SUBDUING THE LEVANT ......

Three major forces are nowadays competing at destroying the Levant, its people, wealth and stability.The U.S., Israel and Iran. I may add a forth, who just lately took advantage of a loophole in the game and imposed itself as a forth player; Russia. The game is destructive as much as funny, as the Iranians believe the Russians will end American and Israeli meddling in Syria, the American/Israeli side believe the Russians will limit Iran's influence in Syria, and the Russians will play the two camps and take over Syria to itself and eventually the entire Levant .

The US State Department, and the Pentagon, concerned mostly in securing the US bases out of which thousands of US troops continue to operate in Iraq, as well as Syria. They have all along kept total silence on the very bloody suppression of young Iraqi protesters against the puppet and very corrupt regime in Baghdad, remaining in power only by playing and bribing both dominant forces reigning in Iraq, the US and Iran.

Ironically, both Washington, with its administration and Tehran and its Ayatollahs are in concert and fair agreement to oppose the demands of the demonstrators for the expulsion of the present Iraqi regime. Both the US and Iran are playing the same cards with the Mahdi administration, both are pursuing practically the same corrupt agenda, while defending their interests and steeling Iraq's oil wealth.

The situation in Lebanon is basically the same, or at least very similar to its Iraqi counterpart in most aspects, the big players are the same ones, the US, Israel and Iran. In Lebanon the scenario of public protest against a very corrupt bunch of political thieves, playing the external cards as well as internal sectarian and ethnic divisions of all religious groups of the Lebanese mosaic under their warlords and their descendants.

Syria had its similarities to both neighbors, and already paid a high price and is still paying in total carnage, desolation, destruction, killings and mass displacement of millions. lately an impression of victory to one side under the absolute tutelage of Russia, contrary to the exclusivity of the America/Iranian in the other two.

While the Trump administration and Israel and their Saudi allies pursue their regional war aims, and suppression over the entire Middle-East, and in the three mentioned countries, Iran Ayatollahs and their local allies and forces strive to suppress social unrest in all three countries by using direct forces or proxies on the ground, suppressing any form of public protest for fear of having them spread across its own borders, a situation that already started and is being harshly repressed.

The US is obviously sacrificing and maybe even purposely destroying two or possibly more of its presumably steady allies, Iraq and Lebanon, Jordan might be the next victim of the same planning, of trying to subdue Iran and kill any chance of independent thinking in any of the Levant mosaics. With a total complicity of Israel, all Arab states, a satisfied Russia, and a bought and threatened Turkey, the game might have a serious chance of success.

After deciding and for various reasons, the Trump administration, and against the declared wishes of Israel's Netanyahu, that an actual war with American troops on the ground is undesirable and not popular in America, and it could be detrimental to Trump's hopes of a second term in office, the game was switched to an economical pressure and sectarian divide tactics to pressure Iran in total submission, resulting in many, indeed many people, from all concerned countries, including the under the brutal illegal occupation Palestinians, who will all pay a very dear price in lives and welfare.

Like the Biblical Samson, who brought down the house upon all the people that were there, the Zionist leadership and their lobbyists, are applying all their pressure on the US political machine to destroy one country after the other, all for their hegemonic dreams, and total vain and egoistical supremacy. The sad part is the US believing them blindly, and maybe not so blindly, but executing to the letter their wishes and narrow selfish interests .
                                          My usual many thanks to all good readers around the world .
                    

HIDING OUR TRUE INVISIBLE SELVES .....

It is essential in life to look at ourselves, and see ourselves as we actually are, not as we imagine our-selves to be, or even as we perceive and like us to be. Once we achieve that, and only then we can truly observe and understand the complex needs, perplexities and various difficulties of others, putting ourselves in their situations and their tragic lives. We'd have to detach ourselves from our own selfish ego, only then we can reach total objectivity and sincerity .

To achieve levels of compassion, harmonious relations with the other, genuine mutual understanding and interaction, to apply to ourselves some of the historical proverbial commands, "Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you." An important part of the modern way of thinking and it's literally all over our world, is to reject religions and their different sects and denominations.

