A lovely short program (22 minutes) on the Super Specialty Hospitals founded by Sai Baba. This is in celebration of the 22nd anniversay of the hospitals, which opened in 1991. Tragically, Swami cannot be here in person to witness this event, but he is ever present, even if we cannot see his body.
The lovely ideal of selfless service (seva) is exemplified in this pair of free hospitals which have thus far helped 2.3 million patients.
This is the ideal. This is totally different from universal healthcare/ socialised medicine/ single payer. When people give of themselves of their own will selflessly that is the highest virtue. When a government steals money from people and redistributes it as it sees fit that is worse than thievery. A government cannot mandate morality, or else the value is totally removed. One cannot be moral or virtuous if one is compelled to act in such a way. It is only through one's own will that one may be virtuous.
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Funeral Fiasco!
Millions (I guess) attended the funeral of South Africa's most famous native son Nelson Mandela. It was meant to be a solemn occasion, admiring how a radical communist terrorist turned his life around while in prison and adopted love instead of revenge. Instead it was a circus of horrors.
The sign language guy at the
funeral had a schizophrenic episode and made meaningless hand gestures
instead of real sign language. He also has a history of violence and
they let him get within three feet of the President Oblahblah. Guess the
Secret Service was drunk that day - very drunk.
Speaking of Oblahblah, he took a selfie next to Mandela's dead body. He then gave a speech in which he talked entirely
about himself, not mentioning Mandela once. In total he used the words
"I," "Me," "My," and other first person pronouns 5,724 times. His wife
was disgusted. The photographer who took the picture of Oblahblah's wife
being disgusted at Oblahblah's behaviour apologised and then committed
suicide for shaming his one true god. Oh, yeah, Oblahblah also Frenched some blonde.
The sign language guy at the
funeral had a schizophrenic episode and made meaningless hand gestures
instead of real sign language. He also has a history of violence and
they let him get within three feet of the President Oblahblah. Guess the
Secret Service was drunk that day - very drunk.
Speaking of Oblahblah, he took a selfie next to Mandela's dead body. He then gave a speech in which he talked entirely
about himself, not mentioning Mandela once. In total he used the words
"I," "Me," "My," and other first person pronouns 5,724 times. His wife
was disgusted. The photographer who took the picture of Oblahblah's wife
being disgusted at Oblahblah's behaviour apologised and then committed
suicide for shaming his one true god. Oh, yeah, Oblahblah also Frenched some blonde.
Friday, September 6, 2013
On Gratitude
A much more personal subject than most.
Yes, my life has problems, but for the vast majority of people on the planet those problems would be blessings. I had a back injury that nearly killed me and an eye disease that may or may not end up destroying my left eye, but I have been blessed with so much: my time spent with family and friends, the help I have gotten with being out of work for several months, and the incredible joy I get from my writing. I also have the many regular blessings that come from modern Western life. I have luxuries that are unknown to billions of people, including the great kings and emperors of antiquity. I live in greater luxury than Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, Akbar, or Louis XIV. They may have had more money and power but I have sanitation, hot and cold running water, flush toilets, air conditioning and heating, gas stoves, telephones, the Internet, the automobile, ice any time I want it, fresh fruit all year round, antibiotics, electricity, moulded plastic, the printing press, and any of a number of things they could never have imagined.
A lot of people just don't care. A lot of people's egos get in the way of their caring for other people. They want to complain about their petty shit and when some enlightened soul tells them about the plethora of genuinely unfortunate people in the world they scowl "I don't care about other people, what about me!" I want to strangle these people and shout "what makes you so much better than them?" You, whose curses would be their blessings and the host of fictitious post 1950s Western diseases. I, who have so much laid before me, what right do I have to complain when there are people really suffering, going days without eating, dying of diseases like cancer and malaria, born blind or limbless, having to bury half their kids before the age of five, endless warfare, and vast festering slums and refugee camps that stretch for miles in all directions? Who am I to complain when I am given so much?
I am thankful, immensely thankful, for all I have been given. I thank God every night, even for the bad things I have to face. My hardships have really shaped me, like the great pressure needed to make a diamond. Greatness is never easy; if it were it wouldn't be worth it. Problem of evil? What problem? What would be the point of life if we were handed everything on a silver platter?
Yes, my life has problems, but for the vast majority of people on the planet those problems would be blessings. I had a back injury that nearly killed me and an eye disease that may or may not end up destroying my left eye, but I have been blessed with so much: my time spent with family and friends, the help I have gotten with being out of work for several months, and the incredible joy I get from my writing. I also have the many regular blessings that come from modern Western life. I have luxuries that are unknown to billions of people, including the great kings and emperors of antiquity. I live in greater luxury than Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, Akbar, or Louis XIV. They may have had more money and power but I have sanitation, hot and cold running water, flush toilets, air conditioning and heating, gas stoves, telephones, the Internet, the automobile, ice any time I want it, fresh fruit all year round, antibiotics, electricity, moulded plastic, the printing press, and any of a number of things they could never have imagined.
A lot of people just don't care. A lot of people's egos get in the way of their caring for other people. They want to complain about their petty shit and when some enlightened soul tells them about the plethora of genuinely unfortunate people in the world they scowl "I don't care about other people, what about me!" I want to strangle these people and shout "what makes you so much better than them?" You, whose curses would be their blessings and the host of fictitious post 1950s Western diseases. I, who have so much laid before me, what right do I have to complain when there are people really suffering, going days without eating, dying of diseases like cancer and malaria, born blind or limbless, having to bury half their kids before the age of five, endless warfare, and vast festering slums and refugee camps that stretch for miles in all directions? Who am I to complain when I am given so much?
I am thankful, immensely thankful, for all I have been given. I thank God every night, even for the bad things I have to face. My hardships have really shaped me, like the great pressure needed to make a diamond. Greatness is never easy; if it were it wouldn't be worth it. Problem of evil? What problem? What would be the point of life if we were handed everything on a silver platter?
Friday, August 30, 2013
The Saudi Connection in Syrian Chemical Attack
Interviews with people from Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus that was attacked last Wednesday, reveal that many people believe it was the rebels, not Assad or his minions, who is responsible for the deaths.
Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons
via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were
responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the
weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim,
the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed
inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant,
known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father
described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others
were like a “huge gas bottle.”
Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.
Like with the missing pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, the Saudi connection in Syria has not received widespread attention.
“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”
“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.
Prince Bandar has close ties with both the rebels and many within the Washington establishment. Elements within the US government may be deliberately hiding his involvement so they can use the incident last week as pretext for getting rid of Assad. He is trying to spread Saudi Arabia's influence within the region. Getting rid of Assad and Hizbulla would mean pro-Saudi thugs will run Syria, not pro-Iranian thugs. In the great war between Sunni and Shia some things never change. This Saudi prince is trying to entangle the US into a millennial struggle for control of the Islamic world.
Bandar has tried making secret deals with the Russians before. He promised safety for the Olympic games to be held in Russia, and would turn a blind eye to Russian bases located in Syria if the Russian military helps to topple Assad. However, if they do not, Bandar threatens Chechen terrorists will attack the games.
This is a war that cannot end well for America. It cannot end well for Israel, it cannot end well for Jordan, or Syria, or the security of the entire world. We must seek a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war. Killing more people with cruise missiles is the last thing we should be doing to make things better, especially launching cruise missiles without the approval of Congress and without a single ally fighting by our side. This is a debacle that will make Iraq look like going on a road trip and forgetting to buy gas.
Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons
via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were
responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the
weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim,
the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed
inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant,
known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father
described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others
were like a “huge gas bottle.”
Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.
Like with the missing pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, the Saudi connection in Syria has not received widespread attention.
“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”
“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.
Prince Bandar has close ties with both the rebels and many within the Washington establishment. Elements within the US government may be deliberately hiding his involvement so they can use the incident last week as pretext for getting rid of Assad. He is trying to spread Saudi Arabia's influence within the region. Getting rid of Assad and Hizbulla would mean pro-Saudi thugs will run Syria, not pro-Iranian thugs. In the great war between Sunni and Shia some things never change. This Saudi prince is trying to entangle the US into a millennial struggle for control of the Islamic world.
Bandar has tried making secret deals with the Russians before. He promised safety for the Olympic games to be held in Russia, and would turn a blind eye to Russian bases located in Syria if the Russian military helps to topple Assad. However, if they do not, Bandar threatens Chechen terrorists will attack the games.
This is a war that cannot end well for America. It cannot end well for Israel, it cannot end well for Jordan, or Syria, or the security of the entire world. We must seek a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war. Killing more people with cruise missiles is the last thing we should be doing to make things better, especially launching cruise missiles without the approval of Congress and without a single ally fighting by our side. This is a debacle that will make Iraq look like going on a road trip and forgetting to buy gas.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
The Eve of World War Three in Syria
Last Wednesday a chemical attack outside Damascus resulted in the death of over 1000 people. The UN was quick to come in and blame Syrian president Assad without evidence. US Secretary of State John Kerry said this was a moral outrage and requires US intervention (war, or "kinetic action" as the Zero regime likes to call it). Sources claim that attack is immanent, maybe even happening sometime today (Thursday 29 August), if not within a week.
None of this makes any sense. Think about it. Assad has killed fifty times as many people using conventional means. He has the upper hand in the war and the backing of Russia, China, and Iran. The quickest way to destroy his own success and alienate himself from his powerful allies would be to use chemical weapons. There is no sane or logical reason why Assad would have ordered that attack. Assad is an evil man, but he's not stupid. He is focused entirely on holding power, which is something he cannot do if he were to use chemical weapons and have the world turn against him.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner shares my suspicion: "the timing is odd, bordering on suspicious. Why would the Assad
government, which has recently been retaking ground from the rebels,
carry out a chemical attack while UN weapons inspectors are in the
country?" He does, however, believe a chemical attack did occur.
UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus agrees: "It would be very peculiar if it was the government
to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into
the country....at the least, it wouldn't be very clever."
Regarding the attack a US intelligence official commented "We don't know exactly why it happened. We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."
Why would Assad call in UN weapons inspectors then launch a chemical attack in close proximity to where the inspectors would be? That does not make any sense.
And yet we are rushing headlong into another poorly planned war with no exit strategy in mind and no thought as to the consequences of our actions.
Noah Shachtman writing for Foreign Policy states "However, U.S. spy services still have not acquired the evidence traditionally considered to be the gold standard in chemical weapons cases: soil, blood, and other environmental samples that test positive for reactions with nerve agent. That's the kind of proof that America and its allies processed from earlier, small-scale attacks that the White House described in equivocal tones, and declined to muster a military response to in retaliation."
We are rushing into a foolish war that will only end badly with less evidence than there was for WMDs in Iraq a decade earlier! There were years of UN inspector reports and other intelligence that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein had a thriving chemical and biological warfare infrastructure in place and after the invasion nothing was found. With Syria we have precious little evidence that a chemical attack happened at all.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the US intercepted panicked phone calls between defense officials in Damascus and the commander of a chemical weapons unit demanding details about the strike, Foreign Policy reported early Wednesday.
The report comes just days after a report in a major German publication claiming that an IDF intelligence unit had listened in on similar conversations between senior Syrian officials discussing the chemical attack.
US intelligence says that these panicked phone calls prove that Assad or someone in his government was behind the attacks. Now I'm no intelligence expert, but I was right about Egypt and Libya, and I did predict the Benghazi attack two full years before it happened, but these guys know what they're talking about, right? I mean, when the Syrian Minister of Defense demands answers regarding who the hell ordered the attack that proves that the Syrian government was behind it, right? When they start panicking about a move that would mean suicide in the world of geopolitical realpolitik, a move that is "pretty fucking stupid," and then immediately begin working on damage control that means they must be responsible, right?
I mean, it's not like we have members of the Free Syrian Army (the Islamist rebels who ate a man's heart and posted it to YouTube - note, this is a mirror, not the original) on video talking about how they intend to use chemical weapons
Oops! Just ignore that. Didn't happen.
There are only two possible alternatives as to who launched that attack: either it was the rebels themselves or it was operatives from the US or some other country looking for a "responsibility to protect," a casus fœderis, for which to intervene.
Russia and China have warned the United States not to intervene, as has Assad himself. Intervention in Syria will spread the conflict to neighboring countries. A relatively contained problem will grow into a full scale war between, basically, the United States versus Russia and China. China holds the lion's share of US debt. They have the power to economically destroy the country immediately if they so choose. Israel and Iran will be drawn in. There may be a nuclear exchange, or at least the use of a nuclear bunker buster to take out Iran's own nuclear program. Of course, the problems with nukes is when one country uses them it sparks other countries to use them too, resulting in the mutually assured destruction that the world has tried to prevent for six decades.
At the very least a million Syrians will die and the US will be out another trillion dollars.
We cannot go to war in Syria. We cannot help the rebels. If the US gets involved this will be WWIII and it won't end until millions are dead.
None of this makes any sense. Think about it. Assad has killed fifty times as many people using conventional means. He has the upper hand in the war and the backing of Russia, China, and Iran. The quickest way to destroy his own success and alienate himself from his powerful allies would be to use chemical weapons. There is no sane or logical reason why Assad would have ordered that attack. Assad is an evil man, but he's not stupid. He is focused entirely on holding power, which is something he cannot do if he were to use chemical weapons and have the world turn against him.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner shares my suspicion: "the timing is odd, bordering on suspicious. Why would the Assad
government, which has recently been retaking ground from the rebels,
carry out a chemical attack while UN weapons inspectors are in the
country?" He does, however, believe a chemical attack did occur.
UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus agrees: "It would be very peculiar if it was the government
to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into
the country....at the least, it wouldn't be very clever."
Regarding the attack a US intelligence official commented "We don't know exactly why it happened. We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."
Why would Assad call in UN weapons inspectors then launch a chemical attack in close proximity to where the inspectors would be? That does not make any sense.
And yet we are rushing headlong into another poorly planned war with no exit strategy in mind and no thought as to the consequences of our actions.
Noah Shachtman writing for Foreign Policy states "However, U.S. spy services still have not acquired the evidence traditionally considered to be the gold standard in chemical weapons cases: soil, blood, and other environmental samples that test positive for reactions with nerve agent. That's the kind of proof that America and its allies processed from earlier, small-scale attacks that the White House described in equivocal tones, and declined to muster a military response to in retaliation."
