Peace In The Middle East Is Welcome

"You can be the generation ..."

After so many useless deaths in too many countries, one has to welcome the words of President Obama spoken to the youth of Israel.

It seemed as if he was saying the older guys can't seem to get there, but you can.

Those young people were open to a peaceful co-existence with Palestinians, so in a way he was preaching to the choir in a war-torn region that no doubt needs to experience at least the absence of war.

It was a refreshing use of words:

President Barack Obama made a powerful and impassioned argument for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, telling an audience of young Israelis that their generation bore responsibility for securing a secure, stable and democratic future for the conflict-ridden land.

In what was billed as the most important public speech ever made by an American leader on the issue, Obama delivered a tough message to Israel, saying hard choices had to be faced and risks must be taken.

"You can be the generation that permanently secures the Zionist dream, or you can face growing challenges to its future … The only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realisation of an independent and viable Palestine," he said.

(Guardian). The problem is regional enough to cause difficulties in other nations around Israel, including Jordan for example:

JORDANIANS go to the polls on January 23rd, the day after the Israeli election, but for people of Palestinian origin, who make up a majority in Jordan and a large minority (at least a fifth) in Israel, there are disarming similarities apart from the timing. Increasing numbers of them are likely to boycott the polls in despair at systems that seem designed to keep them out.

Jordanians of Palestinian descent make up less than a tenth of the parliament’s members, thanks to gerrymandering. In two mainly Palestinian districts of Amman, the capital, 310,000 voters elect as many MPs as 122,000 tribesmen in Karak, a southern town where Bedouin predominate. “It’s not the ballots that are rigged as much as the system itself,” says Ahmad Obeidat, one of several former prime ministers who, alongside the kingdom’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is calling for a boycott of the poll.

(The Economist). The foreign policy of the U.S. in the distant past was more helpful to a broader middle east peace than it has been during the decade or so of the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libyan wars.

Tensions over Syria and Iran have not helped.

So, this presidential endeavor on its face is hopefully a new direction in foreign policy, a policy movement away from The W Direction.

The Guardian article, quoted from above, went on to point out that "necessary diplomacy which secretary of state John Kerry will begin after Obama's departure from Jerusalem on Friday" is the next phase of the effort.

Propaganda Is A "Toxic Asset" - 3

Toxic Accounting

On this date, in 2009, during a time when lots of "toxic asset" falderal was being promulgated in the bullshitosphere by the MSM, a.k.a. McTell News, we pondered the reality, or not, of a "toxic asset."

Dredd Blog did a post that focused on the senseless talk about "toxic assets" and that phrase's link to doublespeak.

Yes, and since doublespeak is the language of Bullshitistan, a little town with a twisted mouth, like Dick "Chain Man" Cheney, down on Highway 61, today I want to provide a trip down memory lane for your enjoyment and for your perusal of the text of that post (just in case you missed it, and also to show how things like that have not really changed much):

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We have written about business propaganda being used every day and every where in the US, since about the first world war.

Recently the use of business propaganda in the main stream media (MSM) has brought us the oft repeated phrase "toxic asset".

The dictionary defines an asset as:

as⋅set –noun

1. a useful and desirable thing or quality ...

2. a single item of ownership having exchange value.

3. assets, ... items of ownership convertible into cash ...

Investopedia Commentary ... Assets are bought to increase the value of a firm or benefit the firm's operations ... something that can generate cash flow ...

(Online Dictionary, emphasis added). The definition of "toxic" is:

tox⋅ic –adjective

1. of, pertaining to, affected with, or caused by a toxin or poison: a toxic condition.

2. acting as or having the effect of a poison; poisonous: a toxic drug.

–noun
3. a toxic chemical or other substance.

(Online Dictionary, emphasis added). The news media promulgate the dichotomy "toxic asset" so as to deceive the public into believing junk is not junk, and that a toxic product has value.

They do this hoping we won't go ballistic when the government wants to use our taxpayer dollars to pay for junk.

One professor calls this doublespeak, and has written a book "Why No One Knows What Anyone Is Saying Anymore". He points out:

With doublespeak, banks don't have "bad loans" or "bad debts"; they have "nonperforming assets" or "nonperforming credits" which are "rolled over" or "rescheduled." Corporations never lose money; they just experience "negative cash flow," "deficit enhancement," "net profit revenue deficiencies," or "negative contributions to profits."

