Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Democracy is not the rule of the people. Democracy is the rule of the politicians elected by the people. As
of 2026, many politicians are influenced by lobbies which contribute to campaigns. Voters are educated and influenced by the media.
Speech helps voters digest propaganda so they can make better decisions at the ballots.
It is my impression that the media is superficial.
It is busy distracting with limited information from biased viewpoints.
The media does not explore issues at a depth that would allow people to make decisions outside of the official current options.
Media is busy throwing shade at people who attempt to explore issues at a deeper level than the official propaganda.
I've started listening to a ton of sources. The result is that the lack of context becomes evident.
I no longer fully trust a single source.
A vigorous exercise of speech keeps government from becoming oppressive.
Speech helps expose government run away on its own trajectory. Feeding voters a limited menu of options.
18th amendment. Ratified in 1919 and effective in 1920:
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Alcohol kills. Often, alcohol is part of unhealthy lifestyles which include other drugs.
Billie Holiday died at 44 from cirrhosis of the liver.
Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died at 32 after a day of drinking approximately 40 shots of vodka.
Charlie Parker died at 34.
Nate Dogg died at 41.
Jimmy Reed died at 50.
AC/DC lead singer Bon Scott died at 33.
Hank Williams died at 29.
There's a 27 club.
Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain.
Live fast die young.
21st amendment. 1933:
Section 1
The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2
The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Hank Williams, Led Zeppelin, and Billie Holiday were massively potent.
Passionately creative. It is likely that they would not have made the music they made had they lived
safe, healthy lives.
Many musicians drank and survived their youths. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Wilson Pickett. Merle Haggard. Bobby Brown. Johnny Cash.
I could go on.
So who's living the 18th like there was no 21st? Who never drinks? Snoop Dog and Donald J. Trump.
Of the people, by the people, for the people.
December 5, 2024 to March 10, 2026
But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln Online
The Soviet Union achieved submission by imprisoning and torturing at least 14 million political dissenters.
Iranians suppressed opposition using arbitrary detention, digital surveillance,
and torture of imprisoned dissenters that included rape and beatings.
Executions were used to instill fear, often following unfair
trials. Britain has arrested over 12 thousand people for social media posts.
It has significantly restricted the right to protest in peaceful demonstrations.
That's after not too long ago shooting its Irish citizens and imprisoning hundreds without trial.
Perhaps you’ve heard hints of what’s happened in China and North Korea. These few stories make their way into the media. They are far from being lone exemptions.
How does America achieve compliance?
CIA experimented with mind control techniques. 1953-1973.
It appears they've cracked the code. We've all become distracted by simplifications. Accustomed to the routine.
The government enganges in such mind numbingly brash actions that it has become
impossible to discuss details, motives or reprecussions.
Obama's administration bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries. In 2016 alone.
Biden's administration bombed Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
Starting on my first day in office, we restored the sovereign borders of the
United States and deployed the U.S. military to stop the invasion of our country.
We got radical gender ideology and woke lunacy out of our Armed Forces, and
began strengthening our military with $1 trillion of investment. We rebuilt our
alliances and got our allies to contribute more to our common defense including
a historic commitment from NATO countries to raise defense spending from
2 percent to 5 percent of GDP.
...
Stopping regional conflicts before they spiral into global wars that drag down
whole continents is worthy of the Commander-in-Chief’s attention, and a priority
for this administration. A world on fire, where wars come to our shores, is bad for
American interests. President Trump uses unconventional diplomacy, America’s
military might, and economic leverage to surgically extinguish embers of division
between nuclear-capable nations and violent wars caused by centuries-long hatred.
...
In the Declaration of
Independence, America’s founders laid down a clear preference for noninterventionism in the affairs of other nations and made clear the basis: just
as all human beings possess God-given equal natural rights, all nations are
entitled by “the laws of nature and nature’s God” to a “separate and equal
station” with respect to one another. For a country whose interests are as
numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not
possible. Yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a
justified intervention.
The White House
As of March 9, 2026, Trump's administration bombed Iran,
Venezuela,
Nigeria,
Iraq,
Somalia,
Syria,
and Yemen.
In the second term.
First term bombings: Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
A government of the people by the people for the people demands engagement.
Discussion. The alternative is government of the governed by the governors.
If the bombings are authorized by the 911 Patriot Act, are there any limitations?
Who are the targeted groups?
Who do the groups target?
What are the goals of the targeted groups?
What has provoked the targeted groups?
What do the groups oppose?
What is the effect of perceived imperialism or crusading?
What's the body count?
What parties benefit?
When does violence not cause eventual blowback?
After 25 years, can we reflect on the motivations Bin Laden stated for his attack?
When we vote, do we consider that the officials we choose are in charge of launching bombs?
Wouldn't discussion be beneficial?
Land for peace.
March 18, 2025 to March 11, 2026
Modern Israel was born in Palestine at the time of the first world war.
A time of brutal antisemitism. Outcast minorities among Christian, Jews sought a home in the lands of their biblical ancestors.
Israel is a democratic nation with freedom of religion.
Its lands are also home to sacred sites of Islam and Christianity.
In its attempt to be a home for Jews, Israel has pushed out and marginalized original non Jewish inhabitants.