Uproot them from our lives and daily habits and thoughts as cheap moralizing, outdated ceremonial rituals, and a total waste of money and time honoring and glorifying some imaginary fictitious deities, everywhere thousands upon thousands of healthy men and women subject themselves regularly, on daily, weekly, and monthly basis, to all sorts of meaningless sacrifices and restrictions, like voluntary fasting, unrealistic and torturous celibacy regiments, wasting their time on purification rituals and time and money consuming pilgrimage, reiterated prayers several times daily and weekly, all for what ??

In our times it's considered by all learned men and women as an exercise in futility, simply out of ignorance and naivety, and mostly to answer invisible characteristics of ourselves. Only in societies governed by strict literal theologies, as in Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran, Saudi, as well as many new leaderships influencing and playing the heinous religious card for their own benefit. They all play and act their invisible sides for deceiving their counterparts.

Maurice Nicoll, described this invisibility of man superbly ; "We all can see other people's bodies directly, we see their lips moving, their eyes opening and shutting, the lines of their mouths and faces changing, and their bodies expressing themselves in action, but people themselves are invisible. If the invisible side of people were discerned as easily as the visible side, we would all live in a new humanity. But we only live in a humanity of the visible appearance. All our thoughts, emotions, feelings, imagination, reveries, dreams, fantasies etc...are invisible and make part of the realm of the invisible. All that belong to our scheming, planning, plotting, secrets, ambitions, all our hopes, fears, doubts, perplexities, all our affections, speculations, pondering, vacuities, uncertainties, all our desires, longing, appetites, sensations, our likes, dislikes, aversions, attractions, loves and hate,all our compassion, all are themselves invisible, but they constitute nonetheless " Ourselves."

These traits of human visibility and invisibility are difficult things to grasp, they constitute the drama of the visible and the invisible, it is the drama of modern existence and the politics of many entities across the world. Hobbes's description of the life of man as; solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Most of our actual spiritual, secular, social or political leaders nowadays, add big time to these attributes, we tend to ignore the other, as well as the better ones.

For when gods and or political leaders fight among themselves, men have to pay the price, even die. Sapiens all over have become in our times more rich in means, and more poor in ends.
                                         My, as always many thanks for your attention.....
                     

SUPREMACY TOOLS OF THE WORLD .... UNITE !!!

Things are only likely to get from bad to worse, especially if and when most if not all political powers, existing and aspiring, right, left, autocratic dictatorial or fascist, theocratic, secular or anything in between, when they all graduate from the exact same schools of thought, learn and apply the same methodologies, and all aspire to rule by big brother absolute control and total supremacy.

There's no more ideology, philosophy or sane strategy in most of our existing or aspiring leadership programs of our times, just "Power for power's sake, personal benefits and the accumulation of huge vast wealth.

Most nations, their elections or grab of power, are turning into very divided nations, into mostly two major parts, something like two different tribes of a third undeveloped country. Choosing absolute sides of the political spectrum, fighting fiercely and brutally not just to advance their own or their leader's agenda, but to provoke, condemn and defeat the other, eventually annihilate the other.

Charlie Sykes, a famous radio show host said; "Politics has become a bizarre tribal world, in which voters and active participants will tolerate any bizarre behavior, any dishonesty, crudity and cruelty, any blatant lie, because the other side is always worse and an absolute enemy.

In most polls nowadays, the majority of people assume search engines are unbiased, while practically all as Face book, twitter, YouTube, Google and many other national or foreign sites, depend almost solely on algorithms, to personalize information based on what we all watch. They customize all info on earlier data they've collected earlier about us all along the way. More and more our computers monitors, our TVs, our daily habits, goings and visits, are all a kind of a one-way mirrors, reflecting fully our strict interests and instant inclinations, while observers are building their accurate algorithmic tables while watching us simply click !!

This constant and continual brainwashing/observing/monitoring, from all sources, makes us all live in increasingly narrow fixed walled rooms of thought, making it harder and harder to reach or agree on facts, and or any sense of reality, or even some common political logic. Algorithms, numbers and statistics are deciding for us all what to see or not to see, what we need to know or not know, what to decide upon, approve or negate, whom to look for from a variety of leaders and representatives.

