Monthly Archives: March 2014

Those Not So Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines

On March 28th 2014 the United Nations requested that all nations using armed drones comply with and respect international law. The two countries most affected by this sinister type of weaponry, Pakistan and Yemen, in which hundreds of its citizens have been killed as innocent by-standers in the ‘global war on terror’ sponsored a resolution with the support of Switzerland, but didn’t single out the United States as the main culprit in this horrid and shameful daily ‘reality show’ played out in the covert war theaters of the post-modern world.
The Commander in Chief of the United States of America, a recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate argues that his country is committed to following domestic and international law with the greatest possible transparency, in its use of armed drones. The average person, and the international community knows that this just isn’t the case.
In a separate, but equally ‘brave new world’ development, Face book guru and profiteer Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to connect two-thirds of the world which has no internet access using drones, satellites and lasers. His announcement follows on from Amazon’s desire to have drones flying around our heads as they deliver tens of thousands of customer deliveries on a daily basis and Google’s plan to have party balloons beaming the internet into our homes!
I wonder if it has ever occurred to Mark Zukerberg, and his confrères at Amazon and Google, that not everyone wants to be connected to the internet or have Wi-Fi access. Our day-to-day lives can and do exist outside of his sphere of influence and the ubiquitous influence of technology on our experiences of thinking and being.
Military use of armed drones to fight wars by proxy, and commercial use of drones as agents of advanced capitalism, both exploit people. In the former case they destroy lives, kill innocents and annihilate whole communities. In the latter case they are part of the wider agenda of the techno-evangelist cult to create a digital utopia in which everyone will be forced to endure the sane madness of those not so magnificent men and their flying machines!

Double Standard: noun, a situation in which two people, groups, etc., are treated very differently from each other in a way that is unfair to one of them

The West’s hypocrisy on Crimea and the Ukraine is so blatantly apparent it’s embarrassing. The United States of America in particular has adopted a revisionist position in its readings of the history of the region. Unsuccessful presidential candidate John McCain’s rants continue to be embarrassing-even to himself.

President Obama, an increasingly impotent world statesman and leader, unable to rely on the euphoria of his two elections and the premature conferring of his Nobel Peace Prize struggles to assert any kind of world leadership in the midst of a contagion of global crises. Rather, like David Cameron in the United Kingdom, he chooses to bluster his way through the seemingly insignificant event in Crimea. It’s insignificant because the people of Crimea have spoken-in a very democratic way-about the direction they wish to see their region develop.


This is in comparison to the unparalleled death and destruction both Cameron, Obama, and the West allow to continue in Syria; a tragedy unknown to the world since the Rwandan genocide, Srebrenica, and the atrocities committed during the rule of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany.

Where‘s your Red Line now Mr. President?

Germany is perhaps behaving very cautiously toward developments in Crimea for obvious reasons although Chancellor Merkel claims she’s been deceived by Putin-all sound familiar?

What are we learning from all of this? Despite the delusion of globalisations for all, and its accrued benefits for the wealthy one percent, the concept of cultural integration is naïve, as understood in post-modernity and in an era of greater technological developments.The world is still a place inhabited by tribal hatreds and internecine rivalries unparalleled since the beginning of time. These will reappear in different guises for generations to come.

The Lord Khrushchev Giveth & The Lord Putin Taketh Away

Reprinted from http://www.pravada.ru
Nikita Khrushchev gave Russia’s Crimea away to Ukraine in only 15 minutes (Pravda.ru, 2009)

USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev gave Russia’s Crimea away to Ukraine in only 15 minutes
The Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union passed the decree to hand over the Crimean region from the structure of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) to the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union. Then-Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, virtually gave Crimea away to Ukraine.
The delivery of the region from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR was just a formality during the years of the “indestructible” Soviet Union. Ukraine received such a gift on the occasion of the 300th anniversary since its unification with Russia. It could never occur to anyone back in those days that the USSR would collapse, and that Ukraine would no longer be a part of it.
Historians have a very simple explanation to Nikita Khrushchev’s generosity. He came to power after the death of Joseph Stalin, unmasked his cult and condemned repressions. However, Khrushchev was involved in a number of repression-related affairs before. He was conducting a struggle against “people’s enemies” when he served as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1938 to 1947 to win the support of the Ukrainian leadership. That is why he gave the resort peninsula on the Black Sea coast to the republic.
Khrushchev informed his comrades of the decision to deliver Crimea to Ukraine incidentally, on the way to lunch. “Yes, comrades, there is an opinion to deliver Crimea to Ukraine,” he said casually. No one dared to express any protests, because a word of the first face of the Communist Party was law.

The Supreme Council of Russia ruled in 1992 that the Crimean region had been delivered to Ukraine illegitimately.
References
Pravda.ru. (2009, February 19). History & Traditions. Retrieved from Pravda.ru: http://english.pravda.ru/history/19-02-2009/107129-ussr_crimea_ukraine-0/

Why wake up your mind when God’s on your side?

The West confronts Russia in the Crimea again, some 160 years after their last fracas and the Ukrainians and Russians eyeball each other with guns loaded while other regional conflicts are given less airplay on our daily news bulletins.

There are around 9 major conflicts on-going in our world today; Afghanistan, Somalia, Northern Nigeria, North West Pakistan, Syrian civil war, Iraqi insurgency, Central African Republic and the Southern Sudan conflict. And each is being fought with the fanaticism of mad men who claim divine inspiration and moral supremacy over humanity.

In addition there’s the struggle for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and Iran, the unresolved Korean peninsula war (to date there’s only a truce in place), the struggle for dominance in the Kashmir region by Indian and Pakistan, the Arab and Israeli unresolved conflict and continued, destructive economic and propaganda war, the Baluchistan insurgency in Pakistan, the on-going internal unrest in Burma and the persecution of the Rohingya, the West Papua uprising against Indonesian imperialism, an on-going insurgency in North East India, the decades old political struggle in Colombia, the Islamic and Communist internal conflicts in the Philippines, the Lord’s resistance army war covering three African countries: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo the Central African Republic South Sudan, China’s brutal occupation of Tibet and the ongoing rebellion in Xinjang province, the Maghreb war that embraces Algeria, Mali, Tunisia, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, the war in Darfur, Al Qaeda in Yemen, the Shia uprisings in Bharain and Yemen and in eastern parts of Saudi Arabia, The ongoing brutal war in the Niger Delta, the Muslim led insurgency in Southern Thailand, the ADF insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the ongoing centuries old Sudanese nomadic conflict, with each being fought with the undying belief that God’s on their side.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts (accessed 7/3/2014)