sobota 8. decembra 2012

Holiday Traditions

 


Festive ideas to make your family's holidays special



The convenience stores are already boasting candles and tinsel, and Jack Frost is sending in the chilly northern winds. The signs are clear: The holidays are coming up fast!
Are you looking for a new tradition or two that will help your family get in the holiday spirit and create lasting memories together? Check out this plethora of ideas to add to your bag of holiday fun!

•  Give your kids a set of cozy winter pajamas every Christmas Eve.
•  Hang gift bags or small stockings on your neighbors' doorknobs.
•  Using SignUpGenius, create a holiday party where everyone brings a gift for a family in need.
•  Give multiple people Secret Santa gift baskets. Pick out five to ten people or families that sacrifice a lot for the community, and make gift baskets to leave on their porches.
•  Using SignUpGenius, organize a party and have everyone bring supplies to fill Secret Santa baskets.
•  Put your kids on decorating duty! Give them Popsicle sticks, cotton balls, glue, paint, etc. and have them make festive crafts to display around the house.
•  To include friends in the above tradition, organize a party for families and create a template on SignUpGenius to be sure that all of the necessary craft materials are brought.
•  Give each child a unique ornament every Christmas Day.
•  For the 12 days of Christmas or 8 nights of Hanukkah, have a small daily community service task for your family or one of its members to complete.
•  For Kwanzaa, include your kids in the nightly folktale. Have them create picture books of the tales by letting them each color a page and write part of the story on it.
•  Start a house decorating contest in your neighborhood.
•  For the truly bold, hide a pickle in the branches of your Christmas tree. The first child to find it gets an extra small present.
•  For extended family members who mail gifts to each other every year, skip the postage and let folks pick a charity to give to instead.
•  Pick your favorite holiday movie and cozy up to it with hot cider and popcorn each year.
•  Go see the lights. Drive around your city or a nearby town and drink in the glowing festivity.
•  Make a memory book by recording each member's favorite part of the season (in pictures or words) and keep it for future enjoyment.
•  While it's nice to burrow into new gifts throughout the holiday afternoon, instead initiate something special that your family does only on that day. (Playing an entire game of Monopoly or reading a special book are good examples.)
•  Feed the neighborhood birds by throwing pine cones and strings of popcorn covered in peanut butter and bird seed into the tree branches.
•  Call up a family or old friend (who isn't expecting it) to come celebrate with you.
•  Grab your passports (figuratively) and choose a different country each year. Research their holiday traditions and incorporate theirs into your own.
•  Start a Charity Box/Jar that you keep in the kitchen or other frequently used part of the house. Throughout the year, drop cash and loose change in it. Come the holidays, collaborate with the family and decide on something worthy of its contents.
•  Have a gingerbread or latkes making party or contest!
•  If you have three or more children that are old enough, have each of them draw names and purchase a gift for that one person. If necessary, set a dollar limit.
•  For Hanukkah, organize a potluck (using SignUpGenius, of course!) and dreidel tournament.
•  Leave a bowl of reindeer food (oatmeal and glitter) in your front yard on Christmas Eve. (Don't forget to remind Santa to tip the bowl over and scatter the food when he comes!)
•  Whether it's cinnamon buns, sourdough bread with butter, or an egg-sausage casserole, have a special, consistent breakfast on Christmas morning or a few different choices throughout Hanukkah.
•  For families of Santa fans, buy presents for kids off of an angel tree at your church or at a mall.
•  A family walk during Hanukkah or on Christmas day will help prevent sluggishness and keep spirits high.
•  A fun (and thrifty) Hanukkah tradition is to keep the gifts simple and minor, and put the focus on a theme for each night. (Charity Night, Family Game Night, Home Movie Night...)
•  Send a Christmas letter with a recent family picture, especially to your friends and relatives who don't spend much time on computers keeping up with people.
•  Host a cookie swap or a Christmas tea. Use SignUpGenius.com to invite and organize.
•  Pick an evening and go Christmas caroling with your neighbors.
•  Decorate a gingerbread house together.
•  Host a gingerbread house decorating contest. Use SignUpGenius.com to invite and coordinate who brings each type of candy.
•  Ask each family member to make a card for everyone in your immediate family and place them on the tree on Christmas Eve to open before gifts in the morning.
•  Plan a progressive dinner for neighbors, church small group members or school families you'd like to get to know better in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Use SignUpGenius.com to invite and organize.
•  If you live in a warm climate, take a bike ride in the parking lot of a shopping center or mall on Christmas Day when the area is empty of the usual cars.
•  If you live in a snow-laden climate, face off for a snowball fight or build a snowman together.
•  Organize a Christmas group gift for your child's teacher using SignUpGenius.com.
•  Update your family photo early, so you're ready to send it out with a Christmas card in December.
•  Gather a group and host a Christmas party for seniors at a local retirement home. Use SignUpGenius.com to invite and organize.
•  Decorate a holiday themed dish at a local paint your own pottery with your family and add to the set every year.
•  Offer to babysit for a single mom while she goes out Christmas shopping.
•  Get a new holiday music CD every year and listen to the CDs while you are in the middle of enjoying other holiday traditions together.
•  Have each child write a “Dear Santa” or “Dear God” letter each year and collect them to share together around the holidays as the kids grow up.
•  Think about a family who might be struggling at Christmas and brainstorm ways to encourage them together. Decide on one or two ideas to do as a family.
•  Start a Christmas puzzle together at the beginning of the season and work on it a little bit at a time to decompress through the holidays.
•  Watch family videos of previous winter holidays together while drinking hot chocolate.
•  Bundle up and make a day trip to a tree farm to pick out a Christmas tree and return home to decorate it together.
•  Organize a school wide Christmas shop where families can contribute new or gently used items from around the house and kids can shop for inexpensive gifts for their family members. Use SignUpGenius.com to coordinate volunteers to set up, man the shop and restock.
•  Visit a live nativity scene and return home to act out or read the Christmas story together.

