksgiving: Celebrating all that we have, and the genocide it took to get it.
Thanksgiving is one of the most paradoxical times of the year. We gather together with friends and family in celebration of all that we are thankful for and express our gratitude, at the same time we are encouraged to eat in excess. But the irony really starts the next day on Black Friday. On Thursday we appreciate all the simple things in life, such as having a meal, a roof over our head, and the connection with those close to us. But in less than 24 hours, we literally trample over others in a mad dash to accumulate as many material possessions as possible at bargain-prices.

So what is the true history of Thanksgiving? Well, just like we have stories of Easter in which a magical bunny hops around the world and hides baskets of goodies for us to find, or stories of Christmas where Santa Claus travels the globe in one night to leave presents under the tree for good boys and girls – Thanksgiving, too, has its traditional myth which we share with our children. We recount stories of the Indians and Pilgrims getting together for a magical feast of brotherly love and appreciation. The only problem is that, unlike the other holidays, we never reveal the truth about Thanksgiving to our children as they grow older. In fact, most of us don’t understand its bloody history ourselves…

The first actual proclaimed “Day of Thanksgiving” came in 1637 in a meeting between the Pequot Indians and English religious mercenaries. The Pequot were celebrating their annual Green Harvest Festival, which resembles modern-day Thanksgiving. On the eve of the festival, the English demanded that everyone comes out of their homes, puts their weapons on the ground, and surrenders by converting to Christianity.

Those who obliged with these terroristic demands were either shot dead or clubbed to death. Those who stayed inside their longhouses – including women and children – were burnt to death. In all, more than 700 Pequot men, women, and children were slaughtered that day.

The “victory” was celebrated by the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony holding a feast and trumpeted this as a “Day of Thanksgiving.” During the celebration, they cut off heads of Natives and put them on display publicly; including beheading the Wampanoag Chief and impaling his head on a pole in Plymouth which stayed on display for the next 24 years.

New Family Values
I was in third grade and playing in my back yard, when I noticed a moving truck in the parking lot beyond the fence. We lived in a middle-class suburban community, but right beyond our fenced in yard, there was a Section 8 Housing Community.

As I stood and watched, a young boy around my age came running over to the fence to greet me.
“Hi, My Name is Doug,” he said, “We are moving in next door.”

It’s funny as kids, we are so free and we see someone our age and we just want to be friends. Someone we can spend time with. This shows the natural desire of human connection.

Doug and I became pretty good friends instantly. We spent time at each other’s house often, mostly playing Nintendo or throwing the ball around in the yard.

Until one day, one of my favorite video games was missing. No idea what happened, but the game was gone. We always had anywhere from three to 10 people over at our house and there is no way of knowing what happened to the game or if it was simply misplaced.
“No more going over to that Indian’s house,” my Dad told me, “He took your game.”
Indian? What’s an Indian? I remember thinking that to myself. To me, Doug was just my friend. Now, just like that, he was my Indian-friend. I knew very little about other races at that time. Sure, we saw that people looked different, but never attached a label like that.

The only thing I knew about Indians, I learned in school. And the things I learned in school, was just being passed down from what our teacher’s learned in school with no adjustments to the curriculum. We learned how to sit “Indian-Style,” we learned how to sing “Ten Little Indians,” learned what it meant to be called an “Indian-Giver,” and we learned to play “Cowboys and Indians.”

I can honestly remember in First or Second grade around Thanksgiving, we made headdresses and colored feathers to dress up like Indians. Then they told us how to do war-cries by putting your hand over your mouth and yelling, “Ahh-Ahh-Ooh-Ooh.”

They instructed the class that the Pilgrims came over from Europe to escape religious persecution. Upon arriving in America, they realized that there were already people living here. The brave Europeans encountered the Indians, who wore headdresses, make weird noises, and were uncivilized. So, the
Pilgrims decided to help them out and they had a giant feast together. Everyone got along and then for every year since then, we celebrate Thanksgiving.

But, Doug didn’t do any of those things. I never met an Indian, he was just a normal kid. But, I was told not to trust him. The irony of a white person not trusting an Indian is too much to even comprehend.
“Doug, do you have my video game?” I asked him, “And, I am not allowed to come over here anymore and you can’t come over to my house.”

“No, I don’t have it. Why would I take it? You always let me use it whenever I want,” he replied, “But I understand. I won’t come over anymore.”

