By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
President Yahya Jammeh, who has for twenty-one years served as Gambia’s president, declared his nation an Islamic republic claiming this action would serve to break from the nations “colonial past.”
Though Gambia’s population is ninety percent Muslim and this would be in many ways seem an alignment with the culture of its people, the nation nevertheless has a very poor reputation for human rights, especially in its treatment of its homosexual citizens.
Jammeh is a vehemently and vocal anti-gay leader who told gays and lesbians in 2008 to leave the country or risk decapitation. Five women have now been arrested as accused lesbians in what human rights groups are calling a national campaign of terror and torture by the police.
The law criminalizes what it calls “aggravated homosexuality,” involving “serial offenders” and people living with HIV or AIDS. The law lumps such “repeat offenders” who engage in homosexual relations with people who engage in homosexual acts with someone who is under 18, disabled or who has been drugged or is under the “authority” of the homosexual. The accused face life in prison.
Amnesty International has charged that people are being tortured by police and forced to confess to homosexual acts or to accuse others of such acts.
Last year the European Union withheld aid packages to the small nation over its human rights record.
President Jammeh claimed in a television interview that no dress code would be enforced and promised that people of all religions would be allowed to practice their faith. He continued, “As Muslims are the majority in the country; the Gambia cannot afford to continue the colonial legacy.”
Jammeh withdrew Gambia from the British Commonwealth in 2013 claiming it was a neo-colonial organization.
By Darren Smith
Source: BBC News
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
To add to that, Ken, the few among them who took flying lessons, practiced on a tiny aircraft, nowhere near the behemoth that is that boeing…to believe they could have steered it according to the specifications of one Bin Laden in order to hit the tower exactly whereas to cause the maximum damage sounds far fetched.
At this point, there is enough evidence that we can believe 2 things with some measure of certainty:
1- The planes hit the buildings
2- Something else helped the building come down…something other than the impact of the planes.
Everything revolves around the second point.
barbarians. Anybody see the movie Africa Addio from the 70s? Tells you all you need to know.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060073/
Try and find the Italian edition, the one they admitted to the US was heavily censored.
@Tom Nash
1, December 14, 2015 at 2:36 am
” ‘The Boeing 767 is capable of carrying up to 23,980 gallons of fuel and it is estimated that, at the time of impact, each aircraft had approximately 10,000 gallons of unused fuel on board (compiled from Government sources).’
“Quote from the FEMA report into the collapse of WTC’s One and Two (Chapter Two).
“Since the aircraft were only flying from Boston to Los Angeles, they would have been nowhere near fully fueled on takeoff (the aircraft have a maximum range of 7,600 miles). They would have carried just enough fuel for the trip together with some safety factor. Remember, that carrying excess fuel means higher fuel bills and less paying passengers. The aircraft would have also burnt some fuel between Boston and New York.
“If one assumes that approximately 3,000 gallons of fuel were consumed in the initial fireballs, then the remainder either escaped the impact floors in the manners described above or was consumed by the fire on the impact floors. If half flowed away, then 3,500 gallons remained on the impact floors to be consumed in the fires that followed.”
“We have assumed that the entire 3,500 gallons of jet fuel was confined to just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with perfect efficiency, that no hot gases left this floor, that no heat escaped this floor by conduction and that the steel and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb all the heat.
“Then it is impossible that the jet fuel, by itself, raised the temperature of this floor more than 257° C (495° F).
“Now this temperature is nowhere near high enough to even begin explaining the World Trade Center Tower collapse.
It is not even close to the first critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F) where steel loses about half its strength and it is nowhere near the quotes of 1500° C that we constantly read about in our lying media.
” ‘In the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900° C (1,500-1,700° F) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.’
“Quote from the FEMA report (Appendix A).
“Recalling that the North Tower suffered no major structural damage from the intense office fire of February 23, 1975, we can conclude that the ensuing office fires of September 11, 2001, also did little extra damage to the towers.