From unique holiday tradition ideas to easy sign ups, SignUpGenius is here to help you simplify your December and have a blast doing it. So go ahead, use SignUpGenius to manage your potlucks, cookie exchanges, and holiday parties. We know you'll love spending all of the time you save on more meaningful activities with family and friends. From us to you, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

source :http://www.signupgenius.com/home/fun-unique-holiday-traditions.cfm

piatok 31. decembra 2010

Happy New Year to all my dear friends...





I wish you Health...
So you may enjoy each day in comfort.

I wish you the Love of friends and family...
And Peace within your heart.

I wish you the Beauty of nature...
That you may enjoy the work of God.

I wish you Wisdom to choose priorities...
For those things that really matter in life.

I wish you Generosity so you may share...
All good things that come to you.

I wish you Happiness and Joy...
And Blessings for the New Year.

I wish you the best of everything...
That you so well deserve.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 my FRIEND!

********

Prajem Ti Zdravie ...
by vychutnať si mohol každý deň v pohodlí.

Prajem Ti Lásku  priateľom a rodiny ...
a mier vo svojom srdci.

Prajem Ti  Krásu prírody ...
by vychutnať si mohol Božské  dielo.

Želám Ti Múdrosť pri výbere priorít ...
tých veci, ktoré sú naozaj dôležité v živote.

Želám Ti Veľkorysosť, by zdieľať mohol si ...
všetke dobré veci, ktoré sa k tebe dostanú.

Prajem Ti Šťastie a radosť ...
a požehnanie pre tento Nový Rok.

Želám Ti zo všetkého to najlepšie ...
čo dobré si zaslúžiš.
ŠŤASTNÝ NOVÝ ROK 2012 priateľ môj !

streda 17. novembra 2010

Farming: Why Obama's government is George Wallace, Monsanto is the KKK, and we are all black children now



http://www.opednews.com/articles/Farming--Why-Obama-s-gove-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090125-421.html

The US food supply is being taken over at this moment through regulations most people have never heard of or know about. Click here.

For years, environmentalists have been struggling to stop pesticides that are deadly to everything, and food safety people have been trying to stop GMOs that are threaten to human health and all of nature, and farming groups have been trying to stop regulations that make farming literally impossible. The arguments for organic farming and freedom to farm go beyond argument - it is patently obvious that is the only thing that makes any sense whatsoever.

So, why is industrial agriculture - which is depleting and contaminating our water supply, filling animals with drug after drug that make us sick, using such disgusting practices it has created Mad Cow and Bird Flu, wiping out fish stocks in the ocean with poisonous run-off into the Mississippi, causing suicides by the 10s of thousands in India and our own farmers deaths in huge numbers in the 80s here, destroying farming communities and the democratic base they provide this country, killing bees, and giving us diabetes and heart disease and cancers - pre-eminent over an agriculture that is simply and by all common-sense, good?

Discrimination.

Look hard at that word. It is unfamiliar within the paradigm of agriculture but it is the unseen bedrock reality and it is the source of all the insanity mentioned above.

The poisoning of the earth, the mutating of nature, the dying of bees and farmers, do not derive from an even remotely just system but from one as systematic and malign as racism, and with same infiltration of government and extra-governmental use of terror to prevail.

Monsanto is currently in the process of wiping out hundreds of farmers in southern Illinois and destroying previously close communities through fear and paranoia. Within a frame of "agriculture" or defending "patents," it somehow passes as "normal" to have hired thugs trespassing, harassing, threatening, tracking, and abusing farmers and then pushing them into bankruptcy through lawsuits against patent infringement. Click here. Pulled from an agricultural frame, though, one can see that those patents as similar to laws that defined slaves as 3/5 of a man legally, because they, too, contravene all equal and natural rights of each individual to what is inherently theirs - in the first case, freedom and a vote, and in the second case, ownership of nature itself. And Monsanto is also acting as did the KKK, striking fear into communities on purpose, to cow farming communities and even to eliminate them in what it calls "rural cleansing." Click here.