As the next couple years went by, I start seeing more movies with Cowboys and Indians with the natives viewed as hostile savages and the cowboys save the country. I am now in fifth grade and have been trained and brainwashed to hate a race of people and believe that I am good and they are wrong. And, still no one has given me an answer as to what happened to all the Indians that lived here?
Then, I gained perspective from the oddest of sources – the comedy movie, “Addams Family Values.” In the movie, the children were at some type of summer camp in which they are putting on a play for their parents, reenacting the first Thanksgiving. All the rich-white privileged kids at the camp were playing the role of the wholesome pilgrims; whereas, the outcasts of the camp were stuck playing the part of the “uncivilized” Indians. As the pilgrims invited the Indians for a meal together, Wednesday Addams –playing the role of Pocahontas (although this is historically inaccurate as Pocahontas lived near the Jamestown Settlement) – decides to go off the script just prior to sitting down for the meal:

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.” [view scene]

I remember watching this scene and my friends were laughing hysterically, but not me. I was more in shock and awe. It all made sense. I realized that everything I had been told about history was a lie. And I have been searching for the truth ever since.

A National Day of Mourning
We are very impressionable as children and take what elders, parents, and teachers tell us as fact. It gets very difficult to break these thoughts that shape our identity. However, the story of Thanksgiving described above has only a small semblance of truth. The Pilgrims and Indians got together for a giant feast – one time. And in all recorded history of that time, there are actually only two documents of record reporting this event, over the total of three paragraphs – indicating the very minor significant of this event.

Thanksgiving Day is also known as The National Day of Mourning among Native American Tribes. In 1970, there was a huge celebration in Massachussets to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Today, there are still Wampanoags living in the area. On the day of the celebration, they asked one of them to speak:

“Today is a time of celebrating for you — a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people.

Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important.”


The National Day of Mourning plaque at Plymouth, Massachusetts

The Lies of Thanksgiving
To get started, the Pilgrims were not seeking religious persecution – they already had that in Holland by 1608. However, they did not like the work and demands of Holland and wanted to seek commercial ventures overseas. However the Pilgrims also had no money or resources, so they had to borrow a loan from the Virginia Company of London and Plymouth. The agreement stated that they were to take all the money earned over the first seven years and put it into a common stock – sounds like Communism.
So, the communist Pilgrims sailed across the sea in September of 1620. Yet, it is also important to note that they did not call themselves Pilgrims. They were originally referred to as Separatists as they no longer followed the Church of England. Yet, they referred to themselves as God’s Chosen People, in which they called themselves “Saints.”

The rest of England, considered them “religious dropouts.”

The Pilgrims were also not farmers, nor woodsmen; they were mostly city people and artisans that had no clue how to survive in the Wilderness. It would be like if a group of broke-hipsters decided to move to a remote jungle in South America to start their own civilization because they do not fit in with mainstream society. Yet, they don’t have money, so they take out a loan from the government to set up their little expedition.

They were not just being persecuted for religious beliefs either, they were revolutionaries who intended – and in fact, did in 1649 – overthrow the English Government.

On November 20, 1620, they landed at Cape Cod – not Plymouth Rock. A winter storm had sent them off-course and they were many miles north of their destination in Virginia. They landed in a desolated area in which the Patuxet used to live – but were completely wiped away by disease in 1617. The Pilgrims raided the land for corn, beans, and robbed the gravesites at Corn Hill to steal as much winter provisions as they could handle.

It wasn’t until another month later that they landed at Plymouth Rock. In which, the crew was decimated and the settlers were either dead or dying from starvation, malnutrition and disease. Only 53 of the remaining 102 members of this ship made it through the winter. In March, they were greeted by two English-Speaking Indians – Samoset and Squanto.

While this tale seems miraculous, in fact Plymouth Governor Bradford referred to Squanto as “a special instrument sent from God.” However, it was not that simple.

Squanto had been captured in 1605 and sold into slavery in England, in which he was forced to learn English. Then they sent him back to America, only to serve as a guide for the explorers to further ravage his land. In 1614, he was captured again and shipped to Spain. This time “rescued” by friars who tried to control the slaves and convert them to Christianity. He jump-shipped again and made his way back to his homeland in 1619, only to see that every member of his tribe had perished to disease. Hence, Squanto was the last living Patuxet and was forced to live with the nearby Wampanoag.

