blog

April 6, 2016 dead of night

I think my response on Politico is enough for tonight.

The more they say our David can't beat their Goliath (who commited serious war crimes in Libya, where 10s of thousands were slaughtered due to her preference for bombs to talks, creating a real genocide happening now, rather than a "smoking gun" Condy Rice justify intervention Genocide that never happened and never would have happened). At any rate the more they say we can't do it, the more determined we are to make it happen. They said his economic plans didn't make sense. Pickety, Galbraith, Reich, even Gordon Gekko have said he has the best plan. Now they say he doesn't know how to break up the big banks. He produced a cogent explanation of the mechanics of that. They said he didn't understand foreign policy. A congressman favoring diplomacy and above all fairness for 20 odd years. Many came to his cause. Jeffrey Sachs, Tulsi Gabbard. And he delivered a great foreign policy speech while boycotting likudpac er AIPAC, while not boycotting it, calling for what Clinton had she been worth a damn would have done, forceful demand for a real two state solution. Veterans of Mossad and Shin Bet will prefer Sanders, because they know the hellish future Netanyahu proposes of violence and impunity, which Clinton also embraces, is not something they want to inflict on their kids, or the Palestinians kids. Bernie Sanders may be America's last best hope. As we find ourselves with an out of control military industrial complex war machine that employs so many it cannot be stopped, with election systems that have been so thoroughly gamed our elections rank below ALL European countries, 46th in the world, between Mongolia and Micronesia, and the specter in the future of a jobless economy, but with an economic system that simply abandons all, and a media that is like the mouth of sauron, an oligarch's organ, no investigative journalism is done, except by outsiders, no policies are analyzed, instead endless horse race politics, endless gaming, this article being a prime example. Imagine if our media analyzed issues and approaches, instead of personalities and races. Luckily we have the Internet. And this fine speech I have just given is almost entirely encapsulated in Bernie Sanders stump speech. There is very little he does not cover. We will surge into office and transform every state house if he wins, and selects a vice president of equal metal (age and assasination must be guarded against).

March 31, 2016

I wish we could vote for goals instead of politicians. And then vote for approaches to approve, require further research upon or reject, etc.

Run elections the way that research etc is conducted.

Suddenly left and right would change, and people who thought they were allied would find themselves on opposite ends, and people who thought they were opposed would find themselves on the same side, and more importantly, intellectual evolution would occur, and the news, now being on approaches to solving problems would suddenly become more investigative more interesting, and would likely produce a completely different type of presenter.

Politics should be about policies not personalities. Except on certain aspects of foreign policy, Hillary and Bernie would both be useful contributors to researching new ways to solve problems, instead of fighting. Even Trump and Cruz would have something to contribute. (Trump on foreign trade and crony capitalism, Cruz on unleashing the energy of small business). But in fact if we realigned towards approaches to solving worthy problems, instead of a cult of all too fallable leaders, the people contributing would be a bit more like IETF meetings and a bit less like this personality driven system we have today.

March 24, 2016

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/turkey-has-reached-new-levels-of-journalist-repression-yet-the-eu-willingly-lets-itself-be-fooled-a6944501.html

Isn't it interesting that when the Guardian had Greenwald and published Snowden. got harrassed by GHCQ they have since become much more mainstream and less left oriented?

Then I found the best UK paper of course was the Independent - with great Middle East Journalists Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn - and started reading that.

It shortly thereafter had to cease printing. And is now available only online.

The great investigative journalists:

Sy Hersch

Robert Fisk

Glenn Greenwald

Patrick Cockburn

Robert Parry

None are employed by the major media. In fact, their are virtually no interesting journalists that do investigative journalism of this caliber working for any mainstream outlet. Once in a while they get an article printed. But Sy Hersch has to use the London Review of Books as his main platform.

Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2016/3/24 - watch the whole show

"To Quote Churchill

"The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out;":

February 21, 2016

Out of ashes of defeat in Nevada some comfort:

Sander 53-47 amongst Latinos ! This is great news with 49-47 ehite and 71-22 African American. Being badly behind in the African American vote cost Sanders the difference.

http://atr.rollcall.com/high-turnout-delays-start-harry-reids-precinct/

February 20, 2016

Presidential Race: Bernie Sanders Man of the hour:

Watching MSNBC and listening to the silly questions - how many points ahead would a victory be ? How to get them to compare policies and what it would actually mean. If we had direct internet governance - this silliness would be impossible - how to have horse race - without any horses - then perhaps we could discuss bills and policy. No doubt the chattering class would simply adopt a new silliness, the personalities of famous people who had taken positions on the bill, rather than the bill itself and why it is percieved as good or bad.