A discriminatory group has intruded itself into a setting in which all people once had equal rights over nature, and it has managed to alter the entire system of rights which no one had noticed as "rights" before (access to nature being so unconsciously assumed). This immense overturning of justice did not happen accidentally but derived from extremely corrupt means - inserting a Monsanto employee, Clarence Thomas, onto the Supreme Court to make rulings that genetically altered organisms were no different from normal ones, and then on intellectual property law which allowed fro the take-over of nature through genetic engineering. People have recognized that this gave Monsanto a massive benefit - a lock on ownership of whatever it screwed with. But what has been missed is that those rulings by a black "Justice" destroyed previously taken for granted and thus undefined civil and human rights around nature.

The approach to pesticides has been similar. They have been seen merely as a product to be tested and approved or not approved, but something primary has been missing in that - a recognition that the corruption of the process is a civil rights issue. "Life," liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In those words, it becomes plain that health, and thus what is done to threaten nature, the source of all life, is a civil right. Lost within "agriculture" and "commodities" or "profit" or "studies" is the profound truth that this is about life or death and our civil rights to life. One group is using corrupt means to discriminate against a defined segment of the population - all of us who wish to live.

We are used to seeing discrimination personified - George Wallace in the school house door blocking little black children from getting an education, and Bull Connor setting fire hoses and dogs on peaceful black protesters. That template became the defining one for civil rights - white over blacks, good people being stopped by the government. But it does not fit civil rights abuses now.

Today, government is not the rescuer but itself is attacking a marginalized group and stands between it and something they need. This is even harder to recognize now that Obama is president - for he is a black man overseeing a government that is discriminating and abusing a marginalized group. Who is the marginalized group? It is hard to see as well because it is all of us. And what is that group being denied through discriminatory laws and practices (and armed raids)? What we all need to survive - nature in a healthy state and full freedoms to it. And who is being discriminated in favor of? Multinational corporations such as Monsanto.

It makes for a much harder to draw political cartoon because the discrimination is so total and the government, run by a black man, is part of it.

But let's look at only a couple of examples to see how it works precisely as discriminatory laws worked against the civil rights of blacks.

Voting rights were the heart of civil rights because they defined the equal personhood of black people. To block them from this civil right, poll taxes were interposed between them and the vote. They "were allowed" to vote, only the cost made it prohibitive.

Today, farmers are allowed to farm but the FDA's seed contamination regulations (with Monsanto's hand in them easy to see) have just listed seed cleaning equipment as sources of seed contamination and farmers are no longer allowed to use the equipment they have to clean seed to sell to the public now. Click here. The seeds included? Those eaten raw (flax, poppy, sesame); those sprouted (wheat, alfalfa, beans, greens, broccoli, etc.); those pressed into oils (corn, soy, sunflower, canola, etc.); those used for animal feed. Oh, farmers can still clean those seeds but they would have to get equipment the FDA now requires as safe enough - a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment ... for each line of seed. A farmer with hand made seed cleaning equipment he's used for 40 years to clean seeds which never made a single person sick, would now need to build 15 buildings if he wishes to raise and sell 15 kinds of seeds. This corporate influence is criminal and corrupt. But even putting that aside, the imposition of corporate standards on small farmers is discriminatory. And intentionally so. Just as with voting rights, it is meant to deny the civil rights of one group to the advantage of a more powerful one.

A second example. Once poll taxes were eliminated, racist white people found another means of blocking blacks from voting - literacy tests. Using the seemingly rational argument that people should be educated enough to vote, they inserted this bar between black people and their full Constitutional right to vote. Black people were slurred, deemed "too dumb to vote." No one, of course, was testing whether the racists were too undemocratic to vote, too cruel, too miseducated, too corrupt, or too ... whatever. And no one asked whether common sense and decency and a history of being treated unjustly were actually ideal qualifications for voting and literacy was irrelevant and not included in the Constitution. What mattered was only that one group discriminated against another and denied them their Constitutional rights and using "false measures of value" to do so.

Today, farmers have "the right" to farm but the government is attacking their products as "too dirty to sell." The USDA and its state agriculture departments are increasingly making raids against Mennonite and Amish raw milk dairy farmers and others who have been producing and selling their clean and healthy products for hundreds of years without complaint from customers. Click here. The government lab results which are used to close down farms don't match independent labs, and farmers fear the permits demanded of them set them up for attacks against them. Those behind the "food safety" attacks represent filthy food already making our population sick - food derived from disease-creating feed processes, from GMOs, from heavy pesticide use, from hormones, steroids and antibiotics. Just as the racists hid behind literacy as the criteria for democracy, but were at their core illiterate about democracy and anti-democratic, those discriminating against farmers ("farmists"?) hide behind "food safety" as a bar to selling food, but are at their core are "too profit-blinded to produce safe food" as well as profoundly anti-democratic. "Food filthy" is attacking those providing true food safety and the healthiest food in the country. These attacks are certainly criminal and corrupt and in Canada, a farmer is actually suing the government for criminal conspiracy. Click here. But what is important is to see through the criminality and corruption and the bogus use of "food safety" to the discrimination involved in generating a view of farmers as incapable of farming adequately - and by those farming dangerously. Just as with demanding literacy tests (which were also rigged), condemning farmers' food as unsafe it is a device meant to stop farmers from farming. And just as with voting rights, this is discrimination - an absolute denial of the civil rights of one group to the advantage of a more powerful one.