This is the man that helped the Pilgrims survive – enslaved twice, forced to learn English, attempted to be forced to convert to Christianity, then to return home and find everyone he loved was dead. If it were not for Squanto, all historians agree that the Pilgrims would have starved to death and had quite a different impact on American history.

As Governor Bradford explained:
“Squanto continued with them and was their interpreter and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation. He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish, and to procure other commodities, and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit, and never let them till he died.”

The Pilgrims were living in dirt-covered shelters, had no food, and nearly half of them had died during the winter. They obviously needed help and the two men were a welcome sight. Squanto, who probably knew more English than any other Indian in North America at that time, decided to stay with the Pilgrims for the next few months and teach them how to survive in this new place.

Squanto had orchestrated a treaty between the Pilgrims and Indians to protect each other from neighboring tribes.

By Fall of 1621, things had greatly improved for the Pilgrims. They put together a feast to celebrate their harvest – a common custom of the day in all parts of the world. This was celebrated back in Europe for many years, as well as the local tribes had six different “Thanksgiving” feasts throughout the year.
As they Pilgrims were shooting their guns in the air – likely with a mixture of the hefty amounts of alcohol they consumed – they were met by ninety or more Wampanoags. As the story goes, they invited the Indians to join them. However, it is more likely that the Indians rushed over to see what all the gunfire was about and then were asked to join. They had a three-day feast, in which the Indians provided the majority of the food.

This was never called “Thanksgiving” and it was not the beginning of some beautiful friendship, in which they all lived happily ever after. In fact, it never happened again. This was the first, and only, time that they got together in peace. The true “First Thanksgiving” was a much bloodier hell on Earth which tells the tale of the next 400 years for the Native Americans.

The “First Thanksgiving”
It is hard to tell the true intention of the first Pilgrims at Plymouth as they were severely outnumbered and had no means of survival in the New World. Once word was spread about the Paradise out West, more and more religious zealots, known as Puritans, came sweeping across the shores of America.

Once they arrived, they noticed no fences around the land and considered it all to be public domain. They were not in as great need of help from the Natives, as the original Pilgrims, and the friendship between the two weakened rapidly. Soon, the Pilgrims were demeaning the Indians for their religious beliefs and the children of those who shared this majestic meal together were killing each other in the next generation’s King Phillip’s War.

That is the foundation of America’s idea of “freedom.” We want freedom for ourselves, but not for those who do not look, think, act, and believe as we do. In the Declaration of Independence it is stated that “All Men Are Created Equal” but each of the founding fathers were slave-owners who valued white supremacy and favored Indian genocide. They didn’t want equality, they just wanted equality from the British, but the oppression they did to African-Americans, Indians, and Women was completely acceptable.

The Pilgrims were religious bigots who saw themselves as the “chosen elect” and first planned to purify themselves and then anyone who did not accept their interpretation of scripture. They believed they were fighting a holy war against Satan. In a “Thanksgiving” sermon in 1623, Maher the Elder gave special thanks for destroying “chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus cleaning the forests to make way for a better growth.” Yes, thanking the Lord for giving smallpox to the same Wampanoag that saved them from starvation two years prior.

In 1637, as stated in the opening paragraphs of this article, the first Thanksgiving was held to celebrate the systematic slaughtering of the “heathen savages.” These killings become more and more, as the settlers went from village to village wiping out generations of tribes. With each “victory” they would hold days of thanksgiving feasts for each successful massacre.

During the next century, the Tribes continued to get pushed further West. The likes of Lord Jeffrey Amherst intentionally gave smallpox-infested blankets to tribes in the early forms of biological warfare. Whereas, the 1756 Indian Scalp Act paid out bounties for the scalps of Indian men, women, and children.
This continued up through the French-Indian War in which the British defeated the Indian-French allies; but proclaimed that the settlers can not go West of the Appalachian Mountains – not because they grew a heart for the Indians –but because it would be too hard to manage the settlers which would soon revolt against the Kingdom.

Even during the Revolutionary War, there were Days of Thanksgiving honored after a victory against the British. Until George Washington suggested that there is only one day of Thanksgiving set aside per year, rather than after each massacre.

