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Guest Post: One Experience That Really Shaped My Thinking
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,
Years ago as a young intelligence officer, I served a stint in Saudi Arabia running a team of counter-terrorism analysts and agents.
We used to have regular “threat working groups,” a fancy way of saying we would get together at the US Embassy for meetings with the embassy staff, local NSA operators, and CIA operatives working in the country under official cover.
The tone of the meetings was always the same – looking at various reports and figuring out which intelligence was credible.
It seemed like every week we would hear about some terrorist with a suitcase-sized bomb, and the bureaucrats would dive into a lively debate about whether or not to evacuate the Americans.
One day, I remember, my friend who was the senior ranking non-commissioned officer interrupted and said, “What about the Swedes?”
Silence. You could have heard a pin drop.
An embassy official looked at him, puzzled. “Sergeant?”
“What about the Swedes? Do we evacuate the Swedes too?”
The embassy staff looked at each other, shrugged a bit, “Oh sure, sure, we’ll coordinate with Washington on that.” And the discussion continued.
“What about the Saudis?”
Silence again. And then he really made his point. “It’s not just about Americans, you know. Their blood is worth something too.”
I’ll never forget it. It was formative for me. But for the government bureaucrats, it was as if he were speaking Greek. They just didn’t understand the concept.
It’s so commonplace… and one of the more unfortunate aspects of humanity. We group ourselves, defining each other by irrelevant things like nationality or the color of our passports.
The modern nation state has only served to reinforce this purpose. The flag waving and bombastic patriotism drive a sentiment that other peoples are less important– that their lives are worth less than our lives… as if we’re not all human beings.
To give you a harsh example, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was a vocal opponent of Geneva Convention restrictions to prevent British planes from bombing certain civilian targets.
He had a long history of this, having dropped 97 tonnes of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds on Iraqi civilians in a 1920 revolt against British occupation.
According to his wife in later memoirs, George opposed any such restrictions because he wanted to “reserve the right. . . to bomb niggers!”
Though such language is intellectually appalling today, very little has changed in this sentiment: our lives are worth more than other people’s.
President Obama really drove this point home in a speech yesterday which passionately defended US drone strikes– something the White House calls “necessary, legal, and just.”
Now, it’s possible that I’ve seen a more intellectually disingenuous speech in my life. But I really can’t remember when.
As the President stated, the drone strikes are “effective” and have “saved lives.”
So says the Nobel Peace Prize recipient. But I imagine there are a number of dead civilians who would take issue with his assertion if they could.
By “saved lives,” he obviously meant “American lives”. Of course, we’ll never know since they don’t release any information and we’re all just supposed to take the government’s word without question.
I don’t. Having once been inside the machine, I know that there is zero certainty in the intelligence business... which makes the whole calculus morally reprehensible.
My dictionary defines the word sociopath as “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”
I think the shoe fits. At a minimum, this policy… this strategy… is sociopathic. It demonstrates a lack of conscience for the value of innocent life overseas and is another massive moral stain on the politicians who lord over the Land of the Free.
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UN is as good as people who are in it. UN was not involved in Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Syria.. so I'd say their track record is not bad.
Just because UN is disregarded in US and Israel doesn't mean its in same regard everywhere else.
And the whole thing about "protection", you have to admit is BS. Its a same as "fighting for freedom" "democracy" "protecting american way of life"
The UN sucks. It would be hard to find an organization more rife with conflict of interest, corruption, and fraud. What they actually DO for humanity is useless when you consider the amount of resources they operate with. Google UN corruption or UN fraud. One of their latest declarations to solve world hunger is for people to eat more bugs. Do we need a world body to determine that? They should abolish the UN and allow countries to form alliances as they wish as the UN has no power to enforce anything and is just a way for each country to justify their policy.
Hey, dude, I am in Dhaka and there was no weird armed stuff when I went in at the goofy airport there, like you described earlier.
The USSA, however, is a police state compared to 20 years ago. That's why I stay out.
The duty free "shops" could use more stuff, but, hey, the country is 4th world.
You need to come off the cloak and dagger stuff.
There are other folks out here who know exactly what you do, and we are just as capable as you are.
Carry on.
()
N3
The difference between an IED and a drone?
Cost.
Funny how easy it is to divide and distract people.
