If Our Government Wants A War (It Does), It WILL Use A False Flag

 

Anyone thinking that a false flag operation (i.e. a lie) will not be used to initiate U.S. entry into a war with Iran is being childishly naïve. Embarrassingly naïve. Unpardonably naïve. This is just standard operating procedure, and as the truism goes, truth is the first casualty of war.

A false flag was used when Iraq invaded Kuwait (Iraqis pulling babies from incubators), happened a decade later when the U.S. was determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein (WMDs), was used in Syria (Chemical Weapons), etc. You say Syria had chemical weapons? The Assad regime has been toppled, where now are the chemical weapons it possessed? Or don’t we even merit the proof of the assertions made to justify the bombing, the sanctions, and the support of terrorist mercenaries that ruined so many lives? If you have not learned from the multiple examples of lies and provocations our government has used to overthrow governments and ruin nations, naïve is not a good enough descriptor for your behavior. Cowardly is much more accurate.

The false flag required to justify a war with Iran will have to be much greater than any of these, since Iran is a much greater power than any we’ve faced in our lifetimes. Although strict sanctions have been placed upon Iran for many years now, they have not strangled Iran the way those imposed on Iraq and Syria did. Iran did not agree to basically disarm the way Libya and Iraq did, rendering them incapable of defending themselves. Iran saw what became of those countries, and only a fool would trust the United States and its allies (vassals). Moreover, in the ensuing years, countries that are not empty vassals to U.S. power have grown stronger while our allies have grown weaker. Iran will not be without allies, while those countries who support the U.S. and Israel (Saudi Arabia, Jordan) will face the wrath of their own people.

The time will come when you will be asked to believe the false flag allegations that will justify a war that no honest person can tell you will not grow to something beyond anything our masters have promised. And when I say we will be asked to believe, I mean it in the sense that Big Brother asks the people to believe that 2+2=5. The allegations will be thrust upon us with such force and from every quarter in an attempt to overwhelm us and crush our ability to resist.

It will be your decision whether or not you will succumb to the pressure or else find within you the will to retain your individuality and your capacity for skepticism and critical thinking. It will not matter what anyone else thinks or says or does, you will have to find something within you that calls out for sanity or else be washed away in the madness. A few individuals willing to stand up for peace and truth will go a long way in halting a war that will do no good to anyone and will do great harm to millions, perhaps billions.

I have no great faith that those who identify themselves as being on the left will find that kind of courage to stand alone, even when it is Donald Trump they would be opposing. Their leaders will fall behind this war as they fall behind every war, and I have seen no evidence that those who follow AOC, Kamala Harris, and Chuck Shumer will oppose Trump on any subject they are not explicitly told to.

I have a slightly greater hope in people on the right opposing the war, though their ultimate commitment will require greater proof than mere words. I see people like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owen and even Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking out against it, so perhaps Republican voters might find courage in their examples.

I cannot fathom how those who manage to gather in the hundreds of thousands to protest Trump’s military parade cannot be trusted to gather in greater numbers to protest Trump’s war, but logic and moral consistency have nothing to do with politics nowadays.

The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier is headed to the Middle East as I type these words. Many speculate that since it is a fifty year-old ship that is due to be decommissioned that it will be sunk in order to be used as justification for the war both the U.S. and Israel so obviously want and have so obviously been building up for. If not this, then some other casus belli will be manufactured. And the people who lied to you so often before will tell you to believe them and so many of you will.

It doesn’t matter whatever anyone else says or does, the moral responsibility for what is about to transpire rests firmly upon your shoulders. Such dark times are remedied by individual heroism and made darker by those who relinquish personal responsibility to authority. Democracy cannot survive in a country where individuals cannot find within themselves the courage to oppose a government that seeks to bully the masses.

Our Ruling Class Will Only Permit Your Input On Social Issues, And Then Only Until It Affects Them

 

Photo by Arthur zKrause on Unsplash

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both parties that work for the one percent. The one percent are not divided, they only need two parties to ensure WE are divided. The two parties work in tandem whenever it is an issue on which the one percent agree, and only differ on issues that are of no interest to the ruling elite. On social issues, the two parties rage like tigers, or more precisely, like two chihuahuas with a gate between them. Social issues never concern the one percent. They will be able to have abortions even if they have to take their private jet overseas to get one. And that includes the wealthy among the “moral majority” as well.

The laws made by Democrats or Republicans don’t apply to our ruling elite. They never did and never will. This is why they don’t care about social issues, because social issues only apply to the poors. However bigoted or homophobic some of the obscenely rich appear to be, such issues ultimately matter little compared to the class issues which unite them. Even Nazis tolerated Jews, homosexuals, and people of “lesser” races when it suited them to do so.