So, American farmers can farm, only their means have been removed and they are being being raided and their products seized and the public is told what they produce is dirty and dangerous. Many farmers refuse to get permits out of fear and out of their belief it is their Constitutional right to contract freely with neighbors without the interference of a corrupt government, one that is not only intentionally discriminatory but has become dangerous in its armed attacks against them. They want testing for pathogens but distrust the government labs now. And in California, "too dirty to sell" comes now in the form of a government law that intentionally sets the bar higher than normal fresh milk can meet. Click here. Farmers recognize the George Wallace/Bull Connor behind the demand for permits, and are standing up for their Constitutional rights against their own government, and using the language of Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement in doing so. Click here.

Monsanto triggers thoughts of the civil rights movement, because its KKK tactics work the same way, as does its infiltration of good ole boy networks within state and national governments. Vilsack pushing of anti-democratic laws that preempt a community's means to control what is planted in its area, his pushing for GMOs, his pushing of NAIS, his supporting CAFOs which wiped out thousands of small farmers in Iowa, should be seen only through the lens of his working for Monsanto or of the government being corrupted through his closeness to Monsanto. Instead, his actions should be seen as massively discriminatory against farmers and against citizens whose constitutional right to life, and to liberty through democratic laws, is being aggressively and endlessly and covertly and powerfully denied.

Pull farming and pesticides and GMOs out of the frame they have been held in. It's almost like pulling them out of the mud. Wash them off and hold them up and look at them again. Realize that you are the little black child now unable to reach a decent life. And in that doorway, towering over you and all of us, is our own government (infiltrated by Monsanto), blocking every one of us from farming, from having a country full of small farmers, from local food, from safe food, from clean unpoisoned land, from healthy bees and birds, from normal seeds and trees and animals, available to everyone, and from our democracy.

Instead, we have a government ramping up to create a disease scare (as bird flu is being used in Asia right now) and use Homeland Security to wipe out normal animals stocks and normal seeds at will, and replace them with genetically engineered and patented ones. "Food safety," "diseases," "bioterrorism" all part of how the Patriot Act and Bush's "war on terror" are justified as weapons against us and our civil rights.

This is not just an agricultural issue. It is a civil rights and a human rights issue - the most profound in human history since it is about the right to (normal) nature and survival itself. The totalitarian and corrupt parties discriminating against us all can only be dealt with once we see this as a single issue and come together in a civil rights movement on behalf of us all. -->

štvrtok 26. augusta 2010

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today - Lži o Hirošíme sú lži o dnešku



http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20532
author:John Pilger

On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.



preklad zdroj:http://www.outsidermedia.cz/Kdo-lhal-o-Hirosime-lze-i-o-dnesku-1.aspx
Když jsem v roce 1967 poprvé přijel do Hirošimy, byl stále ještě vidět stín na schodišti. Bylo to dokonalé zobrazení ženy ve stavu pohody: roztažené nohy, prohnutá záda, opřená o jednu ruku tak, jak čekala, až se otevře banka. 6. srpna 1945 ve čtvrt na devět ráno byla její silueta vypálena do žuly. Zíral jsem na její stín snad hodinu a pak jsem šel k řece, kde jsem potkal muže jménem Jukio, jehož prsa byla stále poznačena vzorem košile, kterou měl na sobě, když byla shozena atomová bomba.

On se svou rodinou stále ještě žil v chatrči, postavené v prachu atomové pouště. Popsal mi obrovský záblesk nad městem „modrý svit, něco jako „elektrický oblouk při zkratu“, po kterém se vítr roztočil jako tornádo a padal černý déšť: „Porazilo mne to na zem a před sebou jsem viděl jen stonky tam, kde předtím byly mé květiny. Všude bylo ticho a klid, ale když jsem se zvedl, viděl jsem mlčící ochromené nahé lidi. Někteří neměli ani kůži ani vlasy. Byl jsem si jist, že jsem po smrti.“ Když jsem se po dalších 9 letech vrátil, už nežil, zemřel na leukémii.

Spojenecké okupační úřady zákázaly okamžitě po bombardování veškeré zmínky o radioaktivním spadu a trvaly na tom, že lidé byli zabiti nebo zraněni pouze výbuchem bomby. Byla to první lež. „Ruiny Hirošimy nejsou radioaktivní“ byl titulek na první stránce New York Times, klasická ukázka dezinformace a žurnalistické zbabělosti, což napravil až australský reportér Wilfred Burchett svým článkem století. „Píši toto jako varování světu,“ napsal Burchett v listu Daily Express, když zranění umírali na to, co nazval „atomovým morem“. Protože napsal pravdu, byla jeho novinářská akreditace zrušena, byl pranýřován, špiněn, ale nakonec obhájen.

