PFC Sandoval edited by Ashley Wells (Wisdom Quarterly)
(Kristinamgarcia) Ignored by the VA, left homeless and cheated out of college tuition promises... now police arrest us at Occupy Boston.
Thank goodness for Veterans for Peace. Today is Veterans Day, a day set aside to remember the sacrifices families have and are making to promote free trade, hegemony, and imperial rule.
I remember a time on deployment. The troops in Iraq were tired of sitting around. They were tired of hearing peacenikshippy diplomats say, "Give peace a chance." We really thought there were WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). We were lied to.
Bush, Dick, and Colon (not pictured because he's a party pooper) (rense.com).
The fresh meat, rushed through training, were fond of saying: "Give war a chance." They really thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. Listening to metal There is an OG punk song that goes, "Let's have a war so you can go die."
It's about dying for stupid reasons. Colin Powell rewriting reports, Bush doing everything Cheney ordered him to, Ashcroft singing, Rumsfeld talking so much [nonsense] and no one calling him on it. Condoleeza Rice, Madeleine Albright, Phyllis Schafly, Laura Bush, the women were no better.
What do we call those who delight in war, "demons"?
War was desirable and planned for in great detail before inventing a reason to illegally starting to bomb with no congressional declaration. An unelected president signs the country up for an unwanted war...and we're still there. His father's friends told him to.
Raping, drinking, looting, pillaging, killing, all in a day's work.
"A lie is a lie." What no one realizes until he arrives in human "hell" is that you never get this view. Half blind behind a mask, gripped by fear, taking orders, killing anything to stay alive, then spitting at anyone stupid enough to call you a "hero" if you survive crippled having served not family or country but corporations and capitalism.VIDEO ANALYSIS
Today, of course, the worst thing about "duty" is that the term is distorted to convince youth that they have a call -- to serve in glorious, murderous campaigns for corporate-government.
"It is your duty, you maggot, grunt, pansy, punk @$$ b!tch."
"Duty" has an interesting and storied history in Indian (Vedic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Sufi) history. One's dharma is one's social obligation.
Unfortunately, its original spiritual significance -- as one's path to spiritual freedom -- was hijacked. It became something promoting war and accepting slavery (bound to "duties" by birth, caste, race, gender, being drafted/tricked, or factors not under our direct control).
The explanation was that this birth was under our indirect control: We caused and conditioned it (by our karma, actions past and present). There is truth in this but it neglects the fact that we have almost unbounded potential right now. The Buddha did not accept caste as any barrier. Hinduism has taken ancient Vedic-Brahmanism and continued to promote division and discrimination by birth.
If war videogames wanted to be "realistic," they would stay trapped behind foggy goggles, unable to breathe, sweating, and wondering if camouflage is used so you can pee in your pants without showing how scared you were.
It is the folly of empire to ruin countries by ruining soldier's lives. We may accept defense, but we can never accept offense (even if you rename it "preemptive" defense). Invasions are not defensive. Heading off to foreign lands to burn, rape, and pillage is not defensive. Occupying other countries is not defensive. It is folly, and it is nothing new.
The threat to us comes from the government, which no long is of, for, and by the people. Occupy public spaces to decolonize minds. War is unjust, immoral, and very profitable for corporations who pay off representative politicians.
An Old Lie The imperial Roman poet Horace fed a lie to Roman troops long ago: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, or "It is sweet and right to die for country." The US Dept. of War, Pentagon, and CIA still repeat this lie to recruits without enough life experience to have learned otherwise. Videogames do an even better job of seducing children, potheads, and chubby weekend warriors.
But war poet and soldier Wilfred Owen, the greatest British poet of World War I, said it much better:
DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1) Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9)...
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12) Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.(15)
WarFghterDiaries.org - social network designed for uniformed service members, short videos of actual war stories, real life experiences, building a resilient team. Learn from and share to find out what's really involved in fighting and dealing with the tremendous fallout
(AsiaFoundation) What does daily life look like for the average Afghan being attacked by the American military machine?