We are rushing into a foolish war that will only end badly with less evidence than there was for WMDs in Iraq a decade earlier! There were years of UN inspector reports and other intelligence that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein had a thriving chemical and biological warfare infrastructure in place and after the invasion nothing was found. With Syria we have precious little evidence that a chemical attack happened at all.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the US intercepted panicked phone calls between defense officials in Damascus and the commander of a chemical weapons unit demanding details about the strike, Foreign Policy reported early Wednesday.
The report comes just days after a report in a major German publication claiming that an IDF intelligence unit had listened in on similar conversations between senior Syrian officials discussing the chemical attack.
US intelligence says that these panicked phone calls prove that Assad or someone in his government was behind the attacks. Now I'm no intelligence expert, but I was right about Egypt and Libya, and I did predict the Benghazi attack two full years before it happened, but these guys know what they're talking about, right? I mean, when the Syrian Minister of Defense demands answers regarding who the hell ordered the attack that proves that the Syrian government was behind it, right? When they start panicking about a move that would mean suicide in the world of geopolitical realpolitik, a move that is "pretty fucking stupid," and then immediately begin working on damage control that means they must be responsible, right?
I mean, it's not like we have members of the Free Syrian Army (the Islamist rebels who ate a man's heart and posted it to YouTube - note, this is a mirror, not the original) on video talking about how they intend to use chemical weapons
Oops! Just ignore that. Didn't happen.
There are only two possible alternatives as to who launched that attack: either it was the rebels themselves or it was operatives from the US or some other country looking for a "responsibility to protect," a casus fœderis, for which to intervene.
Russia and China have warned the United States not to intervene, as has Assad himself. Intervention in Syria will spread the conflict to neighboring countries. A relatively contained problem will grow into a full scale war between, basically, the United States versus Russia and China. China holds the lion's share of US debt. They have the power to economically destroy the country immediately if they so choose. Israel and Iran will be drawn in. There may be a nuclear exchange, or at least the use of a nuclear bunker buster to take out Iran's own nuclear program. Of course, the problems with nukes is when one country uses them it sparks other countries to use them too, resulting in the mutually assured destruction that the world has tried to prevent for six decades.
At the very least a million Syrians will die and the US will be out another trillion dollars.
We cannot go to war in Syria. We cannot help the rebels. If the US gets involved this will be WWIII and it won't end until millions are dead.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Why Can't We Be Friends?
From the LA Times (Why do I bother with publications that have "Times" in the title?).
Madeline Janis, some leftist broad, a writer for the Times and the national policy director of a group called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (yeah, that name is transparent), writes a very disgusting piece about her late father.
Her father - name withheld - was 87 years old and very sick. He was a veteran and, she describes "highly educated — a psychiatrist with multiple advanced degrees in science and medicine. He was Jewish and deeply religious, donating regularly to charities helping those who struggled with life's challenges." This man is at the upper echelon of human achievement. He's very smart, well grounded, and very generous. This is not the kind of man you would expect to be treated as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, mouth-breathing, kunckle-walking, talks with a Southern drawl, gun owning, Bible thumping, bitter clinging, brow ridged troglodyte, especially by his own daughter. Not with an introduction like that anyway.
"But he hated President Obama and thought that government was at the root of all evil."
Shame!
We do not speak ill, NO, we do not think ill of dear leader! Dear leader is your new god. Bow down and worship him.
His other sin? He not only listened to, as if that was bad enough, but liked Rush Limbaugh! AAAHHH!!!!1 The horror! I...I can't. I have to go sit down and cry for a few minutes, this is too horrible.
He also had a few Rush Limbaugh caps, which he enjoyed wearing. The humanity!
I'm sorry. I shouldn't subject you to torture like that. I'll write it in small print.
Anyway, as I said earlier, her father was old and sick and in 'Murica when a parent can no longer live alone the child throws the parent in the trash. Yep. They put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food in your mouth for, what, fifteen years, and you can't return the favor when they get old. They changed your diapers when you were a baby and you can't do the same when they're an invalid. You disgust me.
So this broad was going to put her father, who she claims to love, in a home. In case you didn't know it, a home is not as good as it sounds. A home is a place where old people go to be abused, neglected, have their social security money stolen, and their prescriptions sold to teenagers who are looking for drugs. And this broad was not only going to put her father in a home, where she would not have to lift a finger to care for him, or ever have to see him again, but she whined "why can't we throw these Limbaugh caps away, which bring you so much joy in your final days? Limbaugh is a big, fat, smelly meanie. He is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, and I know if he ever met me he would hate me! WAAA! WAA!"
He wouldn't hear it.
A few days later (I'm guessing; this article is written so poorly, jumping back and forth like a leprachaun who has had a few too many and has energy to burn), she goes back and her father tells her "sweetheart, I want to tell you something."
"Nope! I don't want to talk about it!" She pouted.
He continued anyway, "I've come to the conclusion that although I really like Rush Limbaugh, I love you more. So I'm going to give up the caps."
Maybe he really loved her that much. Maybe he was dying and didn't want to argue anymore. I think it's a little of both. The point is, this man decided to be the bigger man and give up his own happiness to make his spoiled brat daughter happy by throwing out his most prized possession which she hated. Then he died.
The worst is yet to come, folks. Yes, worse than what I've already told you. She writes an article in the LA Times about the incident with her deceased father. Wait, it gets worse! She says this "our love for each other and our family helped my father and me transcend the enormous ideological divide between us. It makes me wonder if there isn't something in these experiences that might help us, as Americans, transcend our political differences."
Did I miss something? She use her father's death as an opportunity to write about her selfish, arrogant, narrow-minded political ideology and claim that Rush and all people who listen to him are racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, and she has the conceit to say at the end "why can't we all just get along?" She whined until she got her way from her dying father. Yep, she beat a dying man in an argument and then writes an article about it in a major newspaper. And she claims the moral high ground!
This broad then closes with "that could be a start, at least, at reaching across the gulf of ideology to work cooperatively and respectfully to solve the challenges facing the nation."
What a bitch.
You know why we can't be friends? You know why we can't get along? Let me tell you why we can't get along.
By the way, I saved the original article just in case the LA Times takes it down so that a permanent record exists.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Trayvon Unmasked
At 7 PM on the night of 26 February 2012 in Sanford Florida, two men had an altercation in the rain that left one of them dead.
The people involved were 17 year old Trayvon Martin, black, and 29 year old George Zimmerman, Hispanic. They are the only two who know exactly what happened that night, and, unfortunately, Mr. Martin is dead so we can never have the complete story. What we do know is that someone started a fight that Mr. Zimmerman ended with a single gunshot.
The event ballooned into a media circus that lasted a year and a half until, 13 July 2013, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second degree murder after what was very nearly a hung jury. Threats of violence, and some actual violence, erupted following the verdict. Protests were staged around the country. The President made two comments, one good, one bad. This is pretty much the most objective account of what has happened.
Now here's the part sprinkled with my analysis.
First, Sanford is a lower-middle class community with a crime problem. 18.5% of the population is below the poverty line. In 2011 the people of Sanford formed a neighborhood watch program to deal with the crime, with Zimmerman being appointed as the coordinator. George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin's father's fiancee (where he was living at the time) were renting homes in the town.
