NEW YEARS TERRORISM

DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

With the advent of ISIS, the face of terrorism has changed.   It is not that we don’t have to worry about large scale attacks like 9/11, but it seems like the new normal is to motivate ‘lone wolf’ religious nutcases to target places where civilian gather. 

Earlier this year ISIS posted a video of a suicide bomber among the crowd at Time Square.  We have to ask ourselves if this was propaganda to make us fearful, or was it a recruiting tool for radicalized American Moslems willing to commit the greatest sacrifice for Jihad.   

I know that our government leaders say if we change our routines we are giving in to terrorism, but perhaps we are living in a new reality and haven’t yet accepted the truth.    

Regardless of the number of NYC police in Time Square on New Year’s Eve, I don’t see how that scene can be made safe from people willing to die to create chaos and destruction. 

We haven’t decided yet if we will watch the ball drop in Time Square on TV, as we usually do on New Year’s Eve.   I have trepidation.   

At any rate, I will be glad when this night is over.

the Ol’Buzzard

THE HUMAN RACE SUX, BUT HAVE A GOOD DAY

Today is a cat day.  It is raining and the temperature is fifty degrees with a slight wind. 

I love this type of day.    It’s a day to stay home and read, nap, eat, nap, drink wine, get laid and nap – and spend a short time on the computer this morning to get the need to write out of my system.

 

I have made a conscious effort not to mire into the political, economic and foreign policies of the country and the world on this blog; because what comes around goes around – and we will see the same insanity again and again and again.

So I try to blog about the non-crisis of the moment.   But today I have to comment.

  

October 9, 2015 and we have another shooting at a college campus, this week in Arizona.   Oh well; what’s Donald Trump doing?

The Republican led Congress is totally dysfunctional: they have inherited the wind; but we all suffer from a dysfunctional government.

We are quagmire in the Middle East and it is of our own making:  

  

In 2003 Bush invaded Iraq and removed Saddam, and that has turned into ethnic chaos resulting in Isil.

 We supported the overthrow of Kaddafi resulting in that country being destabilized and becoming a home for Al Qaeda.

Now we are demanding the overthrow of the government of Syria and removal of President Bashar al Assad – what could possibly go wrong there?  Obviously we can’t learn from past mistakes.

Adding to the Syrian conflict Russia has now militarily committed to the al Assad government and is flying missions in defiance of U.S. war planes.

  

Vladimir Putin is an ego-maniac that seems anxious for a confrontation with the U.S.   He is capable of escalating the Syrian conflict to a nuclear threat believing the U.S. will back down and Russia will be respected as the premier military power in the world. 

The problem is that we have our own ego-maniacs led by John McCain who would like to escalate a confrontation with Russia.  Yesterday McCain proposed implementing a no fly zone over Syria and confronting Russian war planes.  

I constantly make reference to George Orwell’s 1984 because the parallels to today are so striking.

 

The country is in a perpetual state of war: we fight them there because we don’t want to fight them here.

“War is Peace.”

The Patriot Act will keep us safe.

“Freedom is Slavery.”

The Tea Party has taken over the Republican Congress and vies for the Presidency.

“Ignorance is Strength.”

The parallels are endless.  If you haven’t read 1984 in a while…   Perhaps you shouldn’t – it might ruin your day.

The fucking country is a mess, the god damn world is a mess, the human race is a mess; but I don’t care.  It will be the same way when I am gone.    The human race cannot live in peace.  As individuals we are likable-enough; but in our herd, our pack or our troop we are destructive, vindictive and cruel. 

Am I depressed?   No way.   I plan to drink some wine, have a decadent lunch, and if I am lucky have sex this afternoon with my beautiful wife.

  

So the world can go to hell in a handbag – just as it always has.   We are the root of our own destruction and someday we will inherit the wind. 

But in the meantime have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard

HOW TO END AMERICA'S ENDLESS WARS

Bring back the draft

Hell no - We won't go!

The way you wage endless wars so the people won't protest, is with an all volunteer military.  

 the Ol'Buzzard 

MUSLIMS ARE NOT THE REAL DANGER TO AMERICA

Once a year Muslims in Texas meet at the State Capital to celebrate their American heritage. 

Muslim terrorist are creating havoc in the Middle East; but here in the United States the real danger to individual freedom comes not from the Muslim community, but from the fundamentalist Christian cabal.   They would establish their version of Christian rule that would be every bit as draconian as Islamic Sharia Law.

