Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

There are so many answers to that question, it's difficult to know where to begin. But here are a few right off the top of my head, based on our current foreign policy and the thinking mapped out by the truly remarkable collection of political leaders currently at the helm.  One of these real geniuses offers insights into the kind of guy he is in the above video.

Anyway, please stand at attention with your hands over your hearts, as I offer twenty-four of the reasons why we should wage war on Iran.

1)  Because we can.

2)  We have all these bombs.

3)  What good is a military if you don't use it?

4)  We love spreading chaos!

5)  Destroy, divide, conquer.

6)  Have you ever seen Hassan Rouhani on Dancing With The Stars?  Obviously he hates our freedom and our television shows.

7)  God told us to.

8)  Israel told us to.

9)  Saudi Arabia told us to.

10)  Lindsey Graham told us to.

11)  We want to start a world war (see #2 above).

12)  We got over the Vietnam Syndrome but now we have to get over both the "Afghanistan Syndrome" and the "Syria Syndrome".

13)  It'll piss off Russia.

14)  It'll piss off China.

15)  It'll piss off Hillary Clinton because she wanted to be the one to start it.

16)  Donald Trump will get re-elected because when we're at war we have to rally behind the president (I think it's somewhere in the Bible: "Don't change horses' asses in the middle of a war." Leviticus? Corinthians?)

17)  Hollywood needs new settings for its upcoming war movies.

18)  War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

19)  Americans love war as long as it's NIMBY.

20)  Jared Kushner.

21)  War makes lots of money for investors, especially the already ultra-rich.

22)  It'll hasten the Rapture.

23)  Peace is for pussies.

24)  Iranians revealed their diabolical anti-Americanism by putting their country in the middle of all our military bases.

There's more.  But I think this is a damn good start!

You have a problem with this?  Too bad.




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

Life In Japan: National Holidays

                                     Coming of Age Day: January 14, 2019, Tokyo, Japan.


Here are the official national holidays and dates for Japan in 2019 . . .

New Year's Day: Jan 1 (self-explanatory).

Coming of Age Day: Jan 14 (turning 20 means adulthood, so all the new 20-year-olds dress up in kimonos and yukatas and have a party).

National Foundation Day:  Feb 11 (a very old celebration going back to 660 BCE when Emperor Jimmu ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne and Japan was born).

Vernal Equinox Day:  Mar 21 (yes, the Japanese celebrate the spring equinox!).

Showa Day:  Apr 29 (the first holiday on the Japanese calendar commemorating the birthday of the Showa emperor).

Constitution Memorial Day:  May 3 (commemorating the inauguration of the current Japanese constitution, back in 1947).

Greenery Day:  May 4 (celebrating and expressing thanks for nature and its splendor).

Children's Day:  May 5 (celebrating kids!).

Marine Day:  Jul 15 (celebrating the ocean and the sun and the bounty they provide).

Mountain Day:  Aug 11-12 (lots of mountains here and they're honored for contributing to happiness and natural beauty).

Respect for the Aged Day:  Sept 16 (the elderly are accorded great respect all throughout Asia, but this day is specially dedicated to honoring them; lots of flowers and cards).

Autumnal Equinox Day:  Sept 23 (heading into fall; the harvest after all is a big deal!)

Health-Sports Day:  Oct 14 (honoring health, fitness, sports).

Culture Day:  Nov 3-4 (people go to museums, also celebrate the post-war announcement of the new constitution, and the birthday of Emperor Meiji).

Labor Thanksgiving Day:  Nov 23 (unions march to celebrate labor rights, farmers give final thanks for the harvest, hopefully a fruitful and profitable one).

Notice anything missing?  Where are the military parades?  Where is the nationalism?  The self-aggrandizing political speeches?

Short answer:  There aren't any military celebrations.  Maybe honoring the constitution is "political" in a way.  It celebrates the political framework of Japan, but I believe without being nationalistic.  The birth of the country?  Again, it's about self-respect rather than superiority and "indispensability".
Most holidays, as is evident, are very innocent, focusing on people and nature.  Celebrating mountains?  The oceans?  The position of the Earth in its orbit around the sun?  Old folks? Kids?  Adolescents becoming adults?  Without getting drunk and hurling bottles at passing motorists?  Or eating seven times my body weight in barbecued ribs?

Some westerners might be tempted to sneer and make some snarky remark.