Trayvon Martin was not a kid, as many portray him. Neither was he innocent. He was not the ten year old seen in the pictures. He was a grown man, he portrayed himself as a thug on the Internet, and he was a petty criminal, having been suspended from school many times for painting graffiti and stealing jewelry. His parents were divorced. His mother sent him to live with his father because he was too much trouble for her. The night of the shooting he goes out in the rain to a 7-Eleven and call his friend Rachel Jeantel (who lacks all common sense and tact). After 18 minutes on the phone the call abruptly ends for unknown reasons. Martin was not most likely not buying candy at the 7-Eleven, he was buying ingredients for a drug popular in the hip hop gangster culture that he talked about frequently on the Internet. The drug, known as "purple drank," "lean," or "syrup" is made with cough syrup containing codeine or dextromethorphan (such as in Robitussin DM, which Martin was talking about with some friends on Facebook). He most likely was planning on mixing the Skittles and Arizona watermellon drink that he had purchased with the Robitussin to create "some fire ass lean," as one friend called it. Extended use of the cough syrup based drug is linked to liver damage and psychotic episodes.*
Next, George Zimmerman is often portrayed as "lily white", a "white-Hispanic", or as "mixed-race" by people trying to spin the case. Unsurprisingly, NONE of these same people call the President "mixed-race", "white-black", or "white" when both he and Zimmerman have one white parent. The President is 100% black and Zimmerman is white above any other races, if not entirely white. This is not because of his complexion or features. Zimmerman has dark skin and his eyes and other facial features clearly belong to someone who is not white.
According to the other wiki, "during the 18 months preceding the February 26 shooting, Zimmerman called the non-emergency police line seven times. On five of those calls, Zimmerman reported suspicious looking men in the area, but never offered the men's race without first being asked by the dispatcher." Zimmerman takes his job very seriously. I would argue too seriously. He was driving around with a gun, safety off, looking for suspicious men. 26 February he finds his sixth suspicious looking man, and this time it does not end well.
Zimmerman calls the police from his truck saying he has found yet another suspicious looking man. After four minutes he gets out of his truck to follow Martin because, as the tape indicates, Martin started running at this point. The dispatcher advises Zimmerman not to pursue Martin but he doesn't listen. Martin calls Rachel Jeantel back but his call gets disconnected again, for unknown reasosn.
Someone started the fight. When it was over Zimmerman was bleeding from his nose and the back of his head, Martin was shot in the chest and lie dead in the grass with bloody knuckles.
There were eight witnesses, of whom only two saw part of the altercation. They reported (from wiki):
A witness to the confrontation just prior to the shooting stated that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and punching him, while Zimmerman was yelling for help. This witness, who identified himself as "John", stated that "the guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, 'Help! Help!' and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911". He went on to say that when he got upstairs and looked down, "the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point."
One eye-witness statement given the night of the shooting describes "a black male, wearing a dark colored 'hoodie' on top of a white or Hispanic male who was yelling for help." The witness said that the black male was throwing punches "MMA [mixed martial arts] style." After hearing a "pop," he saw the black male "laid out on the grass." When the witness was subsequently interviewed weeks later by a different agency, the witness said he thought that the black male was either punching or pinning the lighter skinned male underneath him. He was no longer certain who was calling for help, having not seen their mouths in the dark. He was still certain that the black male had been on top of the lighter-skinned male.
The eighth witness, Jeantel, heard part of the altercation from the phone: "She then heard Martin say, "What are you following me for?" followed by a man's voice responding, "What are you doing around here?"" The phone then went silent.
What happened after that we can only speculate. Zimmerman asked Martin what he was doing out at night, then someone started the fight. Trayvon Martin was either the instigator or else he got the upper hand and had Zimmerman pinned to the ground and was whaling on him, or as Jeantel calls it "whoop ass." An audience member's mouth falls open at the revelation that Jeantel basically admitted it was Trayvon who started the fight. Foreign national Piers Morgan tried to pull her fat out of the fire by asking "if Trayvon was being attacked, would he have 'whooped ass' as you call it?" She immediately corrects him, saying that "whoop ass" cannot be conjugated to form "whooped ass". He nudged her a second time and she finally gave the answer he wanted, that yes, Trayvon was defending himself, because Android phones can't be turned off if you're the one on top in a fight.
There is a difference between beating someone to death and "whoop ass". "Whoop ass" is all fun and games, even if it leads to concussion and paralysis or death. It's the intent behind "whoop ass" that counts, and the intent is, well I don't know. Jeantel is about as clear as mud. I've understood dogs and cats better than I understand her. I don't know what the difference between "whoop ass" and a savage beating is, and according to Jeantel that misunderstanding is why Zimmerman killed Trayvon.
Tracy Martin, Trayvon's father, listening to 9-1-1 recordings, testified that the person crying for help was not his son, although he later changed his story after the case. Sybrina, Trayvon's mother, testified that it was her son. A neighbor testified that it was Zimmerman. The FBI analysed the recordings and said the quality was too poor to determine whose voice it was.
As the autopsy reveals, Martin was on top of Zimmerman when he got shot. It also revealed that Martin had extensive liver damage well beyond what would be expected in a 17-year-old, further evidence that he was on a drug run the night he got shot. (*I'm not condemning recreational drug use, I'm merely illustrating that Trayvon Martin was not an innocent little boy who got shot because he was a black kid out buying candy. Also, if this drug - and potentially others - had caused this much damage to his liver it probably also caused damage to his brain, and he was likely not thinking clearly the night he went out and started a fight when he could have easily outrun Zimmerman home and called the police if he was really worried. Yet in spite of what all rational people would know is a bad idea, Martin likely started a fight with a man in the middle of the night and ended up dead.)
There is no evidence that Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin. Zimmerman has black relatives, he has worked with the black community in Sanford to get them more active in the neighborhood watch program, and he was "one of the few to take any action to protest the 2010 beating of Sherman Ware, a black homeless man, by the son of a Sanford police officer."
What do I think happened? George Zimmerman went out looking for trouble. Trayvon Martin went out possibly looking for something to burgle, if his past is any indication, and no doubt open to the possibility of a fight. Rachel Jeantel goaded Martin into starting a fight with an armed man in the middle of the night. It was Jeantel who sewed the seeds of fear or rage or whatever in Martin while they talked on the phone. "Some creepy ass cracker is following me." "He can't do that! You better whoop ass so he gets the message!" The gang culture Martin and Jeantel idolise combined with confusion and testosterone took over rational judgment and Martin and when Zimmerman asked "what are you doing here?" Martin started beating him. Zimmerman greatly underestimated Martin and, fearing for his life, took his gun and shot Martin, happening to hit him fatally.
In President Obama's first address regarding the verdict, he acted like a leader and said basically "it's a tragedy that a family lost their son but the justice system is based on evidence and, let's face it, there's no evidence to convict Zimmerman, so we should accept the verdict of 'not guilty' as a victory for our justice system, as it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to put one innocent man in prison. Now, in respect for the family let's all put this behind us."
In his second address he said (exact quote) "you know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn't go away." He then went on to say "there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off."
Yes, I know what it's like to get nervous looks out of people as I walk by. I know what it's like for people to turn their porch lights on as I walk past their houses at night. Trayvon Martin probably couldn't have been me. I don't live in a high crime area, but I do like to go for walks at crazy hours of the night and I do often make people uncomfortable by my looks and mannerisms. No one where I live will probably shoot me, and I doubt anyone would have shot Obama either during his carefree childhood in Hawaii, or his time spent in Indonesia with his step father who owned a lot of exotic animals. I'm not saying he's lying, but he is definitely not telling the truth either when he says "Trayvon could have been me 35 years ago." Maybe during his time in Chicago, that cesspool of crime and human suffering, but not when he was 17. Obama did not move to the mainland until he was 18.
