FEAR IS NOW THE MAIN INSTRUMENT OF ENSLAVEMENT

The fabric of jurisprudence, the law that governs and constrains presidential power, and the covenant that binds the will of the people with those who are presumably elected, has become dangerously weakened; and now, after thirteen years of this corruptive process, we are clearly in for hard times.

Looking at this power projected overseas, as the nation's foreign policy, even watching it as it gradually brings psychological insecurity and fear to our own cities and countryside; we end by observing the same undeniable strategies at work. The longest continuous period of war in our history is happening now; and it is matched by the longest chapter of war propaganda that the people have ever had to endure.

Considering the repetitious and absurd series of scares, the never-ending cast of new bogeymen, the multiplicity of  "Hitlers", of which there never seems to be an end; only a gullible people, or a people driven into a stupor by endless propaganda, would pay any mind to such tactics. The repeated  lies have worn down the will of some, and leave so many numb, or in an unsettled state of fear.

Fear is the driving force of the oppressive war propaganda, fear is used as a marketing tool, and is used to gain the acceptance  and normalization of the NSA Surveillance State. Fear is finally omnipresent when one has become a slave, or is acting as a good citizen in a fascist state.

As James Risen has written in his new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War:

Fear is hard to question. It is central to the financial well-being of countless federal bureaucrats, contractors, subcontractors, analysts, and pundits. Fear generates funds.

The Intercept has an interview of James Risen by Glenn Greenwald, which I recommend to readers.

But when fear is a means to an end, and the goal of US policy is the fragmentation and destruction of other people's societies,--even to the undoing of their culture;-- then going past war's previous destruction,  to a new stage of chaos, is also a more corrupt and vicious kind of aggression. This is what has been done, and is still being done, to what remains of Iraq and Syria.

The US leadership, congressional and presidential, is implicated in a history that has continued for years. This is a process of subversion, carried out on the Dark Side, beyond public scrutiny, and abetted by cable and broadcast networks, with the falsification of events by these propaganda organs.

Libya's society has been cast into the outer darkness, by nations whose leaders have expressed no remorse, and who have used the breakdown of authority in that land, as a cover, in order to move arsenals of weapons into the hands of real extremists, the same extremists to whom our hypocrite president refers, in public, as America's sworn enemies.  The former president of France, M. Sarkozy, one of the schemers behind this double war crime, first attacked Libya, and then covertly transfered the aggression toward Syria. He has only recently resumed his post as the leader of French conservatives, instead of being brought to justice for these crimes.

Turkish authorities continue to facilitate transfers of supplies to Islamic extremists,  funneled like the arms the CIA previously smuggled out of Libya into this very dirty game; but it is nothing new. The United States has been busy training  those religious extremists whose mission is to destroy a lawful government in Syria. The most terrible of the bogeymen, the multi-national ISIS, or ISIL, as Obama insists on calling it, has been receiving converts from the ranks of those the US trained, in Jordan, and has been armed from many sources, the Gulf States and Saudis, as well as by having weapons which the Americans have spread around.

The United States has a history of promoting state terror through proxy armies, using zealots and psychotics who are happy to do what they are inclined to do. From arming the Contras in Nicaragua, which was done illegally in the 1980s, we come to  the latest craze of advancing sectarian, or religiously inspired terror, as Obama's policy of lies and hysterical claims permits.

Andre Vltchek, a novelist and war correspondent, brings us to an understanding of the ends our country has been pursuing in Iraq. At personal risk, he traveled deep into the Kurdish land of northern Iraq, where the Kurdish Peshmerga has pushed back against ISIS troops, regaining their villages to the west, coming within 15 kilometers of Mosul. He writes:

In the evening I am having a cup of tea with an old scientist, a nuclear physicist, Ishmael Khalil, originally from Tikrit University, now a refugee. We are in the ancient tearoom in the center of Erbil.

“All that I had was destroyed... I have no idea what is left of my university... Western allies supported the IS: Saudis, Qataris, and Turks. Americans are the main reason for this insanity – for total destruction of Iraq. Not just me, ask any child and you will hear the same thing... We all used to belong to a great and proud nation. Now everything is fragmented, and ruined. We have nothing – all of us became beggars and refugees in our land,” Khalil says.