“Conclusion:
“The jet fuel fires played almost no role in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/how-hot.htm
“Besides the theoretical arguments supporting the hypothesis that intentional demolition, not fire, brought the Towers down, the huge volume of video evidence shows conclusively an array of specific details of the Towers’ collapse that are wholly consistent with the particulars of intentional demolition.
“The first detail is the speed with which the Towers fell. Despite the huge amount of mass and material sitting underneath them, the tops of both Towers, like with Building 7, collapsed to the ground at close to free-fall speed. To put it more bluntly, if a massive crane hoisted the top 15 floors of the North Tower to the same height at which it sat on the morning of 9/11, and then released the top to fall unimpeded to the ground with nothing but air to block its way, it would have taken approximately 10 seconds to hit down. This is virtually the same speed it took the actual top 15 floors of the North Tower to collapse.
“With the entire in-tact, undamaged, unaffected 90 floors worth of core building sitting underneath it, somehow providing NO further resistance to the falling building than air itself. (Remember that the impact zone of the aircraft and the subsequent fire was from floor 90 up. No other part of the building could have possibly sustained any serious damage since heat and fire go up. And the government’s official theory is that the top 15 floors essentially destabilized and failed, and its then unsupported weight began to pile drive downwardly onto the rest of the 90 as yet undamaged stories.)
“Somehow, in a gross violation of the laws of physics, the remaining 90 floors and core of the North Tower sitting under the damaged section of the building offered little more resistance to impede the speed of the Tower’s collapse than air itself. This is another unequivocal impossibility. The only thing that can account for the speed of the Towers’ collapse is controlled demolition – where cutter charges and explosives were placed throughout the core of the building, timed to explode and pop out sections of floors and beams to clear a path and create the vacuum that was necessary to account for the tumbling speed of the Twin Towers. (My emphasis) Almost exactly like these firefighters in this video surmised on the morning of September 11 before the story got officially rewritten.”
http://911hardfacts.com/report_08.htm
Again, how could those 19 Arabs of the official conspiracy theory have managed to set and detonate in the buildings the explosives that were reported by multiple witnesses and recorded on multiple videos capturing the sights and sounds of their detonation?
Ahhhhhh
Such make Hildegard happy.
@Tom Nash
1, December 13, 2015 at 2:58 am
“I don’t intend to try to respond to the various conspiracy theories, but I wonder what conspiracy theorists really believe happened on 9-11.”
————–
As someone who has apparently bought into the 9/11 Commission’s conspiracy theory that 19 Arabs with box cutters conspired to execute the devastating attacks of 9/11/01, how do you explain the multitude of explosions in and pulverization of the steel and concrete buildings that occurred, including the destruction of two buildings (Buildings 6 and 7) that were admittedly not struck by airplanes?
How did those 19 conspiring Arabs manage to set and detonate in the buildings the explosives that were reported by multiple witnesses and recorded on multiple videos capturing the sights and sounds of their detonation?
If you simply aren’t familiar with the visual and auditory recordings of those massive explosions which caused the WTC buildings to implode, blasting debris in horizontal directions for hundreds of feet, watch the following compilation of those explosions:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/911_wtc_implosion.html
I look forward to reading your explanation.
Ken Rogers……I’d have to review the location and height of those buildings…..I don’t remember how far they, and other destroyed and damage buildings, were from the Twin Towers.
The debris from 2 100+ story building fell with massive force. That force was not all “strait down” pancaking”…….. People were displaced from residences and business some distance from “Ground Zero” due to destroyed or badly damaged buildings.
My niece’s husband, an executive for Sears, was in route to his normal commute to Manhattan……he and many others spent several days in the city, opening up their stores and mostly giving away merchandise to the “newly homeless”.
I don’t know the number of displaced residents and businesses, or the distance encompassed. But it appeared to be substantial, based on what I heard and media coverage I saw.
If a smaller 10? story building is close to the 100+ Twin Towers, it seems plausable that the force of perhaps millions of tons of debris would take down those buildings.
If each airplane had nearly 10,000 gallons of jet fuel….I think that’s in the ballpark…the flaming debris and maybe some of the fuel itself may have showered #6 and #7, but I don’t remember seeing video news coverage that confirms or refutes this.