While Americans threaten the people of Afghanistan and Afghans whither in the face continued threats to their peace and security, many of the people in the ancient Buddhist land remain optimistic regarding their country's future. (The original Kapilavastu, Siddhartha's hometown, may well have been in the Bamiyan Valley). The Asia Foundation puts us on the ground in Afghanistan to see what life on the streets looks like for many of the nation's citizens. More
They had the nerve to shoot at us, the invading force there to rape them. Could you believe that? We had to kill them. They had no reason to shoot.
The real Kapilavastu, where the buddha-to-be grew up, was likely not Nepal but Bamiyan, Afghanistan at the foothills of the Himalayan range -- or some such location in Baluchistan (Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan), Central Asia, the ancient frontier of India.
This may seem odd, but Siddhartha was fair (golden), blue eyed, tall, and came from the west to India proper, where he became the Buddha in Bihar state and began teaching near Varanasi. The oldest Buddhist monastery discovered to date is 2,600-year-old Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, where so many of his family members (the Shakyans) might have gone to practice after ordaining.
The Buddha's father, King Suddhodana, gained faith when the Buddha visited seven years after leaving and, close to his death, became enlightened with the Buddha's help. His mother, Maha Prajapati Gotami, became the first Buddhist nun in history and also became enlightened. Many Shakyans such as Yasodhara (his wife), Rahula (his son), Ananda, Nanda, Sundari Nanda, Devadatta (his half-siblings often called cousins), Anuruddha, Kimbila... followed the Buddha and the Dharma and became part of the Sangha.
In this German film, a family struggles for survival amid the rubble of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan -- after their destruction by the CIA-backed Mujahadeen. Who were the Mujahadeen? Afghan tribal warlords? No, there were no such thing. Afghan and Pashtun culture have no history of such things -- even though that is the propaganda we are fed daily to justify America's most expensive, longest running, and most opaque war.
The Mujahadeen -- as well as Al Qaeda and the CIA's own Osama bin Laden -- were outsiders, criminals, released convicts (brought in from neighboring Islamic countries such as Pakistan) who were being encouraged to fight Russia in defense of Afghanistan with the secret help and military backing of the United States. See InvisibleHistory.com for the sordid details by American scholars Fitzgerald & Gould.
The reasons we are given in defense of endless war are psy-ops and propaganda. Unfortunately, the disinformation campaigns infect Hollywood, which goes on to produce modern propaganda films like "Charlie Wilson's War" featuring Tom Hanks. Blame the mess on a Texas Congressman. Blame it on a 6' 6" tall asuran billionaire cave-dwelling warlord and 9/11 mastermind. Blame anyone but our CIA or Pentagon.
But it all ties together the inscrutable range of topics regularly covered by Wisdom Quarterly, which must strike some readers as odd:
Afghanistan, Buddhism, extraterrestrials (and UFOs), giants or "titans," CIA abuses, 1984, US propaganda, war, Islam, Zoroastrianism, our military-industrial complex, Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 false flag operation, forbidden archeology, and endless government deception. It matters why our government (both elected and secret) actually fights wars as one of the most violent empires trying to rule the planet. Peace is hardly sustainable in the midst of deception. But when truth is found then peace comes quite naturally.
Losing the Plot: The Afghan War after bin Laden Jim Naureckas (fair.org)
With Osama bin Laden [Emmanuel Goldstein long gone and now "officially"] dead, can the United States finally bring an end to the Afghan War, its longest-lasting foreign military conflict?
It’s an obvious question, since the invasion of Afghanistan was largely portrayed as an effort to catch the leader of the group that carried out the September 11 attacks. [Create a problem, overcome reaction, and people will demand the "solution" you want -- because a pretext for war is easy if war is the goal.*]
Corporate media did sometimes address this issue.
On ABC (5/4/11), Christiane Amanpour asked in regard to bin Laden’s killing, “And many people are saying, well, does this require the U.S. to leave Afghanistan right now?”
