The agenda behind the possible U.S. military strike on Syria is known now. Many elites want Syrian pipelines and their strategic resources. We know that America started to support the Syrian opposition years before any uprising had occurred there. 4-Star General Wesley Clark was told – right after 9/11 – that Pentagon officials planned to attack 7 countries in 5 years … including Iraq, Libya and Syria. General Wesley Clark admitted these words in his following words: "...About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September...So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” Wesley Clark admitted that the planning for regime change in Syria and 6 other countries was started by 1991 at the latest. He or Clark admitted that he had a meeting with Paul Wolfowitz (he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy or the number 3 position at the Pentagon). Wesley Clark asked Wolfowitz about if he happy with performance of the troops in Desert Storm. Wolfowitz told him the following: "...Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” We know that the U.S. and British governments considered using a false flag attack 50 years ago to topple the Syrian regime. We know that many of the Syrian rebels are terrorists and filled with other hardliners. We know that a top U.S. military commander said that an attack would be both risky and expensive (and that he can't even say why we'd go to war with Syria). His name is General Martin Dempsey (or the Joint Chiefs Chairman). Many troops and military officers and Pentagon war planners oppose an attack on Syria. The U.S. and Britain have used chemical weapons in the last 10 years and they supported the largest chemical weapons attack in history, but they cannot find conclusive evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the August attack. Also, an attack on Syria is an act of war being a violation of international law point, blank, period. This attack will grow corporate interests not us the people collectively at all. We know that many fighters joining al Nusra came from abroad including those from the recently decimated Libya (where a significant arsenal of chemical weapons have fallen into the hands of a sectarian extremist government, which is funding and arming terrorists in Syria). The Republican Senator John McCain has, for several years, been supporting and mingling with Al Qaeda commanders in the field in blatant violation of international law as well as in breach of US anti-terrorism legislation. One of the rebels’ leading figures was Abdel Hakim Belhaj (picture below), a member of the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group LIFG), a terrorist organization on both the UN Security Council and the US State Department lists. It is sick for some to invoke dead children as a means to justify militarism. Making Syria a puppet client state of the West including their sellout Gulf states is in league with corporate financier interests.
We know of the war crimes in the world done by not only by the Western elites, but by nations globally. We have the responsibility to disagree and oppose murderous regimes domestically and internationally. We know that a capitalist cabal has seized political and economic control over America. This has been going on for centuries. We know that the Western elite have done international war crimes for decades and centuries (beyond the spokesman of the white supremacist power structure President Barack Obama has done. That is why this situation is bigger than Barack Obama). That is why to this very day, dedicated human beings want to take international war criminals to justice. The German leaders were tried by a German court in the Leipzig War Crimes Trial for crimes committed during WWI. Many Nazis were convicted of international war crimes after WWII ended. Churchill even once did not support trials since he wanted the Nazis to just be executed outright. Yet, the U.S. agreed with the use of judges as a means to prosecute criminals of war crimes. In other words, you have to have due process and the legitimate functions of a trial prior to executing specific forms of justice against even wicked, nefarious Nazi war criminals. There were trials of German and Japanese leaders. Today, many Americans are responsible for advancing the agenda of the nefarious war on terror and the criminal acts of the capitalist cabal that runs our nation. Not all Americans are to be blamed for this situation. So, I want to make that perfectly clear. If someone willingly participates in the crimes against humanity that are still being perpetrated by the system, then that someone is just as guilty as the members of the elite doing the crimes in the first place. That is why many American leaders, members of the Vatican who made concordat with the Nazis, some American corporations, and others are all just as complicit in the Shoah as the Nazis were(since these entities funded the Nazis in one way or another). The Western elite have done war crimes in Iraq, SE Europe, Asia, Africa, and throughout the Earth. We have the right to have our freedom of thought and utilize dissent against imperialism. Former Presidents Bush I and II and other United States leaders committed war crimes against Iraq (during and following the Gulf War) and Yugoslavia (in the invasion of Kosovo) and are still under indictment with the International War Crimes Tribunal. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was able to dodge a standing subpoena ordering him to appear before a Paris judge investigating crimes by the Kissinger backed Pinochet regime in Chile. So, we should always oppose the authoritarian National Defense Authorization Act of the NDAA of 2012. We oppose the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and the DHS including other intelligence agencies spying on Americans citizens (they have used phone lines, seized property based on trumped up charges, monitoring internet wage, etc.). The Western elite for long decades (beyond Obama is doing) has destroyed worker's rights and sent welfare for big money interests (while the health insurance companies, agribusinesses, Afghan pipeline interests, banksters' bailouts exist to benefit from our oppression). We have to vanquish ignorance. Ignorance harms true civilization and we have to educate our people and the whole human race. Not just because I disagree with ignorance, doesn't I embrace arrogance. I hate arrogance. Just because something is not awoke doesn't mean that person should be degraded and disrespected. All humans should be treated with dignity and respect. We were once lost, so we have to use patience and maturity including compassion in our lives. We have to never embrace the notion that we must have some idle pursuit of wealth and pleasure with no thought for others. We have to embrace altruism and concern for our neighbors. Our democratic and constitutional liberties have been violated under tyrannical policies. We have to inform ourselves about how the world works. A poor human being in the street is not responsible for war crimes made by the enemy. Yet, if someone actively advances imperialism and other evils, then they are just as wrong as the establishment executing these policies in the first place. We can win, but we have to work. We have to use creative, independent actions as a means to respond. We can boycott. We can join citizen action groups and other independent organizations as a means to fight for solutions. We can also create independent economic solutions like commonwealths, cooperatives, etc.