Very Sad I missed Nevada. Well perhaps SC

Next project read the cuban isolo and umberto eco

Ron Paul started many a speech when posed with some outrage of the current oligarchy, would say "why don't we just try following the constitution?".

For a QA man, this resonates. Put things into best practice mode, first.

His scolding of the ruling class for abandoning the constitution essentially depicted them as lawless lawmakers, like a fox in a hen house, cranking out rule after rule, to hem us in by an all powerful state.

September 10, 2014

- Outrages: ISIS now possesses over 2 billion dollars worth of US weapons.

January 31, 2014

Obama: Milking Inequality while selling out: Warren, Paul, Sanders, Brown and Francis

Barack Obama gives a state of the union speech – calling for “a year of action” in restoring the dream of upward mobility. He could instead talk of 5 years of inaction, accelerating inequality by alternately sitting on his hands paralyzed with fear at the thought of actually making a single bank take the consequences of their criminal fraud, as Bill Black can inform you, or making matters much worse, stating “ I am very good at killing people” as each week he decides who will be assassinated from robots flying over poor far away countries.

President Obama, I am sorry but a great man once said “What you are shouts so loudly at me that I cannot hear what you are saying.” You are partially redeemable as President but the road of action will have to be well trod upon before one can feel anything other than suspicion of stark political manipulation.

The speech smells of posturing, of setting the table for a quick set of political moves to strengthen his power base, the Democratic Party through faint hearted attempts at righting the wrongs of a country stripped of its assets by the billionaires that fund both parties.

Is their anything more disgusting than manipulating the poor and the nations deep unease about becoming a giant banana republic for personal political gain. A giant banana republic we are, the US now leads the world in wealth inequality, especially when looking at momentum.

Barack Obama, a man able to run political campaigns, but unable to actually lead once in office. It is a sad spectacle. Apologizing for a secret government that has run amok, turning us into self-censoring paranoids. Comparing actions of a totalitarian national security to Paul Revere. Was he reading Ronald Reagans speech about the killers we trained in Nicaragua called the “contra’s” that is the counter revolutionaries, as the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers”. The vast majority of scholars and history buffs steeped in the American Revolution of Lockian propositions of the natural right of man and the enlightenment were baffled and outraged by such a comparison. Didn’t Paul Revere seek to end tyranny? And if you go back to the declaration of independence, I think you would find we have much greater cause today to demand a severing of ties with Washington D.C. than the founders had severing ties with London, England. This security state he has lamely defended is a vast monstrosity. Millions of people have top secret clearances. The majority of it is privatized. Reading the leaked emails of Stratfor and HB Gary, we learn of their plots to plant false information to destroy journalists and activists, of offers to charge the chamber of commerce 100,000 a month to sell top secret government information to private corporations to destroy their enemies. Of course the people who exposed these horrors or even linked to exposing these horrors now sit in prisons. In the case of Barrett Brown, facing 98 years for posting a link. The Judges husband was a client of Stratfor, yet the judge does not recuse herself, quite happy to destroy the soul and break the will of one of the few truly interesting and brash journalists in the spirit of Hunter S Thompson and William S Burroughs. Let us destroy him. The surveillance state being largely privatized suits those in Government brilliantly. As they award these companies huge contracts, and then go to work for them lining their pockets, and then return to government to award them more huge contracts, and then back through the revolving door. It is the real tragedy and crime that has sped our way to a large banana republic. The foxes plundering the hen house. And when Obama is not massaging the bankers and defending totalitarian surveillance, he is channeling Bush, invading Libya, murdering Pakistanis by the bushel, where the US is now the most hated country in the world according to a recent poll.

So what could get worse?

Michelle Obama comes to California to help fight poverty apparently. But no poor are allowed, the minimum price to listen to her pleas to fight poverty is 10,000 a seat. She says “Write as big a check as you can” – to rich people – not poor people or charitable institutions – no the tune is set “wealth inequality’ that will be the music to keep Michelle and Barack as major power brokers – handing the reigns to others. It is simply the musical score for attempting to return a powerful blue oligarchy to power. No discomfort will be inflicted on the wealthy and well connected.

