The Goldstone Report Still Stands!

We are being deceived again. Judge Goldstone's OpEd in the NYT is reported as recanting the report. None such thing if you read the fine print. The Report (on the Cast Lead War by Israel in the Gaza Strip) stands as is, minus a few semantic 'corrections'. Time and again we are fed headlines based on a tiny part of the news story, hiding the true message and/or truth. Who are these people who publish this kind of misleading copy, who are they answering to? An honest journalist - objective as s/he should be - could never stoop as low as to distort a straightforward story. Why is it left to us to dig and find out what is really behind a misleading headline? And the majority of readers will of course not do that to begin with. They will go out and believe the headline, retell it, distribute it and thereby make it much more believable. Do I want to be part of this system? NO. I will hang on to my Common Sense!

Libya - Japan - and our Readiness to "Help"

Have you counted the number of nations sending their war machines to bomb Libya? Within two days of the UN Resolution there were at least eight of them. We, the US, of course in the lead. 125 Tomahawk missiles have been launched so far, at a cost of one million dollars each, to keep Ghaddafi's forces from 'killing' civilians. So we are killing to prevent killing. Makes great sense, does it? This is not genocide, where such an intervention would make sense and where we usually keep our eyes and forces averted until it is too late.

And what about the catastrophe in Japan? How many nations, ships and planes full of food and blankets and tents for half-a-million or more freezing and starving people without shelter are on the way? And written about? Zero, from what I can see. The 125 million or so dollars that went up in fire and smoke, destroying people and goods in Libya could have been sent the other way and done some good. NO? That makes too much sense for our "freedom"(= oil)loving and oh so moral leaders.

This morning I found an article by Pablo Ouziel on my favorite news site (www.commondreams.com) where he writes "The time has come to break our silence and judge them and their allies for crimes against humanity. Only when we have wiped clean the blood spilled in the name of our false morality, by confronting the crimes committed in our name, might we find ourselves in a position from which to ethically judge the crimes of the foreign petty dictators our leaders often called friends." My sentiments exactly!

Please read the whole article and others on that site. They are all eye-opening and not always hopeful, but they tell it as it is.

Fuel Fools

I have been aware of the fact that the military is one of the biggest users -if not THE biggest user- of motor fuel, think jets, planes, tanks, trucks etc. Now I read that 80% of the cargo that the US military hauls around .. is fuel. So, we go to war to ensure the fuel for the military so they can .. umm, lug it off to the war zones? Is that it? Unfortunately, yes, that's it.

Where is the common sense?

Don't Let Them Scare You!

As more and more slightly insane terrorist "bombers" appear on the scene, please be alert and read more than the initial story. From the Sears Tower plot (Chicago) to a conspiracy in Florida, from shoe to underwear bomber all these stories have big holes and plenty of proof how these plots did not have much of a chance to work and were hatched and executed under very suspicious circumstances. The Nigerian underwear bomber, for example, boarded the plane without a passport, was shephearded by an unidentified official through security and placed on the plane. Before that his father had appeared at the US Embassy and warned the authorities that his son had radical connections and might plan a terorist act. Of course, nobody followed up on that ... draw your own conclusions.

The latest scare, the Oregonian Christmas bomber story does not seem to pan out very logically. What struck me most was the following:

The Oregonian newspaper quoted Oregon US Attorney Dwight Holton as saying: "This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people - even here in Oregon - who are determined to kill Americans." I ask aren't there Americans who not only have the chilling determination to kill Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis but also have been doing so for many years?

Nothing makes sense any more. I am giving up - but not quite yet. Keep on reading and digging deeper. The truth is out there.

Read an article with details here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/25-0

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"Thou Shalt not Kill" Applies to All?

Yesterday I received an email asking me to sign a petition to save Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman accused of adultery, rescued from stoning by an international outcry and now threatened to be executed. Of course, I signed immediately. Anything I can do to save a life, I will do, gladly.

But this noble effort made me think of the non-effort in this country to stop the killing in the wars we keep going. Who raises awareness about the women (and children) who are not accused of anything, whose only "crime" is to live in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan and who get killed either by our over-zealous soldiers or by indiscriminant missiles fired from drones or other aircraft? Are we as a nation already totally numb to this constant wiping out of innocent lives?

When somebody else does the killing - in this case the Iranian government - our government's elected boogieman of the hour - we are being pushed to react, to rally and show our concern -- is it mainly because we want to magnify the bad image of the "enemy" rather than over the concern about the poor woman's life?

Wherever I look these days, double standard rules, applied without much thought but with great enthusiasm. I find it disheartening, disillusioning and actually quite disgusting. If I do it, it's ok. If you do it, it is a crime. We are not moving along the path of enlightenment that way. Peace!

Democracy? Where?

Did you hear Mitch McConnell's speech before the American Enterprise Institute? It's not the only Republican post-election rhetoric that lacks the common sense that I am defending here. He said very clearly, with a straight face and full of blistering conviction (if his sad face can convey that at all), that the priority of his House majority is to roll back every legislative progress that has been passed during the last two years. He also said that if Pres. Obama does not do what they want, they will have somebody in the White House in 2012 who will not yield the Veto pen.

Is that the essence of Democracy? Or just hateful, spiteful, narrow-minded semblance of governing? Old Russia anyone? Isn't that something the Republicans accuse President Obama of - ramrodding change down the poor populace's throat? I am confused, but also angry and deflated. What has this country come to? Can there be no reasonable discourse? Civility? Winning a landslide of House Seats is not a mandate to disassemble the whole works. Especially by the Party that has ZERO plans on the table to do anything positive. Hear, hear!

Does this Nation not have important problems to solve? Like Economy, Jobs, Environment, real reform of the Financial Industry, maybe even Election Reform? Could they be at least mentioned or addressed? No, that would definitely be too much common sense. Good luck to all of us.

The Jesters Give us the Truth

Just listened to the parting remarks made by Jon Stewart (http://www.youtube.com/watchv=jXmbzLI3pnk&feature=player_embedded will get you there) at the Washington DC Rally for Sanity and was reminded of my history lessons. Were not the court jesters the ones who could tell the absolute truth -or maybe just the inconvenient truths - to the King or the Queen without being punished? The Courtiers had to make things look good and flatter the ruler in order to be kept on and maintain their influence.

The sadness over this state of affairs- that comedians have to step up for SANITY and the truth, while all the supposedly free carriers of the news and the truth are feeding us IN-sanity, comprised mostly of spin and lies, is only outweighed by the comments posted following the youtube clip. How so many people -who apparently read and write well- can miss the point of the rally altogether by such a wide margin is rather incomprehensible to me. Read them and see for yourself.

Case in point on the media's reliability over the last few days, the parcels supposedly filled with explosives sent by freight plane from Yemen (who knows?) and promptly intercepted by our vigilant homeland security department long before they arrived here. If you poke around a bit in the independent news sites you will see that this is an entirely ridiculous story that can be proven wrong and inconsistent very easily. Purpose? To install fear in our not so informed populace - exactly the fear-mongering Stewart's rally was pointing out.

Please inform yourself and THINK. And if you have not voted yet, please do so on the correct side of the ballot. (I know that's hard, but maybe reading Michael Moore's latest essay can help you out.