Simple fact of the matter is, if "we" weren't "over there" to begin with, we wouldn't be arguing about this stuff.
Our masters get us into these situations, then keep us squabbling amongst ourselves about what to do about it.
This is a piece of wild and smooth "intelligence" itself. And Simon Black, whom I suspected earlier of being involved in "intelligence", has just confirmed this.
He's very good at what he does. He's established how wrong dropping bombs from drones is; something most of us know already. Then, he turns it into some kind of Nationalism.
What Obama (a puppet for sure) is doing has NOTHING to do with flag waving, patriotism, and the "nation state".
This has to do with breaking down nation-states (borders), bringing world-wide conformity, a one-world Banking system, the abolition of "tribes" and clans that might be a threat to the coming Techno-World-Dictatorship, and destroying the Individualism that is still going on in the United States.
It's about bringing about a Modern Day Techno-Feudal system.
Simon Black's goal is to encourage the wealthy to invest in many of the dying sovereign nation-states that he obviously helped destroy. One of the is Chile. He encourages the Fat-ass American and Euro-trash neuveau rich to plunder and exploit these nations.
The Nation-State is a problem for these people.
We are not bombing the Middle East and other places because we are preserving our American 'Nation-State'.
This guy is full of shit. He's probably a sociopath himself. This guy stays anonymous for a reason.
This is the worst article I've seen written by Simon. It severely reduces his credibility with me. The implied altruism and moral equivalence is sickening.
Tribalism is inherent. It is hard-wired into our DNA. The inability to control our tribal instincts is killing us. Miltary intelligence IS AN OXYMORON!!! Truly. My pops was a cryptographer, so he oughta know.
This is Memorial Day and the militants are using this to honor the current wars that America is fighting.
Those wars are Israeli wars; they are fought against the enemies of Israel. And because the U.S. foreign policy has been co-opted by a pro-Israel philosophy we now have many enemies because to adapt policy to the enemies of Israel is to pick up a world of enemies.
And when you see the U.N. votes where only the United States votes with Israel you begin to recognize that these wars are for empire and not for defense or justice or humanity or, you know what, for “saving lives.” They are for killing people, and killing the enemies of Israel by the hundreds of thousands. Yes, they’re using drones to attack wedding parties because there might be “one bad guy’ present. But how about those children in their gay wedding clothes spattered with blood from the drone?
How about their future and their lives?
Obama is a two-bit messenger boy. It’s not this president who is the prime sociopath; it’s who is pulling his strings? Who authorized him to be president? Who blocked all of the other qualified candidates from even having a chance? And it wasn’t the Chicago gang; it was the New York gang - the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
When you begin to look beyond Obama, and you being to look beyond the Chicago boys, your eyes begin to rest on your final target – the NY Federal Reserve Bank - the gang that has a string that is attached to all the other… puppets.
Those wars are Israeli wars; they are fought against the enemies of Israel. And because the U.S. foreign policy has been co-opted by a pro-Israel philosophy we now have many enemies because to adapt policy to the enemies of Israel is to pick up a world of enemies.
Really?, LOOK at who is taking over after we have cleaned out the horrible despots.Which is worse?
The first by a mile,and all WE are doing is helping set up all these places as an extension of a califphate.
You are mistaken, of course, about the aftermath of the U.S. empire footprint.
We keep the resources.
Left behind are the bodies, the burned villages, the destroyed infrastructure and, not to be forgotten, the anger, the revenge, the hatred of the American arrogance and viciousness against the hundreds of thousands of innocent people in completely sovereign countries that have never indicated malice toward America.
But to chronicle your mistaken conclusion one needs to watch the path of attack followed by the Americans acting as the Israeli servant: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, and now Syria.
Where does this pathway lead? Iran - the one populated, strong nation defiant of Israel. Iran has been the target all along, its culture will not give in, will not compromise, and the march toward them is right on schedule.
We have all in our turn bowed down to sacrifice our cultures – Europe, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, and, of course, America, compromising and surrendering to Hollywood, socialism, multiculturalism, radical diversity, atheism, and corporate corruption - Satanism. We are dissolving our relationships with each other so that we cannot face the elite rulers as a body, oligarchs who have seized the leverage to take the actions they've taken -- driving the foreign policy, electing willing puppets, controlling the currency and the direction of the corporations and monopolies. But they haven't completed it yet; they've co-opted millions and neutered a few million others; but they have also alerted millions that we are under attack from within. And we're going to have to fight to take back our country; a revolution to get them out.