People, we must begin to view inordinate wealth and inordinate power as something not to envy but to be disgusted by. We need to own our houses have local manufacturing, perhaps more expensive than done overseas. Pride should come from self sufficient regions where everyone has a part to play. That is true riches. Ron Paul dreamed of an America like Hong Kong, “We could be so rich! He exclaimed” But we should see through excessive wealth as a sort of pornography. “ I very much like and admire Ron Paul, but we must find excess disgusting not admirable. Perhaps then things might change.

There was a tradition and there still are thinkers who value modesty. Perhaps the greatest leader in the world today is actually Pope Francis.

You see these are much harder questions to formulate...

How would you break down peoples reactions to your positions, Clintons and Trumps? Which policies do you encounter the most and least enthuthiasm?

Why not ask something original?

"How has campaigning affected your thinking on policy?" This would be interesting. We would find out what all the interactions he has had have affected him intellectually.

First they print the articles:

Bernie Sanders Plummets in fundraising!

Then when each journalist gets to speak to him, they dutifully ask him this question, even though he and Jeff Weaver have answered it a dozen or more times in the last 72 hours. Are you hurting the party? See above.

What is your path to victory?

What do these questions have in common? None of them actually deal with policy. It is as if policy is off limits.

These reporters shamelessly ask the same questions over and over. Do they not realize this?

May 4, 2016

Who manufactures the mysterious talking points of the MSM?

Rachel Maddow, CNN, the NYT, Salon.

So when I back on my life, I feel less bad that I did not pursue pleasure more. Thought the drive to make a contribution drove my pleasure seeking into the wrong focuses.

"The health of the soul is incomparably more important for eudaimonia than (e.g.) wealth and political power. "

From all this I take it, be careful what you fix your heart's desire upon. For it may disturb the balance of your mind.

"The alternative translation excellence (or "a desirable quality") might be helpful in conveying this general meaning of the term. The moral virtues are simply a subset of the general sense in which a human being is capable of functioning well or excellently."

One important move in Greek philosophy to answer the question of how to achieve eudaimonia is to bring in another important concept in ancient philosophy, "arete" ("virtue").

Aristotle says that the eudaimon life is one of “virtuous activity in accordance with reason”

excerpts below from wikipedia.

Also I read of what it is to live "The Good Life", apparantly the Greek word Eudaemonia.

August 20, 2016

8/20/2016

Reading Aristotle's "The Politics" has been a eye opener for me on so many levels. I was impressed by one City State Government, wgere rather than people run for office, the citizens would simply decide who should serve, usually a term of one year, and that would be that. This would elimiate the hucksters who promote themselves to a large extent.

The Rabbit Hole: How deep into totalitarianism have we gone?

Data Interpretation (speculative)

Speculation: Rise Of American Neo Fascism (Militarized Super Capitalism)

The US and West believe they will win.

They will annhilate all of their opponents.

Full Spectrum Dominance:

These corporations scheme to manipulate elections (stratfor), manipulate opinion, manipulate perceptions of reality. Psy Ops. (Hastings Congress Afghanistan). Destroy left wing and libertarian anti corporatist movements.

Ron Paul movement roughed up. R party rules changed - to prevent take over of party by wrong sorts (of activists).

Jesse Ventura debriefed by CIA after surprise gubernatorial run.

Who is the cheerleader and what is the cheer?

The Stratfor files show the corporate control of the intelligence services and the military.

Revolving door

The incredible value of the NSA Base - as a temptation to be used for many reasons.

Power.

Where is tech dev going?

How do we defeat our opponents?

Even I as a small businessman have thought of uses of this data - and have begun modifying our own big data practices to gather more data about potential customers (in this case a positive use of the role - as it will make our network development outreach much more efficient.

Much more efficient.....

Thoughts on what is happening in the West today.

Full Spectrum Dominance:

Themis

Greenwald

Barrett Brown

Michael Hastings

Bradley Manning

Julian Assange

Anonymous

Aaron Schwartz

DS

Wikileaks

Is it safe to even type these things in one place?

Zombie States:

Iraq

Afghanistan

Syria

Libya

Egypt

Yemen

Somalia

Common Denominator: Drone operations indicate a non functioning or compromised state.

