End War

newjesustimes's picture

Open Thread - anybody out there, what's on your mind?
if only we could, let's end all war tonight.

Comments

McJ's picture

I've been hiding out in the mountains

I've been hiding out in the mountains recharging my batteries. I so wish I could have taken you all with me. smiling
I can't say I missed knowing what was going on in the world while I was away but alas I am back at it and in news catchup mode right now. I will be gone on and off over the next month so won't be doing too much blogging but I'm still here.

Tonight, what's on my mind is Wiki Leaks and Julian Assange. I almost threw up a post about it after doing some reading over at Arthur's blog. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikileaks-resistance-genuin...

So...is he a hero? brilliant? a zionist dupe? a mossad/cia agent? conintelpro? looking for fame and fortune? ...because I have read all these things about him. I haven't had much time to look into this but wow, is he getting slammed from every direction - right, left and center. I guess my initial thoughts on hearing about this were, if the information he was leaking was that explosive and damaging to the PTB's, he would have been 'expired' long before he could release the info. Arthur's take threw me for a loop however, and as usual his arguments are very convincing.

Any thoughts??

Then there is the Mile Rivero / Alex Jones breakup....good post on this fron Kenny at link: http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2010/08/alex-jones-banishes-mike-river....

Photobucket
The view from our campsite.

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer traveling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

What a beautiful spot. Sorry

What a beautiful spot. Sorry you had to come back to (or is that from) reality.

McJ's picture

Yes it is!

Yes it is! And it has white sand beaches and clear, clear water, warm enough to swim in even though it is way up in the mountains. The rumour is: they are fed by underground hot springs and that is why they are so warm but I don't know if that is true. There are two of these small lakes about a 90 min. drive from where I live. I call them the best kept secret in BC because there are relatively few people that know about them. There is limited development allowed on them, unlike many of our bigger lakes which are zoos in the summer with all the boats and jet skiis and people.

And I'd say it was back from reality. It is so good for the soul to be out in nature and away from all the distractions of modern life.

If you ever come to visit BC Debbieanne, I'll take you there. smiling

Which makes me think of this song...

Let Me Take You There
by the Plain White T's

I know a place that we can go to
A place where no one knows you
They won't know who we are
I know a place that we can run to
And do those things we want to
They won't know who we are

Let me take you there
I wanna take you there....

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer traveling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

When/if

I should ever be so lucky, I might just take you up on that offer, McJ. Thank you.

McJ's picture

:)

smiling

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer traveling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

Convincing indeed

Arthur Silber's arguments are always convincing, and there's a good reason for that. He has considerable legal training and knows very well how to constuct a convincing argument. Whether or not the argument is sound is another question.

His most recent series on Wikileaks is full of bombast and profanity, conclusions drawn from imaginary scenarios, unattributed quotes from unnamed individuals at unlinked websites, and other many tricks of the trade. Without these adornments, the weakness of his arguments would be immediately apparent.

The same would be true if he allowed comments on his blog. But that would be just too inconvenient, wouldn't it? For instance, Arthur writes:

"Many of the left-leaning critics of Wikileaks frequently condemn the U.S. as a cold-blooded killer, waging an endless series of criminal wars. Yet in this case, they seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the very strong likelihood that the U.S. has targeted Assange. But the logic of the situation, and of Wikileaks' role, necessitates the conclusion that Assange has been targeted, and I'm aware of nothing that would suggest a contrary conclusion. All the evidence I've seen tends to establish that the U.S. government wants to stop Assange at a minimum, and eliminate him if necessary."

But there's no space for anyone to ask Arthur: "If you're so certain that Assange has been targeted, why is he still alive? The fact that he is still living and breathing and doing his dance so freely is all the evidence you need."

But of course -- and by necessity -- there is no space for anyone to ask Arthur any of the questions which he dodges in the course of constructing his "convincing" arguments.