Some pedestrians on sidewalks below and near the towers were badly burned by fireballs of fuel and/or debris.
If you know the distance, location, and height of 6&7 in relation to 1&2, you can save me some hunting for info…….or if you know of a good source for a diagram of the layout of these buildings, it’d give me a clearer picture.
Ken Rogers. PS….There is a PBS Nova program from 2006 on how the Twin Towers collapsed…..the likely sequence of progressive structural deterioration. As I remember, the “forensic engineers” came to the conclusion that the extreme, protracted exposure to heat, more than the initial explosion and force of 737s slamming into the buildings at 500-600 MPH with nearly full fuel tanks, ultimately caused the steel framing and flooring to buckle.
In the Bin Laden tape, he refers to his knowledge of engineering, and that the hijacker/”pilots” were instructed to try to hit certain stories (levels) at a particular angle to to maximize damage.
That PBS Nova episode should be available online?
Tom Nash – that PBS episode is available on DVD
Ken Rodgers – only 8 conspirators could have planted charges in the Twin Towers and could you explain how they got in and where they planted the charges. Remember, those faux airplanes have to be accounted for.
One last offering…this one offers a historical perspective that frames ISIS quite adequately…
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/07/hand-choppers-isis-are-deluded-there-nothing-islamic-about-their-caliphate
Haha…I know, it does look like that LÓbserver…I believe however that in these dark times, no one holds the truth, it floats in between various assertions, from every camp…
Either everyone is close enough to it or everyone is far enough from it… But in between the aggregators, Lew Rockwell, information clearinghouse, Truthdig, consortium news…etc, I am able to check the ones against the others and derive my own conclusions.
That article on zero hedge, for example, ties some loose knots together, but in that process loosens others…it puts everything at the feet of the Saudis but fails to address how bringing in the Saudis contradicts the established belief that the Baathist generals are the core of ISIS.
po
zerohedge? lew rockwell colleague?
over the edge, my friend, over the edge. getting into hildegard territory.
And then, this: In the true sense, ISIS is simply a “Saudi army in disguise.”
—————————————
“If we strip away the phony religious cover, what emerges is a Saudi move to grab some of the world’s largest oil reserves, those of the Sunni parts of Iraq, and of Syria, using the criminal Turkish regime in the role of thug to do the rough work, like a bouncer in a brothel. If Moscow is not conscious of this larger dimension, she runs the risk of getting caught in a deadly “bear trap” which will more and more remind them of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
What stinks in Saudi Arabia ain’t the camel dung. It’s the monarchy of King Salman and his hot-headed son, Prince Salman. For decades they have financed terrorism under a fake religious disguise, to advance their private plutocratic agenda. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and oil. A look at the ISIS map from Iraq to Syria shows that they precisely targeted the oil riches of those two sovereign states. Saudi control of that oil wealth via their ISIS agents, along with her clear plan to take out the US shale oil competition, or so Riyadh reckons, would make the Saudi monarchy a vastly richer state, one, perhaps because of that money, finally respected by white western rich men and their society. That is clearly bovine thinking.””
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-12/isis-simply-saudi-army-disguise
PO…….a lot of material to digest_ with recommendations from Nick_ a link posted by Michael Aarethun, a lengthy post by you, and a few links you posted.
With the caveat that I haven’t really scratched the surface of the large amount of material in the posts/links that appeared in the past few hours, I’ll address a couple of subjects.
U.S. soldiers in WWI and WWII were often welcomed home with parades, ceremonies, etc. And there was a climatic , victorious ending to these wars. Their service was duly noted, there were some veterans benefits that paid for college, medical care could fill the gap for the uninsured at military or VA hospitals, low interest VA loans were provided for mortgages_ etc.
“Battle Fatigue”, now PTSD, was probably under diagnosed and under treated. Many WWII veterans rarely mentioned details of combat, and the ” old fashion way” of silently dealing with ongoing “flashbacks”, anxiety, nightmares, etc. was more common with these vets. A relative stayed mostly drunk for two years after returning from combat in the Pacific.