(William Lutz, Rutgers University). What is forgotten is that this propaganda is toxic and those who use it are doomed to eventually become deceived by it.

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The lyrics to the following song are here.

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Searching For Lost Iraq War Memories

I Got 'R Dun Good.

The Bush II mission to start the Iraq war was accomplished about ten years ago.

As we try to remember how the Iraq war happened, we notice that a war of ten years ago is hard to write down as accurate American history.

In fact, just today, MSNBC's Morning Joe had to retract what they had said yesterday, because it was a false history of the Iraq war's beginning (it happens all the time).

They had said yesterday that Nancy Pelosi voted in favor of the Iraq war, but retracted that false statement today (cf The Stark Truth).

They had also republicanized a video, like convicted O'Keefe had done to a video about ACORN, by slicing it up to say the opposite of what Speaker Pelosi had actually said (she voted against the Iraq War Resolution).

If the people had any say in the lead up to that war, or if Pelosi had her way, we would not be trillions of dollars the worse for it, hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, millions displaced, the leaders of Oil-Qaeda with more cash in their international bank accounts, and America's reputation on the skids.

Often Dredd Blog pondered some of the whys of those days leading up to the invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.

We succeeded in isolating some of the dynamics that were in play behind the scenes:

The book Fortress America, by William Greider, 1998, observes the U.S. military in these terms:

Until more money arrives, the defense apparatus is literally feeding on its own parts, pinching this and that, scrimping here and there, in order to keep the same Cold War force structure in place and the same lineup of new weapons moving through the pipeline of development. During the Cold War era, the military institution acquired a reflexive appetite for growth that it's now unwilling to give up. Instead, it lumbers toward a self-induced crisis of malnourishment, as when an addict's starving body eats its own liver.

(see Fortress America NY Times, 3rd World Traveler, emphasis added). The author observed the military being an addict, which is synonymous with dangerous and aberrant behavior.

Within a very short time after the book was published came 9/11 followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The drug of war became the salvation of the military and the weapons industry.

If the critics are correct that the Iraq war had to do with the U.S. addiction to oil, then, we can conclude that the perfect storm did happen, the shadow government took over, and it is here to stay.

(Is There A Shadow Government - 2?, 8/21/09). More recently information has been gathered to appropriately name that shadow government "The Epigovernment."

More than that, since General Wesley Clark also pointed out that a coup had taken place (the military budget doubled), we see the characteristics of an Oil-Qaeda dynamic within that shadowy epigovernment.

In the Dredd Blog series The Peak Of The Oil Wars through The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 8 as well as Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? through Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 8 we watched as Iraq became the number two oil producer in OPEC.

Finally, we postulated that Oil-Qaeda may be covering up Iraq and Libyan oil shipments to the U.S. military, as well as trying to cover up the approaching peak oil, while attributing "new oil reserves" to tar sands and shale oil (The Peak of The Oil Lies - 5).

There is abundant evidence that the Iraq and Libyan wars were about oil.

But many still ponder the question "Oil-Qaeda would not lie to us would they?"

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Links to songs about lies here.

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Wouldn't It Be Loverly: Big Bank Justice

This Gives New Meaning To "Bank Robbery"

The American people inhabit a nation that has been held hostage by an inability to apply accountability to the "Too Big To Jail" Plutocracy.

The Plutocracy that sits on top of several governments in the west, the Plutocracy that dictates economic policy through a form of legalized extortion.

They have the power to move massive amounts of money in and out of banks as well as in and out of nations, and they also have massive buying power.

Their wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq flushed them with money from their military sector businesses, and the oil flows that were seized in Iraq and Libya add more cash into their coffers.

Criminal greed on steroids being what it is, they wanted more from the 99%, more from the poor, so they went after what they called entitlements and what the 99% calls Social Security Insurance which they paid for all their working lives.

So the inane "sequester" episode, composed of the privatization of plunder along with the making public of the Plutocracy's gambling debt at the Wall Street Casino, set them back.

All the "we are bankrupt" talk took a chunk out of their military munitions cash flow, so now we have a new mantra for the neoCon robopunks to mouth incessantly:

"House Speaker John Boehner broke from some Republicans on Sunday when he agreed with President Obama and other Democrats who say the country does not have an immediate debt crisis.
...
His comments were backed up by fellow House Republican Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee."

(Fox News, emphasis added). This propaganda babble will soon morph into "so now we can reinstate those tax cuts for the 1%, and reinstate the military budget that has doubled since about 2000."