Personally I have been wondering for a long time whether Arthur Silber is worth reading, and his recent series has helped me to clarify my thoughts.

Especially helpful in this regard was the following passage from the third installment of his most recent series: On Wikileaks (III): "We'd like his cooperation..."

"In my reading over the last week, I've seen that some of the same leftist writers who criticize Wikileaks have posted absolutely nothing about supporting Bradley Manning. I'll have more about this, and what I consider an altogether shocking omission, in upcoming parts of this series. (I realize that many factors determine those topics a writer covers and those he does not -- but it's not as if the writers I have in mind haven't had plenty of time to write about other issues, none of which approach the urgency of this matter in any respect. I also acknowledge that I myself have been guilty of what I now consider very egregious similar omissions in the past, for which I am deeply sorry. I'll do my best to see that the same kind of mistake isn't repeated in the future.) For the moment, I will simply ask: Given your repeated proclamations of your great concern about the loss of innocent life and the brutality visited upon entirely undeserving victims, what the hell do you have a blog for? If you can't be bothered to urge that people support Manning in any way they can, you might as well take your blog and ... well, you know what you can do with it."

This was written by a man who -- despite serious illness -- finds time to write about such pressing matters as opera on Obama's iPod, dating other men and his love for the male anatomy ... but who has never written a single intelligent, skeptical, or even curious word about 9/11.

His whole website is built around the idea that the stories we tell matter very much. And I agree.

The story of 9/11 obviously false at every key point. And, since it is used to justify every depradation, at home and abroad, it matters a great deal.

It certainly matters more than opera on Obama's iPod, more than the anatomy of gay sex, even more than the defense of Bradley Manning. And yet, having sidestepped 9/11 and all its implications for nearly 9 years, Arthur Silber can find it in his heart to write of other people:

"If you can't be bothered to [write about my "hot" issue, from a point of view that I find acceptable], you might as well take your blog and ... well, you know what you can do with it.

The hypocrisy behind this view is mountainous, but it is surely exceeded by the arrogance required to express it publicly.

I'm convinced.

newjesustimes's picture

ones up on a thyme

hi Winter! smiling

Your insight is appreciated as always. I miss reading you every day sad

I've never had any interaction with Arthur other than to send an Email with an offer of help once. I received no reply, but I also can't assume he necessarily received my message; Email is a notably unreliable medium, and as you've pointed out, there's no where to post a comment and establish a dialogue with the guy.

I thought last time I was reading him regularly, his internet connection was about to go dark for good and he was getting hauled around in ambulances on a semi-regular basis?

I wish I had more time to dig into it but... Who is he really and what are his motivations..? Do you think I should take 'Once Upon a Time' off the blogroll?

Thanks very much NJT

Your insight is appreciated as always.

Thanks again.

I miss reading you every day

awww ... I miss blogging and I still hope and expect to be back in action relatively soon.

I've never had any interaction with Arthur other than to send an Email with an offer of help once.

I have had much more interaction than that, and I think I may write about it soon. It would certainly make an interesting story.

I received no reply, but I also can't assume he necessarily received my message

If you mentioned me, that would explain why you received no reply. I'll explain later.

[snip]

Who is he really and what are his motivations..?

Who knows?

Do you think I should take 'Once Upon a Time' off the blogroll?

Probably not.

Thanks again / more when I can swing it / best wishes to all
WP

wikileaks

Hi Winter,

I've been reading Arthur's blog for quite a while but didn't really pay attention to his take on 9/11. A few Google queries brought me to a passage which may sum up his perception of the events:


The resistance of the ruling class and of most Americans to one aspect of the truth about 9/11 remains astonishing, and it demonstrates how puerile our national conversation is. Of course, the ruling class cannot admit that to state the obvious fact that actions have consequences is not to say that the U.S. "deserved" 9/11 -- for to acknowledge the millions murdered by the U.S. government and our policy of aggressive military intervention across the globe would subject our own actions to the kinds of judgments that only the United States is entitled to make, and only about the actions of others.