To take what has been fragmented by violence and terror, and to use fear
in a canny way to further atomize and divide a society, can be a means to an extreme where society breaks down, and a nation's culture is wounded. And what empires inflict on their prey, they bring back with terrible results to their people at home. 

william blake THE HUMAN ABSTRACT

PITY would be no more

If we did not make somebody Poor;

And Mercy no more could be

If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,

Till the selfish loves increase:

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the ground with tears;

Then Humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of Mystery over his head;

And the Catterpiller and Fly

Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat;

And the Raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea

Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree;

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the Human Brain.

WHO ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES?

By Grayson

Grant Wood's most famous painting features an iconic farmer, his prim daughter and a pitchfork. His most satiric painting was Daughters of Revolution. Three white-haired ladies pose with raised teacup before a recreation of George Washington Crossing The Delaware. With their hatchet mouths and squinty, almost feral, eyes, they seem to gloat over the mere fact of their birth.

Wood completed the painting in 1932 when the country was deep in depression, thousands out of work, homeless. Breadlines were common. Wood makes the point—still relevant today—that the robber barons surely had nothing to fear from the polite, pampered ladies of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who are about as far from real revolution as one could get.

I often wonder how a country so enamored of its revolutionary origins could produce so many obedient apostles of the status quo, which always aligns itself with wealth and power against those who have neither.

For example: all those who sided with the insurance industry against universal health care, including the so-called “Tea Party” Republicans, who have been known to dress up in the costumes of their revolutionary idols.

As I understand it, the kinds of revolutionaries celebrated by the DAR and the Tea Party don't usually side with the well-fed and complacent at the top, but arise from below, when the have-nots begin to suspect the political and economic cards are stacked against them.

This seems to be where we are now: record numbers of people in poverty, who, in spite of their best efforts, even working full time, still struggle to get ahead. Among them are many former middle class people—nice, decent folk who woke up one morning to find they couldn't send their kids to college. Now many of them can't even adequately feed their families or keep a roof over their heads.

In Detroit, where the price of tap water has soared above the average and many are jobless, the city has cut the water off for thousands of people, mostly black, who can't pay their bills—a move condemned by the United Nations as an international human rights violation.

Hard to believe this is the U.S.A.! In fact, it's what happens when you have a small cadre of multimillionaires deciding the fate of the rest of us—which campaign to back, which legislators to buy, whether or not we'll have health care or keep Social Security, and where the next war will be. Literally life and death decisions, rarely motivated by decency or ethics, but strictly driven by profit.

The result is a wholesale attack on the Commons—to wipe out pension funds, destroy unions, slash public education, and turn everything, even the right to clean water, over to corporations.

And rest assured, if it succeeds in Detroit, it can happen anywhere.

A stellar example of this mentality is Texas' own Greg Abbott, candidate for Governor, and enthusiast for privatizing just about everything, including education. In 2011, Abbott supported cuts to Texas schools by $5.4-billion, resulting in job losses for 12,000 teachers across the state.

As Attorney-General, Abbott ruled to keep confidential the locations of dangerous chemicals, like ammonium nitrate, the stuff that blew up the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, obliterating dozens of homes, a middle school and a fifty-unit apartment complex.

Abbott's campaign receives funding from the billionaire Koch family, which has interests in the chemical-fertilizer industry.

Clearly, the playing field is out of plumb. And it's not apt to change for the better so long as those in power remain virtually indistinguishable from the robber barons they serve.

Nor can we expect much support from the likes of the “Daughters of Revolution” or the Tea Party, those stalwart celebrants of our first war for freedom, who, had they actually been there, likely would not have been throwing tea in Boston Harbor, but would have sided  with the Tories, just as they side with those in power today.

Indeed, there's nothing particularly honorable or noble in polite conformity. It would be hard to name a single positive change in our world achieved by that crowd. Conformists did not cross the color line to occupy lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, nor did they risk their lives registering blacks to vote in Philadelphia, Mississippi in '64. Conformists did not end child labor laws or bring women the right to vote. They had no hand in creating Medicare or Social Security. And just as they were absent in the marches to end the Vietnam War, they're now missing in the struggle to end our current wars, including the latest senseless provocations toward Russia.     

