Friends, the image above symbolizes most of the human race. In it, we have one person on a stage addressing hundreds of thousands of persons. They hang upon his every word as if he possessed all knowledge, had all the answers, will change their lives, lift them out of mediocrity, take them to the Promised Land. They applaud, shout, stamp their feet in adoration.

For ten thousand years humans have been doing exactly the same thing: blindly following this person or that: a king, a czar, a religious guru, a pope, an emperor, a president. It’s as if the thought of them being equal to those who they follow never occurred to them. Even when someone as ridiculous as George Bush comes along, what happens? He gets re-elected for another four long years.

The bottom line is that we are all humans. We all have brains. We all have intelligence. We are all capable of thinking for ourselves. Unless we have handicaps, we can all make our own way through life without having to follow anyone, without having to conform to whatever script we are handed.

It’s time to debunk the idea that we need messiahs, that we need politicians, that we need corporations, that we need religious institutions, that we need armies, that we need wars, that we need a profit-based health system, that we need schools with strict, sterile curriculums, that we need a job, that promotion is good, that we can only retire when we’re old and frail, that a car is a status symbol, that a mansion shows we’re better than most others, that we must be loyal to our country and be willing to die for it.

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Planet Earth?

Friends, there are three issues in the world which could create a catastrophe: the imposition of sanctions on North Korea, the election of Armadinejad, and the civil war which is developing in Pakistan! Guess which nation is involved in all three?

Taking the North Korean problem first, the U.N. has imposed sanctions on the Communist State such that  authorized U.N. member states can inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, and requires them to seize and destroy shipped goods that violate the sanctions (arms, nuclear materials, etc). Given North Korea’s geographical location this means that Japan and its master, the U.S., can legitimately stop all shipping and flights going into or out of North Korea, board it, inspect it, then destroy anything that is non-approved.

Worryingly, Clinton said the United States would work with other nations to enforce the U.N. resolution “…in a vigorous way…” I  bet they will! The U.S. never misses out on an opportunity to stir the pot, to engage in military confrontation even with an unstable nuclear power!

Friends, this resolution, which was heavily pushed by the U.S., drives North Korea into a corner. It leaves it no option but to respond to any military action against its shipping with military force. Such military force could involve a nuclear attack on Japan or Guam or who knows where else.

What is an irony to me is that America, long ago, had a phobia about communism. Vietnam was the result and America got its butt kicked. That didn’t stop it moving into South Korea however. Now, the days of the ‘Reds under the Beds’ has long gone but America is still trying to crush communist North Korea while it happily trades with communist China. Such hypocrisy and irrationality is of no concern to the U.S.

“We are trying to stop nuclear proliferation,” the Americans cry but of course, hypocritically, they’ve said nothing about the nuclear arsenal which Israel has acquired and threatened to use should the need arise!

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Friends, as I was replying to a comment this morning the thought dawned upon me that Americans, in the main, are insecure and fearful.

Now I realize this thought clashes with the aura of brash invincibility that most Americans project but perhaps that is all an act. Perhaps, underneath it all, they feel uneasy, feel that their grasp on power is tenuous, feel that their position on the planet is constantly under threat. Let’s consider a few things.

Firstly, why do Americans need to have the biggest army in the world? Perhaps they think that because they only have 300 million people in a world of 6.6 billion (4.5%)  that, being so heavily outnumbered, they need to compensate or, more correctly, employ overkill. So they spend more on defense than most other nations combined.

The trillions of dollars they spend on their military means that they have poor quality health care and educational facilities and their infrastructure is crumbling but that doesn’t matter. As long as they fill the oceans of the world with nuclear submarines and warships and fill the skies with heavily armed fighter jets and bombers and have their armies strategically placed all over the world they feel a little safer, the emphasis being on the word ‘little’. Politicians in America only have to mention the word ‘terrorism’ and most Americans panic!

Secondly, why do most Americans own guns?

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Friends, do you realize that, while you are sitting at your computer, all over the world there are clever, cunning people who, behind locked doors, are hard at work:

- Planning how to further increase their already obscenely large fortunes.

- Planning how to hide the dangerous negative health effects of the products they make and sell.

- Planning how to further exploit poor nations and their people for profit.

- Planning how to keep selling fossil fuels despite global warming.

- Planning how to hook you and your kids on hard drugs.

- Planning ways to torture people that might be harder to detect.

- Planning how to avoid paying any tax on their multi-million dollar incomes.

- Planning how to get you to invest in schemes which will leave you bankrupt.

- Planning how to bribe you and confuse you at the next election so they can remain in power.

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Some of the villains but not all!

Friends, Reuters reports today that the new U.S. envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell,  has assured Israel that: “The United States and Israel are and will remain close allies and friends.” It’s a clear case of birds of a feather flocking together!

The article also reports that Netanyahu has made it clear that: “Israel’s security is paramount in peace efforts and any self-governing Palestinian entity must be demilitarized and have limited powers of sovereignty.”

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out where the Palestinians fit into the latest phase of the charade being engaged in by the U.S. and Israel, one that purports to be all about giving the Palestinians justice after sixty years of one of the greatest travesties of justice the world has ever seen.