To get back to Wikileaks, can we go as far as to say that the fact Assange's heart is still beating means his action is of no real importance? I can't fully accept the logic of "the messenger is alive hence his message won't harm the state", which implies some omnipotent and foolproof Administration which would never let any sentient being survive long enough to harm them.

Sure, the leaks are no big news to those who aren't glued to CNN all day...but isn't it better than nothing? Or is it worse than nothing? It may look like the whole truth, like real journalism can exist, when it's in fact old history and a fragment of the horrors committed.

Assange's interview in the Wall Street Journal was a bit anticlimatic:

Mr. Assange said the source who leaked the documents was motivated by a desire "to call attention to a number of these incidents."

For his own part, Mr. Assange said he doesn't "really have an opinion about whether the war should stop."

"We just have the opinion that the abuses should stop, the abuses of war should stop," he said.

Mr. Assange said he hopes the release of the documents will lead to a "deep understanding and scrutiny of the war in Afghanistan, and, as a result, changes in policy about the prosecution of the war."

too many questions

Hi Cryptic

Thanks for your comment. It contains too many questions for me to answer all at once, but I will try them one at a time.

In my view, the quote you found from Silber re: 9/11 may indeed "sum up his perception of the events", but if so, it does more to support my contention than refute it. Silber's argument is, after all, a thinly disguised endorsement of the official story, i.e. "Muslims attacked us because they hate what we have done to their countries".

This is a slight improvement from Bush's story, i.e. "Muslims attacked us because they hate our freedoms". But it is equally false.

We were not attacked by Muslims, and everybody with a modicum of intelligence and internet access should have known this a long time ago. 9/11 was NOT a consequence of American imperialism, but rather a pretext for the expansion of same. And thousands of amateur bloggers and other investigators have unearthed overwhelming evidence of this fact.

The fact that Arthur Silber still refuses to acknowledge any of us, or any of what we are saying, or any of the troubling facts about 9/11 makes it very difficult for me to take anything else he says seriously.

I will answer your other questions in a separate comment, as soon as I can.

... can we go as far as to say ...

... can we go as far as to say that the fact Assange's heart is still beating means his action is of no real importance?

Not exactly. But we can go so far as to say that it is very difficult to trust a writer who makes it impossible for anyone to challenge his assertions in public.

I'm not saying that Assange's continued existence is necessarily proof that he hasn't been targeted -- but I am saying the story being told on his behalf raises many legitimate questions: If he's been targeted, why is he still alive? If they really want to silence him, why is he able to travel so freely? If he is truly a threat to the state, why are major organs of state propaganda, such as the NYT, cooperating with him? (You know the NYT would never run a multi-page spread detailing all the reasons why we know 9/11 was an inside job, just to give you one example.)

The fact that Arthur Silber doesn't provide a platform where such questions can be raised makes his arguments weaker than they would be if he were willing to field such questions and answer them.

And in case you haven't noticed, the really serious threats, people who can't be silenced or marginalized, do get targeted, and they don't last very long. David Kelly was a threat. Pat Tillman was a threat. Paul Wellstone was a threat. And so on ...

As I see it, Assange is not a serious threat to the powers that be, but he does provide them a number of opportunities. In subsequent comments I will elaborate as to why I believe this.

Please feel free to ask more questions if you have any.

thanks

Thanks very much for the replies, WP. Actually, concerning 9/11, your initial post prompted me to do some research of my own about Arthur's take on the matter, and my conclusion was sadly the same as yours. I quoted that passage because I thought its implications were particularly striking... Sorry if it wasn't clear.

Concerning the "leaks", many are talking about the files but few have read them in their entirety. In fact, that NYT article summarizes them as follows:

- things were bad because there were few resources (implied: Bush botched it, Obama gave additional troops to make it good)
- Osama Bin Laden appears in the files (implied: a decaying corpse can actually organize attacks)
- the "Talibans" fight harder than we thought (hint: we REALLY need the second "surge")
- Drone attacks aren't effective and puts US troops in danger (hint: they aren't "effective", yet not a word on the civilian casualties)
- the "commando missions" claim "notable success" (sic) since Obama started them.

Conclusion: we need more troops, Osama is alive, Obama is on the right track.

Damaging stuff indeed. I'm convinced.

I know the juggernaut of Big Media spins things to oblivion, and dissent that doesn't attack the core of the system will be recycled to perpetuate it, but these files seemed too convenient to begin with.

Hi Cryptic

Wink with a handle like yours, you shouldn't always be clear. so no worries on that score.

I agree with you about the content and impact of the wiki leaks, as far as I know. It would be impossible for me to read them all, even if I live to be 100. But from the little I have read, and what I have seen from the more-reliable analysts among us, it seems to me that there are other fishy aspects as well ... and I wish I could type more freely because it's going to take a lot of keystrokes to explain it all.

But let's start with:

Who wrote the documents? Where, by whom and how were they trained? You can already see one of the problems. The writers of these documents are all of the view that the indigenous people are the bad-guys, and the interlopers are the good-guys, and that colors everything anybody writes anytime. There is no way this bias -- deliberately fomented in Pentagon-land -- can ever be removed. And if the documents are not presented in light of the built-in bias -- which they most certainly never will be -- then how much value can they actually have?

For example, even the common word "insurgent" is loaded with deceit. According to proper usage, an "insurgent" is a rebel who opposes a legitimate government. The people of Afghanistan are NOT insurgents, and neither are the people of Iraq. In this and in many other ways, the story told in these documents cannot help but be hopelessly slanted.

Then: What is the context? There is none. Why are we there? What are we trying to achieve? Not the for-public-consumption narrative but the REAL reasons? None of these questions are going to be answered in any of the 92 zillion documents, or in the whole stack taken together.

About the role being attributed to Pakistan:

Is Pakistan playing a "double game"? Of course! That is and has always been Pakistan's most important role in this whole sorry charade. Supporting the American-proxy terrorists in Afghanistan has been one of the main functions of the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) ever since American geniuses first started training and infiltrating terrorists into Afghanistan, in the summer of 1979.

One of the more interesting questions that you will never see asked in any mainstream media, and maybe not anywhere else at all, goes like this:

In the swirling aftermath of 9/11, when Pakistani President/General Pervez Musharraf agreed to be Bush's faux-ally in the phony war on deliberately fomented terror, did he understand that it would inevitably lead to the destruction of his country?

In my analysis the answer is: Yes, but he had no better option, because to refuse Bush's ultimatum -- "either you're with us or you're with the terrrrists" -- would have resulted in the immediate destruction of Pakistan, rather than the "belated" attack on the "central front in the war on global terror" that is happening now.

Meanwhile ... the wikileaks are commonly -- and incorrectly -- being compared to the Pentagon Papers, and at the moment I cannot spell out exactly why the comparison is incorrect and misleading, but I will do so in my next comment on this thread.

Once again I apologize for everything happening so slowly, but it's good to be happening at all.

Wikileaking......

The paragraph below is from a Peter Chamberlain article at Therearenosunglasses.com
He seems to have a pretty good take on PTB manuevering with this event.
Anyone notice if you take Assange reverse the second a and n and then turn the n upside down you get assuage ?
"I Can't Get No Satisfaction" - thanks for our lifes' theme song Mick & Company.

"The Wikileaks were a document dump, intended to overwhelm researchers and to preoccupy they, studying the Empire’s past moves, in order to distract us from our new focus upon the present, looking towards the future. Look for the release of an even greater document dump from Wikileaks in the near future, as they dump their Iraq files onto the Internet. Another effect of the Wiki document dump is that it has flooded search engines with countless new variations on the search for “American war crimes,” or info on important key battles or screw-ups, making it even more impossible to find information on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anything covered in the leaks. This will muddy the waters for us even more and make it even less likely in the future that we will stumble across important evidence of ongoing criminal activity."