Atomové bombardování Hirošimy a Nagasaki bylo kriminálním činem neuvěřitelného rozsahu. Byla to předem připravení masová vražda, která pustila z řemene kriminální zbraň. Z toho důvodu její obhájci hledali spásu v mytologii „dobré války“, jejíž „etická očistná lázeň“ (jak to nazval Richard Drayton) dovolila, aby si Západ nejen odpykal svou krvavou imperiální minulost, ale dopřál si 60 let hrabivých válek, vždy chráněn stínem Bomby.

Nejtrvalejší lží, je to, že „bomba byla shozena, aby se urychlil konec války v Pacifiku a uchránily se lidské životy“. Americká studie o strategickém bombardování z r. 1946 učinila následující závěr „I bez atomového útoku by vzdušná převaha nad Japonskem vyvinula dostatečný tlak, aby se docílilo bezpodmínečné kapitulace bez nutnosti invaze. Na základě detailního průzkumu všech faktů a podle výpovědí těch japonských velitelů, kteří přežili, je názorem této Studie že … Japonsko by se bylo vzdalo, i kdyby atomové bomby nebyly shozeny, Rusko nevstoupilo do války, a nebyla plánována invaze do Japonska.“

Národní archiv ve Washingtonu obsahuje americké vládní dokumenty, které mapují japonskou předehru k mírovým jednáním už v r. 1943. Jednání se neuskutečnilo. Telegram, zaslaný německým velvyslancem v Tokiu 5. května 1945, zachycený Američany, rozptyluje jakékoliv pochybnosti, že by Japonci zoufale netoužili domoci se jednání o míru, včetně přijetí kapitulace „i kdyby podmínky byly tvrdé“. Namísto toho americký ministr války Henry Stimson řekl presidentu Trumanovi, že se obává, že americké letectvo vybombarduje Japonsko tak, že nová zbraň nedostane příležitost „ukázat svou sílu“. Stimson později přiznal, že „nebylo vyvinuto žádné úsilí a nebylo o něm ani vážně uvažováno, aby se dosáhla kapitulace s cílem bombu nepoužít“. Jeho kolegové toužili, aby „mohli zastrašit Rusy Bombou, ostentativně pověšenou na opasku“. Generál Leslie Groves, ředitel Projektu Manhattan svědčil: „Neměl jsem žádnou iluzi o tom, že by Rusko nebylo náš nepřítel a že projekt byl veden na základě tohoto faktu.“ Den poté, co byla zničena Hirošima, vyjádřil president Truman svoje uspokojení nad „obrovským úspěchem tohoto pokusu“.
(Pozn. překladatele: Vzpomínám na kreslený vtip z podzimu 1945, kde na přehlídce pochodují obrovské ešelony ruských vojáků a pak jede jediné americké auto s bednou, označenou „atomová bomba“, následované vojenskou hudbou.)

Předpokládá se, že od r. 1945 byly Spojené státy nejméně třikrát na mezi rozhodnutí použít atomovou bombu. Při proklamování svého falešného hesla „boje proti teroru“ současné vlády ve Washingtonu a v Londýně vyhlásily, že jsou připraveny provést preventivní atomové údery proti beznukleárním státům. S každým krokem, přibližujícím nukleární Armageddon, jsou lži o oprávněnosti takového kroku stále více pobuřující. Současnou „hrozbou“ je Irán. Ale Irán nemá nukleární arsenál a dezinformace jsou od iránské opoziční skupiny MEK (podporované z CIA) – stejně jako lži o zbraních hromadného ničení Saddáma Husajna pocházely z Iráckého národního kongresu, vytvořeného Washingtonem.

Role západní žurnalistiky ve vytvoření tohoto strašáku je kritická. Americký Defence Intelligence Estimate uvádí, že „s vysokou pravděpodobností“ Irán přerušil svůj program atomového vyzbrojování v r. 2003. Nikoho nezajímá, že iránský prezident Mahmúd Ahmadínežád nikdy nevyhrožoval „smazáním Izraele z mapy“. Ale tato mantra žije tak, že Gordon Brown ve svém proslovu před izraelským parlamentem ji opět použil k výhrůžce Iránu.

Tento sled lží nás přivedl k jedné z největších krizí od r. 1945, protože skutečná hrozba je bez diskuse v západních vládních kruzích a mediích. Na Blízkém Východě je jediná nekontrolovatelná nukleární mocnost - a tou je Izrael. Odvážný Mordechai Vanunu se v r. 1986 snažil varovat svět, když vyvezl důkazy, že Izrael buduje sílu nejméně 200 nukleárních hlavic. Bez ohledu na rezoluce OSN má Izrael svědění napadnout Irán a to z obavy, že nová americká vláda může, skutečně jen možná může, zahájit skutečná jednání s národem, který byl Západem pošpiněn, když Velká Británie a USA svrhly v r. 1953 demokratickou vládu v Iránu.

Izraelský historik Benny Morris, který byl kdysi považován za liberála, a který je nyní politickým a vojenským poradcem své vlády, ve svém článku v New York Times z 18. července letošního roku pohrozil, že „Irán může být přeměněn na nukleární poušť“. To by byla masová vražda. Pokud to pronáší Žid, je to ironie osudu.