A North Carolina Hospital will shut down in six months. The reason is that the state will not expand Medicaid. The Hospital is named Vidnant Pungo Hospital from Bellhaven, North Carolina. This relates to the stubborn GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act (when they want a total privatized, corporate run system). It can affect them personally when executives at Vidant Health system unanimously voted to shut down the local Vidant Pungo Hospital within six months. Vidant officials said the move was necessary as a consequence of North Carolina’s refusal to participate in Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. It is one thing to disagree with certain aspects of the ACA. Yet, Medicaid expansion is not immoral in my eyes at all. Belhaven is a small town. It has a population of 1,688 where more than 55 percent of the population is African American and approximately 28 percent of the residents live in poverty. Vidant Pungto bill itself as a “a private, not-for-profit 49-bed acute care hospital on the waterfront in Belhaven” that “provides medical care to patients in eastern Beaufort and Hyde counties, serving approximately 25,000 people with a service area of approximately 1,260 square miles.” According to the latest census date, in those counties, more than 19 percent and 25 percent of residents respectively live below the poverty level. Since the safety net hospitals that serve regions with high numbers of poor and uninsured human beings often have patients who can't afford to pay for their care, they usually have to rely on the government to pick up some of the tab for the uncompensated medical treatment to stay financially viable. But Obamacare reduced reimbursements to these so-called “disproportionate share hospitals” (DSHs) — one of which is Vidant Pungo — since the law originally intended all states to expand Medicaid for every American living up to 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. If things had unfolded that ways, these hospitals would not need the additional government payments since their payments would finally be able to pay their own care via Medicaid. The Supreme Court ruled that the expansion was to be optional last summer. That is why hospitals have intensely lobbied state officials to expand Medicaid. This has caused the combination of uninsured patients and reduced federal reimbursements, which could spell financial doom for them. Unfortunately, at least 21 states with GOP governors or legislatures including North Carolina opposed to the health law have refused generous federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility. In May, the federal government took steps in May to soften the blow to DSHs by tying how much states' reimbursements for uncompensated care will be cut with their uninsurance rate (like the larger uninsured population a state has, the less its DSH funding will be cut). This was likely a fiscal band aid not permanent solutions. And as Vidant Pungo’s imminent shuttering demonstrates, some hospitals simply aren’t willing to risk the uncertainty. Expanding Medicaid would cut North Carolina’s uninsurance rate by more than 48 percent. The Affordable Care Act has strengths and flaws. It is the first step in this human rights movement. The ACA is not the final step. We have a long way to go see our true liberation and freedom as human beings. So, the Tea Party types of Republicans are extremists indeed. I do believe that universal, single payer health care is the best way for all Americans to receive quality, affordable health care in my view. Dr. Martin Luther King said: "...Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman.” We have to fight the current health care disparities. Many free health care services now are doing great work in America. We have to continue to fight for labor rights and a living wage for all working Americans too.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the evil, unfortunate assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we are learning more accurate information about the whole event. We know more truth surrounding the time of the early 1960's and the Cold War atmosphere. We know that there were numerous political differences between President John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. President John F. Kennedy fired the top level of the CIA after his investigation of the Bay of Pigs found out that they had lied to him. No President after him would do this. JFK allowed his brother to serve as a part time ombudsman over certain CIA operations. This caused many Agency officers to be infuriated as documented in David Corn's "Blonde Ghost." JFK was working with others in trying to create détente with both Cuba and the USSR. This is documented in Jim Douglass' classic book called JFK and the Unspeakable. John F. Kennedy did not go along with the Agency's longstanding plans to assassinate Castro as proven by the CIA Inspector General Report on the subject. President John F. Kennedy represented a huge policy change from Eisenhower, Nixon, and Johnson. Eisenhower and the CIA Director Allen Dulles tried to isolate Patrice Lumumba in Congo, so folks can murder Lumumba. They wanted to have Congo partitioned and then its wealthy mineral province to be dominated by them including Western international corporate interests. Dag Hammarskjold and the United Nations disagreed with that agenda. Kennedy sided with Hammarskjold. In his first week in office, he reversed Eisenhower’s policy by asking for UN control of all armies, having the country