These people would send us back to the eighteenth century where church clerics could condemn people to the stocks, or public whipping, public shaming, imprisonment or worse for defying their interpretation of Christian law.

These radicals are not to be laughed at, for they have already infiltrated the highest levels of our government and are accepted and placated by the Republican Party

.

This type of vitriol, bigotry and intolerance is beyond freedom of speech – these people are capable of blind rage and violence in the name of their God, and they are seeking a Christian Nation.    

 Sound familiar?

Be afraid - be very afraid.

the Ol’Buzzard

1984 REVISITED

I urge anyone with time for books to read or reread George Orwell’s 1984.   The similarities to our government is astounding.   It is obvious to the observer that science fiction writing has predicted advances in real science; and we might say George Orwell has predicted our present.

The story, of course, is the extreme of an individual’s manipulation by a government; but the underlying picture of our government’s manipulation of facts and reality is strikingly familiar.

(Note: the movie sucks)

EXCERPTS FROM 1984 FOR CONSIDERATION:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“The enemy of the moment represents absolute evil.”

“If all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became true.”

Mission Accomplished

“Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

George W Bush Presidential Library

“Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version.  A great deal of the time you were supposed to make them up out of your head.”

“The aim of the high is to remain where they are.   The aim of the middle is to change places with high.   The aim of the low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinction and create a society in which all men shall be equal.”

U.S. Congress

“Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public execution, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and deportation of whole populations not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

“In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance.”

“The essential act of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.   To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient…”

Weapons of Mass Destruction

“The Proles (people) are only intermittently conscious of the war.   When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.  

What War?

 It is in the ranks of the party, and above all the inner party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.”

Republican Neo-Cons

“We know that no one ever seized power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

Partisan Politics

NEWS SPEAK: (news released designed to diminish the range of thought.)

DOUBLE THINK: (to successfully manipulate the mind to the point that people think the opposite of what is true.)

The correlations are obvious.  

the Ol’Buzzard

THE UNREPORTED WAR

America is focused on war in the Middle East; we are obsessed with Isis, mainly because of their media exploitation of the beheading of  Westerners. - and our government's obsession with oil.   

However, all this time there has been a European leaning country under attack by Russia - a country truly fighting to keep its independents; and we in America are ignoring their struggle.  

You will not find reporting of the Ukrainian struggle on the news; but you can get a firsthand view, and understanding of the root of the conflict by accessing the Blog Fodder blog posted by a Canadian living in Ukraine

It really is worth following.   

America is involved, and has been for over a decade, in a Middle Eastern religious conflict that has no resolution.   It is quite possible we created the conflict by removing Saddam from Iraq.   Colin Powell warned the Bush administrator that if you break it you own it...   well we have tried to own it every since.    

The bottom line is that we should be supporting the Ukrainian people desperately fighting to keep their independence from Russia and not spending the lives and resources in the Middle Eastern black hole of religious extremism.

the Ol'Buzzard 

IF WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT WARS LET’S BRING BACK THE DRAFT

The President in the State Of The Union speech asked Congress for a new authorization to wage war in the Middle East.


People with money, young people with options, young people raised with advantages, young people able to attend college on their parent’s dime don’t join the military.   The volunteer military, especially the enlisted, for the most part is populated by young people without privilege or options who see the military as a way to security in an uncertain future. 

I know this for a fact, as I spent 22 years as an enlisted man in the Navy.  The Cheneys, the Bushes, the Rumsfelds, and the Romneys don’t serve in the military – it is the people like me: I was a young man raised by my grandmother,raised in poverty,  in a tiny town in Mississippi  – few options, no future – my only chance to ‘get out’ was to opt for the military.

I hate seeing the young men and women coming back missing limbs or otherwise physically or mentally injured.   I have seen the deaths and carnage of war.   I have smelled it.   Bodies stacked like cord-wood on pallets in the hot tropical sun, waiting for a C-130 to come carry them home. 

We lost fifty-eight thousand in Vietnam for absolutely nothing.   We have been involved in the Middle East because of false pretenses.   Men and women are coming back injured from these wars and we have accomplished absolutely nothing. 