Dis-Mech (Disinformation Mechanics)

Concentrate on what we know - and dont worry to much about unanswerables and imponderables (was MH whacked?) Was his arm being pulled by RE a sign of the deep animosity

Common demoninators BB MH

ProjectPM?

The American Empire started with Andrew Jackson - Lawrence Wilkerson.

The corporotacracy - John Perkins

On 15 May 1961 Pope John XXIII published Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher), his first social encyclical. In the opening paragraphs the Pope restated the Church's right and duty to teach on matters of justice in society, He then devoted the whole of Part One to emphasizing that he adhered faithfully to the social teaching of his predecessors Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII. Pope John drew attention to the teaching of Pius XI that the wage contract 'should, when possible, be modified somewhat by a clear reference to the right of the wage-earner to a share in the profits, and, indeed, to sharing, as appropriate, in decision-making in his place of work'. Reinforcing his predecessor's teaching, Pope John wrote that 'it is our conviction that the workers should make it their aim to be involved in the organized life of the firm by which they are employed and in which they work.'

The pope drives a ford focus, wears an iron cross not a gold cross, and wears white and black, not red.

He washes the feet of the poor, the criminal and the non believer.

When in recent times have we seen such a leader?

There are great moral examples in the world, the President of Uruguay Pepe Mujica, shot 10 times, put at the bottom of a well in solitary confinement for over a year, lives simply and states that for our planet to survive we must live simply.

E.F. Schumacher who wrote “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered” wrote of Buddhist economics, the economics of a moral livelihood.

These are the sorts of people we should admire and imitate not the superficial oligarchy and its sycophants, such as the vast majority of people running the republican and democratic parties.

We have the example of Ron Paul, who said “If it came to being a little poorer and more free, I would take that”. Ron Paul does not appear to seek self enrichment but lives in the world of philosophy and ethics. Things that if we taught in our junior high school and high schools how different are society might be.

Ron Paul is a man who believes in extreme limited government. But he is not corrupt. That is why young students flocked to him. There were saintly people such as R.H. Tawney who was a democratic socialist in England who was revered for his socialism was steeped in ethics. He was called the Christian socialist, though he himself rejected this title.

There are role models in the world of a life beyond materialism, on the left, in the center, on the right. These are the people we must support. We must strive for spiritual, cultural and philosophical wealth in our society. Material wealth can only you get you so far. The blind worship of wealth is making chumps out of us. In my readings on these matters I have begun to change. My values and my habits have changed. I do not think about the next car so often, or the next purchase, other than books and perhaps trips.

So who will we have on the right to embody virtue and wisdom and incorruptibility? I do not know. I once hoped Rand Paul. But he has said things I cannot square. What should he learn from his father? His fathers appeal was that he was guided by his convictions. But the price of authenticity was the political wilderness.

On the left we hope Elizabeth Warren is incorruptible,. We know Bernie Sanders is, and we hope Jerry Brown rereads Small is Beautiful, and listens to his Pope. And stay away as you can from Hillary Clinton!

January 11, 2014

If the purpose of the NSA is to keep us safe from terrorism by being able to monitor every communication of every person in the world, we must ask what sort of terrorism they seek to thwart.

If one can think about it for a moment, one has to get into the minds of the people who have erected this system.

Who are these people? We know that Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, Bush and now Obama certainly have had a great deal to do with increasing surveillance of the public.

We know that the people with great power who support Bush are people like the Waltons of Walmart, the owners of the great corporations. The 400 as they are called, and their lieutenants. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Blackrock and Bank of America. And each of these people by and large, if their deeds were fully exposed to the light of day, would have much to fear reprisal for.

People like the Waltons have destroyed small business across America, creating vast swaths of territory with populations facing a much more difficult time setting up shop for themselves. Rather than operating a small general store or some modern equivalent, a family business, which perhaps initially does not yield much, but as good will is generated in the community gradually produces not only wages but modest profits for the shop keepers. They are forced to report to work at minimum wage at the Walmart, which leaves only the smallest investment in the community. Each of the 8 or so Waltons involved might earn 500 million or 1 billion a year each, money they have more than sucked out of the community, because their rapaciousness extends to the producers as well as the consumers.

They fear retaliation, assault and protest, because they know deep in their minds how their activities could be interpreted as deeply injurious to millions.

