Get Smart

Read this.

Now take a look at this:

Now PLEASE watch THIS.

I'm tempted to just leave this post at that. But you know I can't. Let's start with the supermarket scene. It says it may have been in a different country or it may have been totally fabricated. I have a hard time accepting that in Canada, which I have read is the "most educated country in the world," (whatever that means), this could ever happen. If Canadians really ARE educated they'd take the hour or two of research time it would take, (the vid is an hour and a half actually), and realize that the Iraq invasion and occupation had absolutely jack-shit-diddly to do with ANY rights and freedoms we have in Canada. It was Operation Iraqi Liberation - O.I.L. Period.

Ostensibly it was about weapons of mass destruction. ZERO were found. But how many were USED? Watch the doc. They talk about cluster bombs used on the general population. Cluster bombs are weapons. They are intended for indiscriminate destruction of large amounts of people. Perhaps these are the bombs the lady in the burka was referring to. Incidentally to add drama, the average age of the population of Iraq that were being indiscriminately cluster bombed was 15. How many were used in Iraq? Impossible to know because despite the hundreds of "embedded" reporters we saw giving reports from the ground with soldiers drinking beer and kicking a football around behind them, the Iraqi operation was mostly done from the air and I don't remember a single reporter embedded in a bomber. They weren't allowed to see that part of the war, the documentary reports. And if they were they might have lots their hooowah comradery that built up when spending time with the amiable troops and actually been journalists instead of jingoists. Now I know that the article points out most of the cluster bombs were launched from the ground but if any reporter had seen that or any of the air bombings, they'd probably have lost some of their patriotic support and possibly the contents of their stomach.

This report gives an unconfirmed number of about 10,800 cluster bombs used by the U.S. and 2,200 used by the U.K. Watch the video. Read the article. People died and children were sent to the hospital because of cluster bombing. The video shows some. It also talks about an Agent Orange, napalm-type substance also used in Iraq.

Afghanistan, Syria, Gaza, the Ukraine, pretty much anywhere there is conflict the cause is oil, natural gas, or some form of corporation-enriching commodity. This is not conspiracy theory. In so many cases the people who do the research are, in my experience, the ones who believe the "conspiracies" and the dummies who believe the corporate and political media doublespeak are the ones laughing at them for being so stupid. Like the cartoon. Laughing, bullying, taking away their jobs, or worse.

The Muslim shopper had a point. When ARE we going to stop bombing people, or in Canada's case, when are we going to stop supporting with our tax dollars, the greedy, violent tactics of western corporate global Manifest Destiny? When are we going to face facts and admit to ourselves that if we saw this kind of killing in our countries, we would want revenge too? When are we going to stop blaming these things on religion? Yes, the woman was Muslim. Yes, she has more rights and freedoms in Canada than she had in Iraq. But precious little if any of the fighting done by Canadian soldiers since WWII has had anything to do with either.

I have met a hundred soldiers here in Asia if I've met one and amongst them I have yet to hear a single freedom fighter slogan or emotional mantra such as "freedom ain't free" or "fighting for our way of life." Those are skillful emotional manipulation used on civilians to build the fighting forces into heroes they don't want to be. They're doing a job and collecting a paycheck, most of them. And when I talked to soldiers, male and female, during the Iraq operations every one of them said they wanted to go over there. I asked if it was to "defend the liberty of Americans" and they all said, "Nope, it's better pay." I have even heard stories from protesters protesting for peace and being guarded or even arrested by soldiers and/or police, that they were secretly told by the soldiers to keep doing what they're doing.

Look at the little girl in the article. Shahad Thaer Mustafa. Just saying the name connotates something negative in my mind and I hate the fact that somehow I've gotten that anti-Muslim name sentiment into my head. It sounds like a religious extremist or terrorist, right? How do you suppose that happened? She's a little girl whose uncle was killed by actions that could very accurately be described as "terrorist." If she grows up and joins ISIS or ISIL or whatever organization they might morph onto by then she will be called a terrorist. But is that accurate? Or is she just a person who has seen friends and relatives killed by a force and she is doing everything within her power to weaken or eliminate that force? Even if it unfortunately involves killing innocents. Her uncle was innocent. Maybe some other friends and family she lost were too.

If this becomes the case there is no doubt little Shahad would be labelled a terrorist. You see when she allows for the killing of innocent people in the name of her cause, it's called terrorism. When the allied forces use cluster bombs that they know will kill innocent people, it's called collateral damage. The same goes for a lot of other types of warfare that has been used including drone strikes. When an attack in retaliation for murders perpetrated by evil corporate warmongers is arranged and carried out the spin-doctors in the media always pretend like it was completely unexpected, out of left field, unwarranted, cowardly and without justification. Terrorism. This aggression will not stand. This aggression will not stand. We must redouble our efforts to combat such unwarranted and evil attacks. It's all skillful, emotional manipulation. And if your brain is small enough, it's so easy to jump right on that bandwagon of violence!

But smart people question things. Smart people don't get carried away with emotional calls to arms against people who are subjugated by our foreign policies. Smart people need to object to people using, "It's just business," or "It's my job," to try to justify taking human lives. Smart people know that this is why there are more and more emotionally messed up soldiers and former soldiers. Read this story of one soldier who was wounded in Iraq. Was he a hero or an unappreciated pawn in the global game of Monopoly or Risk or Oil Grab being played by the true psychopathic terrorists of the world? Smart people need to stop sitting down and taking the brainless abuse that dumbasses such as the two in the cartoon or the person who wrote the fake supermarket story dish out. Smart people understand that the people bombing Iraq are not WWII veterans and they're not doing it for Iraqi, U.S. or Canadian freedom. Smart people need to say some smart things and educate those people even if they don't want to be educated and they might punch you in the face if you try. Smart people need to show the same support for corporate/military killing as they do for retaliatory killing or if you prefer, "terrorism" being committed by ISIS and other such groups: NONE.

The Koran does not support killing unless in self-defence. I doubt there is a single member of any ISIS-type organization who doesn't believe that this is what they are doing. The simple solution is to remove the perceived need for self defence. Stop with the extremist economics. Don't just kill more people and further solidify their resolve. I don't even think a person has to be smart to figure this out, but it's getting to the point in our world where we must either get smart or get dead. We're not there yet but I sure hope we don't leave it until it's too late!