If somehow we manage to get workers unionized, if we succeed in raising pay to a living wage, if we start making corporations pay their fair share, and make college available to all, you can bet it will be the conformists—the power-brokers and their apostles—who will stand in the way, as they always do.

As most revolutions start from below by people without wealth or power, so this one will, too. The Occupy Movement was the beginning. Let the conformists stay home.

 

First published in Fort Worth Weekly.

CHRIS HEDGES AT NYC GAZA RALLY: "GODS COVENANT IN THE PROMISED LAND"

ISRAEL IGNORES WORLD OPINION, AS IT CONTINUES ITS MASSACRE IN GAZA

AFP Photo/Marco Longari

London's Telegraph has reported that Israel's IDF has killed more children, more than the total of Hamas fighters killed, during the latest outbreak of carnage in Gaza.

Well over 1,000 people have been killed by IDF forces.

The Israelis have bombed hospitals, and paramedics,--and  grade schools,-- even those under the protection of the UN, serving as shelters for civilians. Drones and snipers, tanks, have pushed deep into Gaza, and it is as though the population of Palestinians is being squeezed in a vise. The Israeli government seems incapable of hearing about, or assuming any responsibility for bombing UN monitored facilities, or other civilian structures. They have become deaf to accusations.

There is always cruelty and sadism performed by the occupier over a subject people; and it exists in the hearts of those who cheer and pull up lawn chairs, to watch high explosives turn Palestinians and their dwellings into rubble and blood. Israel's barking voice, Netanyahu, its strange leader, has admitted recently that there will be no two state solution, There was never going to be such an agreement. And really it must be concluded that all Israeli negotiations have been examples of bad faith,--a deception undertaken  in order to steal Palestinian land. It was always about building more settlements for Israelis, while cornering the Palestinians into ghettos, into places where water is scarce, where farmers come under sniper fire as they try to till their land, where fishermen are harassed and bottled up close to shore.

Most Americans are unaware of the harsh and arbitrary limitations placed on foodstuff that is allowed to enter Gaza. Israel puts a stranglehold on the allotted calories that each person is Gaza is expected to consume. They have bragged about putting Palestinians "on a diet". This is no joke. It has been calculated scientifically; and this stingy allotment of nourishment has been coldly calculated.

The worst element of the massacre is that Netanyahu manufactured his obscene case for bombing and ground invasion; and it turns out that he was in too much of a hurry to wait for Israeli police to get to the bottom of the investigation into the killing of the three Israeli teenagers. The fact persists, that Netanyahu manipulated events and prolonged uncertainty about the kidnapped kids, even though he had been informed, privately, that they were killed soon after being taken.

The Israeli leader drove his country into its present tantrum of destruction. And it turns out that political Hamas, the party elected to govern Gaza, was not responsible for the deaths of the Israeli teens.


These events have come to shatter a relatively quiet period in Gaza, that has existed for a while between Hamas and the Israeli authorities. But now, the terrifying destruction of civilians cannot be called war; for it is primarily a slaughter. It is murder. No comparison exists between the arsenal of US arms, that Israel has, and the homemade rockets Hamas uses. What an occupied people has done, is to resist, to face the colonial power that will not allow their underlings any foothold of sovereignty, or any allowance of dignity. Colonial Israel doesn't offer them even second class citizenship; it will only administer the lives of its subjects.

Netanyahu did not let out that the kidnapped teenagers were dead; and he stirred up anxiety and public dread, and used the uncertainty as a pretext to commence attacks on Hamas , in Gaza, on July 1st, before an investigation could have properly identified the perpetrators. And this was prior to the Hamas retaliation, with its rudimentary, unguided rockets.

 Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach were killed in a car that was abandoned later by their kidnappers; and their bodies, as reported by The Guardian, were found in a valley near Hebron.

Following the discovery of the bodies the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, blamed Hamas for the murders, warning the militant group will pay a heavy price for the deaths. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay ... [They] were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts," Netanyahu said in a statement.