Dave

newjesustimes's picture

Thanks Dave

Yeah I did notice that about Assange's name too. I wouldn't be surprised if Wikileaks is just a steam valve to make the anti-war people feel like they've accomplished something...

follow up on wikileaks

The Wikileaks were a document dump, intended to overwhelm researchers and to preoccupy they, studying the Empire’s past moves, in order to distract us from our new focus upon the present, looking towards the future. Look for the release of an even greater document dump from Wikileaks in the near future

Like Could WikiLeaks Have Prevented 9/11? Former FBI Agent Says Yes at The Nation yesterday...

(sorry to bring this thread back from the dead - the story is so lame it deserved a mention, as it officially crowns Wikileaks as the new guardian of Democracy)

newjesustimes's picture

So beautiful !!

That looks like a perfect spot McJ - thank you for sharing smiling
Good news is the BP gusher is stopped. Bad news is "as you read this, BP is already working to create their next disaster. What they are presently creating is even more dangerous and devastating than what they did in the Gulf, and even less regulated."
Regarding wikileaks, I'm not sure what to think, I guess you may have seen this? Interview with John Young, "Wikileaks' estranged co-founder becomes a critic."
I haven't paid them much attention, are they leaking anything we didn't already know?

newjesustimes's picture

recharging station



from my bike ride last week smiling

McJ's picture

Recharging Station

I like it NJT! We all need some of these recharging stations in our lives. It is interesting because I was just reading recently about the healing power of trees and then I caught a couple of spots on the radio about how it so good for your health to spend some time walking or just being in natural settings - good for stress, depression, your immune systems etc. Big trees (cedars are my favorite) and water really do it for me but I also like the desert. I spent a week in Tuscon, Arizona a number of years back and surprisingly I found it very soothing, even the extreme heat. I could live there. smiling

"The most unpleasant truth in the long run is a far safer traveling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Emerson

newjesustimes's picture

working on some upgrades

we'll hopefully soon be on bigger faster better hardware, and all the latest software. fun! horse-bleep

admin's picture

ok sorry for the comments

we lost over the past few days.
and for the brief outages; I noticed some of the quotes had been replaced with unusual characters by the upgrades. In trying to fix that I broke some other things so I'm sorry to say I lost the comments of the past few days, and hopefully not too much else, but I've got a backup & can pull it up if someone lost anything they worked on.
McJ and James I think they were yours, here's the text embarassed

Thanks James

Thanks James for this thoughtful and uplifting reply. Sorry for taking so long to respond.

My question was a bit rhetorical but I do think about it a lot and tend to get despondent if I spend too much time on it. So, I appreciate you pointing me (and others) in a helpful and constructive direction. Smile

"If we used judgment in terms of discernment rather than in terms of condemnation and were en guarde against feeling superior i.e. there but for the grace of God go I sort of thing, we would be able to deal more effectively with the psychopaths and the violent among us."

This is so true and is I believe how we are meant to use judgment. It would solve so many problems if we could just learn to use it this way. Another pitfall I see is the need to be right which has a tendency to overrule even the best of judgment (ie. even though our judgment may be telling us we need to move our thoughts in a different direction, we will stay the course, so to speak, because we need to believe what we have been doing/thinking is right). Makes us easy pickins for the Paths.

Your reply brings me back to Huna which you and I have discussed in the past. The way I learned it, there is only one rule (admonition actually) and that is: Act without intent to harm. You really can't go wrong when you take this attitude with you. Smile

Sat, 08/14/2010 - 13:58

admin's picture

whew, i think

whew, i think we're back to normal now. good night, anything else i'll try to fix tomorrow Mopping

admin's picture

found a few more

of these no-good characters turning up: …
ran a fixer script and they seem to be fixed. Laundry

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