The “Most Free Country on Earth”
After being declared a “free country,” the savagery continued. President Andrew Jackson issued the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the Natives west to Oklahoma. The Cherokee removal from Tennessee became known as the infamous “Trail of Tears” in which Cherokee were slain in front of family members if they did not oblige.

As the land continued to be stolen, the Native Americans set up reservations. This land was not GIVEN to the Native Americans, it is land that THEY reserved for themselves that could not be taken from them. However, as we find out that did not seem to matter as the United States has broken every treaty ever signed with a Native American tribe.

It’s also important to understand that the government does not just hand out money “because they are Indians.” They are given money that is owed to them due to the treaties signed by the United States to purchase their land, and they settlements due to breaking every single treaty ever signed. It is not just a charity hand-out, it is part of a guilty plea.

However, false propaganda and poor educational curriculum like to inform the mainstream that we “gave the Indians reservations” and “pay them money.” This ignorance is a direct result of America not teaching their children what a treaty actually entails, or why it was signed in the first place.


In 1851, the Sioux made two treaties in which they were to be compensated with cash, food, and goods to give up over one-million acres of land to the United States, while living on the reservation. However, there were corrupt leaders in the Bureau of Indian Affairs who refused payments and gave goods out to white settlers instead. Once Minnesota became a state, Chief Little Crow took his grievances to Washington – in return, the United States took half of the land back from the Sioux and opened it up for white expansion.

Each year the situation got worse, until the summer of 1862 in which the Sioux were literally starving in these unlivable situations. This is referred to in history as the “Sioux Uprising.” They were “uprising” because you were starving them to death because of lies and broken promises.

One day a group went off the reservation hunting and stole some eggs from white settlers and eventually murdered them. The authorities in Minnesota then rounded up 303 Sioux, many of which were not involved in the uprising, and sentenced them to be hung to death. The Great Emancipator, President Abraham Lincoln issued the largest mass-killing in American history with the hanging of 38 Santee Sioux in Mankato, Minnesota. He reduced the number to 38 in fear that European nations may take the side of the South in the Civil War and exchange he promised Minnesota to kill or remove any Indians from Minnesota and pay $2 million in settlement – he only owed the Sioux$1.4 million for the land.

One year later, Congress expunged all Sioux treaties from the records, took back their reserved land and ordered the entire tribe to be expelled from Minnesota. As an incentive, a bounty of $25 was offered for the scalp of any Sioux found living in the state. In the same year, President Lincoln decided that Thanksgiving should be a Federal Holiday.

During this time, the Wild-Wild West included the likes of Custer going from camp-to-camp killing Indian women, men, and children for sport. They would burn, rape, and mutilate entire villages and were celebrated in the news as heroes. This includes his raid of the sleeping Cheyenne and their peace Chief Black Kettle, despite his previous surrender to the military and willingness to live on the reservations.
In 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation the Natives were practicing ghost dances, in which the military was called in and turned a peaceful dance into a massacre with another 300 dead at the hands of their conquerors.

“The people who are citizens of the U.S., these are your treaties. They aren’t just the Indians’ treaties. No one gave us anything. No one was dragging any land behind them when they came here. This was our land… As native American peoples in this red corner of Mother Earth, we have no reason to celebrate an invasion that caused the demise of so many of our people, and is still causing destruction today.” ~ Suzan Shown Harjo, the Morning Star Institute, a national Native American rights organization.

Boarding Schools
As the Sioux Wars ended, and it wasn’t as easy to deliberately kill the Indians, the Americans needed a new way to carry out genocide. They introduced the Boarding School System in 1890. This was United States Government policy that they could show up at your doorstep, take away your infants and toddlers and ship them to boarding schools hundreds of miles away. Your children were no longer yours.
At these schools they were banned to speak native languages, mocked their traditions and cultures, cut their hair, made them look American, as well as physically, emotionally, and sexually abused on a daily basis. Some children would never see their parents again. Or if they did, they had become different people.



It was a systematic eradicating of a race of people, they looked Indian but they were Americanizing them. Every Indian today is a product of this boarding school system. It peaked in the 1970s and carried into the 21st century.

In the 1950s, the United States then wanted to “re-civilize” the Indians and invited them to live back in the city. The problem is they had no money, education, or skills, and could not find work. Most of them ended up homeless or in jail.