 But Netanyahu went with collective guilt, once more,  which he managed to heap upon Hamas and the people of Gaza; and he never intended to rein in the revengeful power he was unleashing. At the funeral of the slain Israeli youths, he cried out, "They sanctify death, we sanctify life...They sanctify cruelty, and we mercy and compassion. That is the secret of our strength."

But the Prime Minister was painting a target on Gaza again.

But needless to say, the duly elected government in Gaza is not using those whom it serves as human shields; and Palestinians love their children as much as Israelis love their own kids. And yet the corrosive propaganda would have us believing the absurd.  Chris Hedges recently wrote that Israel cannot seem to self-correct:

When all this does not work, when it becomes clear that the Palestinians once again have not become dormant and passive, Israel will take another step, more radical than the last. The “process of destruction” will be stopped only from outside Israel. Israel, captive to the process, is incapable of imposing self-restraint.

When Palestinian leaders reject passivity, and respond as soon as the community is attacked, Netanyahu calls them terrorists.

What kind of terrible judgment  is being enacted when Israel's huge fragmentation bombs obliterate whole families? How will killing four little boys who are playing on the beach,--all of them wiped out by an Israeli airman who takes special care to pick them off, --how will this settle accounts with God? After Israel saturates Gaza with a deluge of blood, how will the garden grow? They are clearly insane if they think the climate will improve.

This kind of behavior is in no way moderated by self-reflection. A different leader with a different mindset, whose goals were really expressions of compassion, could have included some remorse for the tragic killing of the other teenager, 17 year old Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The Palestinian boy was forced to drink gasoline, and then burned to death, by a couple of Israeli teens, who thought they were exacting revenge for the deaths of young Frankel, Shaar, and Yifrach.

The opportunity was never grasped by Netanyahu (who called the killing of Khdeir "loathsome").  But the Prime Minister was focused on ending a great many Palestinian lives; and he did what he could to whip up the rage of the Israeli public.

***

Trembling

by Hilmy Salem

We can resist the sectarian kings

With a single turn in the opposite direction.

But given how nimble we are

The strong ones tremble

Every time two people exchange a smile.

But for those who trade in doubt

Before love, and after it,

Our gift to them: a crutch.

--translated from the Arabic by Dima Hilal and Idra Novey

 

O SAY CAN YOU SEE BY THE DAWN'S BURLY BLACKWATER?

An article today,  in The Voice Of Russia, points out the inclination of the US administration to abandon any path to improve relations with Russia. The new US candidate for ambassador to that country comes with some interesting diplomatic baggage. John Tefft, now awaiting Moscow's approval, has had previous service as US ambassador to Georgia and Ukraine, when US meddling in the domestic politics of those two countries was at a critical stage.

Though summoned out of retirement, Tefft's diplomatic career is also somewhat interesting. Under Barack Obama's presidency, from 2009 through 2013, he was US Ambassador to Ukraine. Under George W. Bush, from 2005 through 2009 – to Georgia. These two countries have recently signed association agreements with the EU, one of the main points of discord between them and Russia.

Experts unanimously believe the new appointment will bring no improvement to relations with Russia. In fact, Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of comprehensive European and International studies at the Higher School of Economics, says many already call it a new cold war.

"I think that relations are at their lowest point since the end of the cold war. Many observers in the US and Russia are talking about a new cold war," he told Radio VR.

 http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_06_30/US-strategy-for-Russia-new-ambassador-old-war-5193/

These prior appointments put Tafft on the spot.  During the war started by Georgia's president, Saakashvili, there was a surprise attack against Russian peacekeepers; and Moscow had to swiftly send in its military to thwart the aggression. It was a piece of history that was blacked out, in 2008, and smothered under an avalanche of lies in the mainstream US press and TV.

The news of the past few weeks is astonishing. After a coup in Ukraine was  sponsored and paid for by the US government, in secret, and the payment for its logistics confirmed later, by Victoria Nuland, a high State Department official, we have seen Russia accused of intervening there, though there is no evidence whatsoever of that.  On the contrary, the thugs who have taken the reins in Kiev, have been blasting away with artillery at eastern Ukrainian cities, where people oppose the coup d'etat, and a presidential election that basically reflected only the will of the western region, where the forcible takeover was organized.