While we should resist, or at least make sure all these are not keyed to well set programs, fixed demagogic and political crazy ideologies, let us make sure there's some independence from big brother indoctrination and thought policing of our modern times. Let me use a small example of how fixed we can all be sometimes and during some fazes of our lives, Here in the U.S, 78% of Democrats, and Democratic leaning independents said recently, that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country and its youths. A majority of Republicans and leaning right American Republicans almost a staggering 60% of them have a negative view of these same institutions of higher learning . Our present day political institutions are only a clear aspect, reflecting these numbers.

We all thought originally, that all these free of charges and free of advertising and commercials, and available to all, all over the world, is the innovation of science thrown to us all as a gift, solely because it was a good idea of progress and scientific achievement, we all felt it was more good than harm, but it's now collectively being discovered that it's more perverse and serving ideologies of big fascist brothers, than practically any other tool of modern times, it's exploiting the populations by spreading misinformation and disinformation and fake news, cruelty and prejudice, spreading the non facts that support certain specific points of view, the entire Internet with its tools are playing with our brains grand time.

Finally, to claim that our world is becoming a much safer, better and more equitable and democratic place, Well , let's wait and see. No one in his or her right set of mind can assure anymore or be assertive and positive as to the future of humanity or its institutions.
                          My as always, many thanks for your patience and time. 

                  

SCENES FROM LEBANON AND BEYOND ........

Lebanese from all walks of life , from all regions of the country, from all religions, something hard to muster in a country like Lebanon, they all have risen collectively and instantaneously, in impressive numbers, not seen for a long time . An unprecedented sense of civility and self imposed correctness hardly observed anywhere in the area or the world .

All with practically the same core of demands, of economical and political reforms, an immediate cessation and an end to the chronic era of official and private corruption and theft of public funds and infrastructure plus public services allocations . All parties and public figures , warlords and politicians are implicated with no exception what so ever, that makes it very hard as there's practically no one side capable of addressing or accusing or pointing a finger to other guilty of corruption or theft, be it a party or individual, everyone at higher echelon is somehow implicated in a form or other.

Some believe the army, which is benefiting lately of some sympathy among most Lebanese, could take over temporarily, do the job and reestablish some real democratic order into the scene, the major problem is always, as has been for decades, the extreme vulnerability of the army, and the danger of it disintegrating on religious and sectarianism pressures from the different Lebanese political factions. That would be a greater drag and jeopardy for Lebanon and the Lebanese people.

As practically all Lebanese political personalities and parties are implicated in aggravating the population to beyond reasonable control, whereby now it looks like a free falling snowball or avalanche, my comments will hit on one aspect of it all , Hezbollah, the fastest ascending Shiite party, originally from the south of Lebanon, and now, totally inspired, funded and directed from Tehran.

Hizbollah attributed to itself through the few past decades, many important and great roles on the local Lebanese scene, starting with liberating Lebanon from the Israeli aggression of the eighties, and again in the first decade of the 21st century, and finally maintaining a considerable destructive power and precision sets of missiles to balance any new aggression by Israel, it gained the role of moderator and less corrupt among most local players, forcing itself into a powerful partnership with some or other political factions, and influencing the fragile local balance between political lordships . Yes Hizbollah is in many instances many of these aspects or all of them , according to its benefits and to the benefits of Iranian and or Syrian wishes and political tactics and interests.

But, I personally, as well as many in Lebanon and the region, still look at the Party of God suspiciously, with little sympathy or love to its agenda, tactics, affiliations and final goals, it is after all a deeply theocratic and religious institution, that was founded on these basis and continues to adhere strictly to a certain view of Islamic religious dogma and fatwas, and the higher theocratic leadership's opinions of Iran. It had always a clergyman at the top echelon, it's an essential part of its dogma and existence, it will not change, ever.