She answered her question: “The job is not finished there. You’ll talk to the commanders. We’ll talk to them, it’s the Taliban there who are waging war against the United States, and that job is not finished.” More
*"Problem-reaction-solution" manipulation/propaganda technique explained by David Icke:
Coast to Coast is paranormal talk radio discussing spirituality, unexplained mysteries, global finance and banking fraud, motivations for war, conspiracies, pollution, ghosts, space, giants, cyptids, science discoveries, mythology, exo-politics, and cosmology. Art Bell was replaced by George Noory, who delights and aggravates listeners as a "member in good standing of the shadow government." A joke? Probably not. But mystery creatures suggest more about our world than we normally see. The main questions the show attempts to answer regards the Big Picture: Are we being manipulated by a shadow government, or why do things really happen?
Senator Daniel K. Inouye (Hawaii) in 1987 Chaired the Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, which held public hearings on the Iran-Contra affair. Senator Inouye summarized its involvement by saying:
"There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."
The full-length (90 min.) version of Bill Moyer's 1987 scathing critique of criminal subterfuge in the United States. It is carried out by the executive branch of the US government. A hidden and secretive group carries out operations that are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people, their elected representatives, and most arms of the military and law enforcement.
The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and government drug-running operations. Such top secret operations flooded the streets of this nation with crack cocaine [and many increasingly powerful drugs that lead to mayhem and astronomical profits, aid in the build up of our prison culture and facilitate the economic collapse of the bank-controlled legal economy].
The significance of the documentary is probably greater today than when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same "shadowy" forces (elements in the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, NSC, TSA, and Homeland Security) have committed the most egregious terrorist acts on US soil while justifying their treasonous activities by declaring a fraudulent "War on Terror." (It is impossible to win a war against a tactic, but that's the point -- endless war).
The ruling unelected regime in the US has insisted on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and the destabilization of China, Japan, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, North Korea, and any other state or stateless entity it determines is blocking its ambition total dominance sometimes referred to as the New World Order or the realization of Biblical Revelation). The same regime is now banging the war drum against the Muslim Brotherhood because it needs an inexhaustible "enemy" (having lost its Cold War partner with the fall of the USSR).
The subterfuge is legal as well as extralegal. The PATRIOT ACT, launched by Cheney/Bush and ratified (unread) by a very cooperative and fearful elected government, has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights. This is justified by the terror of 9/11, which was the shadow government's own doing.
The TSA, FEMA, Homeland Security, and other such institutions are engaged in abuses to prepare the public for living in a police state without end and without the necessity of false flag operations to secure our cooperation.
Woman squeezes TSA officer’s breast at checkpoint A 61-year-old woman allegedly squeezed and twisted the breast of a TSA officer [searching and groping airport passengers passing through security] on Thursday at a security checkpoint in Sky Harbor Int'l Airport in Phoenix. More
I long to wake up on Memorial Day to find our country at peace with the world. Instead of mourning the young men and women who think they died fighting to protect their country, let us mourn the truth.
Let us mourn the fact that most of the time our beautiful youth died to keep our permanent war economy alive. They died for what Eisenhower referred to as the "military-industrial complex." They died for the power and profit of strangers.
Had they thought of the expression “die for your country” as a public relations con job would they have risked their lives in such massive numbers? Of course not. But profiteers and presidents are so good at selling war… and most of us are so bad at knowing when we’re being manipulated.
It hurts us to recognize that practically since its inception our country has been in a state of perpetual war. This is a cause, not for celebration but for shame.
Listeners feel I’m being disrespectful of our fallen perhaps? Am I not taking into consideration the sacrifice, the“glory” of Memorial Day? Perhaps this should be a day of prayer and religious rituals? Very well. How about this?
No one knows for sure of course, but let’s say God actually is an old guy with a white beard.
And he stood on top of a mountain holding out his arms like Charlton Heston. He had the attention of millions of armed service men and women below him about to be shipped off to war.