There was a public rally in Kiev yesterday, with the Right Sektor, the fascist cadre that spearheaded the seizure of power, crying for the blood of those Ukrainians who oppose the new regime.

The protesters held a “people’s assembly,” during which they warned Poroshenko that “this Sunday campaign may be the last peaceful one,” Itar-Tass reported.

The demonstrators called on the newly-elected president to “listen to the real holder of power – the Ukrainian people.”

They added that if the president didn't “hear [their] demands,” they would “consider him a traitor of the country” and “he will share the same fate as [ousted President Viktor] Yanukovich.”  --RT

The Obama administration has been committing crimes and covering up the wrongdoing with lies and distortions. There is even confusion about who is calling the shots in this Empire run amok. Is it the CIA?--the president?--the State Department?--or the peculiar Hydra-head mercenaries, like Blackwater, operating in Baghdad?

This picked up speed under President G. W. Bush; and the descent of the United States into hell seems to be accelerating. Read the article,

How Blackwater Survived Iraq Probes Of Being "Above The Law" - By Threatening To Kill Investigators

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, The NY Times reports that the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. However, as James Risen reports, a senior official of the notorious private security firm allegedly threatened to kill a government investigator leading the probe into the firm’s Iraqi operation. Stunningly (or not), the US embassy sided with him and forced the inspector to cut the visit short.

 What the Obama Team has been pushing since they conspired with the British and French to destroy Libya, and then by continuing on against Syria, is the empowerment of extremist Islamic radicals, jihadists--or whomever they find in the rank of mercenaries, to do the dirty work for them. That is to say, to cause the destruction of governments, if not societies; and they don't seem to care if it is one or the other.
 
Now there is the open conspiracy to force NATO into Russia's sensitive borderland, to threaten Russian naval installations in Crimea, to interrupt Russia's commerce and energy trade with Europe,--in other words to screw with that country--while simultaneously vilifying it.

Washington no doubt is inviting a proxy war in Iraq. Look at this new batch of over-ambitious, gleaming, well-provisioned, supremely confident rogues, who are tearing through the Iraqi countryside! There they are: crucifying the "moderate" extremists who were fighting Syria's president, making videos as they execute prisoners in Iraq, driving in long convoys of shiny new Toyota trucks.

I wonder who is paying for all those spiffy uniforms? Obama just recently asked Congress to fork over $500 million for weapons, to be given to the so-called moderates who are attacking Syria. If those weapons end up in the hands of the new killers, the glory-seeking, self-styled rulers of the whole Muslim world, it's probably just another installment on America's extended mercenary army.

"A BIRD DOESN'T SING BECAUSE IT HAS AN ANSWER, IT SINGS BECAUSE IT HAS A SONG."

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

--Poetry Foundation:

Angelou’s most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. She read black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated black woman, finally got her to speak again. Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children’s book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class. 

I once saw Maya Angelou on stage, where she was giving a lecture on poetry and retelling her life experience. She was a fascinating and beautiful person, a unique American poet, linguist, a gifted raconteur, and had a remarkable knowledge and appreciation of history. Her presence before us was quite powerful; and her soul seemed to embrace the whole audience. It is a cherished memory for me.

ARE WORLDS ABOUT TO COLLIDE IN EUROPE AGAIN?... WHO IS THE AGGRESSOR?

That morning they lifted above their heads
what appeared to be a doll in a christening gown
and we stood in the blasted haze waiting for long white
plumes to stanch the fires quickening through
carpets and bedclothes, a tea service, a tender curtain,
and we did not turn away, nor did we photograph the child,
—except at the moment of its being raised—
but later we walked to the Place des Martyrs
where a stillness had been created entirely
by small arms-fire that had blistered walls, blackened shops
and taken from the movie-house all but its blank screen,
where once all manner of figures had shone,
wavering, composed of light through what was
now nothing: a country. Or such was the hope.

--Carolyn Forché,  Place des Martyrs

Tholos now marks an anniversary of eleven years, on the 23rd of April. What counts as the result of our labor, and the labor of others like us, has to be measured in terms of awareness across the realm of readers, and  among the ripples that spread from that awareness.