The party, its leadership and cadres will always sanctify and blindly obey Iranian wishes and interests. Will always be inspired by 1400 years of narrow Islamic views, practices and archaic religious wild imagination. No discussions no arguments about any of this. Behaving worse than anyone else in executing and complimenting the dirty work asked of them .

When the Syrian internal conflict started some 10 years ago, the Syrian regime and its various militias found themselves cornered, even defeated by local groups of rural people, mostly Sunni Muslems, who very quickly got infiltrated by all kinds of Islamic jihadist from around the world, heavily funded by many sides including America, Israel and some of their allies. Hizbollah with absolutely no special love or affinity to the Assad regime, his family, oligarchy or his secret services, had to oblige by sending tens of thousands of well armed and trained fighters to fight along side the Syrian and eventually Iranian sides, against whoever was against the Syrian regime, Israel could have taken advantage and attacked, but they refrained and restrained !!! basically all to satisfy Iran's future aspirations, interests, and the party's own Iranian arms delivery routes.

The party of Allah, fought in Syria a very dirty war against many poor and powerless rural areas and their populations, all based on blind sectarian and religious ethnic-cleansing tactics and strategies. Killing, brutalizing and displacing entire populations and villages and areas of the Syrian rural and city core fabric. They all of a sudden became the trusted heroes of the small fraction of the Syrian oligarchy, the Assad clan and its pseudo supposedly saved religious and economical minorities.

From an Arab versus Israeli perspective, Hizbollah is maintaining the same policies of the Assad's, with an undeclared semi truce and a mutual non aggression policy throughout the long and often disputed common borders, Israel is slowly and surely acquiring the Arab territories, like the Golan heights, and the Chab'aa farms in Lebanon, plus its own occupied Palestinian territories, with the others bragging about their deterrent forces. Iran of course is the biggest and major winner till now in the game,smartly exploiting it all, with its crescent from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, what a powerful strategic combination !!! all the way to the Mediterranean warm waters. No wonder Israel's Netanyahu and America's Trump are dog like panicky about it all .

No educated or learned person has any doubts,that Hizbollah is the perfect Iranian tool, tactically for Lebanon, eventually to keeping Syria in check and under leach, and subduing this entire portion of the Middle-East, a very efficient tool indeed for Iranian theocracy and Farsi strategic and hegemonic long goals. In fact , and I know many who could be offended by my opinions, I'd say what's the difference between Israeli and Iranian future hegemonic and expansionary visions. This is the reason, I and many, can not and will never tolerate Hizbollah's take-over, even partially of Lebanon, Syria or any part of the very diversified and rich Middle-Eastern fantastic and unique cobweb .
          My usual many thanks to everyone around our small glob......                                     

A SLOW AND SURE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY, AS WE KNOW IT ......

Just about to enter our third decade of the 21st century, we live new realities, at least in the political and economical sense, our new breed of aggressive politicians/dictators/fascist/Capitalists, are the new realities of our modern times. Their tactics and demagoguery are almost identical, all using the same umbrella, the same greedy excessive profiteering to achieve personal and national gains, using the full scope of Orwellian "parallel reality" to achieve their purposes and goals. Leaders who are devoid of any philosophy or strategy, only a collage of impoverished vocabulary contradictions and empty rhetoric.

Orwellian "New speak and parallel realities" was a fictional language, it's used today to mirror and satirize what we used to call "Wooden language", or "langue de bois" wherby the object is avoidance of concrete facts and realities, " My theories and strategies are true because they are correct" !!!. The world has only things good,or things evil. Nothing in between. These leader's power lie in giving themselves the ability to say what they want, when they want, regardless of the facts or the reality, they are leaders of their countries and masters of reality.

Most of these leaders are open and clear deceivers, whereby they knowingly know they are lying and deceiving their followers, and masses and the world, few are convinced they have the truth and nothing but the truth, the rest is invariably fake news and blatant media and opposition intentional aggression. Mr. Trump of America is obviously a leader in this domain, and is helping many around the world establish their false reigns, they are all hiding behind his ways , demagoguery, lies and pseudo aggressiveness.