What would he say? I don’t know about your God, but my God would roar:
“Stop! You think you’re going off to save Democracy, to protect your country, to create freedom and equality? Know that you are going to protect the oil companies and the drone makers, Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel, General Electric, corporate America and the military. More
In what seemed to be a natural follow-up to the May 1st assassination of Osama bin Laden,PBS's Frontline offered a fascinating look into the not so secretive operation of our "kill/capture" program. It has already claimed the lives of over 12,000 "militants." These include mid-level and senior members of the make believe terrorist organization "Al-Qaeda," anyone we label as being in the Taliban, and spin-off groups considered part and parcel of the insurgency. Most of the footage is from Afghanistan, the alleged cradle of our US War on/of Terror. More
(Sdlhsn) If anyone has the slightest doubt about the events of September 11th, weigh the facts and the overwhelming evidence supporting this unbearable reality: The events of 911 were set up. This work exposes the lies, disproving every aspect of the bogus 911 Commission report put forth by our corrupt government. Judge, investigate the facts, listen to the unpaid experts, and examine the footage and evidence before coming to a conclusion. The evidence is not going anywhere. But it is inevitably coming out. A comprehensive list of over 100 lies and omissions in the 911 Commission report can be found at septembereleventh.org.
Is America a "terrorist" nation invading country after country? Using the pretext that we are helping them or retaliating when in fact our businesses and government are robbing them? Installing dictators? Training secret police agencies? Trading blood for oil? Terrifying its own population and stirring up anti-Islamic sentiments (which it has been doing since it turned its eye on Iran in the 1970s)? Exporting a consumer-capitalist McWorld mentality? Launching propaganda campaigns to cover the Shadow Government's tracks?
We are not our government! This is not our way! This is not right. We must speak up against the corporatism and militarism that represent us.
The author of World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, Hedges is one of the most creative American writers today. He is a columnist on Truthdig. His latest book is important because it represents a truly prophetic vision of where we are headed.
He points out many malevolent aspects of today's modern world system and the need to confront them. He is somewhat pessimistic about prospects for reform in the Democratic party. As a New York Times reporter in the Middle East and Bosnia, he saw the fury of holy war first hand. His unique insight into the world is striking: As things collapse, the misuse of religion will be a major factor.
The myth of the monster Osama bin Laden is constructed; here's why.
(MD) "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" is a three-part BBC documentary film written and produced by Adam Curtis.
The films in the series compare the rise of our Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the supposed "radical Islamist" movement around the world, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two.
More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism -- as a massive, sinister organized force of destruction, specifically taking the form of al-Qaeda -- is a myth.
It is perpetrated by politicians in many countries -- particularly American Neo-Conservatives -- in an attempt to unite and inspire their populations to follow the failure of earlier, more Utopian ideologies.
Part 1: Baby It's Cold Outside The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the U.S. to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in Western society through individualism.
When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernization under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using Western technology.
He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite "vanguard" to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser's jails, comes to believe that Western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption.
Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution.
The revolution does not materialize. And Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted not only by their Western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by the disease of jahilliyah.
Thus both may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him. They continued to have the belief that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace it with a pure Islamist state.
At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson's "Great Society."
They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil -- and set about creating a mythical enemy.
These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in FEAR of the Soviet Union.
The Neo-Conservatives allege that the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries. And with the investigation of "Team B," they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods. President Reagan is convinced nonetheless.
In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the 2001 resolution [belatedly] authorizing the "use of force" in Afghanistan.
Today [after the Obama administration's extrajudicial killing of Osama], she is a leading advocate for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. She is also for repealing the authorization that grants a president the authority to use force without a formal "declaration of war" issued by Congress.
“While the head of al-Qaeda is no longer around, we have to really address the root causes of terrorism and understand that we have to refocus our resources and our strategy in a way that begins to get us out of Afghanistan,” Lee says. Democracy Now! also speaks to filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his "Rethink Afghanistan" campaign and journalist Anand Gopal, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan. More
This early Buddhist triad from the 2nd-3rd century CE is from Gandhara (Musée Guimet, personal photograph). Left to right: A Kushan devotee, Bodhisattva Maitreya (future buddha), the historical Buddha, Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, and a Buddhist monk.
AfPak invasions in ancient Buddhist areas Wisdom Quarterly In spite of its long Buddhist history, spanning back to Siddhartha's renunciation and search for supreme-enlightenment, Afghanistan-Pakistan (ancient Gandhara) were invaded for reasons having more to do with strategic advantage and natural resources than obscuring Buddhist history. They border Iran and are therefore lumped into the "geopolitical Middle East."