Zůstává otázka: Jsme my ostatní pouhými diváky, kteří tvrdí, tak jako to říkali dobří Němci „my nic nevíme“? Schováváme se čím dál tím více ta to, co Richard Falk nazval „pokryteckou, jednosměrnou, legálně/morální zástěnou s namalovanými kladnými obrázky ohrožených západních hodnot a nevinnosti, což umožňuje konat kampaň neomezeného násilí“? Lovit válečné zločince je opět v módě, Radovan Karadžič je před soudem, ale Sharon, Omert, Bush a Blair nejsou. Proč? Vzpomínka na Hirošimu vyžaduje odpověď.



streda 28. júla 2010

Human Rights in the New Millennium by Noam Chomsky



http://www.zcommunications.org/human-rights-in-the-new-millennium-by-noam-chomsky


It is significant that the U.S. is self-exempted from international law

Before trying to address the current state of human rights, it is worth considering what is admitted into that sacred canon. The question constantly arises, quite concretely. For example, on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty in October, when Amnesty International declared that, "Poverty is the world's worst human rights crisis." Or two days before that, on World Food Day, when the UN food agency reported that the number of people going hungry rose to over 1 billion, while rich countries sharply cut back food aid because of the priority of bailing out banks, and Oxfam reported that 16,000 children are dying a day from hunger-related causes—that is twice Rwanda-level killing just among children—not for 100 days, but every day, and increasing. And the issues regularly arise even in the richest country in the world, where the question of whether health care is a human right is being hotly debated while some 45,000 people a year die from lack of insurance, unknown numbers from utterly inadequate insurance, in the only industrial society I know of where health care is rationed by wealth, not need.

In all these cases, the lives could be saved by a tiny fraction of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the rich countries, so the question is whether they recognize the right to life as among human rights.

There is a gold standard on human rights—the founding documents of the UN—the Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UD). The charter guarantees the right to be protected from what was declared at Nuremberg to be the "supreme international crime," differing from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows: the crime of aggression, which is reasonably well-defined. In practice, the Charter has long ago been revoked. Article 2(4) is in the wastebasket. There are sophisticated arguments in the international law literature to show that it doesn't mean what it says, when we carry out aggression, that is; no such questions arise when Russia or Saddam Hussein do.

The U.S. has been, in large measure, the global sovereign since World War II and remains so despite the increasing diversity of the global economy in past decades. Hence its practices are of great significance in considering the prospects for human rights. It is, for example, of great significance that the U.S. is self-exempted from international law—John F. Kennedy's armed attack against South Vietnam in 1962—to mention one case of no slight import that took place in the real world, but not in official history, opening the most severe crimes of aggression since World War II.
>>>>more read on the link above>>>>>>>

utorok 20. júla 2010

Western Savagery Ready to Unleash Nuclear War on the World Based on Lies

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/114159-0/
Western Savagery Ready to Unleash Nuclear War on the World Based on Lies

The history of endless US savagery reads like a horror story. Of course there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just a little preview of things to come when a monster gets its hands on weapons of mass destruction.

When they first started feeling their oats after the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, there was the savage, murderous attack on Yugoslavia for a pack of lies. Damage done to Yugoslavia was estimated to be USD 30 billion. In the 78 days of the attacks, 540 buildings were destroyed, 58 bridges and 30,000 homes.

There were 146 air raid alarms which combined lasted for 774 hours, for an average of 9 hours and 55 minutes a day. The insatiable lunatics were flying over 650 sorties every night. Talk about savagery and overkill, lack of civilization and absolute terrorism, not to mention the war crime of collective punishment of Yugoslav civilians who were expected to rise up against their leadership because they had been sufficiently terrorized.

Is this the way a respectable nation behaves, a nation who expects everyone else on the face of the Earth to be a carbon copy of themselves?

At one point during the bombing, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea likewise said the following:

"If President Milošević really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign."

Right, just like that, roll over, bend the knee and allow NATO to do whatever it wants.

Then there was Iraq. A completely devastated infrastructure, over a million dead and people still dying and suffering...much of the environment plagued with nuclear contamination, NATO totally wrecked the place. Again, all because of lies.

Then Afghanistan, now being forced to reveal and surrender its great resources, not to mention the lucrative drug trade, the heroin and opium, now being mass produced thanks to NATO.

What Part of "Bans the use or threat of force" does the US and Israel not understand? This is part and parcel of the UN Charter.

Specifically, in UN Resolution 1887 of September 2009, the Security Council reaffirmed the call for all states to resolve nuclear issues peacefully in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Iran's military doctrine is strictly defensive ... designed to prevent any invasion force from occupying the country. Iran is also committed to diplomatic solutions to hostilities or disputes. Iran only has "limited ability" to project force beyond its borders. Studies done make clear that the Iranian "threat" is not military. Iranian military spending is low compared with others in the region, and less than 2% of that of the U.S.