But the war hysteria and thunder being raised against Russia during this month has gone to the heads of liberal and conservative alike, even beyond the usual circles of corrupt media. Eleven years ago, our attention was focused with horror on George W. Bush, and his invasion of Iraq, in which he often sputtered, and struck his warlike poses, to the praises and exultation of a news media that was eager to join him and play their part. This war on Iraq was not undertaken to go after those responsible for the 9/11 attack;  but went to the wild edge of the furious spectacle, whose primitive, bloody urges, and barren language, worked with its criminal abandon and profane show of force. This was the road to American war crime, to  full-throttled, global war making. The empire can be defined, or described now,  by the curse it leaves on the land: all the lasting bitterness, torments and hatred, scenes of murder, and poisoned land, for which it will be remembered.

Neither Americans, nor anyone else, should ever forget what that debacle was about, because it destroyed the nation that was invaded, and ruined as well, the United States, the nation that committed the crime. Iraq is in ruin, still, and is wracked by political killings, if not smoldering urban war. But the US, too, is become a lean shadow, a long spineless shadow, of what it was when we were growing up. The war of absurd rhetoric on "Terror", and the other war of "Full Spectrum Dominance" (to use the language of empire) are two different things. The first is the silly, cartoon version; and the second is the real state of affairs.

Insane and endless war will bankrupt a nation, and our country is no exception. More dangerous, more desperate and foolhardy gambles, are history's messages, scrawled on the walls by dying empires. The diplomacy of Obama and his Secretary of State, Kerry, has a most terrifying logic: the logic of unrelenting confrontation, the bankrolling of mercenaries, stooges, and extremists of various stripes, in the overthrow of elected and legitimate governments, in bribery and blackmail, and targeted assassinations. And then there is the hallmark of aggression, that leads ominously to war: bad faith in negotiations, and signatures on agreements that are soon disowned by the signers. This bad faith and deception has happened twice in a few weeks.

Coincidence? No way.

History has proceeded so madly during the Bush and Obama years, that in terms of the hell we're in, looking forward and looking back seem almost indistinguishable now. And the lies that have lodged in the mouths of  corrupt leaders and news people, give consent to the architecture of military aggression, which is the central point of the empire. We live in a basically fascist oligarchy, in an airtight surveillance society; and we are practically suffocated during this Ukrainian crisis by the most childish propaganda.

Some fools, such as U.S. Senator John McCain, are saying that we should already be in military conflict with Russia.

When the United States appears with its European sidekicks, small nations start dropping like flies. And nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the US exhausts itself with long military occupations, are not fixed ever, but are left in chaos, and finally just abandoned in the hands of warring militias, or in the care of armed drug cartels, or under the protection of white slavers, --or for instance-- in the case of the coup government in Kiev, under the thumb of fascist street thugs.

 The Obama administration mirrors the interests of the Central Banks and the blood-sucking IMF, that methodically rapes entire nations, with its  debt-schedules and predatory interest rates. But the real muscle behind the shakedown comes along later, when economic sanctions are not persuasive enough.

Of course, economic sanctions in the hands of an American president, adds up to an act of war by itself.

Nothing else is revealed by our exaggerated image of ourselves, except our moral collapse as a society, in our trance-like  fingering and thumbing of the infernal cell phones, as Obama, the president, boasts that our army can lick Russia's army.

It was Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote:

 "Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences."

Americans and Europeans, we are still in the prison of our own device, this empire that is bankrupt now. Where is our sense of humility, in consideration of our nations' crimes? Where is our sense of history as we approach the 100th anniversary of World War One?

copeland morris HORSES WATCH MY DREAMS

 

There were millions of years, at least
Of petite horses, slipping inconspicuously

Beneath primordial fronds, hiding in
The ground cover, peeping from under
Bromeliads, almost as shy as chameleons.
When did their articulate little hooves begin
To thunder?--filling out their long strides?

We inherit some movement known to them,
Their noble way of standing idle, gazing
Into the pasture. Their need to dream exists,
A fragrance of grass on which they feed.
May they watch your dreams, my dear one,
As they have watched mine. And may they ever
Approach your open hands, in peace. 