The JP Morgans and the Goldman Sachs are almost entirely parasitic to the real economy, they loot, speculate and capture their regulators, hiring those charged with regulating them, buying off the government, and obtaining access to loans from the government in the trillions, currently interest free, loans which none of the rest of us may obtain, and are allowed to lend them out at 10 times their actual capital reserves or greater. Not even an idiot could fail to become vastly wealthy under such a regimen, yet not content their, they require the taxpayer to make good their vast losses.

Certainly they know that if the public became fully aware of what they have gotten away with, their could be a day of reckoning.

Then there are the politicians, generals, spy agencies and arms makers, who have been constantly working form the large corporations and also simply raw power by destabilizing country after country, in near constant warfare, when not overt such as Libya, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, and the proxy wars by Israel and similar allies on Lebanon and the Palestinians, they are covert, bribing and capturing the security forces in countries like Ecuador, Chile and throughout the Americas and the borders states of Russia and now in the proxy war for resources in Africa with China, creating untold suffering and the damaging of the cultures and security of countless countries.

These people, if their actions were fully exposed to the light of day, and properly understood by the people, could lead to their trial for capital crimes on an untold scale, and under Nuremberg principles could lead to their execution. Imagine that, thousands of arms imakers, politicians and armed forces and intelligence agency personnel put in the dock to face capital punishment.

There are countless other injuries inflicted on the poor and working class, whether the incredible rate of incarceration, the careless manner in which are manufacturing and blue collar jobs disappeared under globalization, the destruction of our natural systems, which are under the belt of these 400 and their political corporate military and police agents.

So one can imagine their apprehension when they step out in public.

So it seems that they view as potential terrorism, any act, any party that could bring them closer to accountability for their crimes. The deaths of millions, the irreparable harm to the environment, and the impoverishment of billions both economically and culturally.

So we are all indeed suspects, because if we should ever wake up from our consumerist slumber, the day of reckoning could put these oligarchs and their minions in mortal danger.

Therefore, from the point of view of the ruling elite, terrorism is the act of demanding accountability for their actions, and ending their impunity.

January 11, 2014

January 8, 2o14

Take our lands back from the tiny elite that has deftly taken them from us

Each of us with access to land and water to grow the real food we need for our families

Take it back!

If a person wants to sleep in their car. They can do it! If they need to sleep in a park! Let them do it.

The country is ours! Not the Governments! And not a fortunate few who through their “success” have decided they deserve more than us.

Take back the right to camp at will on public lands!

Asian Carp will cost 18 billion at minimum to simply bar from the great lakes!

And why? Because our titans of industries for the sake of squeezing a few more pennies profit per unit, and that would be the noblest of their possible motives, shipped all our manufacturing overseas, now when they bring their goods in the boats drip with invasive species, literally attacking our plants and animals

Restore manufacturing locally! We can make it efficient enough with all the blessings of technology!

Take it back!

Our schools are places where people are humiliated and standardized. Why not let teachers and students decide what to study and learn? Will that really make them all illiterate?

Wouldn’t it actually make people a lot more interesting ? If they WERENT all taught the same things?

Instead of training them all to fit through the eye of a needle and enter the oligarchies fabled meritocracy?

Take it Back! Take back the right to study Space Science or journalism or stamp collecting and not the common core

The right to be different! Not the same! Take it back!

Take back our houses from the banks!

Tax the banks on their mortgages and then use the tax to buy the mortgages

Take back the right to live in your house without paying any rents any taxes any mortgages to be secure in your personhood in your home!

Take back the right to live in a house without paying either banks insurance companies or the government! Take it back

If your house burns down – do a house raising amongst the neighbors – without permits!

Take it back!

Create local currencies like berkshares

Put your money in local one man one vote credit unions

Farm Hemp as the basis of locally made textiles

Reopen the shuttered plants and transform them with solar panels and wind turbines and algae fuels

Take it all back

The ruling class don’t really have the wealth they think they do – if you withdraw your support

If you don’t work for them – subsidize them through crooked tax subsidies or buy from them their only assets will be their mansions and art collections, their billions on paper will gradually evaporate

As your communities wealth will grow and grow

Give them a black eye ! They sold us all out in their arrogant belief in their own superior “meritocracy”

Take it Back!

Take your right to breathe and walk and sleep on the beach back!

