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Tragic News Predawn
[Bar Baraban in Kiev on 2/18/16]
Luckier than many, I look forward to each day, so getting up is my favorite activity. Often leaving my dwelling before the sun rises, I soak in all activities with elation and gratitude. In Vietnam, this means hearing birds, roosters, street sweepers and other early risers. In the dark, they exercise or walk briskly.
During my six months in Tirana, I was daily astounded by the Skanderberg Mountain Range, as seen from my 8th floor window. In Cape Town, it was the Table Mountain as I walked out my door. In Phnom Penh, the sight of the Central Market’s dome never failed to cheer me. Seeing it each morning from my Zing Hotel room meant it was time to hit the still dark alleys. In Pakse, the earliest light would reveal Amor Fati Cafe across the street. Sometimes, an old, hobbling woman who rarely strayed from her block would look up to see me. On the ground floor, Sơn and Thảo, meaning Mountain and Grass, would be busy setting up their hotel’s restaurant while getting their kids ready for school.
This morning, my usual elation was punctured and poisoned by the horrible news Gonzalo Lira had been murdered. Abandoned by his government and mocked by gleeful cowards, Lira had been tortured to death by a regime fronted by a corrupt clown and sustained mostly with American money.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 2/24/22 was merely a belated reaction to the American orchestrated Maidan Revolution of February 2014. Like Jews, Uncle Sam routinely inverts reality, so the destruction and humiliation of Ukraine, now in its final chapter, would be rebranded “The Revolution of Dignity.” Visiting Ukraine just two years later, I witnessed a society already on its knees, with its young men farcically sacrificed in a self-destructive war against Russia. The main American architect behind this was the Jewish Victoria Nuland. Since her grandfather had been forced to flee his native Odessa, Victoria was exacting payback, plus outrageous compound interest, but there were other factors.
Poison Spiders at the Center of the Web
“The same people accusing Trump voters of subverting democracy are the ones who cheated in every election since the 1960s, lied to get us into half a dozen stupid wars, created Covid in a lab, and then covered that up. You are free to tell them to STFU” — Peachy Keenan
You know why the judge let provocateur Ray Epps off the hook for his antics before and during the so-called J-6 “insurrection,” don’t you? Well, yes, it was partly because he was acting at the direction of blob officials, most likely the FBI, but possibly the CIA, Defense Intelligence, or some black-box fed outfit no one ever heard of (but somehow gets half a billion in funding every year). Ol’ Ray pleaded to one year’s probation (no jail time), 100 hours of community service (checking books out at his local library?), and a $500 fine. Say, what. . . ? A speeding ticket on the Rockville Pike would probably cost you more.
You remember those videos of Ray on the DC street the day before the riot, importuning the crowd, a commanding presence with his military bearing and red hat, six inches taller than most of the other men around him, yelling, “Tomorrow we need to go into the Capitol, into the Capitol!” At which moment the crowd groaned “no-o-o-o. . . !” and then commenced chanting, “fed. . . fed. . . fed. . . !” They had his number. His use of the word need was especially beguiling, as in, who actually “needed” that to happen?
I’ll tell you one reason Ray didn’t get, like, twenty years, nor two years of pre-trial detention in the reeking, roach-infested DC lockup, or massive fines, like other J-6 defendants: Because he told his handlers in no uncertain terms that he would blow their cover and vivisect them publicly on the whole fed J-6 operation if they so much as made him show up in person for any proceeding — and, of course, he “attended” his sentencing by phone, in a Zoom meeting from a remote location.
Canada must support ICJ ruling on Israel’s genocide
Yves Engler
South Africa recently requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make an urgent order declaring Israel in breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention. Canadians should support this non-violent bid to curtail the apartheid state’s horrors in Gaza.
[On January 11, 2024] the ICJ began hearing South Africa’s urgent appeal, which Turkey, Bolivia Jordan, Iran, Maldives, Malaysia and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have backed. The 84-page brief argues Israel’s onslaught “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part” of the Palestinian population in Gaza.