Every military person in harm’s way worries about death or injury, and especially at the end of their tour.   And even worse - to be the last fatality just before the end of hostilities – the last man killed in a war; a death that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

America has been at war for over a decade fought by our volunteer military; and combat injuries and deaths are still occurring.   The hostilities go on, but the American population is unaware and unconcerned because it doesn't affect us or our daily lives.   We go for days unaware that people are dying and being injured.   For the most part we are not even aware that we are at war until we come across something in the news or on TV to remind us; and then we as quickly forget and move on to the next news item.

Where are the protest?   Where is the outrage?  It is not right!

When our politicians decide this nation needs to go to war, or is in a war status there should be a draft instituted.   Everyone should have a stake in the fight.  Only then will our politicians be called to account.

WAR.  GOOD GOD.  WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

   

MAN IS MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE

MAN IS MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE

AND

GOD IS SUCH A PRICK THAT HE THOUGHT NOTHING OF FUCKING DROWNING EVERYBODY. 

Everyone is appalled at the cruelty of ISIL – but should we be?   The natural desire of groups to live fear free, and especially the affluence of our country, allows us to maintain a system of laws and standard of behavior that suppresses the darker nature of our human kind.

  

We are all (especially males) capable of heinous cruelties toward people ‘not like us.’  You see it in wars and insurrections and mob violence…  When the veneer of civilization is removed the human being often reverts to its baser animal instincts.

You want a snapshot of the nature of human beings?  Just watch elementary kids on the playground barbarize the week and different.

  

Our closest kin in the animal kingdom is the Chimpanzee.  We share 98.4% of our DNA makeup with our simian cousins.    When we see the actions of a marauding band of male chimps attacking a weaker band we are seeing a mirror image of ICIL.

From the earliest history of mankind, cruelty toward weaker groups or individuals has been the bloody legacy of our species.  War is the natural state for humans and peace the interval for rearmament.

Stoning, beheading, lynching, burning, electrocution, gas chambers, shootings, knifings, beatings, drowning, rape, torture: How can I kill the?  Let me count the ways…

We are all capable – and capable of justification…

  

We can put a hellfire missile up your ass baby, and that evening go home and have a barbecue with our family.

 

Decapitating: It is an atrocity when someone else does it; but when we nuke a quarter of a million men, women, and children – we are the good guys; just bringing peace, justice and the American way to the ‘others’ - the bad guys.

I’m just saying:

the Ol’Buzzard

DAMNED IF YOU DO AND DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

The President spoke about the United States’ obligation to respond to the threat posed by ISIL.   The fact is – there is no good option.   The Middle East is a quagmire of religious strife.   Regardless of what the US does; how many military die; how much it cost; there is no good, lasting solution.  The Sunni and Shia Muslims have been at blood war for over a thousand years, and nothing the US can do will change that.

Colon Powell told the Bush administration that ‘if we break it we will own it.’   And, we broke it.

Saddam Hussein maintained a balance of power throughout the Middle East and when the US invaded Iraq and removed Saddam it unleashed the sand storm of ethnic violence.

  

Even though we were the initial cause of the problem with our Nation Building, defeating ISIL should not be our responsibility.   The neighboring Shiite countries endangered by ISIL have the primary responsibility to band together and confront their mutual enemy.  But it is not likely they will act when they can wait on the United States to step in and expend its wealth and manpower to confront their enemy? 

The US has no loyal allies in the Middle East.   No Muslim country will align itself with what, in the Middle East, is viewed as a Christian nation and the Great Satan.  They will gladly accept foreign aid and military aid, but they can never be counted on as a staunch ally.

Saudi Arabia is a perfect example.    They overtly align themselves with the US.   Saudis work with the US to stabilize oil prices; they depend on the US to protect oil shipments in the Persian Gulf; they hold major investments in US companies; they have the fourth largest group of international students studying in the United States; many of their military officers are trained in the United States; and they have made huge purchase of high tech US military equipment.

 

 In return Saudi Arabia has opposed the State of Israel; they have joined in oil embargoes against the US; they opposed the invasion of Iraq; 15 of the 19 hijackers that attacked the Twin Towers were Saudis; and, according to the US State Department wealthy Saudi donors constitute the most significant source of funding for Sunni terrorist groups – including ISIL.

 

We must ask ourselves: Does ISIL pose a threat to the United States?  And the answer, of course, is ambiguous: ISLIL does not pose an immediate threat to the United States, but may in the future; however, it poses a present and immediate threat to the surrounding Shia nations in the Middle East – yet they choose not to act militarily.

So what do we do?   We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

the Ol’Buzzard