REFERENDUM IN CRIMEA MAKES HISTORY

People sing the Russian national anthem as they celebrate in Simferopol's Lenin Square on March 16, 2014 after exit polls showed that about 95.5 percent of voters in Ukraine's Crimea region supported union with Russia (AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff)

The celebrations were widespread throughout the Crimea today; and despite the claims by nations in Europe, backed  with the threat of consequences to Russia by the US, their spirits were not dampened. They voted for association with the Russian Federation. Those in favor numbered around 93%.

The White House is  scowling today, declaring that a principle of self-determination which is set down in the United Nations Charter should be ignored; and that instead, we are to respect a rump, illegal clique of fascists, who overthrew a legitimate, elected government, in Kiev. But it is madness to satisfy the greedy ends of a small collection of neocons and central bankers. These seem to be the people who are using the military muscle of the US , and presidents, who are nothing but hollow creatures, who will willingly murder anyone and overturn any society, if there is a profit down line for this morally decrepit Empire.

This recent crisis which forced Russia into a defensive position, next to its coastline, and its primary naval defense installation, in the Crimea, is something that concerns the essential Borderland, in Ukraine, that reaches back to the foundational beginnings of Russia, deep into its history. But our public has been told lies about this crisis. Those lies have been told and repeated in almost every major US and European news media. They will tell the people that the coup is not crawling with fascists at all. They don't tell the people about the horrific fascist sympathies embedded in the World War II history of the region of Western Ukraine. American audiences didn't get to hear about how, during the recent coup d'etat,  the sniper shootings of both police and protesters, turned out to be the work of the same snipers.

President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and all the pusillanimous  leaders of the Empire's vassal states, will tell you with one voice, that it's only the Ukrainian Constitution that matters now, without mentioning how those fascist freaks of the Right Sektor and the Svoboda have crashed the party. The United States can now apparently void diplomatic agreements within days after the paper is signed. The February 21st agreement, said that the Ukrainian president would remain in office for an interim period, as those from the Maiden Protest and the opposition were eased into a power-sharing arrangements, pending a scheduled election. All the parties to this document were responsible for its implementation.

But what happened? Ukraine's president had to run for his life, people just came into Parliament, tossing the regulars out of their seats; and in an undignified haste they didn't even follow constitutional procedures for impeachment. When Russia asked the US about its responsibility for seeing that the party in power live up to the agreement, whose ink was still virtually drying, the US position was, "different facts now on the ground, forget it".

One astonishing fact after another came to light. Victoria Nuland (who is married to a bona fide PNAC neocon) and who is, herself, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, has admitted  that $5 billion from our US Government had been the seed money for this "revolution".

And John Kerry rattles on about consequences. There will be consequences for this and that, and consequences over the referendum.

 But there will be no consequences for Russia that will not also land heavily on the backs of Americans and Europeans. And this has been the most desperate overreach and the most wicked foreign policy initiative thus far, by the Obama Administration, one which might have led to the mutual destruction we have always feared, if it had been further bungled.

So all hail the Constitution of a country, the poor Ukraine, whose broken legitimate government, the United States had a big hand in breaking. This is not the first country that has been broken and brought to despotism, chaos, or ruin, by the CIA and those fraudulent NGOs who provide cover for acts of subversion. Nothing Obama or Kerry has done has been for the benefit of Ukraine's people. And people in the US are beginning to wise up. They are not interested in this kind of absurdity any more. All of us who understand are beginning to hate all this hollow military posturing, this repulsive war making, which is ever advanced by the deception of our corrupt President and Secretary of State.

Hooray for the people of the Crimea today! At least they have the freedom of the ballot box, and can decide and celebrate their choice, one at which they have freely arrived.

copeland morris SWEET RESOLUTION

Repair is going on under moonlight.
But what is the moon?--her holiness now
Linked to imagination? Fireflies flash;
But where is the fine control of my instinct
While this wildfire burns my heart?

From sparks of appreciation, light expands
Upon this moon that has risen at dusk.
From such cold fire comes flame.
She is the bride that holds white roses;
And when she wanes I still see
The dark of her. Forever her precise,
Hurried words, explain the tide going out,
Where I dreamt I knew what peace meant.