Primitive Savages
There are volumes and volumes of dissertations written on this information listed above and it is difficult to condense it to less than a couple thousand words. (I encourage you to do you own research.) But in reading through the horrors, atrocities, genocide, and institutionalized racism enacted against the indigenous people, what is quite clear is that the label of ‘savages’ is on the wrong end.

Our society’s practice of “might is right”, consumerism, competition, separation and judgment is the opposite of how humans were designed to live. We were meant to live in harmony with each other and respect our fellow man. These ideas and values had already been in place for many years, but have been since removed by an advanced military society, but a primitive spiritual one.

“When your people came to our land, it was not with open arms, but with Bibles and guns and disease. You took our land. You killed us with your guns and disease, then had the arrogance to call us godless savages. If there is a Heaven and it is filled with Christians, than Hell is the place for me.”

Primitive spirituality and genocidal practices over the past four-hundred years have resulted in nearly 100 million deaths of indigenous people – making the Europeans the true primitive savages. Before the European invasion of the Americas, there were believed to be as many as 80-100 million native people occupying what is now the United States. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, only 5.2 million people in the U.S. identified as American Indian and Alaskan Native, either wholly or in part, and out of this total only 2.9 million people identified as solely American Indian or Alaska Native. At the time of European invasion, at least 300 different languages were spoken in addition to numerous “trade languages”.

The natives of the Americas were not only “living lightly on the land”, as is so often claimed, but were engaged in landscaping, building and agriculture, trade and commerce, in addition to sustainable hunting and gathering, and of course, ancient cultural and earth-based spiritual practices — much of which has now been decimated.

When Christopher Columbus first landed in the Americas, ho entered an occupied land with force to subjugate and exterminate the civilizations that had existed for at least 30,000 years (some estimates are as high as 200,000 years), a trend that continued for several hundred years. And although he and the colonists that arrived in the years to follow have become icons of our national mythology, the result has been mass assimilation, raping, slaughtering, enslaving, and intention to wipe out all evidence of a native population of between 50 and 100 million indigenous people from the land — the greatest genocide in recorded history.

But, one day out of the year, we are able to give thanks and show gratitude as part of the traditional celebration to honor a bloody massacre.



About the Author
An avid historian, Irwin Ozborne (a pen-name) is a survivor of childhood abuse and torture over a period of 13 years, and a recovered alcoholic. As a mental health practitioner, today Irwin practices holistic care and incorporates eastern philosophy into his work with clients. He is available for speaking engagements as well, and can be contacted via email: takingmaskoff@yahoo.com. Please visit www.takingthemaskoff.com.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Turkey Downs Russian Fighter to Draw NATO and US Deeper into Syrian Quagmire by MIKE WHITNEY

    NOVEMBER 24, 2015
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  2. On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that was carrying out military operations against jihadi groups in Northern Syria. The downing of the Su-24 fighter jet is part of a broader plan by the administration of Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan to topple the secular government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and to establish “safe zones” on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border. Erdogan needs the safe zones to provide a sanctuary for the militant extremists who are the footsoldiers in his war against Syria. The downing of the Russian fighter is a desperate attempt by Erdogan to incite a reaction from Russia that will draw either NATO or the United States deeper into a conflict which has dragged on for 4 and a half years and killed 250,000 people.

    Unlike the Obama administration, that has been willing to arm and train jihadi groups to conduct its proxy-war against Assad in Syria, Erdogan is a true believer, a committed Islamist who has done everything in his power to roll back democracy in Turkey, to establish one-man rule, to destroy the independent judiciary, to silence the free press, and to establish a conservative and intolerant Islamic state. Erdogan is what many would call a “Koolaid drinker”, a man who believes that his support for disparate and vicious terrorist groups that have decimated Syria, laid its civilian infrastructure to waste, and displaced more than half the population is “God’s work”. Make no mistake, the Turkish government is the modern-day Caliphate. The fact that its government officials dress in nicely-tailored suits rather than black pajamas, is merely a way to divert attention from their extreme fanaticism and their covert support for liver-eating fundamentalist savages.