From the wiki page on Obama: "Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, 'That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind.'
He started to think about black nationalism and anger toward whites in spite of the colourblindness of his peers. Fellow student Mark Hebing recalls "we didn't think about his blackness." From the same LA Times article, we have more accounts of Obama's time in Hawaii:
"His reflections about the race issue surprised all of us," said Kellie Furushima, who knew him well. "He gave no indication of feeling uncomfortable in school, and I never witnessed or heard anyone being unkind to him.
"Being in Hawaii, we had a lot of different races," classmate Vernette Ferreira Shaffer said. "People would tell ethnic jokes, but it was more about making fun of stereotypes than trying to do a cool thing."
Hanging out and working with many black people, I know they make just as many jokes (maybe more) about black stereotypes as any other group. Comedian Chris Rock in Bring the Pain even jokes about the difference between "black people" and "niggers," whom normal black people hate more than white people.
Inside all of this is the anger Obama alludes to. Black people are angry about the way they were treated during the time of slavery and Jim Crow. He says "that doesn't go away." I ask why? Yes, it's true that the slave trade was one of the worst acts of inhumanity in history, but let us not forget it was started in Africa by black people selling other black people to at first Muslims and then to white people. There is still racial tension in Africa between Negroes and Pygmies, two distinct black groups who view the other as nonhuman and have fought wars to wipe the other out. It was also whites who eventually ended slavery, beginning with groups such as the Quakers and taking off when the Methodists got behind the abolition movement, finally culminating in the deaths of over 600,000 men to put a stop to the barbarism once and for all. Immediately after the Civil War many of the Southern states, with majority black populations, elected blacks to federal office. It was not until Reconstruction ended and the white Democrats took power once again that blacks were rendered slaves in all but name until the 1950s. President Eisenhower, Republican, wanted to solve the problem by passing a host of civil rights laws, and he did go very far but was checked by Senate leader Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, who was one of the biggest racists of the time. It was only after Johnson lost face for killing kids in Vietnam that he finished what Eisenhower started, and wrongly took credit for being a civil rights leader when he wanted nothing more than to reinstitute slavery. 50 years of indoctrination in public schools have led millions to believe that the Republicans, who fought and died by the thousands for the rights of black people, are evil while the Democrats, who fought and died to keep blacks enslaved and started the KKK, are good. Truly a cosmic irony.
Why does the racial hurt never go away? When my ancestors came to America a century ago we weren't even second-class citizens and we certainly weren't white (although I'd probably be considered white today I do not self-identify as white). We had hardships, we were mistreated, and we really still aren't viewed in that good a light, and still I have no racial anger toward anyone. I don't think to myself "my ancestors were treated like shit so I'm gonna hate white people forever!" It makes no sense to hold on to anger, to give that kind of power to other people who did nothing to me, and ruin my own life in the process by destroying my own mental health. Anger causes far more harm than good, especially to one's self.
Yes, blacks suffered more than probably any other group in history except the Jews, but just about more effort was put into fixing the injustices done to blacks than to any other group. Wars were not fought and countries were not destroyed to fix other race relations or bring other people out of bondage. I would appreciate one tenth the effort done for my people.
Why does racial hurt never go away? I argue because it is useful. The power elite keep blacks as victims through soft racism such as affirmative action and race baiters such as Al Sharpton. Blacks are not good enough to compete on their own, they argue, so big daddy government must give them a hand up and take care of them just as big daddy massa did. "Massa don't want to hear that slave shit, sing him something different!"
If you take a look at just about every problem society faces today you can trace it back to people with power wanting more power, disenfranchising one group to play off another, keeping us all separated so we can't unite and defeat them. Racism has always existed and probably will always exist, but the idea of permanent racial victims exists only as a device by the elite to divide people.
Now, here's where I'm gonna get really racist, as one person has insinuated, by citing statistics. According to the FBI, 2,720 black people were murdered in 2010, 2,459 of them at the hands of another black person. Another study, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, discovered that 94% of all black murder victims were killed by other black people.
One black violent thug was shot by an Hispanic idiot wannabe hero who's painted as "lily white" by race baiters and all of a sudden there's a huge outcry and the beginnings of race riots. The nearly 3,000 other black people killed by other black people every year - not a peep. If Zimmerman was black it has been demonstrably proven over the past three decades that the event wouldn't make the news. About 13,000 people are murdered in total every year. How many of them do we ever hear about on the news? How many of them get a "Justice for Jane Doe" campaign, or two televised speeches by the President, or mass demonstrations in the streets of major cities? How many millions of black babies are killed in abortion mills every year (Planned Parenthood was founded with the specific intent of exterminating black people)? How much harm is the government and racist leaders like Al Sharpton doing to the black community? How much harm is the black community doing to itself? And in spite of all of this we barely hear anything. Whites who speak out are labeled racist and blacks who speak out are labeled Uncle Tom.
Somehow is it more real when an Hispanic (or even a white) man kills a black man than when a black man kills another black man? Is that because the power elite in the media told you so? I don't think so. I don't think it's more real when OJ got off on the death of his wife because there was reasonable doubt because OJ was a black man killing a white woman. I don't think black people should consider it more real that George Zimmerman got off on the death of Trayvon Martin because there was reasonable doubt because Zimmerman was whatever the hell race you want to call him killing a black man. Can we not look past the colour of peoples' skins and see into the content of their characters as a great man once said before he himself was murdered by a racist? Must we divide ourselves among races, playing into the elite's hands, weakening our own power, enslaving ourselves? How does any of that make sense?
It is a tragedy when anyone has to die, but it is an even bigger tragedy when we let those deaths needlessly divide us further. Al Sharpton doesn't care about Trayvon Martin, neither does President Obama, and neither do any of the people on TV who are making money by hyping the incident. Obama will never have to bury his children because of a fight with an armed man, thankfully he has Secret Service to protect them. However, he is stuck seeing things through the lens of race as the elite of his day indoctrinated him, and now that he has all the power in the world he is using it to indoctrinate others. In his ignorance he is part of the problem, a problem that uses race to divide the one human race as evil always does to secure power for itself.
I might be veering off into even more alien ground here, but here is how I see the endgame play out. Evil has no power of its own. All power comes from God, even the power that evil misuses. Just as a solar powered machine cannot be used to destroy the sun, there is nothing evil can do to to defeat God.
All the super evil people in history have eventually outstretched their limits and were murdered by their own people. Stalin, Timur, Attila, Mao, all the tyrants, however powerful, however many millions they terrorised or killed, they were eventually killed by a guard or someone who saw the opportunity to strike and put an end to someone whom everyone hated. Evil loses because it isolates itself. In alienating all possible allies and ruling entirely through fear, evil leaves itself open to that one person who inevitably arises who has nothing to lose and the perfect opening to get at the tyrant one on one. Once they are free, the people, who have been living in secret, watching every step they take against the seemingly omnipotent authorities, immediately resume their lives where they last left off as best they can.