I can't help but smile and be grateful I'm not hearing war drums, 21-gun salutes, and parades of politicians moralizing about the honor of dying on the battlefield.

I'd rather thank the trees for being so green, the sun for showing up on time.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: National Holidays

Life In Japan: Ground Golf

There's "community life" in my community.

In my village called Noma, which is on the very eastern edge of town, as I've mentioned before, we get together regularly to clean up the "neighborhood".  Of course, most of the area which hosts the 40 or 50 houses in our village consists of rice and soybean fields.  When I refer to the neighborhood, I'm actually talking about the irrigation canals and ditches, retainer walls, our shrine hillock dedicated to Benten, a goddess of art and music.  We also have an annual barbecue, our curry and bingo party, and a number of ceremonies celebrating holidays throughout the year.

That's just my local village get-togethers.  Mind you, similar ones are taking place across the entire city, in each of the twelve or so local villages.  All of these are organized as neighborhood happenings, where it's likely everyone attending will be at least somewhat familiar with one another. 
Then there's all of the city-wide activities for Sasayama -- just this past May renamed Tambasasayama [丹波篠山市] in a special election -- organized for all 42,000 of the city's residents.  I've mentioned elsewhere the Dekansho Festival in August and the Festival of the Portable Shrines.  There are many more -- tea festivals, sports day festivals, the black bean (soybean) festival, wild boar festival, as well as street fairs, special markets, and so on.  For a relatively small city, there are certainly a lot of officially organized events.  But this is true for all of Japan.

There's one activity, however, I'd like to call special attention to.  Because it's just so darn charming, and so thoroughly Japanese!  That's the game of Ground Golf that takes place, weather permitting, every day here for six or seven months out of the year.

Not that Ground Golf is Japanese.  I don't know where the game originated.  Being called 'golf' certainly suggests non-Asian roots.

It's just the idea of it!  As the photo shows at the head of this article, it takes place on a huge flat field of sand.  The city maintains this play area just for Ground Golf.  There's not much else it could be used for.  Maybe a beach, if climate change causes a 150-meter rise in the level of the ocean.

Why do they have this?  To give old folks something to do and an excuse to socialize.

Can you imagine?


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Ground Golf

Julian Assange: Lest We Forget What Courageous Journalism Looks Like

New Zealand citizen journalist Suzi Dawson, herself a whistleblower who has taken political asylum in Russia to avoid persecution by the New Zealand government, listed what she considered the ten most important achievements by Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  This was in a interview with Jimmy Dore, October 27, 2018.

Here they are:

1)  "Wikileaks has been keeping the historical record intact, and is actually combating the digital loss as web pages and websites are constantly being taken down from the internet by the powers that be.  In this current paradigm they're actually scrubbing entire websites and domains at every opportunity.  They're trying to erase information from our living history.  And Wikileaks' founding charter says that any information that's at risk of censorship or deletion can find a safe harbor at Wikileaks."

2)  "Wikileaks enables victims of persecution to have admissible evidence to fight their cases in court.  40,000 cases around the world have had Wikileaks documents submitted as evidence to the court."

3)  "They've maintained a 100% accuracy record over ten years of publishing."

4)  "Wikileaks is still publishing despite the full force of the Empire being used against them.  Intelligence agencies, financial service providers, hostile media and law fare, and of course now Julian Assange's solitary confinement, we still see Wikileaks releases being published."

5)  "Wikileaks has established a digital library of over 10 million documents, containing pristine datasets, the full relevance of which will only become apparent years into the future.  Every current news story can be further informed by doing a key word search to see what Wikileaks archives contain about topics or persons or places that may be relevant to that news story."

6)  "Wikileaks has established a whole new way of doing journalism.  They also initiated the first anonymous drop boxes, which we now see that a similar technology is being used by media outlets across the globe."

7)  "Wikileaks has become the vanguard of press freedom, always pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable in publishing.  And that is incredibly important because as they are pushing those boundaries further and further out, it allows independent media and citizen media to fill that space in between.  We can go further and do more significant things because Wikileaks is out there taking the heat for us."

8)  "Wikileaks has published leaks on every country in the world without geopolitical bias."

9)  "Wikileaks leaves no source behind, and not only do they go above and beyond to support their sources, they've actually established other organizations to support other at risk journalists and whistleblowers, such as the Courage Foundation, and we now have proven that Julian Assange was involved in the establishment of the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

10)  "Julian saved the life of Edward Snowden, who is renowned as the greatest whistleblower of our generation, and was brought to you by Wikileaks."
Julian Assange should be getting a Nobel Prize, not being persecuted.