The Taliban brought the giant Bamiyan Buddha statue to the world's attention -- by blowing it up and attempting to cover up its rich pre-Islamic cultural history. The area was until only recently a part of greater India.
But protecting artifacts, women, innocent civilians, and above strategic advantage prompted the CIA, NATO, and US forces to invade, oppress, and colonize these two war-torn countries. Why? And why will the media not provide sensible explanations?
Wisdom Quarterly recently spoke to Paul Fitzgerald about the Buddhist history of Afghanistan, a connection he was already aware of and intrigued by. As he explained, the region has a spiritual feel that is difficult to explain.
Moreover, an official secretly revealed a figurine he found that struck him because of the Buddha's obvious non-Asian features. It was long believed that the Buddha was westernized as the Dharma moved west, when in fact it originated in the northwest region of frontier India.
Gandhara-style Buddha figures, which appear Greco-Indian, more likely represent how he actually looked. The media overlooks this, but its not the only history of Afghanistan and Pakistan it ignores:
Rory O'Connor (invisiblehistory.com) A unique husband and wife team, Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould have reported for decades on the issues and conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the spring of 1981 they received the first visas to enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew and produced an exclusive news story for the CBS Evening News.
They also produced a documentary for PBS, returned in 1983 for ABC Nightline, and later worked under contract to Oliver Stone on a film version of their experience.
In 1989 the Soviet Union finally withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. And the Cold War soon ended with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. But as civil war followed in Afghanistan, the United States also walked away.
And in 1994, a new strain of religious holy warrior called the Taliban arose, sweeping into Afghanistan from Pakistan. By 1998, as the horrors of the Taliban regime began to grab headlines, Fitzgerald and Gould began collaborating with Afghan human rights advocate Sima Wali, filming her return from exile and producing another film.
In the years since 9/11 they continued to follow the Af/Pak story closely, ultimately writing a book entitled Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. Their latest effort, Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, examines what they call “the bizarre and often paralyzing contradictions of America’s strategy” in the region.
Crossing Zero has been hailed by Daniel Ellsberg as “a ferocious, iron-clad argument about the institutional failure of American foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” And it has been praised by filmmaker Stone, who noted that Fitzgerald and Gould “have been most courageous in their commitment to telling the truth -- and have paid a steep price for it. Their views have never been acceptable to mainstream media in our country, but they deserve accolades.”
Media reformer Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, called their latest work “a searing expose of distortions that have fundamentally warped U.S. perceptions and actions in the ‘AfPak’ region.”
And onetime CIA Senior Soviet Analyst Melvin A. Goodman said it should be “required reading at the National Security Council and the Pentagon.”
Rory O'Connor recently interviewed the authors about how the media has reported -- and misreported -- the ongoing story of the “AfPak war” during the past three decades. Read the full interview
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould talk about the history of Afghanistan, including their own first-hand accounts of the U.S. government's involvement...
Pakistan once had a large Buddhist population. Gandhara (northwestern Pakistan/eastern Afghanistan) was mostly Mahayana Buddhist but also a stronghold of Vajrayana Buddhism. The Swat Valley (ancient Uddiyana) was a kingdom tributary to Gandhara. There are many Buddhist archaeological sites in Swat (Matloob Ali/Flickr).
Although raised in Kapilavastu (near Bamiyan, Afghanistan), the historical Buddha was born in Lumbini, close to his mother's parent's territory. Indologist Dr. Pal posits that this garden park was in Baluchistan, in the vicinity of modern Kandahar province, Afghanistan, close to northwest Pakistan, near modern Iran, an area of great strategic to the US military to exploit and the stridently Islamic populations to conceal.
Thank goodness for Veterans for Peace. Today is Veterans Day, a day set aside to remember the sacrifices families have and are making to promote free trade, hegemony, and imperial rule.
Bush, Dick, and Colon (not pictured because he's a party pooper) (rense.com).
The fresh meat, rushed through training, were fond of saying: "Give war a chance." They really thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. Listening to metal There is an OG punk song that goes, "Let's have a war so you can go die."
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