US efforts to slander and lie about Iran's peaceful nuclear program range from the outright fabrication of documents recently discovered in at least two instances, to trying to silence the IAEA and Director General, Mohamed El Baradei, who just cannot be convinced to lie for them.

Anyone remember the fabricated document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger, which was used by George Bush as part of his propaganda efforts in the buildup to the Iraq invasion of 2003? It's happening again and there is no excuse for people to be unmindful and especially silent that it's happening again.

Why is it constantly ignored in the western corporate media and by all the lying political buffoons that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on August 9, 2005. The full text of the fatwa was released in an official statement at the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. That ostensibly should settle the matter once and for all.

What part of "it is forbidden" do they not understand?

Now regarding the threats against Iran, what are Israeli warships doing, for the first time, in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s maritime areas? They are accompanied by a US fleet whose declared mission is "to implement sanctions against Iran and oversee the ships arriving or departing Iran." British and Israeli media reported that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for the Israeli bombing of Iran (Saudi Arabia denies this, another lie).

Military equipment being prepared for the aggression against Iran includes 387 "bunker busters" [bunker buster bombs] used to attack fortified subterranean structures. Preparations for these "massive attacks" with bunker busters, the most powerful bombs in the small arsenal of nuclear weapons began in the Bush administration. Upon taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans in order to target Iran.

"They are in high gear for the destruction of Iran," said Dan Plesch, director of the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. "Bomber and long-range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he said.

Again, Operation Overkill; Operation Terrorize the People; Operation Destroy a Country; Operation Contaminate the Land and Kill and Deform Generations to Come. They are planning nothing as they state, it's not going to be a mere "surgical strike." The US and Israel love to whine and play the terrorism victim card, but they themselves are the worst terrorists this world has ever seen.

Current activities of the Empire have led revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, to gloomily predict that nuclear war will soon be upon the world. It is a resignation that cannot be taken lightly, knowing the courage that was required for all the many successes of this man's life.

Every country's leaders need to be called to account for their mindless lockstep with Washington on this planned attack, as well as the sanctions. Who do these leaders work for, their people or Washington/Tel Aviv?

At this point, we can only ask the creative power that brought the universe into being (whatever your particular faith or belief system uses for a name) and all that we know as good, pure and beautiful, to put a protective hand on the great people of Iran and spare them and us the planned horror, put every obstacle in the path of the dogs of war, the evil empire, the greedy gluttonous forces of hell that base themselves in the USA and Israel.

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru

preklad:
Neurvalost Západu hrozí rozpoutat světovou jadernou válku založenou na lžích.

Historie nekonečné americké brutality připomíná hororový příběh. Samozřejmě tu byly Hirošima a Nagasaki. Pouze malá ukázka věcí budoucích, toho, co se stane, když monstrum dostane do svých rukou zbraně hromadného ničení.

Když poprvé pocítili možnost sklízet úrodu po rozpuštění Varšavského paktu, došlo k barbarskému vražednému útoku na Jugoslávii na základě snůšky lží. Škody způsobené Jugoslávii byly odhadnuty na 30 miliard dolarů, za 78 dní útoků bylo zničeno 540 budov, 58 mostů a 30,000 domovů.

Celkem proběhlo146 leteckých poplachů, které dohromady trvaly 774 hodin, v průměru 9 hodin a 55 minut denně. Tito maniakální šílenci prováděli každou noc 650 náletů. Mluvíme o barbarismu a masakrování, necivilizovanosti a čistém terorismu, a to nemluvě o válečném zločinu kolektivního trestu vůči jugoslávským civilistům, po němž měli povstat proti svému vedení, protože už měli mít dost terorizování.

Je toto způsob, jakým se chová úctyhodný stát, který očekává, že všichni ostatní na zemském povrchu jej budou věrně napodobovat?

V určitém okamžiku bombardování mluvčí NATO Jamie Shea prohlásil:

„Pokud prezident Miloševič opravdu chce, aby všichni jeho obyvatelé měli vodu a elektřinu, tak jediné, co musí udělat, je přijmout pět podmínek NATO a my s touto kampaní přestaneme.“

Přesně tak, zabalte to, padněte na kolena, a nechte, ať si NATO dělá, co chce.

Potom Irák. Kompletně zničená infrastruktura, více než milion mrtvých, a lidé tam stále umírají a trpí… z velké části v důsledku prostředí zamořeného jadernou kontaminací. NATO z celého toho místa udělalo ruiny. A opět, vše se stalo na základě lží.

Další na řadě byl Afghánistán, který je nyní nucen odhalit a vzdát se svých bohatých nerostných zdrojů, a to nemluvíme o lukrativním obchodu s drogami, o masové výrobě heroinu a opia v režii NATO.

Jaké části „ Zákazu používání síly nebo vyhrožování silou “ USA a Izrael nechápou? To je přece podstatá část Charty OSN.

V rezoluci OSN číslo 1887 ze září 2009 Rada bezpečnosti znova výslovně potvrdila výzvu všem státům světa, aby řešily jadernou otázkou mírově, v souladu s Chartou, která zakazuje používání síly nebo vyhrožování silou.

Íránská vojenská doktrína je přísně obranná … s cílem zabránit jakékoliv invazi a okupaci země. Írán je také zavázán k diplomatickému řešení nepřátelských činů a sporů. Írán má pouze „ omezenou schopnost “ uplatňovat sílu mimo své hranice. Provedené studie jasně ukazují, že íránská „ hrozba “ není vojenská. Íránské vojenské výdaje jsou v porovnání s jinými zeměmi v regionu nízké, a činí méně než 2% výdajů amerických.

Snaha USA pomlouvat íránský mírový jaderný program a lhát o něm mělo rozsah od přímého falšování dokumentů, jak bylo zjištěno v posledních dvou případech, k pokusu umlčet MAAE a Mohameda El Baradeje, kterého prostě nešlo přesvědčit, aby pro ně lhal.

Vzpomíná si někdo na zfalšovaný dokument, který údajně ukazoval, že se Irák snažil koupit uran v Nigeru, a který byl použit Georgem Bushem jako součást jeho propagandy ve snaze připravit invazi do Iráku v r. 2003? Děje se to opět, a neexistuje žádná výmluva, aby se o to lidé nestarali a mlčeli, zvláště když to není poprvé a znovu se to opakuje.

Proč je ze strany západních korporátních médií a všech těch prolhaných politických tatrmanů tak vytrvale ignorováno, že ajatolláh Ali Chamenei vydal již 9. srpna 2005 fatwu, zakazující výrobu, uskladňování a používání jaderných zbraní? Úplný text této fatwy byl zveřejněn v oficiálním prohlášení na setkání Mezinárodní agentury pro atomovou energii (MAAE) ve Vídni. To zdánlivě mělo s touto věcí skoncovat jednou provždy.

Jakou část z tohoto " tabu “ nechápou“?

Co se týká hrozeb vůči Íránu, co dělají izraelské lodě poprvé v Perském zálivu, Hormuzské úžině a v námořních oblastech Íránu? Jsou doprovázeny americkou flotilou, jejíž deklarovanou misí je „zavést sankce proti Íránu a dohlížet na lodě připlouvající a odplouvající z Íránu“ . Britská a izraelská média oznámila, že Saúdská Arábie poskytla koridor pro izraelské bombardování Íránu (Saudská Arábie to popírá, tedy další lež).

K vojenskému vybavení, které je připravováno pro agresi vůči Íránu, patří 387 „ bunker busters “ (bomb k ničení podzemních bunkrů), používaných pro útok na opevněné podzemní struktury. Přípravy na tyto „masivní útoky“ za použití protibunkrových bomb, nejvýkonnějších bomb z „malého“ jaderného arzenálu, začaly za Bushovy vlády. Po nástupu do úřadu Obama okamžitě tyto plány urychlil, aby se mohlo na Írán zaútočit.

„Jedou na plné obrátky, aby zničili Írán,“ řekl Dan Plesch, ředitel Centra mezinárodních studií a diplomacie při Londýnské univerzitě (Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London). „Bombardéry a střely s dlouhým doletem jsou dnes připraveny zničit v Íránu 10,000 cílů během několika hodin,“ řekl.

Opět, operace Masakr, operace Terorizuj lidi, operace Znič zem; operace Kontaminuj půdu, Zavraždi a zmrzač další generaci. Jak říkají, neplánují nic jiného, než pouhý „ chirurgický řez “. USA a Izrael milují fňukání a rádi ze sebe dělají oběti terorismu, ale sami jsou to nejhorší teroristé, které tento svět kdy viděl.

Současné aktivity Impéria přiměly revolučního vůdce Fidela Castra, aby ponuře předpověděl, že svět brzy čeká jaderná válka. To je beznaděj, kterou nelze brát na lehkou váhu, když víme, jakou odvahu si vyžadovaly mnohé úspěchy v životě tohoto muže.

Vůdce všech zemí je potřeba volat k zodpovědnosti za svoji bezduchou podporu Washingtonu tomuto plánovanému útoku i sankcím. Pro koho tito vůdci pracují, pro svůj lid, nebo pro Washington či Tel Aviv?

V tuto chvíli můžeme pouze požádat onu tvůrčí sílu, která dala vzniknout vesmíru (ať už ji jakákoliv víra nebo náboženství nazývá jakkoliv), a kterou známe jako dobrou, čistou a krásnou, aby vztáhla svoji ochrannou ruku nad vznešený lid Íránu a ušetřila jej i nás před plánovanými hrůzami a postavila všechny možné překážky do cesty válečným štváčům, impériu zla a všem hrabivým nenažraným silám pekla, které mají základnu v USA a Izraeli.

Článek Western Savagery Ready to Unleash Nuclear War on the World Based on Lies vyšel 7. července na serveru Pravda.ru.
Překlad: Stan
zdroj:http://www.outsidermedia.cz/Neurvalost-Zapadu-hrozi-rozpoutat-svetovou-jadernou-valku-zalozenou-na-lzi-1.aspx