What can we do to save this courageous, heroic man?  This is not just about one man, as admirable and honorable he is as a person.  This is about freedom of speech, freedom of dissent, being able to stand up to power and avoid complete and total, across-the-board repression by burgeoning corporate-state totalitarianism.  The media is already a pitiful shell of what it once was.  Silencing the Julian Assanges of the world will just accelerate the demise of public discourse built on honest investigative reporting.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Julian Assange: Lest We Forget What Courageous Journalism Looks Like

Book Review: “The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin”

It takes enormous courage to write a book like this, which goes completely against the narrative promoted by America’s foreign policy and military establishments.  Courage because now any defense of Putin and Russia as actors on the world stage will not be met with reasonable, polite rebuttal and rational well-supported refutation, but personal vilification, marginalization, attacks on character and integrity, aspersions about disloyalty and lack of patriotic commitment, allegations of treachery and even sedition.  Lacking anything — e.g. facts — with which to rebut and refute the message, opponents of a balanced, objective, truthful analysis of Russian-American relations must resort to attacking the messenger.

Early in the book, Mr. Kovalik describes the process which radicalized him, what personal events opened his eyes to the barbarity and hypocrisy which has been centerpieces of America’s history from its earliest days.  His transformation occurred during a visit to Nicaragua during his college years.  He learned then to question and always be highly skeptical of the “official rationale” inflicted on the general public in the U.S., because it was often driven by the covert intent of obtaining — often manufacturing out of thin air — consent for America’s diplomatic bullying, manipulations, wanton aggressions, destructive interference, regime changes, and outright subjugation of countries across the planet.

History is the best teacher for understanding the present.  Our history, as is thoroughly explored and documented in this short but incisive volume, is riddled with false flags, misrepresentations, distortions, propaganda and outright lies, all carefully calculated to serve the real agenda of our government.  This is to provide unambiguous support for U.S. corporate interests; ruthlessly undermining any nation which dares to consider even the most diluted iteration of socialism; and punishing — all too frequently destroying — any country, often even murdering its leaders, for independently adopting policies which don’t disproportionately benefit the U.S. and honor the authority of the U.S. as world hegemon.

What has Russia under Putin done?  It put Russia’s interests first, it openly criticized the U.S. for its wanton aggression and disregard for international law, called out the U.S. for its consistent meddling in the affairs of other nations, including all too often violently overthrowing governments it doesn’t approve of, and moreover had the audacity to deploy national defense mechanisms which frees it of being blackmailed by U.S. military might.  For the U.S., which regards itself as the “exceptional” nation selected by destiny to control the world, these constitute an inexcusable affront which must be answered, a challenge which must be eradicated, even if this requires a world war which might go nuclear.

So it’s Russia bad, Putin badder.  Every imaginable and imagined accusation, typically presented as fact, is spewed out and flung at Putin and Russia.  And thus what we get as “news” these days is a childish white hats vs. black hats depiction of the momentous battle of Great Good America vs. Scary Evil Russia, a facile scenario now dubbed as the Second Cold War.

The extremes our government spokespersons and the obsequious media has gone to in order to strike fear in all of us about Russia and to incite a personal hatred for Vladimir Putin, should by themselves raise suspicions and reasonable doubts about what’s going on. But when the media is controlled by six major corporations with unshakeable deference to official government propaganda and those who fabricate it, and political leaders from both major parties who are owned by Wall Street, the big banks, the corporations, the ruling elite who obscenely profit from perpetual war, all everyday people get 24/7 is yarns about the Russian threat, Putin’s bloodthirsty desire to return to the glory days of Russia as a great power, Russian aggression, Russian invasions, Russian meddling in our otherwise perfect democracy, Russian targeted assassinations, Russian plots to subvert and destroy freedom-loving countries, Russian blame for everything from STDs to plugged toilets and family squabbles. It’s a premeditated program of brainwashing inflicted on a gullible and generally hapless American public.

The only possible pre-revolutionary antidote is thorough, unbiased investigative journalism, potent research, historical knowledge and perspective, personal insights shared with candor and clarity, all of the foregoing assembled by an author of the high caliber of Dan Kovalik, into an immensely readable and superbly informative book like The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]


Book Review: “The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin”