Question Everything!Everything!! |
Welcome to Truth, FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience. , is an alternative media and news site that is dedicated to the truth, true journalism and the truth movement. The articles, ideas, quotes, books and movies are here to let everyone know the truth about our universe. The truth will set us free, it will enlighten, inspire, awaken and unite us. Armed with the truth united we stand, for peace, freedom, health and happiness for all
Question Everything!
This blog does not promote
Saturday, February 29, 2020
How the US Supreme Court and America’s Multi-billionaires Are Ruining Democracy in America
How the US Supreme Court and America’s Multi-billionaires Are Ruining Democracy in America
Democracy in the U.S. is being replaced by a corporate state with little regard for morality, life or the law
“[T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
“In other words,” they continued, “strong support among high-income Americans roughly doubles the probability that a policy will be adopted; strong support among the middle class has essentially no effect.”
“So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over,” said President Carter.
Why Leaders Should Be Mindful, Selfless, and Compassionate
What might a better world look like? I believe the answer is straightforward: A better world is one where people are happier. Why? Because all human beings want to be happy, and no one wants to suffer. Our desire for happiness is something we all have in common.
But today, the world seems to be facing an emotional crisis. Rates of stress, anxiety, and depression are higher than ever. The gap between rich and poor and between CEOs and employees is at a historic high. And the focus on turning a profit often overrules a commitment to people, the environment, or society.
I consider our tendency to see each other in terms of “us” and “them” as stemming from ignorance of our interdependence. As participants in the same global economy, we depend on each other, while changes in the climate and the global environment affect us all. What’s more, as human beings, we are physically, mentally, and emotionally the same.
Look at bees. They have no constitution, police, or moral training, but they work together in order to survive. Though they may occasionally squabble, the colony survives on the basis of cooperation. Human beings, on the other hand, have constitutions, complex legal systems, and police forces; we have remarkable intelligence and a great capacity for love and affection. Yet, despite our many extraordinary qualities, we seem less able to cooperate.
In organizations, people work closely together every day. But despite working together, many feel lonely and stressed. Even though we are social animals, there is a lack of responsibility toward each other. We need to ask ourselves what’s going wrong.
I believe that our strong focus on material development and accumulating wealth has led us to neglect our basic human need for kindness and care. Reinstating a commitment to the oneness of humanity and altruism toward our brothers and sisters is fundamental for societies and organizations and their individuals to thrive in the long run. Every one of us has a responsibility to make this happen.
What can leaders do?
Be mindful
Cultivate peace of mind. As human beings, we have a remarkable intelligence that allows us to analyze and plan for the future. We have language that enables us to communicate what we have understood to others. Since destructive emotions like anger and attachment cloud our ability to use our intelligence clearly, we need to tackle them.
Fear and anxiety easily give way to anger and violence. The opposite of fear is trust, which, related to warmheartedness, boosts our self-confidence. Compassion also reduces fear, reflecting as it does a concern for others’ well-being. This, not money and power, is what really attracts friends. When we’re under the sway of anger or attachment, we’re limited in our ability to take a full and realistic view of the situation. When the mind is compassionate, it is calm and we’re able to use our sense of reason practically, realistically, and with determination.
Be selfless
We are naturally driven by self-interest; it’s necessary to survive. But we need wise self-interest that is generous and cooperative, taking others’ interests into account. Cooperation comes from friendship, friendship comes from trust, and trust comes from kindheartedness. Once you have a genuine sense of concern for others, there’s no room for cheating, bullying, or exploitation; instead, you can be honest, truthful, and transparent in your conduct.
Be compassionate
The ultimate source of a happy life is warmheartedness. Even animals display some sense of compassion. When it comes to human beings, compassion can be combined with intelligence. Through the application of reason, compassion can be extended to all 7 billion human beings. Destructive emotions are related to ignorance, while compassion is a constructive emotion related to intelligence. Consequently, it can be taught and learned.
The source of a happy life is within us. Troublemakers in many parts of the world are often quite well-educated, so it is not just education that we need. What we need is to pay attention to inner values.