After all, the ruling elite are used to tolerating the eccentricities of others members of the ruling elite. Those who have such power and wealth can and do live their lives the way they want to, unrestrained by what other people think of them. They have a sexual freedom that few of us could imagine, and I suspect they pursue their sexual predilections as freely as they do the acquisition of unnecessary luxuries. In short, the rich have learned not to be judgmental of how other rich people pursue their freedom but rather concentrate on shared economic interests. The social issues which the political parties use to divide us do not divide the ruling elite in any meaningful way, whereas economic issues are of central importance to them. They divide US on social issues so that WE are not united on our own economic interests, which are in direct opposition to theirs.

The obscenely rich are privately decadent and yet pay handsomely to keep their appearances up as morally respectable. They are made out to be philanthropists and role models. It is safe to say that their behavior would be equally deplorable to liberals AND conservatives should the truth of their behavior leak out. And yet the average working person looks to the one percent for leadership. They hang on the words of celebrities and oligarchs. They may despise the ones who do not cleave to their own personal biases, but they worship those who mouth the proper buzzwords of their clan.

This is not to say that social issues are unimportant to the average American, it is only to point out that social issues are the ONLY issues in which the average American is permitted to have a say. Like children, we are placed in the sandbox of social issues and are willing to do there whatever we like, so long as we do not reach some suitable compromise with those whom we disagree. We can raise our voices as loudly as we like about social issues. But should we raise our voices to speak about economic issues, the self-proclaimed adults in this situation will quickly put us in our places. And should we speak up about war and imperialism — which after all are just our ruling elite’s tools for extending their power and increasing their wealth abroad — we will feel the full force of the ruling elite’s goon squads pushing down upon us.

Go ahead, scream “Free Palestine!” in the most liberal of universities and see what happens to you. You will be hit with batons, arrested, and have the degree you worked so hard for and paid so dearly for yanked from you, as though your money, effort, and achievements earned you nothing. This is because Palestine is beyond merely a social issue and affects our ruling elite’s wealth and power. Palestine is currently where our ruling elite’s true face is being exposed, where the violence required to sustain a system for the ruling elite is most undeniable. Israel must not be held accountable to anyone, and all the freedoms you purportedly have as an American citizen will not permit you to speak out against what many experts deem to be a genocide.

In the end, it only matters to the ruling elite that you go to fight their wars of profit, or at minimum refuse to speak out against them. And so both parties must always in the end convince you that THIS war, whichever war of the endless wars they are now pushing, is just.

For a while, it was useful to push inclusion in the military, and to make the targets of our military appear guilty of not being inclusive. The accusation of inclusivity has been a justification for overthrowing other people’s governments or starving their children. But our ruling elite are coming to realize that inclusion is not an ideology that meshes well with our military’s objectives. Militaries require more typically masculine traits, such as an uncritical obedience to a hierarchy and the desire to commit great violence as a way of proving one’s value to society.

So expect a swing back toward conservative values for the time being. Not because those are the values held by our ruling class but because those values are most useful to meet the economic needs of the ruling elite in this moment.

It is in such moments that we should finally realize that we have no seat at the table even in social matters. That all of the arguing we have been engaged in our entire lives has only distracted us from the economic issues that should have been enough to unite us in the first place. That even if we should continue our fight for the social issues we most strongly believe in, the issues will ultimately be decided by what currently serves the interests of the very richest and most powerful among us.

Quotes On Awakening

 

Artwork in progress for Essays On Awakening

Some quotes from my forthcoming book, Essays On Awakening:

Any choice you opt for, any candidate you vote for, that is offered by the system, is opting for and supportive of the system. Any corporate product you buy or political candidate you invest your energy in is profiting the corporate system. There is no way within the system to fight the system. That’s not an option they are going to give you. Prison guards don’t give weapons to the prisoners they profit from controlling.

This may sound very discouraging, as if there is no way out of the dilemma. And when we feel discouraged, when we feel there is no real way to improve things, we shut down, stop trying, ignore the problem because we feel as if we can do nothing to fix it. This isn’t the case at all, but it is what the existing system wants you to think. They want you to think that there is no hope and there are no solutions. And that is true, but only when you look to the system for answers. The system will only give you answers that support the system, therefore they will only give you lies that will ultimately leave you feeling hopeless. That’s where you are now whether you are fully aware of it or not. You have been beaten down and made to feel that you can only hope for the crumbs that they throw you.

If you cannot say no and you always come up with reasons for supporting those who rule you in ways you should not be ruled, you are a slave. And good for you if you want to be a slave, that’s your choice. But for God’s sake, don’t try to lecture the rest of us. If we do not listen to your master, we are not going to listen to his lackeys. Go live your slave lives but don’t go preaching to us.