So ” bottle up your feelings” and emptying the booze bottles was, more commonly, the SOLE way of dealing with lingering, horrific memories. A great postwar movie- I think it was “The Best Years of Their Life”- dealt with the postwar troubles of vets, and the ” Thank you very much, now we don’t need you anymore” short-term nature of the appreciation, from both the military and the public.
The “fight to a draw ” in the Korean War, lacking a climatic ending, may well have been more frustrating to returning vets. Failure of the U.S., and the South Vietnamese, to achieve the objectives of that war compounded the frustration of those vets.
Growing, widespread opposition to that war lead to a mushrooming antimilitary attitude in America. The U.S. military performed very well in Vietnam, but we “won the battles and lost the war “(with the help of generally poor South Vietnamese political and military leadership).
It’s fair to say that many Americans….not a majority….but many citizens ” crapped all over” returning Vietnam vets.
The “Support the Troops” reaction……..and it’s more than symbolic…….is largely a recognition of/”remedy for” poor treatment of previous vets……esp. Vietnam vets.
It is a recognition that these soldiers don’t decide which wars they fight, and that they are deserving of respect and appreciation INDEPENDENT OF the amount of support for, or opposition to, a particular war.
I don’t think the “support the troops” mentality is in any way related to a “warmongering” mindset. Americans figured out that one can support the troops without agreeing with the wisdom of committing those troops to a particular conflict.
Gotta run, but time permitting, I’ll try to express my view that it is Iranian encroachment, not Saudi expansionism, that is playing out in the M.E.
I don’t disagree with your point, Tom, but it ïs apparent to me, from watching sports and the militarism embedded in it, to the manufactured outrage that holds us hostage and stops us from challenging any type of warmongering BECAUSE we then have to battle accusations of being against the troops, that the slogan “support the troops”is a necessary part of the war effort, the propaganda that aims to stifle dissent and enable, if not outright support, at least tacit consent.
I do not mean that we, the population, are expressing our warmongering instinct through chanting support the troops, we are as they were, all populations of every society since the beginning of times….the leaders make the case for war with rational deliberation, exposition of the threat or fearmongering…in between, we have outright lies and false flags operations.
I do not mean either that it is a typical American trait, it is a typical societal trait…as seen in Turkey recently.
The population, therefore, we, do only what our leaders know we would do. Some see through the fog and call BS, the others, most of us, just go along with the process, buying into it at various degrees.
I still contend however that without the “Support the troops”” and the role it played in not only stiffing dissent, discourse and opposition to the war, both Bush and Cheney might have faced their comeuppance in taking us to Iraq on false pretenses, and Obama would not be mired into his own quagmires. The “”support the troop is the precedent that insures we are always justified in warring as business.
Tom, this video answers quite a few of your questions.
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/9/i_dont_want_to_die_this
No wonder you are who you are, nick, if your idol, your paragon of knowledge and intellect is Ayaan, then…no wonder!
Wow!
Meanwhile, let me offer an insightful essay by someone who knows what he is talking about, and if we really want to stop others from attacking us, perhaps we ought to put an end to the permanent state of warfare we have established for decades…
———————-
“It’s Time to Stop “Supporting Our Troops”
With the 115 year old tradition of the annual Army-Navy football classic on Saturday, the so called “America’s game” and “rivalry for the ages” is now once again upon us. This occasion never fails to pay reverent homage to America’s so called “cream of the crop” elitist military academies and always from the president to celebrities Americans give tribute to our armed forces. At this time we hear that familiar patriotic mantra “support our troops” mindlessly repeated. So it seems appropriate now to take a cold hard look to examine what it actually means to “support our troops.”
As both a West Point graduate and critic of the American Empire, to me the “support our troops” sentiment has long outworn its propagandized welcome. US Empire has been using that contrite expression to brainwash Americans and justify its wars and violence for far too long. It sprang up during this last decade’s protracted war losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never was it ever heard during the Vietnam War when our combat veterans returned home feeling defeated and suffering from untreated PTSD symptoms, shunned by a nation that had bitterly turned against them and their war, particularly by their own peer group. Fast forward to four decades and three war defeats later, and our government is still sending Americans off to fight and die in Afghanistan (9800 currently) and Iraq (3500 with another 100 on the way), and now in Syria (50 just proposed with more on the way while war-hawk Bobbsy twins McCain and Graham are calling for 20,000 more troops in Syria). But this century’s wars we keep hearing red, white and blue, flag waving Americans urging us to “support our troops.”