Mr. Trump denies and confirms, he refutes the most prominent scientific opinions, he is against all State Department veterans, and most senior army generals, all for his own ego and parallel convictions and immediate benefits, be it financial or electoral. He appointed some of the most inexperienced people to major key internal and foreign affairs, including his beloved young puppet son in law as the chief architect for one of the most delicate and volatile spots of the world, the Middle-East and its Israeli impossible dilemma.       

Like all dictators nowadays, they work against the advise of all senior professional advisers, as well as cabinet's appointees, who are mostly there to carry specific tasks, of destroying and vilifying the existing and inherited previous departments and legislation. and trying to find meanings and suitable explanations to their leader's erratic tweets and press statements and policies, only reflecting their parallel and singular understanding of realities and weird agendas.

Mr. Netanyahu is already paying a dear price for his autocracy, personal profiteering and crazy dreams of absolute hegemony, plunging his country in a bizarre, to say the least, situation and political impasse. All based on a decade of parallel realities and lies, fake assumptions, dreams and demagoguery. At least , over there it could be a temporarily recess for the Palestinians and their close neighbors.

Syria has been living for decades under the same false parallel realities, and truth denial, pretentious and false aspirations by the ruling Assad regime and his profiteering oligarchy, it all ended in a total massacre and destruction of Syria. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, now Yemen and Sudan, are all as well as their Latin American banana entities, with great help from the U.S. are all paying a dear price for their illusions, their adventures, and their reliance on the great Allie, with his parallel imaginary realities,  and his fake one way Democracy.

Mr. Putin is interfering with great success in practically every Democratic election that is going on in any spot of the world, with no apparent immediate gain to mother Russia, but surely destroying and giving a bad name to Democracy itself and proving it a failure, and amplifying its social divisions.

Finally, and with the latest pseudo invasion of major parts of Syria, Mr. Erdogan of Turkey, with his big dreams of reviving his Islamic Ottoman caliphate, under his reign of course, The man apart from his foreign ambitions, is jailing all his opposing dissidents, he is destroying books, and purging all cultural aspects since 2016, for a few years now more than 300.000 books have been confiscated and destroyed, including many text books banned for mentioning Pennsylvania where his created alleged rival Gulen is self exiled. The Turkish council for protection of minors from harmful publications knows no rest in declaring books by international renown authors, about rights of boys and girls, as bad influence and automatically banned. A truly great Islamic 1984 new world and its big brother.

No one would in her or his right mind, accept or believe that any authoritarian or absolute dictatorship, whether it's a Trump style or Netanyahu , Putin, Assad or Erdogan , care about the well being or the welfare of his people, or anyone else for that matter, only their families and their loyal entourage and oligarchies for as long as they serve and last. Their wealth and power are the main reason for tolerance. Idiocracy is surely beating all forms of Democracy, and greater times are ahead.
                                           
                                           As always , my profound gratitude for your time .....
        

         

EXPLAINING IT IN SIMPLE WORDS .......

Many Americans, from both sides of the political spectrum, and from all sides of the economical scales of society, believe nowadays that facts about Mr. Trump, his many lies and manipulations of his office and official powers as president to serve his own interests are alarming to say the least.

Americans in more numbers, consider that Mr. Trump's manipulation of what Russia did and their direct interference helping him personally win the 2016 presidential elections  unacceptable, they tend to believe that the special prosecutor Robert Muller did not exonerate Trump of his crimes and manipulations. Most Americans condemn Mr. Trump and his aids when they deny all subpoenas by Congress and disrupt all investigations.

To culminate the whole , lately his continued daily panic messages and lies, about anything and everything , finishing it with his blatant coercing of a foreign government and its leader, to give him explicit dirt on a potential Democratic adversary candidate.

It all started with a minor whistle-blower who reported a strange or according to him/her unethical phone call between Mr. Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, whereby Trump used his power of the presidency to withhold a considerable aid to the Ukrainian military, and inviting a foreign government to interfere in American elections. Then he tried to suppress it all, then again and under pressure he reversed course and admitted the facts, sarcastically and making a joke of it all, trying to delay investigations and possible embarrassing impeachment procedures.