The wimpy DOJ section on bankster fraud, led by the itsy bitsy Holder of a Big Heart, is not going after the Plunder Barons because they are "just too big to fail."

But just now the U.S. Supreme Court has in essence said that private individuals can go after them because they are just too big for their britches:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc suffered a defeat on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision forcing it to defend against claims it misled investors about mortgage securities that lost value during the 2008 financial crisis.

Without comment, the court refused to consider Goldman's appeal of a September 2012 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Goldman shares sank more than 2 percent.

That court let the NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, which owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman, sue on behalf of investors in certificates it did not own, but which were backed by mortgages from the same lenders.

Goldman and other banks have faced thousands of lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities. The bank has said that letting the 2nd Circuit decision stand could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.

(No Supreme Plunder Relief). Thank you courts, in this case, for once staying on the side of the people -- for whom the U.S. Constitution was written.

And thanks to Senator Warren:

"I agree with Elizabeth Warren 100 percent that it’s a real problem," he said.

He also sided with Warren against those banks and others who suggest that having gigantic banks is not really a problem at all.

"Too Big To Fail was a major source of the crisis," he added a little later, "and we will not have successfully responded to the crisis if we do not address that successfully."

(Bernanke & Warren Agree). It is politically significant that the Fed Chair agrees, so let's go get them gang, because itsy bitsy Holder is afraid to.

Related posts/series: The Graphs Of The Age Of Plunder - 3, Bush II Eradicated The Robber Barons - 4, You Labour In Vain & Get Plundered.

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Maybe Human Civilization Is From Mars & Venus?

Wikipedia

To make a point a writer once named a book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

When we take into consideration the issue of morality, combine that with the issue of Capitalism, count the slaughter of people by people, the slaughter of our environment by people, then the title of today's post is within bounds.

Some would say "within the bounds of science fiction anyway", and so it goes.

Regular readers know that we once wondered if some economists are from a bubble galaxy astronomers discovered in the constellation Cygnus (Economists - Aliens From Cygnus?).

Then came the very recent discovery that Mars once had a sufficient environment to be a supporter of life, including clean water which humans could drink, and who knows what else (Mars: Analyzing Layers of History - 4).

And to top it off, there was the scientific evidence that microbes from Mars could have been deposited here by meteorites (A Structure RE: The Corruption of Memes - 4).

Then there was the post that quoted a famous scientist who postulated that human intelligence is a fatal mutation (What Kind of Intelligence Is A Lethal Mutation?).

Perhaps when the planet between Mars and Jupiter exploded and perhaps while its civilization was trying to master a Dyson Grid, some of the pieces of their genetics via microbes made it to Earth in the debris (Exploded Planet Hypothesis).

All that is left now in that area, from Mars to Jupiter, is aftermath of destruction, where perhaps there was once life.

Perhaps parts of that planet are still traveling through space but hitting still-existing planets less frequently now, as evidenced by the recent near misses (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 15).

Was it our ancestors who did that destruction, and is our destructive civilization that way because it still has their defective DNA (Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power - 6)?

We have read the news today, oh boy:

"A combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade," the report said.
...
America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.
...
“People are surprised sometimes,” he added, describing the reaction to his assessment. “You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level. Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

(Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment - 2). Some older news enhances the picture by adding to the notion that current civilization behaves as if it is alien to planet Earth:

In the first post in this series, On The Memorial Daze, Dredd Blog listed many categories of life in our world that the leaders of our civilization have willingly made extinct.

Add 200 more each day since then, for 365 days, and the leaders of our civilization have led us, yes urged us, to murder another 73,000 species since they last memorialized death and destruction on a memorial day of the Unmemorialized.

Now we can also add to the bulk of the extinct life forms those we call amphibians, which have all but disappeared, to the Unmemorialized.

Thus, there are many names for the current time we live in.

Scientists call it The Anthropocene Epoch, a time in which the Sixth Mass Extinction is taking place.

Other scientists tell us we are the most evolved species, the species who can end evolution by ending life on this the Memorable Earth.

(On The Memorial Daze - 3). This week I read that Penguins are in extinction trouble and monarch butterflies are in extinction trouble.

The alien economists still don't seem to get it, wondering: Is Capitalism Moral?

It is odd that creationists and evolutionists are at odds over our origins, but climate scientists are more concerned about our demise, warning us to preserve first, then study old origin stuff, subsequent to our mastery of living well with each other and "our" planet.