As a signatory of the 1948 Genocide Convention, Israel announced it would respond to the case. It has hired prominent British lawyer Malcolm Shaw to lead their defence in what may be the only time Israel has ever formally responded to an international legal challenge. A preliminary ICJ decision is expected before the end of the month and Haaretz reported a senior Israeli legal expert warning military commanders “there is a real danger that the court will issue an injunction calling on Israel to halt its fire.” Also, according to a leaked cable from the Israeli foreign ministry to its embassies, “A ruling by the court could have significant potential implications that are not only in the legal world but have practical bilateral, multilateral, economic, security ramifications.”
As the highest court in the world, ICJ rulings have the force of international law. France’s ambassador to the United Nations has said his country will support the ICJ’s ruling.
Unfortunately, Justin Trudeau’s government has refused to support South Africa’s case even though they’ve backed similar efforts regarding Russia, Myanmar and elsewhere. Global Affairs failed to respond directly to a Globe and Mail inquiry about whether Canada supported the case.
The Perpetual War on Free Speech
The First Amendment was always a huge concern with "statists" of every era. Those who thirst for power, and will compromise themselves to attain it, have never looked favorably upon those critical of them. John Adams, the second president of the United States, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts for just this reason. He bristled at criticism. Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson succeeded him in office and scrapped this tyrannical concept. But the notion reared itself again in 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Adams was a civil libertarian compared to Lincoln. “Honest” Abe didn’t pass any new Alien and Sedition Acts; he just shut down over two hundred newspapers that opposed any of his unconstitutional actions.
Woodrow Wilson revived these odious acts during World War I. Eugene Debs and others were imprisoned for opposing the pointless shedding of blood, and America’s participation in it. The Supreme Court, in perhaps its worst ruling ever, upheld Wilson’s right to jail antiwar protesters. Great “liberal” justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the phrase “yelling fire in a crowded theater” to justify such heinous oppression, placing an ugly asterisk on free speech. No concerned American asked at the time, just how protesting a war could be construed as yelling fire in a crowded theater. This expression gained great renown across the land and is forever on the lips of those who seek to censor dissent.
Zionism and Israel
Zionism — The term Zionism is derived from the word Zion that in the Hebrew language and cultural-historical tradition of the Jews refers to the citadel (acropolis) of the city of Jerusalem as well as to the Kingdom of Heaven. From the matter of politics, Zionism refers to the political-national movement of the European Jews in the very late 19th century for the very purpose to re-create a Jewish homeland in the form of a nation-state in the Middle East – Israel.[i]
Th. Herzl was born in Budapest. He was an assimilated Jew who became a journalist in Vienna and was the Paris correspondent of the newspaper Neu Freie Presse in 1891−1895. The Dreyfus Affair which started in December 1894 found his interest in anti-Semitism and how to solve the Jewish Question. He published the book in German Der Judenstaat in 1896 in which he claimed that the creation of the Jewish nation-state in Palestine can be the only effective response to centuries of European anti-Semitism. He devoted the rest of his life to the propagation and realization of this idea and for that purpose, he established the World’s Zionist Organization (the WZO), which was convened at the First World’s Zionist Congress in Switzerland in 1897.
From the end of the 19th century onward, (basically after 1897) there have been organized attempts to persuade the European Jews to emigrate to the Land of Israel or known as Palestine. However, it was not at first unquestioned that the Jewish nation-state had to be in Palestine exactly.
Auld Lang Syne, 2023
Treading water in an Orwellian Tsunami
As I’ve mentioned, I hate goodbyes. Of any kind. Finality terrifies me. Thus, because New Year’s Eve focuses on what is essentially the death of a year, and celebrates the birth of a new one, it’s probably not surprising that I am always depressed at this time. Especially since for the 35th year or so in a row, I won’t be invited to any parties.
I used to look forward to New Year’s Eve. I went to some great New Year’s Eve parties, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ones where you didn’t feel embarrassed about getting uproariously drunk, because everyone was uproariously drunk. When midnight hit, I thrilled at kissing every female at the party. I mean real, French kisses. It was exciting. I can’t picture such a thing happening in America 2.0. I guess it was the times, but I never had any girl protest, or hesitate in the least when I drunkenly shouted, “Happy New Year!” before embracing them, Clark Gable style. I wasn’t that irresistible. I was turned down plenty when asking girls to dance. New Year’s Eve midnight kissing was an expected custom that everyone followed, like Eskimos providing visitors with their wives to sleep with.