So how do you know when you are effectively opposing a system that is created to oppress rather than encourage individual rights? When the system tells you you are wrong. When they try to silence you, when they tell you you are not merely wrong but dangerous. You ARE dangerous. Dangerous to THEM. Dangerous to the power they have usurped from the masses. You are dangerous to unjust power. And when you are dangerous to unjust power, that means you are powerful to oppose injustice. And that’s a good thing.

The courage that permits wisdom demands you relinquish all of your biases, which act as defenses. You must abandon not only self but your larger affiliations, which, after all, are merely larger sorts of self. You must attempt to see reality through God’s eyes. And in doing so, you must not limit God to what you believe Him to be or what your larger group tells you God is. Again, you must see through the eyes of others. You must attempt to see God through the eyes of those who call him Allah, must see him through the eyes of those who call him Vishnu, those who do not call him by any name and yet seek him though they know it not.

Seek the wisdom of the young, who see life through unbiased eyes. Seek the wisdom of the old, who at last have seen through the many stages of life. Though their eyes be weak, their vision blurry, their knowledge of what to look for is unsurpassed.

The greatest courage we can attain is to step out of our own little shells, to leave self and ego behind and float, selfless and vulnerable, through all the life we encounter. In leaving our home, we find everywhere to be home. In leaving ourselves, we find everybody and everything to be us.

Once wisdom is attained, courage is no longer required.

Do not fear that you will never be free from their machinations. They will always be ahead of you in the games they play, but all their plotting will come to nothing if you keep to the basic principles you know in your heart to be true. They cannot manipulate you if they cannot make you stray from your core values.

Do not hate, even when you do not understand. Do not support violence, even when you are afraid for yourself and your family. Hatred and violence are their tools, not ours. Hatred and violence make tyrants strong but they are the ruin of civilizations.

Have faith, in yourself and in the overall goodness of humanity. Perhaps people are not naturally angels, but neither are they naturally devils. The deciding factor is the way we choose to perceive ourselves and others. If you commit to seeing the better angels of your own soul and of those you meet, you will turn the tide in favor of goodness.

Primitive man realized he was part of a family as much as he was an individual. Advancing, he realized he was part of something larger, part of a clan. Then still something larger, a tribe, a city, a nation. The history of humanity is one of searching for belonging in an ever-bigger community. We have now arrived at the logical endpoint, the realization that we are all one people, a global family, each of us depending upon others for our own survival.

P.S. Essays On Awakening will be a sort of sequel to my book Essays On The Media, which is available HERE

The System Works (For Some)

 

                                 Photo from Museums of History New South Wales

Larry worked at an office where the boss was an asshole. His boss was vulgar, disrespectful, incompetent, and was constantly cheating workers of their rightful wages and benefits. He was a jerk to everybody, but he was especially cruel to Larry, even though Larry was one of his better workers. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t been born in the U.S., perhaps it was his very competence and intelligence that made the boss look like a moron slacker by comparison. You see, the boss didn’t get his position by working hard or by making great decisions, he got it because he was the owners’ son. Life is like that.

It’s not that the boss — we’ll call him Devon — was cruel to everybody. He was surrounded by a group of buddies (all of them male) who always agreed with Devon and who also treated everyone else as inferior. Especially Larry.

When Devon had been made boss a few years back, Larry welcomed the chance to have a fresh start with a new boss. He had worked hard for the old boss for years and never felt he got any recognition or a fair cut from the company’s successes which he had contributed to. But as The Who once said, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Or as the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Devon was even worse than the last boss.

But Larry was convinced that his hard work and smarts would attract the boss’s attention. It did, but not in the way he wanted. Devon singled Larry out, always belittling him around Larry’s coworkers and to his cronies.

One day, Larry decided he had had enough. After learning that Devon’s buddies got a huge bonus while he hadn’t received a raise since Devon became boss, Larry was going to give Devon a piece of his mind. And seeing the state of mind Larry was in and Devon’s unwillingness to hear other people’s point of view, he knew it might just devolve into an old-fashioned ass-whooping. It might not be the smartest career move, thought Larry, but boy would it feel good.

Beverly, who sat at her desk in the HR department that was between where Larry’s cubicle and the boss’s office were, saw Larry walk by and she saw the anger in his expression and how the muscles of his body were bunched up and ready for action.

“Larry,” Beverly called out, attempting to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. “Can I help you with something?”