“Over the long haul, supporting our troops has resulted in the United States being the most warring, aggressive nation on earth, bar none. As we’re about to enter 2016, our ultraviolent country will be killing other human beings somewhere on this planet for 223 out of the last 240 total years the US has been in existence. That’s 93% of our time as a nation-turned-Empire we’ve been destroying human life. That’s certainly nothing to be proud of. Yet it’s “our troops” who’ve been the murdering culprit. No compassionate, rational person could possibly place blindly obedient support behind such rampantly wanton disregard and contempt for fellow human life.
Another fact that Americans can’t be proud of is knowing that the most warring nation on earth just since World War II alone has murdered up to 30 million people around the globe with an estimated 90% of them being civilians. Having initiated 201 out of the total of 240 armed conflicts from the end of WWII to 2001, it then follows that between those years the US Empire of Chaos and Destruction has murdered 27 million innocent people whose lives have tragically been cut short through no fault of their own for simply living in the wrong place at the wrong time belonging to the wrong ethnic nationality targeted by America’s full spectrum dominance and global superpower hegemony. And that was before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what does it take to be targeted as a US foreign enemy? Any country whose leaders choose to support their own citizens’ well-being, independence and quality of life over US Empire’s fascist transnational corporate interests is attacked economically through sanctions and embargos, politically through propaganda lies and threats, or militarily though unnatural disasters/weather warfare, occupied invasions involving long term bloody conflict or acts of terrorism, coups and assassinations. Just ask Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Congo North Korea, Donbas, Palestine or Russia just to name more than a dozen.
People around the world have been victimized for well over a century by American Empire’s willful rape and pillage of their lands in the name of stolen natural resources and inhumane forced slave labor, and those are the nations whose puppet dictators willingly succumbed and acquiesced to US demands and pressures. In fact in the tradition of the British Empire, North America’s entire domestic and foreign history has been made of genocidal killing, enslaving, stealing and subjugating other darker-skinned races into death and submission. Given this context with the bigger picture perspective, “supporting our troops” is really supporting mass murder around the world. So bearing that sobering, grim reality in mind, it’s time for Americans to cease and desist with their jingoistic rah-rah that only adds insult to injury to the rest of the victimized world.
In 2008 the US spent more money every 5 seconds to wage an immoral, unlawful war in Iraq than the average working American earned all year long. 80% of America’s taxes are earmarked towards funding the annual Pentagon budget to wage war around the world. When that kind of war investment misappropriating US citizenry’s hard-earned tax dollars places such lopsided priority over the well-being of its own people, with over a decade of wearing down an overextended military forced into fighting three, four and even five consecutive combat tours on two simultaneous warfronts, it also overburdened and decimated America’s middle class. And now for the first time in nearly a half century, the US middle class is no longer a majority in the United States. A large chunk of it died when sinking into an expanding lower class of impoverished, poverty-stricken Americans barely making ends meet. Half the respondents in a recent survey say they either break even or make less than their cost of living expenses. As an oligarchy the US federal government no longer acts in the best interests of its citizens.
But considering the costs of war to victim nations where since 2003 the US has killed over a million people in Iraq alone, this figure released from a study earlier this year is admittedly a conservative estimate. The study concludes that up to two million in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been killed by America’s wars. These colossal crimes against humanity constitute supporting the US federal government as well as its military troops a moral crime. America’s complete and utter destruction of the world’s second and third largest oil producers in Iraq and Libya, turning them into failed states because their one time US allied leaders moved away from the US petrodollar is unconscionable, yet that’s the tragic outcome of blindly supporting our troops. More than any other single country, the US today is responsible for allowing ISIS to make billions in profit from stolen oil from Iraq and Syria financing the biggest terrorist group on the planet. And US partners-in-crime Turkey and Israel are the two biggest buyers of terrorist oil. So in effect supporting our troops is also supporting both crimes against humanity as well as worldwide terrorism.