neutralized, freeing of all political prisoners including Lumumba (Kennedy did not know that he had been murdered already), and opposition to the Katanga secession. When JFK learned that Lumumba was unjustly assassinated, John F. Kennedy was saddened by it. President John F. Kennedy wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces before he died. Even the Bay of Pigs plans existed under Eisenhower in 1960. Allen Dulles and Richard Nixon fathered the idea of covert action against Cuba including Fidel Castro. Kennedy inherited the plan and was pushed into maintaining it by Dulles and his Director of Plans, Dick Bissell. These men lied to JFK in saying that it would be a positive effort to rally the populace against Castro and that the invasion had a good chance of succeeding on its own. Allen Dulles admitted later in his own handwriting that he knew that these depictions were lies. Further, the Agency wrote a report in advance admitting this was the case, a report that Kennedy never saw. That is why JFK fired the three top officers in the CIA, issued NSAM’s 55, 56 and 57 to limit the power of the CIA, issued orders that the ambassador in foreign countries, not the CIA station chief, should control American policy, and created the Defense Intelligence Agency to also give him advice (this was after Kennedy commissioned a White House investigation about what went wrong in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion). Kennedy never approved the overthrow of President Goulart of Brazil, which happened over four months after JFK was assassinated. Although it is true that Kennedy wanted Goulart to broaden the political spectrum of his government, Langguth makes it clear that the actual Brazil overthrow was similar to the action against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. A group of incredibly wealthy and powerful businessmen petitioned the White House for help in getting rid of a man they feared would endanger their investments. These businessmen were led by David Rockefeller as documented in A. J. Langguth's "Hidden Terrors." The Johnson administration approved of the plan to overthrow Goulart under the guise of anti-communism paranoia. Donald Gibson's "Battling Wall Street" book proved the antipathy between JFK and David Rockefeller. Even JFK supported Bosch and Bosch was overthrown by reactionary forces in the military. Bosch was the leader of the Dominican Republic. After Bosch was overthrown, Kennedy “that all military and economic assistance personnel were being withdrawn from the Dominican Republic.” (Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street, p. 78) This started a chain reaction through South America of condemnation for the military junta. After JFK's assassination, folks try to have a revolt to restore constitutional government (yet, Johnson slandered them as communist dupes and American forces invaded the island on April of 1965). As Jim Douglass details at length, after the Missile Crisis, Kennedy used several intermediaries as back channels to Castro in order to establish a détente. (Kennedy often operated like this since he was at times in opposition to his Cabinet, e.g., during the Missile Crisis, and in the genesis of his Vietnam withdrawal plan.) In this instance, he used William Attwood, Lisa Howard, and Jean Daniel. These negotiations went on for 11 months. Both sides tried to have diplomatic relations after Soviet influence was removed from the island. They were close to détente and Castro cheered for JFK for his negotiations. When JFK died, everything changed. Johnson was more reactionary on foreign policy issues than President John F. Kennedy. Attwood concluded, “There is no doubt in my mind: If there had been no assassination we probably would have moved into negotiations leading toward normalization of relations with Cuba.” Even in the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK wanted a negotiated settlement from the beginning. JFK wanted an early exit of American forces from Vietnam. At the time of his death, there was not one more combat troop in country than when he was inaugurated. LBJ reversed this policy with remarkable speed. In January of 1964, Johnson got a proposal from the Pentagon for bombing of the north and insertion of combat troops. Two months later, the bombing list was expanded. This culminated in the May 1963 Secretary of Defense Conference in Hawaii in which the plan was laid out for the in country personnel with McNamara supervising it. And, in fact, everyone at this meeting understood that Kennedy’s plan was to begin with the withdrawal of 1000 Americans by December of 1963. And that this plan would be completed by the end of 1965. The documents actually say this: “All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN [Republic of Vietnam] forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965.” (Probe, Vol. 5 No. 3, pgs. 20-21) These documents were released by the ARRB in December of 1997. They were headlined in the New York Times as a “Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam.” The Philadelphia Inquirer bannered their story as “Papers support theory that Kennedy had Plans for Vietnam Pullout.” JFK called for world peace in his American University speech. So, President John F. Kennedy without question was one of the most progressive Presidents on foreign policy matters during the 20th century. So, we know that President John F. Kennedy was not perfect, but he not a super war hawk (on the scale of a neo con) as other Presidents was. There is no question about that.