Although the New World Order has a lot of power on the Earth, all the power they have comes from God. No matter how powerful they get they can never win. They will lose; the only question is how much damage will they cause before they are taken down? How long will it take for the world to recover? It took India a century to recover from Timur's destruction, but it recovered. Stalin did his best to destroy the Russian church, but it sprang back once it was free to do so. The unconquerable spirit of free people will be restored as soon as the peoples' burden is lifted. How badly will they destroy the world? I don't know. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because they cannot destroy our freedom, only we can surrender it. They can never destroy love. As A Course in Miracles says:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
That is why no matter how powerful they get, they can never be more powerful than you are. They have already lost. All else is just spectacle.
We should use this tragedy as a chance to unite against the evils of racism, not to add more fuel to the fire. With that I close my analysis of the Trayvon Martin case.
The people involved were 17 year old Trayvon Martin, black, and 29 year old George Zimmerman, Hispanic. They are the only two who know exactly what happened that night, and, unfortunately, Mr. Martin is dead so we can never have the complete story. What we do know is that someone started a fight that Mr. Zimmerman ended with a single gunshot.
The event ballooned into a media circus that lasted a year and a half until, 13 July 2013, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second degree murder after what was very nearly a hung jury. Threats of violence, and some actual violence, erupted following the verdict. Protests were staged around the country. The President made two comments, one good, one bad. This is pretty much the most objective account of what has happened.
Now here's the part sprinkled with my analysis.
First, Sanford is a lower-middle class community with a crime problem. 18.5% of the population is below the poverty line. In 2011 the people of Sanford formed a neighborhood watch program to deal with the crime, with Zimmerman being appointed as the coordinator. George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin's father's fiancee (where he was living at the time) were renting homes in the town.
Trayvon Martin was not a kid, as many portray him. Neither was he innocent. He was not the ten year old seen in the pictures. He was a grown man, he portrayed himself as a thug on the Internet, and he was a petty criminal, having been suspended from school many times for painting graffiti and stealing jewelry. His parents were divorced. His mother sent him to live with his father because he was too much trouble for her. The night of the shooting he goes out in the rain to a 7-Eleven and call his friend Rachel Jeantel (who lacks all common sense and tact). After 18 minutes on the phone the call abruptly ends for unknown reasons. Martin was not most likely not buying candy at the 7-Eleven, he was buying ingredients for a drug popular in the hip hop gangster culture that he talked about frequently on the Internet. The drug, known as "purple drank," "lean," or "syrup" is made with cough syrup containing codeine or dextromethorphan (such as in Robitussin DM, which Martin was talking about with some friends on Facebook). He most likely was planning on mixing the Skittles and Arizona watermellon drink that he had purchased with the Robitussin to create "some fire ass lean," as one friend called it. Extended use of the cough syrup based drug is linked to liver damage and psychotic episodes.*
Next, George Zimmerman is often portrayed as "lily white", a "white-Hispanic", or as "mixed-race" by people trying to spin the case. Unsurprisingly, NONE of these same people call the President "mixed-race", "white-black", or "white" when both he and Zimmerman have one white parent. The President is 100% black and Zimmerman is white above any other races, if not entirely white. This is not because of his complexion or features. Zimmerman has dark skin and his eyes and other facial features clearly belong to someone who is not white.
According to the other wiki, "during the 18 months preceding the February 26 shooting, Zimmerman called the non-emergency police line seven times. On five of those calls, Zimmerman reported suspicious looking men in the area, but never offered the men's race without first being asked by the dispatcher." Zimmerman takes his job very seriously. I would argue too seriously. He was driving around with a gun, safety off, looking for suspicious men. 26 February he finds his sixth suspicious looking man, and this time it does not end well.
Zimmerman calls the police from his truck saying he has found yet another suspicious looking man. After four minutes he gets out of his truck to follow Martin because, as the tape indicates, Martin started running at this point. The dispatcher advises Zimmerman not to pursue Martin but he doesn't listen. Martin calls Rachel Jeantel back but his call gets disconnected again, for unknown reasosn.
Someone started the fight. When it was over Zimmerman was bleeding from his nose and the back of his head, Martin was shot in the chest and lie dead in the grass with bloody knuckles.
There were eight witnesses, of whom only two saw part of the altercation. They reported (from wiki):
A witness to the confrontation just prior to the shooting stated that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and punching him, while Zimmerman was yelling for help. This witness, who identified himself as "John", stated that "the guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, 'Help! Help!' and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911". He went on to say that when he got upstairs and looked down, "the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point."
One eye-witness statement given the night of the shooting describes "a black male, wearing a dark colored 'hoodie' on top of a white or Hispanic male who was yelling for help." The witness said that the black male was throwing punches "MMA [mixed martial arts] style." After hearing a "pop," he saw the black male "laid out on the grass." When the witness was subsequently interviewed weeks later by a different agency, the witness said he thought that the black male was either punching or pinning the lighter skinned male underneath him. He was no longer certain who was calling for help, having not seen their mouths in the dark. He was still certain that the black male had been on top of the lighter-skinned male.
The eighth witness, Jeantel, heard part of the altercation from the phone: "She then heard Martin say, "What are you following me for?" followed by a man's voice responding, "What are you doing around here?"" The phone then went silent.
What happened after that we can only speculate. Zimmerman asked Martin what he was doing out at night, then someone started the fight. Trayvon Martin was either the instigator or else he got the upper hand and had Zimmerman pinned to the ground and was whaling on him, or as Jeantel calls it "whoop ass." An audience member's mouth falls open at the revelation that Jeantel basically admitted it was Trayvon who started the fight. Foreign national Piers Morgan tried to pull her fat out of the fire by asking "if Trayvon was being attacked, would he have 'whooped ass' as you call it?" She immediately corrects him, saying that "whoop ass" cannot be conjugated to form "whooped ass". He nudged her a second time and she finally gave the answer he wanted, that yes, Trayvon was defending himself, because Android phones can't be turned off if you're the one on top in a fight.
There is a difference between beating someone to death and "whoop ass". "Whoop ass" is all fun and games, even if it leads to concussion and paralysis or death. It's the intent behind "whoop ass" that counts, and the intent is, well I don't know. Jeantel is about as clear as mud. I've understood dogs and cats better than I understand her. I don't know what the difference between "whoop ass" and a savage beating is, and according to Jeantel that misunderstanding is why Zimmerman killed Trayvon.
Tracy Martin, Trayvon's father, listening to 9-1-1 recordings, testified that the person crying for help was not his son, although he later changed his story after the case. Sybrina, Trayvon's mother, testified that it was her son. A neighbor testified that it was Zimmerman. The FBI analysed the recordings and said the quality was too poor to determine whose voice it was.
As the autopsy reveals, Martin was on top of Zimmerman when he got shot. It also revealed that Martin had extensive liver damage well beyond what would be expected in a 17-year-old, further evidence that he was on a drug run the night he got shot. (*I'm not condemning recreational drug use, I'm merely illustrating that Trayvon Martin was not an innocent little boy who got shot because he was a black kid out buying candy. Also, if this drug - and potentially others - had caused this much damage to his liver it probably also caused damage to his brain, and he was likely not thinking clearly the night he went out and started a fight when he could have easily outrun Zimmerman home and called the police if he was really worried. Yet in spite of what all rational people would know is a bad idea, Martin likely started a fight with a man in the middle of the night and ended up dead.)