Supporting our troops has contributed to the world becoming far more armed and dangerous today than at any prior time in our recorded human history. Our nation is also responsible for spearheading the biggest arms race in history where it’s not just the US Empire spending so many billions on weapons of mass destruction but due to Empire aggression it has forced Russia and China to answer by also significantly increasing their military spending. A dozen years ago the US defense budget nearly equaled the rest of the world combined. But during this century’s two protracted US wars plus smaller secret ones around the world, America’s military expenditures have soared to $682 billion in 2012 from $417.4 in 2003. The exponential rise of American aggression likewise has pressured the unilaterally declared US enemies Russia and China to significantly increase their military spending as well. The US has gone from spending near half (46%) of the world’s military amount in 2003 to just 35% in 2014 due to Russia and China dramatically expanding their military budgets. In fact following America’s lead, both the world’s annual arms sales as well as its military budgets have exponentially skyrocketed amongst dozens of countries all seemingly gearing up for “the big one.” Not surprisingly, at 31% the US is also the biggest arms dealer on the planet followed by Russia’s 27% with China accounting for 5% during the period from 2010-2014 that totaled a 16% increase from arms sold from 2005-2009.
Events and developments have escalated tensions and confrontations between the US and Russia and China in recent weeks. With the US backing NATO member Turkey recklessly shooting down a Russian fighter jet resulting in a Russian rescue helicopter also brought down last month, in addition to the probable ISIS bomb taking down the Russian airliner killing all 224 onboard a month and a half ago, the US Navy destroyer skirting inside the twelve nautical mile range of built up Chinese islands in the South China Sea, the United States and the West appear to be baiting Putin and the East into World War III. And with nuclear powers going directly head-to-head in Syria, Ukraine and Asia, self-annihilation of the human race becomes a very real and grave risk culminating after a quarter century of US Empire belligerently operating as the sole global superpower and “global village” bully.
Out of nearly 200 countries no other nation on earth has more than a few military bases outside its own country except the United States. In contrast to the rest of the world, the US sends 1.5 million military occupiers on active duty to over a thousand military installations on every continent throughout the globe. Just this week the Pentagon announced a worldwide expansion of military bases without specifying a total number under the auspices of secrecy. West Africa, East Africa and Afghanistan are slotted for full scale bases. Meanwhile US Special Forces that covertly operate by stealth surprise often at night in guerilla-type, fast strike operations are busily secretly committing acts of terror in over 135 nations globally, that’s about 75% of the all world’s nations.
Let’s look at the way our federal government supports our troops. After sending over 6800 US soldiers (along with 7000 civilian contractors) to their early graves fighting in America’s two longest running wars in the nation’s history, leaving one million wounded personnel filing VA claims ranging from life threatening physical injuries to emotionally crippling PTSD traumas and scars, the feds have betrayed our patriots serving our country by treasonously targeting all returning combat veterans as the biggest enemy threat on American soil. Indeed veterans, gun owners and dissidents are deemed to pose a greater danger than even the feds’ own created terrorist monster ISIS that Obama’s open border policy facilitates easy access to establishing terrorist cells inside America.
Those veterans seeking help are customarily snowed under by lethal Big Pharma poison, fast becoming addicted and even more unstable. Many are haplessly waiting and dying on lists for medical services that often don’t come soon enough. Exposing forty veterans who died awaiting services on invisible lists at the Phoenix VA hospital alone triggered a major scandal last year. For several years running on average twenty-two veterans have been killing themselves each and every day in the United States. The overloaded Veterans Administration has been caught grossly ill-prepared to adequately deal with the sheer enormity of the problem with so many severely damaged ex-soldiers in dire need of long term assistance and care. One study predicts that up to nearly a half million veterans will end up with criminal cases in the court system.