The distinction between violence and nonviolence lies less in the nature of a particular action and more in the motivation behind the action. Actions motivated by anger and greed tend to be violent, whereas those motivated by compassion and concern for others are generally peaceful. We won’t bring about peace in the world merely by praying for it; we have to take steps to tackle the violence and corruption that disrupt peace. We can’t expect change if we don’t take action.
Peace also means being undisturbed, free from danger. It relates to our mental attitude and whether we have a calm mind. What is crucial to realize is that, ultimately, peace of mind is within us; it requires that we develop a warm heart and use our intelligence. People often don’t realize that warmheartedness, compassion, and love are actually factors for our survival.
Buddhist tradition describes three styles of compassionate leadership: the trailblazer, who leads from the front, takes risks, and sets an example; the ferryman, who accompanies those in his care and shapes the ups and downs of the crossing; and the shepherd, who sees every one of his flock into safety before himself. Three styles, three approaches, but what they have in common is an all-encompassing concern for the welfare of those they lead.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Kill the Culture, Destroy a Nation
Kill the Culture, Destroy a Nation
What Was Behind Trump’s Recent Threats Against Iran’s Culture and Other High Level Sites?During the Gulf War of the 1990′s, U.S. troops in Baghdad looted important museums, destroyed historical artifacts, some were even found outside of the museums and on the side of roads, many of ancient artifacts and pieces of artworks were stolen. For example, in the city of Hillah, several museums were looted. Then when the George W. Bush Jr. regime came to power in 2000, they blamed Iraq for the September 11 attacks afterwards and accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of harboring “weapons of mass destruction” which of course, all turned out to be another manufactured lie by Washington that began another war on Iraq and then the looting of Iraq’s museums continued. There was an estimated 35,000 small and large artifacts that was stolen from the National Museum of Iraq, a tragedy for where the ‘cradle of civilization’ began.
Just last month, if you remember, U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened Iran in a barrage of tweets that his regime “have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture” and that they “Will Be Hit Very fast And Very Hard” so much for his support of the Iranian people Trump had claimed in the past. Trump did not follow through with his threats, perhaps slightly disappointing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But first, we must ask ourselves, why did empires of the past including the Mongol empire who invaded Iraq in 1258 that begun the destruction of Iraq’s priceless artifacts? There were revolutionary movements throughout history who also chose to commit ‘Cultural genocide’ by destroying ancient artifacts, artworks, history books and even force the people to speak the invading empire’s language. By destroying a people’s culture you erase their history, language, art, everything that makes them who they are. Destroying a people’s culture allows the powers that be to shape the present according to their liking, and then the future belongs to them, not to the people who they conquered. Ancient artifacts for example, embody beliefs, ideas, and sometimes they can even represent the characteristics of a people’s history. Milan Kundera, a Czech-born writer who was living in exile in France once wrote something that described what was behind Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sinister plan. “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was… The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Powerful words. Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean authored a groundbreaking book into the depths of colonialism titled ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ which is reminiscent of what Israeli settlers practice in reality today:
The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother-country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves
However, it’s fair to say that Trump’s threat of attacking Iran’s cultural sites on his twitter rant runs much deeper. In regards to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, there are several documents and statements that have been made by hard-line Israelis that wanted to destroy Arab culture, history and identity and at the same time, jeopardize the future of education for children in the Middle East who will not know anything about their past since the creation of the state of Israel. Back on October 28, 1956, Menachem Begin, a former leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, founder of the Likud Party and Israel’s sixth Prime Minister was quoted as saying “You shall have no pity on them until we shall have destroyed their so-called Arab culture, on the ruins of which we shall build our own civilization.” Despite that fact that on December 1948, the United Nations had passed ‘Resolution 194′ that essentially called for the return of Arab refugees and that “holy places, religious buildings, and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with existing rights and historical practice.”