There is no evidence that Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin. Zimmerman has black relatives, he has worked with the black community in Sanford to get them more active in the neighborhood watch program, and he was "one of the few to take any action to protest the 2010 beating of Sherman Ware, a black homeless man, by the son of a Sanford police officer."
What do I think happened? George Zimmerman went out looking for trouble. Trayvon Martin went out possibly looking for something to burgle, if his past is any indication, and no doubt open to the possibility of a fight. Rachel Jeantel goaded Martin into starting a fight with an armed man in the middle of the night. It was Jeantel who sewed the seeds of fear or rage or whatever in Martin while they talked on the phone. "Some creepy ass cracker is following me." "He can't do that! You better whoop ass so he gets the message!" The gang culture Martin and Jeantel idolise combined with confusion and testosterone took over rational judgment and Martin and when Zimmerman asked "what are you doing here?" Martin started beating him. Zimmerman greatly underestimated Martin and, fearing for his life, took his gun and shot Martin, happening to hit him fatally.
In President Obama's first address regarding the verdict, he acted like a leader and said basically "it's a tragedy that a family lost their son but the justice system is based on evidence and, let's face it, there's no evidence to convict Zimmerman, so we should accept the verdict of 'not guilty' as a victory for our justice system, as it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to put one innocent man in prison. Now, in respect for the family let's all put this behind us."
In his second address he said (exact quote) "you know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn't go away." He then went on to say "there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off."
Yes, I know what it's like to get nervous looks out of people as I walk by. I know what it's like for people to turn their porch lights on as I walk past their houses at night. Trayvon Martin probably couldn't have been me. I don't live in a high crime area, but I do like to go for walks at crazy hours of the night and I do often make people uncomfortable by my looks and mannerisms. No one where I live will probably shoot me, and I doubt anyone would have shot Obama either during his carefree childhood in Hawaii, or his time spent in Indonesia with his step father who owned a lot of exotic animals. I'm not saying he's lying, but he is definitely not telling the truth either when he says "Trayvon could have been me 35 years ago." Maybe during his time in Chicago, that cesspool of crime and human suffering, but not when he was 17. Obama did not move to the mainland until he was 18.
From the wiki page on Obama: "Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, 'That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind.'
He started to think about black nationalism and anger toward whites in spite of the colourblindness of his peers. Fellow student Mark Hebing recalls "we didn't think about his blackness." From the same LA Times article, we have more accounts of Obama's time in Hawaii:
"His reflections about the race issue surprised all of us," said Kellie Furushima, who knew him well. "He gave no indication of feeling uncomfortable in school, and I never witnessed or heard anyone being unkind to him.
"Being in Hawaii, we had a lot of different races," classmate Vernette Ferreira Shaffer said. "People would tell ethnic jokes, but it was more about making fun of stereotypes than trying to do a cool thing."
Hanging out and working with many black people, I know they make just as many jokes (maybe more) about black stereotypes as any other group. Comedian Chris Rock in Bring the Pain even jokes about the difference between "black people" and "niggers," whom normal black people hate more than white people.
Inside all of this is the anger Obama alludes to. Black people are angry about the way they were treated during the time of slavery and Jim Crow. He says "that doesn't go away." I ask why? Yes, it's true that the slave trade was one of the worst acts of inhumanity in history, but let us not forget it was started in Africa by black people selling other black people to at first Muslims and then to white people. There is still racial tension in Africa between Negroes and Pygmies, two distinct black groups who view the other as nonhuman and have fought wars to wipe the other out. It was also whites who eventually ended slavery, beginning with groups such as the Quakers and taking off when the Methodists got behind the abolition movement, finally culminating in the deaths of over 600,000 men to put a stop to the barbarism once and for all. Immediately after the Civil War many of the Southern states, with majority black populations, elected blacks to federal office. It was not until Reconstruction ended and the white Democrats took power once again that blacks were rendered slaves in all but name until the 1950s. President Eisenhower, Republican, wanted to solve the problem by passing a host of civil rights laws, and he did go very far but was checked by Senate leader Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, who was one of the biggest racists of the time. It was only after Johnson lost face for killing kids in Vietnam that he finished what Eisenhower started, and wrongly took credit for being a civil rights leader when he wanted nothing more than to reinstitute slavery. 50 years of indoctrination in public schools have led millions to believe that the Republicans, who fought and died by the thousands for the rights of black people, are evil while the Democrats, who fought and died to keep blacks enslaved and started the KKK, are good. Truly a cosmic irony.
Why does the racial hurt never go away? When my ancestors came to America a century ago we weren't even second-class citizens and we certainly weren't white (although I'd probably be considered white today I do not self-identify as white). We had hardships, we were mistreated, and we really still aren't viewed in that good a light, and still I have no racial anger toward anyone. I don't think to myself "my ancestors were treated like shit so I'm gonna hate white people forever!" It makes no sense to hold on to anger, to give that kind of power to other people who did nothing to me, and ruin my own life in the process by destroying my own mental health. Anger causes far more harm than good, especially to one's self.
Yes, blacks suffered more than probably any other group in history except the Jews, but just about more effort was put into fixing the injustices done to blacks than to any other group. Wars were not fought and countries were not destroyed to fix other race relations or bring other people out of bondage. I would appreciate one tenth the effort done for my people.
Why does racial hurt never go away? I argue because it is useful. The power elite keep blacks as victims through soft racism such as affirmative action and race baiters such as Al Sharpton. Blacks are not good enough to compete on their own, they argue, so big daddy government must give them a hand up and take care of them just as big daddy massa did. "Massa don't want to hear that slave shit, sing him something different!"
If you take a look at just about every problem society faces today you can trace it back to people with power wanting more power, disenfranchising one group to play off another, keeping us all separated so we can't unite and defeat them. Racism has always existed and probably will always exist, but the idea of permanent racial victims exists only as a device by the elite to divide people.
Now, here's where I'm gonna get really racist, as one person has insinuated, by citing statistics. According to the FBI, 2,720 black people were murdered in 2010, 2,459 of them at the hands of another black person. Another study, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, discovered that 94% of all black murder victims were killed by other black people.
One black violent thug was shot by an Hispanic idiot wannabe hero who's painted as "lily white" by race baiters and all of a sudden there's a huge outcry and the beginnings of race riots. The nearly 3,000 other black people killed by other black people every year - not a peep. If Zimmerman was black it has been demonstrably proven over the past three decades that the event wouldn't make the news. About 13,000 people are murdered in total every year. How many of them do we ever hear about on the news? How many of them get a "Justice for Jane Doe" campaign, or two televised speeches by the President, or mass demonstrations in the streets of major cities? How many millions of black babies are killed in abortion mills every year (Planned Parenthood was founded with the specific intent of exterminating black people)? How much harm is the government and racist leaders like Al Sharpton doing to the black community? How much harm is the black community doing to itself? And in spite of all of this we barely hear anything. Whites who speak out are labeled racist and blacks who speak out are labeled Uncle Tom.
Somehow is it more real when an Hispanic (or even a white) man kills a black man than when a black man kills another black man? Is that because the power elite in the media told you so? I don't think so. I don't think it's more real when OJ got off on the death of his wife because there was reasonable doubt because OJ was a black man killing a white woman. I don't think black people should consider it more real that George Zimmerman got off on the death of Trayvon Martin because there was reasonable doubt because Zimmerman was whatever the hell race you want to call him killing a black man. Can we not look past the colour of peoples' skins and see into the content of their characters as a great man once said before he himself was murdered by a racist? Must we divide ourselves among races, playing into the elite's hands, weakening our own power, enslaving ourselves? How does any of that make sense?