As angry as Larry was, Beverly had always been kind to him, and he did not wish to be rude to her, even though he was prepared for a confrontation. “I’m on my way to talk to Devon,” he said, his desire for action being rerouted into a plea for understanding. His emotions getting the best of him, he began to state his litany of complaints that he was about to use as weapons against his unjust boss. “I can’t afford to get my daughter braces. I haven’t had even a cost of living raise since he became the boss. He refuses to take any blame for any of the idiot decisions he makes but he’s always willing to take credit for the successes of everyone else. He’s cruel to everyone who doesn’t kiss his ass, you can’t take him on his word for anything, he never follows office protocol, and his mere presence here has been driving off customers who have been loyal to us for years.”

It felt good to get all this off his chest, felt good to have someone he could open up to. He began to feel his rage subside because Beverly nodded in sympathy with every accusation he made. Finally when he was done, she wrote some final notes in a notebook and looked him in the eye with a great amount of compassion.

“I understand your problem, Larry. You’re not the first person to express these concerns. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll speak to the people higher up in the chain of command and we’ll come up with a solution. Just don’t do anything drastic in the meantime, Larry. You’re a good worker and we’d hate to lose you.

“Yeah, but I really want to give him a piece of my mind,” said Larry, his heartrate still racing.

“I know,” said Beverly, a soothing sincerity in her voice. “I’m sure that would feel good in the short term, but remember your wife and your lovely young daughter, Jessica. Just sit tight and let’s see what we can come up with.”

“Okay,” said Larry. And he walked back to his cubicle and went back to work. It wasn’t like him to confront anybody like that in the first place, the situation had just gotten so bad he didn’t know what else to do. He felt better knowing that somebody in the company was on his side and was going to do something about it.

So in the ensuing days he tolerated the boss’s bullying, knowing that change was coming. The system was going to correct this big problem that was hurting the whole company. Larry just kept his head low, did his work, and took the abuse. Secretly, in his mind, he uttered the thought: “Your day is coming, Devon, just you wait.”

But weeks passed and nothing happened. In fact, Devon was on his case more than ever before, as if he had somehow learned about his conversation with Beverly. His frustration grew once more until at last he decided to pay Beverly a visit to see where things stood.

“Oh, hi, Larry,” said Beverly. Larry looked into her eyes and somehow he could no longer see the compassion there, although her words were still soothing.

“I came to check to see what was happening. It’s been a couple of weeks and Devon has really been bearing down on me.”

“Yes,” said Beverly, “well I sent a letter to the head of HR at corporate, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

Larry was clearly upset but Beverly wasn’t about to acknowledge it. “I’ll follow up with you and let you know,” said Beverly. And Larry, trying to express just the right mixture of disappointment, anger, and faith, said he understood and went back to his cubicle.

More weeks passed and with them came more excuses from Beverly. For all her expressions of concern, it felt to Larry as if she wished he would just go away. Although Devon was the reason for all of Larry’s anger, he couldn’t help noticing that his anger was focusing more and more on Beverly. Although she was outwardly kind and caring to him and Devon was overtly being an asshole, it was Beverly who had put herself in the middle. Back at his cubicle, Larry found his thoughts of punching Devon in the face turning more to thoughts of throttling Beverly. Both gave him a feeling of justice achieved.

Larry continued to check in with Beverly over the following weeks and months, each time with less enthusiasm and less ability to disguise his impatience. Months eventually turned into years. And while Larry had long since lost any hope he had had in the system, he continued to play by the rules that were in the employee handbook as written by corporate which he had early in his career been forced to sign. Until at last one day he walked into Beverly’s office with no expectations at all but merely out of habit. So it was with great surprise that she greeted him with a broad grin and a tone of victory in her voice.

“Great news, Larry. Corporate got back to us and they have decided to act. They’re removing Devon from his position and are shuffling him off to some other place in the business.

Larry’s entire being lightened with this news. All his doubts in the system had been unwarranted. The system worked and Beverly had his best interest at heart after all.

“And the best news, Larry, is that they’re making me the new head of operations here. Effective as of now, you can come to me with all your problems.”

“Well, a few years back, Jessica needed braces but we couldn’t afford them. Her teeth have gotten worse as a result. Is there any way the company could provide some kind of dental insurance?”

“I’ll tell you what, Larry. Thing’s have become difficult lately, what with the economy being the way it is and with me having to fix all the problems Devon was unable to take care of. Why don’t you just remind me of this in a few months and we’ll see what we can do?”

And so it went, for several more years. Until at last Beverly was transferred to another branch and was replaced by Devon’s brother, Darryl. Larry grinds his teeth in his sleep at night, dreaming of throttling Beverly and regretting his lost opportunity of punching Devon in the face.

A few months before Larry’s retirement at the age of 71, he saw a picture of Devon and Beverly hugging it out at a corporate retreat in the Bahamas.