And start by reading E.F. Shumacher’s “Small is beautiful”

Blog: Patriots,Traitors, the deluded and the corrupt. September 21, 2013

Drones, they’ll never see them coming

Especially one drone

“I can be as right wing as I want to be, I can remove peoples rights, and they will think I am a radical left wing messiah”

I can tell them to their faces, I am much more conservative than you think of me. And they will continue to scream in adulation, deaf to my caution.

They’ll never see me coming.

To them I am the wet dream of a neo liberal pseudo meritocracy, where priveledge and submission of the self to societal noms define an outcome of being amongst the chosen to rule.

The inner party comes from the Ivy leagues and a few others sprinkled amongst them.

They are joined by the raider class, the captains of industry, men of arms, except their arms are money and market share.

And they are joined by the new priesthood of secrets.

5 Million Americans hold security classifications.

1.4 Million have “top secret”.

These men and women of these 3 classes, the meritocracy, the plutocracy, and the Military Security, mirror in some respects Russia, in Russia the meritocracy and its proponents are called the siloviki, those for a civil society. The Rule of law.

“Secret Law that are anathema to the consent of the governed” Lon Snowden’s attorney.

“Freedom is participation in power” Lon Snowdens attorneys third brilliant observation.

Tom Payne Said: A Patriot Saves His Country From His Government.

On the inside of this veil, you can access all of your neighbors most personal secrets, and when coming into conflict with one ‘outside’ of the veil, one is tempted to use these less savory tools on the information in their file, in their zapiska.

(pres Obama) Says (Syria) is Different than Libya,….” I think they’re pretty much the same thing” – Rand Paul

Refugee Numbers[edit source | editbeta]

On May 10, The Week posted an article claiming that roughly 746,000 people have fled Libya since the war began.[15] Since the early displacement many of the refugees returned to Libya of their own will. On 1 October, Red Cross official Abdelhamid al-Mendi said that more than 50,000 Libyans had fled their homes in Benghazi since the war began in February.[16]

Although I studied Russian and read a great deal of Russian literature history and of its communist era, I learned this phrase from Ian Flemming in his novel “To Russia, With Love”

Its quite frightening what we’ve stooped to

Said while discussing Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning)

September 22, 2013

It wasnt just "Gadaffi-ists:" that were beaten raped tortured disposessed humiliated and abused and driven into exile. It was also Socialism and Arab Nationalist Government in the spirit of Nasser.

August 27, 2013

Personal disclaimer to the security forces:

Well NSA CIA FBI: I am indeed very concerned about my own security simply for searching online about what is really going on! Please give me a call and maybe we can develop an understanding - so I don't dissapear under the Ice, as Kruschev described the purges of the 30s. All I want is a society based on eliminating wont - through better organization and use of production.

I don't mind if it is voluntarist, anarchists, democratic socialist, or laissez faire capitalist under an enlightened regulatory framework. Their are many ways for a society to reach a zenith. Perhaps we are on the way to one now. If so why am I filled with dread and foreboding?

* * *

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/daily-report-pentagon-becomes-source-of-support-for-silicon-valley/

Will the government simply take your ideas that are stored online - if they are useful to them? Are your trade secrets at risk.

http://blogs.law.unh.edu/tradesecretsblog/2013/07/nsa-targeted-latin-american-tr.html

... Capitalism: Key problem is companies operating on seeking rents - rather than creating profits. A rent based economy will concentrate up - it seems...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/24/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html

In this article the US Generals complain that their is no one who will promote "our interests" to arm. But what exactly are "US interests" - are they my interests or yours?

My interest is having neutral or friendly relations with the people of the world to have interchange commercially, culturally and for tourism. None of these interests are served. No the interests really are the interests of the powerful. "Promoting our interests..."

Thought: The Middle East is the cradle of neolithic and ancient civilization. The popularly known ones are Babylon , Sumeria and Pharonic Egypt, as well as ancient Islamic, Christian and myriad other faiths sources and holy sites. Certainly such a sacred and priceless area should be preserved from bombing. Both sides in Syria are culpable - but primary fault is the rebels -

The opposition willing to negotiate - can be a decisive force in reducing bombardment and killing. By splitting completely - with armed groups not willing to simply introduce general elections under a temporary political amnesty - pending this more transparent legislature - for example - this should be the position of the "positive" opposition.