It is a tragedy when anyone has to die, but it is an even bigger tragedy when we let those deaths needlessly divide us further. Al Sharpton doesn't care about Trayvon Martin, neither does President Obama, and neither do any of the people on TV who are making money by hyping the incident. Obama will never have to bury his children because of a fight with an armed man, thankfully he has Secret Service to protect them. However, he is stuck seeing things through the lens of race as the elite of his day indoctrinated him, and now that he has all the power in the world he is using it to indoctrinate others. In his ignorance he is part of the problem, a problem that uses race to divide the one human race as evil always does to secure power for itself.
I might be veering off into even more alien ground here, but here is how I see the endgame play out. Evil has no power of its own. All power comes from God, even the power that evil misuses. Just as a solar powered machine cannot be used to destroy the sun, there is nothing evil can do to to defeat God.
All the super evil people in history have eventually outstretched their limits and were murdered by their own people. Stalin, Timur, Attila, Mao, all the tyrants, however powerful, however many millions they terrorised or killed, they were eventually killed by a guard or someone who saw the opportunity to strike and put an end to someone whom everyone hated. Evil loses because it isolates itself. In alienating all possible allies and ruling entirely through fear, evil leaves itself open to that one person who inevitably arises who has nothing to lose and the perfect opening to get at the tyrant one on one. Once they are free, the people, who have been living in secret, watching every step they take against the seemingly omnipotent authorities, immediately resume their lives where they last left off as best they can.
Although the New World Order has a lot of power on the Earth, all the power they have comes from God. No matter how powerful they get they can never win. They will lose; the only question is how much damage will they cause before they are taken down? How long will it take for the world to recover? It took India a century to recover from Timur's destruction, but it recovered. Stalin did his best to destroy the Russian church, but it sprang back once it was free to do so. The unconquerable spirit of free people will be restored as soon as the peoples' burden is lifted. How badly will they destroy the world? I don't know. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because they cannot destroy our freedom, only we can surrender it. They can never destroy love. As A Course in Miracles says:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
That is why no matter how powerful they get, they can never be more powerful than you are. They have already lost. All else is just spectacle.
We should use this tragedy as a chance to unite against the evils of racism, not to add more fuel to the fire. With that I close my analysis of the Trayvon Martin case.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The End of Obama
Benghazi. A CIA gunrunning scheme that went bad and led to the deaths of four Americans. A stand down order that had to come from the president himself. A major lie about the nature of the attack, blaming it on a video, the creator of which has been disappeared by the government, because the First Amendment means nothing when Muhammad is involved. Treason, by definition of the Constitution. The single worst thing any president has ever done, ever, by a lot.
The IRS being used as a weapon against conservative and small government political groups in 2010.
Even the far left MSNBC agrees, the government does not tread on political speech. As Joe Scarborough says "political speech is sacrosanct." It doesn't matter where on the political spectrum you are, this is a gross violation of federal authority and heads must roll.
To top it all off, the Justice Department has been illegally spying on the Associated Press. The records from more than 20 separate phone lines used by over 100 AP journalists and editors were seized by the DOJ.
Any one of these is enough to warrent impeachment. Obama has all three. IF he survives this, it will mean he is a de facto absolutist dictator. No one will do anything to stop him from running for a third or fourth or life-time term as ruler of the country. IF he survives this, there is no justice.
The IRS being used as a weapon against conservative and small government political groups in 2010.
Even the far left MSNBC agrees, the government does not tread on political speech. As Joe Scarborough says "political speech is sacrosanct." It doesn't matter where on the political spectrum you are, this is a gross violation of federal authority and heads must roll.
To top it all off, the Justice Department has been illegally spying on the Associated Press. The records from more than 20 separate phone lines used by over 100 AP journalists and editors were seized by the DOJ.
Any one of these is enough to warrent impeachment. Obama has all three. IF he survives this, it will mean he is a de facto absolutist dictator. No one will do anything to stop him from running for a third or fourth or life-time term as ruler of the country. IF he survives this, there is no justice.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Petrus Romanus
Pope Benedict XVI, age 85, has announced that his health is too poor to faithfully fulfill his duties as Pope, and he will step down on 28 February, being the first Pope to step down in 598 years. He is a very courageous man and I applaude his decision.
Pope Benedict is also a theologin, and well aware (as is everyone in the Vatican) of the prophecy of Saint Malachy. The prophecy, which was hidden in Vatican archives for nearly five centuries, reveals a highly accurate list of 112 future Popes, following Innocent II, until the end of days (starring Richard Harris). Pope Benedict XVI, who took his name from Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order, the symbol of which is an olive branch, was the 111th Pope on the list.
There is one Pope left. The final part of the prophecy (according to wiki translation) reads: "In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations:
and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed,
and the terrible judge will judge his people.
The End.
If the prophecy is correct, and it has been scary accurate so far, the next Pope, who is expected to be selected before Easter, will preside over the Church during the end of days. Just when the end of days will begin no one can say, but there are supposed to be seven years of tribulations ultimately culminating in the creation of the new Heaven and new Earth; the final defeat of sin and death, and the glorious reign of the Lord forever.
Now, the official position of the Catholic Church and fundamaterialist archskep-dicks is that the prophecy is a 17th century forgery, which is probably the only thing both groups agree on. Supposedly, since the prophecy is "too accurate" it must have been fabricated to take into account the past Popes, and that, supposedly, all the predictions after the document was released to the public have to be fudged to fit. Unfortunately for both that's not true, as anyone can see that the later predictions have indeed been eerily accurate. Here are just a few:
* Benedict XV (1914-1922) was prophecised as "religion destroyed." He reigned during the rapid rise of Communism, which saw hundreds of millions of people forced into atheism, attempts by the Soviet Union to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, and the First World War that led to widespread disillusionment with religion among the peoples of Europe.
* Pius XI (1922-1939) was prophecised as "intrepid faith." He stared down fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to establish the Vatican as an independent state, freeing it from decades of oppression by the Italian government.
* Pius XII (1939-1958) was the "angelic shepherd" who first sheltered the Roman Jews during the Holocaust, and later made pleas to the Hungarian government to protect the Jewish population of their country as well.
* John XXIII (1958-1963) "Shepherd and sailor." He was Patriarch of Venice, the spiritual leader of probably the world's most famous maritime city.
* Paul VI (1963-1978) "Flower of flowers." His coat of arms contains three fleur de lis.
* John Paul I (1978) "From the midst of the moon." His reign began during a half moon, and lasted one month.
* John Paul II (1978-2005) "From the labour of the sun." He was born during a solar eclipse and later entombed during another solar eclipse.
The past seven Popes have been predicted with stunning accuracy. If the document were a forgery how could a forger have gotten such a remarkable string of hits three hundred years after the document was supposedly written for political purposes? Even if you don't believe the prophecy to be genuine (I do), this is still a highly significant time historically. We are living during the last days of a prediction made 900 or 300 years ago, depending upon which side you take, which may or may not have had a significant influence on the past several centuries of Church history. Either way, we are living in interesting times.
Always love.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