What it means is that a small area of useless land will be eventually allocated to the Palestinians and they will remain under the boot heel of Greater Israel. They will get no right of return. They will get no compensation. They will remain in poverty. They are a lost people who have no future.

The truth is that the Palestinians to both these imperial powers are of zilch importance. The truth is that the only thing that both these powers consider to  be important is themselves.

The truth is that both the U.S. and Israel claim to be democracies and peace seekers when the truth is they are both warmongers who use the excuse of self-defense to engage in military invasion and occupations which are for the express purpose of gaining land and resources belonging to others and to gain strategic military advantage to further swell their own power bases and imperial designs.

Friends, it is time to call a spade a spade.

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Once upon a time, George Bush talked about an Axis of Evil but, thankfully, he has gone! He was, without doubt, both a buffoon and a cretin. He listed nations he considered to be predators: eg, those which threatened American interests. In his list he included Iraq and North Korea and Iran.

The graphic image above shows a human predator, one very much in the cast of Sylvester Stallone or the current Governor of California but, of course, they are ex-Hollywood film heroes (or  violence-driven thugs depending on how you look at things).

Given the state of our world in 2009, I wonder which countries belong in a list of the 2009 Axis of Evil? Which nations are Predator Nations who use pretexts and military force to compell other nations to do their bidding or use military force to take land and resources that belong to others?

Well, the U.S., which is currently militarily involved with Iraq and increasingly with Afghanistan and is also heavily involved in ‘droning’ Pakistan, must be one of the candidates. Given that it has the world’s biggest army and spends more on defense than most other nations combined, its interest in war is no passing fancy. Besides, a large proportion of American manufacturing is involved in the manufacture of armaments and munitions.

Britain and Australia have proven to be staunch allies of America’s constant military assaults upon the world and could be considered to be part of its aggressive military agenda or as separate Predator Nations.

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“Yeah, Sarge. They’ve been saying that for 10,000 years.

Pull my other leg while I’ve still got it. It whistles!”

WAR PROVES THAT MOST HUMANS ARE UNCIVILIZED AND UNINTELLIGENT.

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Friends, Obama is in Germany as part of the D-day memorials. These memorials celebrate the invasion of occupied France not by America but by the Allies which included America.

As part of his visit to Germany, Obama paid a visit to Dresden which was a place that was firebombed by the Allies. The total number of civilians killed during this period is unknown. Obama also visited Buchenwald and laid a rose in memory of the Jews killed there by the Nazis. The above image shows his homage.

Now I would like to throw a few facts at you. According to Wiki (which I accept is not the world’s most reliable source of information), the number of people killed in WW2 was between 50-73 million people. Of course the actual numbers are not known and will never be known (we don’t even know the number of people killed in Iraq – how could we know how many were killed during a war which raged across much of the planet?). At a guess, it is probable that the number is in excess of 100 million.

Now, according to Wiki, the Germans are estimated to have killed around 6 millions Jews, some at Buchenwald. As well they did away with .7 million handicapped folk and gays, 5 million gypsies, 3 million Russian POWs, 2 million Poles and 4.5 Russian civilians, etc. If we add the latter numbers together we get over 15 million, significantly more.

Now I hate violence, killing, war, injustice, imperialism, etc, as much as you do. But the facts I’ve presented above give rise to some questions:

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Friends, did you listen to Obama’s impressive speech in Cairo? It was a bottler! It is so great to have a U.S. President again that has a brain. It’s even better when his brain is also connected to his tongue.

I have to say that though I have wavered from time to time regarding my opinion of Obama, currently I have positive thoughts about him. Of course, after George W., even a damaged store dummy would’ve looked good.

Obama admitted that America has made mistakes which must be the understatement of the millennium. He also had positive words to say about Islam. While I have no time for any institutional religion, it is nice to see that the usual hate-speak between competing religions was toned down and there was praise for the many fine achievements of the Muslim world throughout history.

Obama quoted from the Koran as well as the Bible. He even made criticisms of Israel, something that the U.S. has studiously avoided over decades. He talked about a Palestinian State which drew applause. He talked about new beginnings, of trying for cooperation rather than competition, of not wanting military bases in Afghanistan, of not trying to create an American Empire. He talked…

Of course, a speech is just that: a tirade of words.

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Friends, while the capitalist world is heavily involved in giving trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to bailout private blood-sucking banks, corporations, car companies, finance companies, mortgage lenders, etc, our friend Hugo in Venezuela has just purchased a major bank in his country and intends to use the bank to give low interest loans to the little people! Amazing, eh?

This news (see Al Jazeera for full details) fortuitously comes hot on the heels of my last post where I questioned why the world was trying so hard to resurrect the stinking, sinking hulk of capitalism. Perhaps Hugo read my post and decided to buck the trend and try to help those who live on less than $2 a day! I can but dream!

According to Al Jazeera, The Associated Press news agency quoted Chavez as saying that banks needed to intervene in the financial system and provide low interest credit to people buying houses or producing food, rather than generate massive earnings for their owners. Can you believe what you’re reading?

This follows on from a time, in January 2008, when he threatened to “seize” private banks that neglected laws he’d put in place requiring them to set aside nearly a third of all loans for agriculture, mortgages and small businesses at favourable rates. As usual, our Hugo leads from the front and does not make promises likely.

Friends, do you realize the importance of what Chavez is saying?

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