    In the seven weeks since Russia began military operations in Syria, nearly all of the gains of the US-Turkey-Saudi-Qatar jihadi coalition have been wiped out. The decisive battle took place more than a week ago at Kuweris airbase east of Aleppo. This was the tipping point for the war although the imminent fall of Aleppo is bound to attract more notoriety. It’s clear now that the Russian-led coalition is winning the war, has foiled US attempt to remove Assad, and that the bulk of the foreign mercenaries will either be killed or captured. The Obama administration realizes that the current phase of the war is hopeless and has started to implement a fallback plan to control territory in E Syria that is critical for future pipeline corridors. In contrast, the Turkish government is completely unwilling to accept the fact that its plan has failed which is why it has embarked on this risky strategy to draw either NATO or Washington deeper into the fray. Check this out from a Tuesday battlefield report from South Front:

    “The Syrian forces backed up by the Russian warplanes, pushed back the militant groups from nearly 200 kilometers of land in the coastal province of Lattakia, military sources said Monday. On Sunday, the Syrian army and popular forces purged the terrorists and advanced to areas near the Turkish borders. The ground reports argue that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) took control of Zahia heights, 2km from the joint borders with Turkey.”

    Can you see what’s going on? The Russian-led coalition is closing in on the Syria-Turkish border which will put an end to Erdogan’s dream of toppling Assad or continuing to fuel the war with terrorists that are provided a safe haven on Syrian soil. This is why the Su-24 fighter was shot down on Tuesday. It is a desperate attempt to salvage the failed strategy of toppling a secular government and replacing it with friendly Islamic extremists who hew to Erdogan’s twisted worldview.

    By the way, readers should take a minute and review the video of the “moderate” headchoppers that the US supports in Syria paying special attention to their moderate treatment of prisoners. The Russian pilot was captured by these “freedom fighters”, shot twice in the chest and then his clothes were ripped off so he could be moderately photographed. These are the fine fellows that Uncle Sam would like to see in Damascus heading the government because, as we all know, “Assad has lost legitimacy.” (See here.)

    For the last three days, I have been following a fast-evolving plan by the Turkish Terrorist Government (TTG) to create a false flag operation that would draw either the US or NATO deeper into the war in Syria reversing Obama’s recent commitment NOT to deploy ground troops to the warzone. On Saturday, Turkish newspapers reported that 1,500 Syrian Turkmen had fled to the Turkish border for safety. The reasons that were given were that the Russian warplanes were bombing areas where ISIS was not located. True, ISIS is not located in these Turkmen villages by the border; rather the barbarians that you see in the video are located there. These men belong to the jihadi groups that that have been funded, armed and trained by Turkey and the US and who are fighting to topple Assad. Reasonable people who would like to see an end to terrorism, should feel supportive of Putin’s efforts to annihilate these monsters. Instead, the Turkish government has been trying to make the case that Russia is bombing innocent civilians. Now check out this story (from Monday) in Turkey’s leading newspaper Hurriyet:

    “Turkey has called for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss attacks on Turkmens in neighboring Syria, according to Prime Ministry sources, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu saying his government will “not hesitate” to take the required measures on Syrian soil to protect the Turkmen people…
    Turkey is in discussions with the United States and Russia over the bombing of the villages and has sent a letter to Britain, the current holder of the U.N. Security Council’s presidency, asking for the subject to be taken up, sources from Davutoğlu’s office told Reuters on Nov. 23…

    Speaking to reporters late on Nov. 22, Davutoğlu recalled that he was engaged in constant contact with both Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief Hakan Fidan over the weekend concerning alleged Russian air raids on Turkmen villages near the Syrian-Turkish border. Sources, meanwhile, told Reuters that Davutoğlu had consulted on the intelligence dimension of the issue with Akar and Fidan.

    “Our security forces have been instructed to retaliate against any development that would threaten Turkey’s border security,” the prime minister said. “If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required measures would be taken both inside Syria and Turkey,” he added.
    “Looking at background of these attacks, in a region where very clearly there is no element of Deash (ISIS), where there is no terrorist element, first Russian airplanes come and then with support from foreign fighters.
    “We will also take the required measures diplomatically for the protection of our brothers and sisters in the place where they are located and for the protection of their human rights in the face of any threat,” he also stated.” (Turkey urges UN to act to protect Turkmens in Syria, Hurriyet)



    So is the Turkish PM correct in saying the Russians are bombing the Turkmen civilians forcing them to flee from their homes. Not according to Turkmen leader Ali Türkmani. Here’s what he said:
    “There is a perception operation that is being waged over the Turkmens. The regime will of course attempt to maintain its territorial integrity. As such, threats from al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army are being targeted [by Russian air strikes]. It’s not correct to say the Turkmens are being targeted.”