When you wake up, one of the things that you do is that you realize the importance of altruism. The Golden Rule as found in many cultures is an universal truth. The Golden Rule is to love your neighbor as yourself and do unto others as others would have to do unto you. This means that if we want to execute virtuous conduct in real life, then we must have self-control and advance righteousness in our actions. The apostle James was right to mention that we should visit the fatherless and the widows in their afflictions. We should help the poor and the oppressed during the journey of life. We should not be a respecter of persons. We should reject the lust of the flesh and follow temperance, meekness, strength, opposition to any evils or any injustices in the world, and adhere to the glory of God. The Spirit of God always deals with love, joy, peace, gentleness, and righteousness. We have to forgive (as God for Christ's sake have forgiven us) to overcome the issues common in humanity. We have to end strife and seek solutions. Now, when I woke up, I soon realize that capitalism is the great secular religion that is at war with the Golden Rule as Peter Goodgame has greatly documented. We know about Bernard Mandeville. He wrote poems about issues and he was one modern innovator of capitalism. His poem The Grumbling Hive was published in 1705 and released again as part of his book The Fable of the Bees in 1714. The basic point that Mandeville tried to argue for in his poem and in his book can be summed up in the short phrase: "Private vice makes public virtue." So, Mandeville's poem wanted humans to have their selfish desires fulfilled even if they cross into vice like cheating or deceit. Mandeville mentioned that every profession exists hand in hand with a particular vice. According to Mandeville, every social evil actually works itself out as a public good simply because it helps to promote commerce, which Mandeville applauds as the ultimate source of society's freedom, prosperity, and security. This is contradicted to the Golden Rule since any society which has its foundation based on sin, vice, and wickedness is a hypocritical, nefarious society. When you have righteousness and justice in the land, the land will prosper. It is simple as that. The interest of the community and the family is superior to self-interest. No man is an island and we are interconnected as human beings. Therefore, one human action affects all of humanity. The evils of consumerism are part of the capitalist culture. We must have concern for the welfare of all human life and believe in altruism. The expression of human charity is one great spiritual value that is one hallmark of authentic morality indeed. Ayn Rand loves selfishness, but life is about the individual and the social. We must deal with the comprehensive social condition of the human race. That can never be addressed by individual actions alone. It must be addressed by dealing with the social parameters of life in general. It must be dealt with revolutionary changes in the world. Our hearts must not wax cold, but become great with love. We must express sympathy for the suffering and the oppressed. Greed is an anti-human action. It disturbs the mind and harms the soul. We must reject greed and embrace the truth. In capitalism, life is dominated with competition, consumerism, and covetousness. Life is viewed as a marketable commodity. The marketplace is readily worshipped. Yet, the marketplace is all about 2 or more selfish people forming a deal (or deals) as a means to serve each other's needs, which can be highly self-serving at times. Competitiveness in the most selfish, greedy fashion (and the lust for money) is a major weakness of capitalism (which in essence violates the Golden Rule in every stretch of the imagination). Capitalism deals with lust, pride, and the love of money (since it wants the markets to do what it wants to do without much restraint. The system readily exploits the suffering of the Third World as a means to benefit the Western peoples economically). The satisfactions of human ego and of the lust for consumption (making everything for sale) are common fruits of the immorality of capitalism. Capitalism is readily an uncaring system since it uses competition to crush other businesses at the expense of some. It is like a form of social Darwinism. We must serve one of another for the common good of all humankind. True wealth is not about money. It is wisdom and insight from God to his children. True is using programs and other methods to build up humanity in a positive, constructive fashion. True liberty is not to do what you want, which is anarchy and social nihilism. True liberty is based on following morality, rejecting the world's corruption, and to work righteously in building up society. True liberty is not self-centered, but God centered and community centered. So, a real society should restrain evil and advance the good or the general welfare. You have to restrain evil as a means to establish justice, insure tranquility, and provide for peace. The general welfare is always holy. True wealth is inspiring us to build constructively in our communities, to accept truth, and to follow the will of God. I will serve God not Mammon. It is fine to have better health and to appreciate our heritage in a just way, but we should never omit the need to help our neighbors and to advance justice for all humankind.
By Timothy
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