In June 1967, three days after The Six-Day War, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed the 770-year old Moroccan Quarter known in the Arab world as The Harat al-Magharibah (The Moroccan Quarter) in the Old City of Jerusalem in order to occupy the sanctuary and construct it for Jews only. The Moroccan Quarter was originally founded by the son of Saladin in the late 12th century. Israel’s efforts was to expand the alley and create a new path to the Western Wall so that Jews can have easy access to pray to the newly conquered area. IDF actions was the start of a long campaign to eliminate Arab culture and replace it with Israel’s perception of its historical and cultural footprint in the region especially Jerusalem. The Institute for Palestine Studies headquartered in Ramallah published an article on the history of the Moroccan Quarter back in 2000 titled ‘The Moroccan Quarter: A History of the Present’ explains how the Israeli government has re-constructed the Arab section of Jerusalem which has taken place in different forms since 1948:
‘Western Propaganda is Paid for in Syrian Blood’
Israeli attempts at re-configuring Arab Jerusalem have been varied over the past half-century. Appropriating the built form in Palestinian owned areas of the city has most often meant seizing Arab structures, homes, and neighborhoods, emptying them of their Arab inhabitants, and substituting new histories, new communities, and new meanings in place of old.
Entire neighborhoods and thousands of Arab homes were taken over by the nascent Jewish state in 1948. Occasionally, however, the Israeli state has sought to demolish and to physically erase particular areas of Palestinian habitation that obstruct Israeli visions for exclusive rule in what mainstream Zionism regards as Israel’s “eternal” and “unified” capital
According to the study “The Harat al-Magharibah (the Moroccan Quarter), first constructed over 700 years ago in the age of the Ayyubids and Mamluks, was on the eve of the June 1967 War home to approximately 650 people and 100 families. The neighborhood as demolished by the Israeli state in the days immediately after it conquered East Jerusalem.” The study also concluded that “This former space represents a site where practices of ethnic cleansing and wholesale dispossession have been combined with Israeli discourses of “the sacred” as well as others which promote exclusivist, transhistorical notions of Jewish entitlement to the city.” The study also described what were the characteristics before 1948:
The Character of the Neighborhood before 1948 The structures that comprised this neighborhood over the course of seven centuries were familial, religious, and social and were built mainly of stone and brick. Clustered densely together, these modest one and two story buildings enveloped a network of narrow alleyways that snaked through this largely poor neighborhood.
Its population became increasingly diverse in the centuries after the quarter‘s inception. Historically, most families resident in this quarter traced a genealogy back to the Maghrib. Pilgrimage or oppression in former lands brought many to Jerusalem. Over the course of several centuries, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Arabs from Palestine and elsewhere also took up residence in this quarter
Today, part of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the destruction of Palestinian cultural history and replace it with Israel’s historical claims in Palestine from more than 2,000 years ago. However, Palestinian culture and history was not the only target of Israel. It seems that the Islamic State (ISIS) is taking its marching orders to destroy Arab culture from Israel as they also destroyed numerous archaeological sites with explosives and even bulldozers that deliberately targeted important cultural sites in Iraq and Syria. ISIS is doing what the Israeli hardliners would want and that is to destroy Arabic culture, history and its identity and deprive future generations of that knowledge. According to one of Israel’s mainstream news websites, Haaretz from December 7th, 2014, ‘UN Reveals Israeli Links With Syrian Rebels’:
The observers have continued to file reports to New York, which were relatively mundane; but their content changed in March 2013, when Israel started admitting injured Syrians for medical treatment in Safed and Nahariya hospitals. The Syrian ambassador to the UN complained of widespread cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels, not only treatment of the wounded but also other aid
Soon After, the destruction of Syrian cultural and historical sites began. One example I would like to point out was the incident on May 2015, a site called Palmyra, located in the desert in the eastern part of Damascus which was in essence a historical part of the Roman Empire. At one point in history, Palmyra was a wealthy metropolitan city and at its peak around the 3rd century, Queen Zenobia lead a rebellion against the Roman Empire but failed to win its freedom. Rome re-conquered Palmyra and then was destroyed by Rome’s army in A.D. 273. By the 20th Century, Palmyra became one of Syria’s main tourist attractions. The Islamic State invaded the modern town of Palmyra and its ancient ruins and practically destroyed it. ISIS even executed Khaled al-Asaad, a Syrian archaeologist who managed excavations and hung his headless body on a column (a tactic to put fear on civilians). Another site destroyed by the terrorists with explosives was The Temple of Baal Shamin which was a 1,900-year-old ancient temple. The destruction of Dura-Europos, a fortress founded in 303 B.C was another site that also sacked. It was called Dura by the Seleucids on the intersection of an east-west trade routes along another trade route close to the Euphrates. Dura controlled the river crossing on the route between the cities of Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris. Dura was also considered border city that included Hellenistic, Parthian and the Romans built above the right bank of the Euphrates river and in close proximity to the village of Salhiyé in Syria. By 113 B.C., the Parthians had conquered the city and occupied Dura until 165 A.D. although there was a brief occupation by the Romans around 114 A.D. Under Parthian rule, Dura became an important provincial administrative center until the Romans decided to invade and permanently occupy Dura-Europos by 165 A.D. and expanded their territories reaching the eastern Mesopotamia, but was later destroyed by the Sassanians in 257 A.D.