Do You Dare Even Look? — Forecast 2024
“I’ve also lost patience with the Sharia of the political left taking over the entire system.” — David Collum
Historians of the future, flash-frying peccary testicles and mesquite pods over their campfires, will wonder at how the archetypal Shining City on a Hill of America’s storied yesteryear got transformed into the roach motel that our country has become on the threshold of 2024 CE. Will they be as stupidly bewildered as, in our time, the faculty at Harvard, the editors of The New York Times, or the directorate of the CDC? Or will they figure out the score by then?
Which is: the nauseating state-of-the-nation is being driven by a cohort of our own fellow citizens lost in an evil crypto-religious salvation rapture that veils their own self-disgust, moral failure, peevish discontents, petty hatreds, willful profanations, compulsive lying, sexual depravity, fraudulence, venality, cupidity, and all-around wont of boundaries. They are wrecking the country on-purpose, led by their chosen figurehead avatar, “Joe Biden” and the horses of many different colors he rode in on.
The people running things, yanking the levers of power, managing the malign weapon they have made of government (and the law, and schooling, and medicine, etc.), have got to be turned out, and hard.
Special Features of the Region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
The Middle East was the home of the earliest civilizations in the world’s history. The first urbanizations and literacy started there.
The region of the Middle East usually covers the territories from the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea up to India in the East. In a broader sense, geographically, the region encompasses territories of the East Mediterranean and Central Asia but many Americans followed by other Western academicians, politicians, and journalists regard as a single region the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
The majority of the inhabitants of MENA have many things in common like the Arab language and culture, confession of Islam, etc.. Still, on the other, different ethnic minorities exist in each of those regional countries while the Islamic religion is divided into two factions: the Sunni (majority) and the Shia (minority).
All states of the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) can be selected into four ethnic-geographic sub-regions (groups):
1) The North African states;
2) The Persian Gulf States;
3) The Central Arab states; and
4) Iran and Israel.
The combined number of inhabitants of all of those states is more than 250 million (for the matter of comparison, in the EU 28, i.e. with the UK, there were some 500 million people). The region itself is experiencing culture and civilization back some 6000 years but the majority of the present-day nations are relatively new. In other words, except for Iran and Egypt, all other regional states appeared in their present form only in the last century, largely after WWI, but some of them even after WWII (Israel). The number of states in MENA can be fixed by taking into account at least three criteria: 1) The historical period; 2) Political conditions; and 3) Geopolitical perspective. Today is usually applied that there are 24 states (with Palestine) in the region of MENA (but with Turkey and Sudan 26). However, the state of Palestine is still not generally and formally recognized as independent, as it was expected to appear as such taking into consideration the results of the Israeli-PLO negotiations (Roadmap for Peace).
About Trump
Sylvain Laforest
About his strategy, I could make a quick and accurate analogy with medication: most pills are designed to cure a problem, but come with an array of secondary after-effects. Well, Trump is using medication solely for their after-effects, while the first intent of the pill is what’s keeping him in power and alive. By the end of this article, you’ll see that this metaphor applies for just about every decision, move or declaration he’s made. Once you understand what Trump is about, you’ll be able to appreciate the extraordinary presidency he’s conducting, like no predecessor ever came close to match.
A Rigged System From Top to Bottom
George Orwell Meets Lewis Carroll
Just the other day, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a remarkable statement. “Before this trial even began, the judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump did engage in years of significant financial fraud,” James boasted publicly. This is associated with just one of Donald Trump’s absurd legal cases.
Let what this laughable, biased prosecutor said sink in for a moment. She admitted that the honorable judge had “ruled in our favor” before the case had gone to trial. Even for this collapsing Banana Republic, it’s a shocking precedent to openly brag about such a serious breach of basic legal protocol. James, whom Trump has called “racist,” recently stated, “The Donald Trump show is over.” James has referred to Trump as an “illegitimate president,” and said “his days are numbered.” She lashed out at Trump at many rallies, even declaring, “We’ll bring him down!” Upon being elected in December 2018, James vowed, "We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well." In this case, Trump is accused of exaggerating the value of his assets.