    So civilians are not being targeted, but the Turkish government is supplying weapons and ammo to the terrorists as this article in the Turkish Daily Zaman proves:

    “Several trucks bound for Syria were stopped at the beginning of last year by Turkish gendarmerie forces upon instructions by a prosecutor. It turned out they contained weapons.

    The AK Party government claimed for months that the trucks only included humanitarian aid, but a report published by the Cumhuriyet daily in May last year revealed that the trucks contained weapons.
    According to the daily’s report, a truck, which is thought to be one of many, contained 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells.
    The government was accused of sending the weapons to radical Islamist groups in Syria, but Davutoğlu swore in June that the trucks were bound for Turkmens. In contrast, Turkmens had earlier denied receiving any weapons from Turkey.” (Turkey calls on UN Security Council to convene for Turkmens in Syria, Today’s Zaman)

    So what is the game-plan here? What is Turkey really up to?
    Well, first of all, they are trying to set up a safe zone on sovereign Syrian territory so they can continue to spread terror across Syria. Check out this clip from the Daily Sabah and you’ll see how these Turkmen radicals who are allies of Ankara are seizing villages to create the safe zone:
    “Syrian opposition groups supported by Turkish and US warplanes took control of two Turkmen towns in Northern Syria early Saturday, Anadolu Agency reported….The operation was supported by six Turkish F-16s, four US F-15s and an AC-130 joined the offensive along with three drones.
    Security sources added that this success in the fight against DAESH that can be defined as the first step for the creation of a DAESH-free zone in Northern Syria….

    Speaking about Turkey’s stance on the recent developments in Northern Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a live broadcast on Wednesday that declaring no-fly and safe zones is crucial to resolve the Syrian Crisis….Erdoğan further stated that Turkey will continue to carry out anti-terror operations until concrete results are achieved and peace is restored.” (First step for the safe zone in N. Syria: opposition groups take two Turkmen towns from DAESH, Daily Sabah)

    Whether you call it an ISIS-free zone or not is irrelevant. The fact is, the Turkish government (with US air support) is trying to annex Syrian territory for its own nefarious purposes. That much is clear.
    The downing of the Russian Su-24 fighter fits perfectly with the way in which the Turkish government has been ratcheting up tensions on the border, using its jihadi allies to seize Syrian territory, and trying to incite a violent reaction that will force greater NATO or US involvement. I seriously doubt that Putin is gullible enough to take the bait and overreact to this obvious and pathetic provocation in Ankara. He will exact his pound of flesh at some other time, a time of his own choosing.

    MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
    More articles by:MIKE WHITNEY
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Monday, November 23, 2015

A Game Worth the Candle: Terror and the Agenda of our Elites | Articles

A Game Worth the Candle: Terror and the Agenda of our Elites




People see the carnage in Paris, and cry, “When will this end?” The hard answer is that it is not going to end, not any time soon. We are living through the horrific consequences of decisions and actions taken long ago, as well as those of being taken right now. The currents and movements set in motion by these actions cannot be quelled in an instant — not by wishing, not by hashtags of solidarity or light shows on iconic buildings … and certainly not by more bombing, destruction, repression and lies, which are the main drivers of our present-day hell.