With nearly half (44%) of Congress millionaires and so few (19%) ever serving in uniform now, the DC warmongers are ever-at-the-ready to send young men and women from America’s lower class into harm’s way fighting Obama’s dirty little secret wars in multiple combat zones around the world that the public never even hears about. Yet you’ll see next to none of their own sons or daughters fighting in some far off war. The way our own government has used, abused and not supported our troops is despicable.
And then a sizeable percentage of those Americans who are so vocal in their claims of “supporting our troops,” are too frequently disingenuous. Often hypocrites merely mouth the same banal platitudes year after year from their ivory-towered, pretend world, living so far removed and disaffected from actual war conditions or even knowing anyone who wears a military uniform. Never fathoming the tragic insanity or bloody lifelong consequences that US wars ravage on millions worldwide, permanently damaging all involved, Americans who haven’t a clue will glibly pay lip service, “We owe so much to our soldiers who fight to keep us safe and free.” What bubble, planet or century are they living on or in?
Since the inside coup of 9/11 was perpetrated, US citizens have become the murderous neocons’ war on terror victims as well, terrorized by their own international crime cabal government and militarized police state that’s effectively stolen their freedom and civil liberties while the guilty treasonously continue violating sworn oaths to uphold and protect both the Constitution and American people. Yet too many brainwashed, dumbed down and clueless in America don’t seem to get it. Maybe it’s because they’re bombarded 24/7 by MSM lies and disinformation that never expose the ugliness of war as it really is. The ruling elite controls all aspects of mass media, engaging in widespread censorship of films, television and video games where violence and war are only glorified. Military, CIA and FBI liaisons control every aspect of what comes out of Hollywood these days.
But over four decades of a volunteer army comprised of less than half of one percent of the total US population also contributes greatly to the widening disconnect between the 99+% civilian population and the less than 1% Americans in uniform. The atrocities and horror that the imperialistic Empire’s killing machine has inflicted on Third World nations half a world away may as well be billions of miles away on another planet or galaxy. Out of sight, out of mind goes many civilians’ insulated, tunnel version reality.
Those currently in uniform need to be reminded that they have a sworn duty to protect America from domestic and foreign enemies. As citizens who no longer live in a democratic republic but now a totalitarian police state, they need to recognize that their federal government has a diabolical agenda to enslave and eliminate fellow Americans. Instead of criminalizing dissent, the real domestic enemy has become the federal government and all Americans need to accept this tragic development. Therefore, both those already in uniform as well as those ready to sign up and allow themselves to become their crime cabal’s latest cannon fodder in the elite’s wars need to stand up and be counted as patriots loyal to their nation and fellow citizens rather than adhere to blind obedience to their psychopathic masters. It’s no longer okay to support the troops when they’re misdirected into committing treason against their own citizenry. Military personnel need to take responsibility for their actions and do what’s right by both their Constitution as well as humanity.
2015 has been a tumultuous year when by globalist design terrorism has expanded to all corners of the earth, spreading death, war and destruction in its wake. Meanwhile, feeling its economic prowess slipping away in the face of the emerging power of Eastern rivals China and Russia, the United States government has already conceded losing its war to retain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The DC crime syndicate knows its days in power are numbered. Since the psychopaths ruling the planet are unwilling to relinquish their ruthless power of absolute control, they realize that using their Manchurian puppet president and his overstretched US Empire to recklessly do their dirty planetary bidding to successfully destroy the world’s most powerful nation sending Empire into rapid freefall decline on the way to one world government can only be achieved by igniting World War III against the Eastern powers just as their Ponzi-rigged, house of cards, debt-based global economy implodes on itself. So this late in the power elite’s endgame when we’re still hearing “support the troops,” in actuality it’s time to fight for our lives in support of humanity’s struggle for survival and good ultimately triumphing over evil.
http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/
Well alright. Let’s bite. You read Ms. Ali and you state she knows ‘Just How Many Muslims Support Violent Jihad”.
Let’s have that exact number. I guess it’s somewhere between zero and a billion. But your exact number will be useful. We’ll forward it directly to Chief Spy Brennan.