Now he is alluding to the spy who betrayed him , executing him , and talking continuously about a possible coup against himself and his regime. For a while the discussions were split, and some tried to shift the investigations to the Biden side and his son's dealings at the time in Ukraine, nowadays the discussions are back from Biden to Trump , and the question at hand is not if Trump is likely to be impeached , but when, and  whether or not he will be removed from office .

Many from both sides, believe that the entire affair and exercise are more theatrical, since the Senate in its present configuration of a Republican majority will not vote on it, but the whole process rely on speculation and doubtful propaganda, since many Republican Senators, especially if the vote is done behind closed doors might vote to oust Mr. Trump out.

Many Democrats like Biden and Pelosi and the old conservative section of the party, would love it if the whole process and the 2020 election, turn to be a mandate over Trump, shifting away from the new trend of progressive Sanders/ Warren , their middle to the left visions and politics, that could further alienate the Democratic party in the future.

Mr. Trump is obviously hiding plenty, whether from his past businesses or his actual with his family and oligarchy present dealings while in office, his long history of dodging taxes, his potential money laundering for foreign powers, his continuous obstruction of justice, are all above the law, even his constant signing of presidential directives and laws and policies, that no one knows exactly how he personally or his family and oligarchy benefit from .
                                     My usual many thanks for every one's time ....                            

9/11 ... LOOKING THE OTHER WAY .....

Less than two weeks ago, was what we label as the anniversary of the 9/11 carnage and ugly massacre in NY city against some of its huge office buildings and roughly 3000 of their working civilian inhabitants. Plus the US Pentagon in Washington, and presumably a third airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

We insist on calling it anniversary even if the word denotes a bit of a happier occasion of what happened that day. But the essential idea remains, of ever convincing ourselves of the reason behind the act, of the one perpetrator, one and only one motive, one method and absolutely nothing else is truly amazing, frightening and very immature .

Why are we, the majority of American people, politicians, media, intellectuals, academia etc...etc... why are we all so afraid of confronting the possibility of a different scenario to the 9/11 massacre, why do we all, without exception officials and civilians, adamantly keep the one and only one story alive and in full thrust, although there's enough and reasonable proof of other different possibilities. Very different theories indeed, with very different perpetrators and very different motives .

There are almost flagrant proof of different execution theories for the multiple NY towers, the Washington Pentagon, even the vanished airliner. Some official organizations in NY and elsewhere have repeatedly and officially asked for a new investigation, a multitude of books including detailed pictures, studies and engineering quotes have disputed even the basic official version of events and the scenarios behind them.

The impact of airplanes against the steel structures, the non finding of aircraft parts at the sites, the amazing implosion and collapse and its preceding several explosions in the towers, the same facts at the Pentagon, all totally ignored, even fought against, ridiculed and smeared, so why are we so comfortable sticking to the one and only one story, presented to us practically on day one, with its weird scenarios, details and motives.

Fixed and well rehearsed methodologies, intentions and motives, while no other story or possibility that could constitute a very different affair, the exact opposite and the dirtiest conspiracy for the 21st century !!! To only serve some hideous and frightening ideals and serve very few entities, backed by Neocons, perpetual war machines and few countries behind them. We have proudly created the perfect enemy for us and our closest allies for the foreseeable future. I can only hope the latest missiles against the Saudi Aramco facilities do not follow the same reasoning, planning and motivation.

Subduing and brain washing the entire American and Western population against an entire segment of the globe's population, only to serve the very few, we are all bathing in our comfortability with the well fed official story, refusing even the possibility of actually looking or reexamining the facts, or any other proven or unproven possible scenario of the reality.

Is reality so hard and cruel to look it straight in the eye ?? Have we reached the age of total complacency and submission to the Orwellian world ?? Where do we go next, I wonder , our total surrender to the official verdict, and our absolute blind trust in big brother's methodology and indoctrination is indeed frightening, and it's only increasing and becoming a real part of our lives.
                                          My, as always, many thanks indeed .....