There will be no end to rampant terrorism soon because our leaders are not really interested in quelling terrorism. This is simply not a priority for them. For example, in the past 12 years they have utterly destroyed three largely secular governments (Iraq, Libya and Syria) and turned them into vast spawning grounds for violent sectarianism. They did this despite reports from their own intelligence services and military analysts telling them that the spread of violent extremism would almost certainly be the outcome of their interventions. But for our leaders — both the elected ones and the elites they serve — their geopolitical and macroeconomic agendas outweighed any concerns over these consequences. Put simply, to them, the game was worth the candle. They would press ahead with their agenda, knowing that it would exacerbate extremism and terrorism, but doubtless hoping that these consequences could be contained — or better yet, confined to nations seen as rivals to that agenda, or to remote places and peoples of no worth to our great and good.
Our leaders are not opposed to terrorism, neither as a concept nor as a practical tool. Over the past several decades, our leaders and their allies and puppets around the world have at times openly supported terrorist violence when it suited their aims. The prime example is in Afghanistan, where Jimmy Carter and his Saudi allies began arming and funding violent jihadis BEFORE the Soviet incursion there. In fact, as Carter’s own foreign policy guru, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has openly stated, the United States began supporting Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan precisely in order to draw the Soviet Union into the country. Despite fierce internal opposition in the Kremlin, the Soviets finally took the bait, and sent in troops to save the secular government it was backing from the fundamentalist rebellion.
Ronald Reagan continued and expanded this policy. The same type of men now in charge of ISIS and al Qaeda were welcomed to the Oval Office and praised by Reagan as “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” They were given arms, money and training in terrorist tactics by our military and intelligence services. They were given textbooks — prepared, financed and distributed by the US government — to indoctrinate schoolchildren in violent jihad. The creation of this worldwide network of Islamic extremists was aimed at weakening the Soviet Union. This was the overriding geopolitical concern of the time. Any other consequences that might flow from this policy — creating a global infrastructure of sectarian extremism, seeding a radical minority with arms, funds and innumerable contacts and connections with state were considered unimportant. But we are now living with those consequences.
These are not the only examples of course. For instance, the United States supported — and went to war for — the KLA in Kosovo, a group that it had earlier condemned as terrorists for years. The cultish terror group MEK —which not only carried out deadly terrorist attacks in Iran but also murdered American government officials — is now honored and supported by top politicians from both parties in Washington. The United States now calls al Qaeda associates in Syria “moderate rebels” and provides arms to their allies. The United States is deeply involved in Saudi Arabia’s horrific attack on Yemen against the Houthis, who had been bottling up al Qaeda in the country. Now, thanks to US bombs and guidance — and participation in a blockade of Yemen that is driving the country to starvation — al Qaeda is thriving there again. The violent extremists that the West knowingly and openly helped in NATO’s destruction of Libya are now exporting weapons and terrorists throughout Africa and the Middle East.
Again, in almost all of these cases, Western leaders were specifically warned by their own experts that their actions would exacerbate extremism and violence. And again, with this knowledge, they decided that their geopolitical agendas were more important than these consequences. This agenda — maintaining and expanding their political and economic dominance, and preserving the power and privileges that a militarist empire gives to those at the top — was more important than the security and welfare of their own people.
In this, they are as one with the leaders of ISIS and al Qaeda. They too know that the chief victims of their actions will not be the elites of the West but the ordinary Muslims going about their lives in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and elsewhere. But their own similar agenda — power, privilege, domination — outweighs any concerns for innocent human lives.


This is the abysmal, despairing tragedy of our times. Our lives, and the lives of our children and descendants, do not really matter to our leaders; certainly not more than the agendas they pursue. And so despite the horrors we’ve seen in the past few weeks — and yes, the bombing of the Russian airliner, the mass murders in Beirut and Baghdad are every bit as horrific and grievous as the attack on Paris — nothing is likely to change. Our leaders are not even beginning to take the steps necessary to even begin addressing the consequences of their morally demented agenda and at last begin the long process of reversing the current of violence and extremism that assails us. Instead, at every turn, they are adding to the flow of death and madness, despite the stark, undeniable evidence of the consequences of their actions.
They say they are at war with terrorism. It’s a lie. They use terrorism and terrorists when it suits their agenda. They say they are “at war” with ISIS, an enemy which they tell us represents an existential threat to human civilization, and whose destruction is now our “highest priority.”  It’s a lie. In a real war against such a threat, you would make common cause against the common enemy, even if you find your allies distasteful. Thus the mutually loathing capitalists of the West and communists of the Soviet Union (and elsewhere) made common cause against Nazi Germany.
If we were really “at war” with ISIS, if its military defeat really was an overriding concern, then the West would form a military coalition with Iran, Russia, Turkey, the Syrian government and others to carry out this goal. It is obvious that for the West, the overthrow of the Assad government is far more important than defeating ISIS or bringing the conflict in Syria to an end by diplomatic means.

Instead, our leaders give every indication that they will continue the policies that have brought us to this dark and evil place. With the near-total ignorance and amnesia of our media class, there is little hope that public opinion can be mobilized to insist on a new course. And so, at some point soon, we will see more iconic buildings bathed in the colors of a Western nation (but never one from the Middle East, whose peoples suffer more, by several orders of magnitude, from the decades of extremism fostered by the West). And this will go on, year after year, until we decide that human life, human dignity, human freedom are more important than our leaders’ agendas of greed and domination.