Besides the fact that different cultures have intermingled at one point or another over the centuries, many interesting findings have been made including temples, inscriptions and tombs which many were looted by the US and Israeli backed terrorists during the height of the Syrian Civil War. According to ‘The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two (1954 and 1999) Protocols’ under ‘Article 4 – Respect For Cultural Property’ clearly states the following:
The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect cultural property situated within their own territory as well as within the territory of other High Contracting Parties by refraining from any use of the property and its immediate surroundings or of the appliances in use for its protection for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict; and by refraining from any act of hostility, directed against such property
Raphael Lemkin, a lecturer on comparative law at the Institute of Criminology of the Free University of Poland and Deputy Prosecutor of the District Court of Warsaw wrote ‘Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations.’ One of the sections ‘Acts Of Vandalism: Destruction of the culture and works of art’ described as an act of vandalism:
An attack targeting a collectivity can also take the form of systematic and organized destruction of the art and cultural heritage in which the unique genius and achievement of a collectivity are revealed in fields of science, arts and literature. The contribution of any particular collectivity to world culture as a whole forms the wealth of all of humanity, even while exhibiting unique characteristics.
Thus, the destruction of a work of art of any nation must be regarded as acts of vandalism directed against world culture. The author [of the crime] causes not only the immediate irrevocable losses of the destroyed work as property and as the culture of the collectivity directly concerned (whose unique genius contributed to the creation of this work); it is also all humanity which experiences a loss by this act of vandalism.
In the acts of barbarity, as well as in those of vandalism, the asocial and destructive spirit of the author is made evident. This spirit, by definition, is the opposite of the culture and progress of humanity. It throws the evolution of ideas back to the bleak period of the Middle Ages. Such acts shock the conscience of all humanity, while generating extreme anxiety about the future. For all these reasons, acts of vandalism and barbarity must be regarded as offenses against the law of nations
A people’s culture, history and identity is what makes a nation. If an invading force has its way, destroying the culture would serve as a stepping stone that would solidify their complete conquest of the land they occupy. Trump is already ignorant of culture and history just like the majority of the elected officials in Washington. Looking back at what Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in 1956, Trump is obviously taking advice from Netanyahu and the Israeli hardliners.
The United States Supports the Mujahedeen-e Khalk (MEK) Terrorist Organization MEK is considered by Trump as Iran's ‘government in exile’
The United States Supports the Mujahedeen-e Khalk (MEK) Terrorist OrganizationMEK is considered by Trump as Iran's ‘government in exile’
The United States continues to support the Mujahedeen-e Khalk (MEK), despite the fact that that terrorist organization is losing popularity, not that it ever had very much anyway, around the world. The group remains basically based in Albania, a nation that allowed about 4,000 of its members into the country at the insistence of the U.S. government. As Dr. Olsi Jazexhi has stated, “The Americans imposed them (MEK) on Albania and since Albania is a very fragile state, they had to accept”.
But what of other nations? The MEK’s foothold in Spain was lost when it supported the far-right VOX party. It has been barred from rallying in Germany, and France forbid its annual Villepinte rally. MEK members have lost access to European Union Parliament members.
Even the mighty U.S. has officially cooled its rabid support for the anti-Iran terrorist group. Following the assassination of General Qassam Soleimani by the U.S. in January, the murderous U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, ordered diplomats at all U.S. missions not to have contact with ‘Iranian opposition groups’.
Regardless of Pompeo’s statement, the group continues to have high-profile U.S. supporters, including former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who famously proclaimed in 2017 that the MEK and its minions would be celebrating in the streets of Tehran before the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution in February 2019. That anniversary, and yet another, came and went without any MEK celebrations anywhere in Iran, let alone in the nation’s capital.