Tom Nash, If people in the West would read and listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali they would know just how many Muslims support violent jihad. She’s been predicting this increase in violence for over a decade now. The people who disparage Ms. Ali just elevate her. The critics are jihadists or enablers. I doubt we have any jihadists here, but we sure have some enablers and deniers.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/5737aad3/dhs-official-gets-blindsided-by-trey-gowdy-and-her-response-will-make-you-say-dammnnn
It got kind of stale so I thought i would liven things up by directing you to this particular piece of film….might brighten up your weekend instead of throwing gas on a food fight fire.
Maybe Nick is right about the Lord, although I don’t believe Nick can provide a cite; but then he never does. But I’m damn sure Turley has lost most all of his guest bloggers. Something is not working. Try to figure it out.
“There’s no crying in baseball” or blogging. The Good Lord doesn’t abide whiners.
Paul, homework is due in an hour!
Ready yet?
I’ll dock you points for late submittal…
and if I end up giving you the answer I’d have to fail you.
po – it is not my homework, it’s yours.
Said the bad student…!
po – as a long time teacher I know who is responsible for the homework. It is NOT me.
Philly T.–I apologize for the personal tone of some of my comments last night. I try ( not always successfully) to just stick to the issues. The one exception to that is one frequent commentator that I MEANT to insult, and I stand by those insults.
I just don’t see any real comparison between the threat from “Christian terrorism” v. “Islamic terrorism”. I don’t know of any segment of Christianity that advocates wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter of nonbelievers. By contrast, ISIS, Al Queda, Boko Harem, etc. are clearly motivated by their version of Islam. That homicidal and suicidal ( martyrdom) determination to attack ” infidels” is intertwined with their interpretation of Islam.
It takes a pretty strong believe in the “holiness” of a cause for a suicide bomber to blow himself, and innocent civilians at a marketplace, to pieces. It took a strong commitment for the 19 hijackers to slaughter thousands, with the belief that their “martyrdom” was a ticket to paradise.
I can’t see anything of that scale- either in terms of size, organization, or desire to slaughter “non- believers”- in the name of Christianity. The invasion of Afghanistan was a direct result of the massive casualties of 9-11, in addition to the previous Al Queda attacks. Since the Taliban rolled out the red carpet for Al Queda, and AL Queda was based in Afghanistan ( and more ” centralizred ” at the time), the U.S. went after both.
That invasion would have occurred whether it was a Hindu plot, a Buddhist plot, etc. But it WAS an attack largely based on, and motivated by, belief in a version of Islam that justifies mass slaughter of infidels.
The scumbag who murdered the Black churchgoers in S. Carolina MAY have been motivated by his religion, and he may consider himself a Christian. From what I’ve read, his motivation was to incite a race war, similar to Manson’s objective. Even IF he turns out to be a stout Southern Baptist, there is no evidence that there is a “Baptist Jihad” that motivated,trained, or encouraged him to murder Blacks.
The motivations of U.S. soldiers who went to Afghanistan probably varied a lot. The military may be largely Christian, but Pat Tillman, an athiest, gave up a lucrative NFL career, and his life, by volunteering shortly after 9-11. Pre 9-11,
there was probably greater tolerance for, and respect for, Muslims by Americans.
Another religion to be respected and protected under our mostly secular government.
Post 9-11, many Americans justifiably wondered what the hell was going on within that religion. If Christian fanatics flew airplanes into skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia, their already-disdain for and repression of Christianity would obviously intensifie.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I draw a distinction between military action against Al Queda and Taliban terrorists and the indiscriminate slaughter of any nonbelievers.
I don’t think that the West has a very good “feel” for just how many Muslims support violent Jihad. And how entrenched terror cells maybe. As the 9-11 attack, the Paris attacks, the Russian airliner bombing, and the San Bernardino mass shooting demonstrate, there is a threat and a real capabilty to plan, infiltrate, and execute terrorist attacks.
The Intel community may have an idea of the numbers of Muslim who support terrorism_ but, like most of the public, I can’t quantify that threat.
Where is JackMehoff?
BarkinDog and L’Observer…..”Where’s Waldo?”
This is kind of an ikDayhead article.