What to do with Iran, then, when she will not bow down and worship Baal.
Why are you always leaving the UK's role out of all this? They have a massive responsible part in all of this, too. Not long ago, I saw 'ol Rothschild babbling on about the East rising. And of course it is, because it is being funded to do so, while they are destroying what remains of Western individualism. Rothschild does not care if he destroys Europe, or UK, as long as he has control of the money. Remember:
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependant on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." — Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863
THAT IS WHY THEY WANT TO GET RID OF SOVEREIGN NATION-STATES. Independent nations are the threat, as well as groups of patriots (no matter what country they come from).
But then you have the Administrators of these parasites. And they are in the millions, from nations world-wide....That is how they are playing the "New World Order".
The Elite's choice of strategy to gain control over all sovereign peoples and nations is to first use RELIGIONS as a means to foment radicalism. It is easy then to divide and conquer an entire nation or group. It looks like they are radicalizing the populations of Muslim countries by bombing their people and creating hatred of the West. They ARE NOT BOMBING THEM for a bogus "war on terror" OR for their Resources (you could make far better resource deals diplomatically than by bombs). Nope...They are bombing to piss the masses off so they radicalize. Then they pit the radicals on the cultures (See Iraq for an example).
Same is going to be done in U.S....They will have to tweak it for Christianity, but the principle will remain. It appears they may be going to radicalize the Mexicans (fast & furious, etc).
But you cannot tell many people this stuff and have them follow through on the conversation....they quickly get lost when they see no immediate relation to their lives now.
Thanks for the reminder of the role the UK plays in this sweeping tyranny; you’re exactly correct.
The concepts on radicalism that you have provided fit what I’m seeing as the central divisive wave in our world today. It is race.
America is awash in race.
This was the objective of the 1965 Immigration Act. The symptoms are now apparent for all to see. And the fact is, it was done on purpose. That is no longer debatable.
And its primary objective was to dissolve the white Christian culture and make it less formidable for the advance of corruption. The ruling oligarchs, the financial elites, stand for corruption, for the destruction of freedom, for ushering in their socialist one-world government, for desolation and lawless power.
Some suggest that it is anti-Semitic to link people of Jewish ancestry to top political posts throughout the world. But based on their authorship of the ’65 Immigration bill and their continued reporting on Jewish websites of the appointments of Jews to top positions enabling a more positive and forceful support for Israeli policy in America’s government, it is a political reality that must be faced.
IOW, the appointment of Jews to world leadership positions is more than a racial question; these are political appointments related not to good governance but to a forced foreign policy.
For instance: The “fastest growing Jewish newspaper in America,” the Algemeiner, reports that President Francois Hollande’s appointments of two Jews to top ministerial posts in France that are “rich in Jewish origins” are considered to be in favor of France’s close political ties to Israel, although as artist and close friend to Nicolas Sarkozy, Ron Agam, says, “they should prove that they will be the friends that we want them to be.” (Pierre Moscovici in 2012 was named France’s new Finance Minister and Laurent Fabius was named the country’s new Foreign Minister.)
In short, the Jewish objective is simply to bring in more Jews to put the Jews in power.
At the same time, Hispanics continue to push for the appointments of more Hispanics in government not for good government, not for fairness and the common good of all Americans, but for race related objectives – namely, the increase in the number of Hispanics coming across the border and being infused into the society's political power structure.
That has nothing to do with seeking qualified public officials to serve the common good of America.
National Pulbic Radio (NPR) has a program called Latino USA that often records the number of Latinos in public office in America. It’s not for good governance, for selecting people with the best qualifications for the job… It has one objective: Mexican. Mexican. Mexican. Find them, put them in charge – any Mexican is better than a qualified person of any other race.
As for the blacks, even with a black president, his appointments never satisfy the black opinion leaders whose single objective seems to be the appointment of more and more blacks to government positions.
The mistake we make is to not realize that this divisiveness is being programmed and promoted on purpose to break down a central culture that defined the American system. And that when it is dissolved there will no longer be an America. Or a France. Or a UK.