Another famous and infamous U.S. citizen, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to U.S. President Donald Trump, calls the MEK a ‘government in exile’. Apparently, Giuliani has lost the ability to discern truth from falsehood, fantasy from reality; this is not surprising, considering who employs him. All reputable polls of Iranians, in Iran and around the world, do not support his bizarre assumption that Iranians support the MEK; on the contrary, overwhelming evidence indicates that they oppose the MEK’s goals and tactics.
American-Killing Terror Cult: US Delists Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK)
And to call the MEK a ‘government in exile’ is ludicrous. Consisting of a few thousand aging anti-Iran terrorists, and perhaps a limited number of younger recruits, the organization is not seen as a ‘government in exile’ by anyone but the delusional Giuliani. He also made this amazing statement: the MEK is “…a group that should make us comfortable with regime change.” This statement is incredible in a variety of ways: 1) the U.S. should not be in the business of overthrowing governments (e.g. ‘regime change); 2) who is the ‘us’ that Giuliani says should be comfortable with the MEK as a potential governing body in Iran? Certainly not the Iranians; 3) this is a group that, until 2012, the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization. It is responsible for the deaths of at least 12,000 Iranians. So is Giuliani saying that he would be ‘comfortable’ with a nation of 81,000,000 people run by terrorists? Perhaps so, since he himself works for the head of the largest terrorist organization in the world.
With diminishing support in Europe, and even the U.S. putting the official breaks on contact with the MEK, how does it stay afloat? NBC News reported that it is likely that the MEK id financed by Israeli intelligence. That would make sense, since Israel, like the U.S., is a brutal, repressive regime, in violation of countless international laws, and forever violating the rights of the Palestinians in the most unspeakable ways. And since the U.S. supports Israel with $4 billion annually, one can be confident that some of that money is finding its way to the MEK.
So with fading support, and funding probably coming from Israel, and thus, at least indirectly, from the U.S., what is the MEK to do? Hapless Albania must continue to house them, against the wishes of Albanians, but their leaders are in a U.S. chokehold, so they don’t have much choice. The U.S. wants the MEK nearby in case it needs their terrorism for some reason; the U.S. is not averse to having some other country do its dirty work: witness the U.S.-financed Saudi slaughter of Yemenis, as just one example. And should the Albanian government decide to act as its people want, rather than as the U.S. demands, would the MEK then turn its terrorism on them? Albania has certainly been put between a rock and a hard place by the U.S., which doesn’t care in the least about it or the Albanian people; the whole nation is just a pawn in an international chess game that the U.S. is playing, that no one else is interested in.
The Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the U.S. installed and supported Shah, just celebrated its forty-first anniversary, despite all the efforts of the U.S. to defeat it. One must remember that the democratically-elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was overthrown by the U.S. government in 1953, and then the Iranian people had to endure twenty-six years of oppression and torture under the U.S. puppet who did exactly what he was told by the U.S.; his repression of the Iranian people was unimportant to the U.S. government. It is unlikely that such an overthrow, if attempted, would be successful again. So instead of direct overthrow, the U.S. attempts to harm the people through sanctions, expecting them to rise up, overthrow the government, and usher in the MEK to repress the people and do the U.S.’s bidding. This is the fantasy that Giuliani, Bolton, Trump, Pompeo and their cohorts dream about, but as has been mentioned, reality and the Trump Administration barely have a nodding acquaintance with each other.
The government of Iran will continue to strengthen its defenses, as it works to strengthen its economy with products other than oil. The U.S. will continue its bizarre rantings about Iran and terrorism, trying to hide the fact that it, not Iran or any other nation on the planet, is the major sponsor of terrorism around the globe. And the Iranian people will continue to demonstrate the remarkable resiliency that has made their nation great.
*
Will Censorship Prevail Over The First Amendment?
Abby was scheduled to give the keynote speech at a conference at Georgia Southern Univeristy. She discovered that in order to speak publicly at a Georgia college she had to sign a pledge of allegience not to criticize Israel. Her refusal to sign resulted in the conference being cancelled.
Compliance 101: Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons
Compliance 101: Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons
“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
- draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
- overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
- school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
- standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
- politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
- and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.