As a result, violence on small and large scale has plagued the endeavor continuously from the start.
Israel has at times controlled even more land than it currently has.
The neighboring Muslim countries have been radicalized as a response to the American and European backed forced settlement.
There is no Christian state with citizenship and immigration restricted on the basis of religion.
Not even the Vatican. Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan, and Cambodia have governments based around
Buddhism but they do not restrict immigration. Nepal, India,
and Maritius have Hindu majorities but have secular governments. There are many Muslim states.
One example, Saudi Arabia mandates Islam for all citizens,
making conversion away from Islam a crime that can lead to loss of citizenship.
Saudi Arabia became a Muslim state in 1932.
Much of the Middle East used to be the Ottoman Empire until the first world war. The empire allied with the losing nations of Austria-Hungary and Germany.
The winners of the first world war,
France and Britain, divided up the Middle East and tried to rule it until around the second world war.
Britain, at the time, was the largest empire in history. It controlled a quarter of the planet. France was the second largest empire on Earth.
World war one was a war of the empires. America, fresh off of capturing the Philippines, joined the winning side.
Europe's division of the Muslim lands did not take into account
long-standing ethnic and tribal divisions. The borders drawn by the French and British were inherited by the modern Muslim nations.
The sloppy division is cited by historians as a root cause of the modern Middle Eastern instability.
On their way out, the Europeans installed minorities as rulers. Governments were forced to rely on European support and military force to stay in power.
The Saudi Arabian royal family adheres to Muwahhidun, a strict puritanical Sunni reform movement considered a minority within the broader Muslim world.
The family has more than 15 thousand members and rules a nation of 34 million people. The royal family depends on American help for its survival.
Democracy would mean its ousting.
The Saudi Royal family invests in organizations closely associated with the Bush family.
The Carlyle Group, the Bush Presidential Library and Harken Energy.
America props up Middle Eastern royalties.
This is the way allegiances with outsiders were engineered. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are built around doing away with the
manipulative outsider dictated borders and propped up dictatorships.
During the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, the United States maintained a policy of official neutrality while secretly providing
intelligence support, economic aid and technology to Iraq while at the same time selling arms to Iran.
It's in the interest of outsiders to keep the Middle East fragmented.
The Soviet Union was an Atheist state. 1922 to 1991. China and North Korea are still fully restrictive Atheist states.
There is no Agnostic state.
The Islamic State of Medina, established by the Prophet Muhammad in 622,
was founded on a social contract known as the Charter of Medina.
This document is widely regarded by historians as a groundbreaking model for a pluralistic
society that prioritized religious freedom and inclusion rather than restriction.
The British set the foundation for the Jewish state with Balfour Declaration of 1917.
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
The document seems to respect the rights of the native non-Jewish Palestinians.
Colonization began immediately. From the beginning, the Zionists founders of Israel
planned on creating a Jewish state.
Muslims sensed their intent. Conflict was persistent from the onset. The first notable massacre was in 1920. Israel became a nation in 1948.
Because of the continuing effort to evict the Palestinians,
Israelis face extreme antisemitism. Following Israel’s creation, outside of the Jewish state,
antisemitism has receded. It flares up occasionally as response to the violence of the Palestinian conflict.
Democracy with freedom of religion and citizenship to former residents.
Is that beyond possibility? There was a time when Muslims, Jews and Christians
lived side by side in harmony. In Middle East. Free from terrorism.
The trilemma of Israel: the state cannot simultaneously be Jewish, democratic,
and in control of the entire land (including the Palestinian territories occupied since the 1967 Six Day War) without sacrificing one of these three pillars.
A peace in Israel and Palestine would diffuse tensions worldwide.
Other conflicts are driven by sympathies for the unresolved dispute. A modest fix is inadequate for the deep wound. A miracle is needed.
Estimated cumulative death toll (1948–2026)
Palestinian: between 145,000 and 160,000+
Israeli: between 25,000 and 30,000
Throughout his time in power, Saddam viewed Israel through a prism of intense hostility.
Saddam’s public statements, his discussions with foreign leaders,
and his private comments to advisers were filled with references to the dangers posed by
Israel and the deep antagonism between Iraq and the Jewish state.
“Our worst enemy is Zionism,” he told subordinates in 1980.
In private as in public, Saddam argued that the conflict between Arabs
and Israelis was intractable, and that conflict was inevitable.
“This issue between the Arabs and Israel will never be resolved,”
he told advisers in October 1985. “It is either Israel or the Arabs….
Either the Arabs are slaves to Israel and Israel controls their destinies,
or the Arabs can be their own masters and Israel is like Formosa’s location to China, at best.”
Saddam’s animus toward Israel flowed from several factors.
There was, of course, opportunism—haranguing the Zionists
always played well in Iraqi politics and the Arab world.
There was also the long history of conflict between Israel
and its Arab neighbors, a struggle that had flared during the
early years of the Baathist regime. The Baathist government contributed
one division to the Syrian front during the Yom Kippur War of 1973; Israel,
for its part, sought to bleed and distract the radical Baathist government
by supporting an insurgency among Iraq’s Kurdish population. These events,
as well as the broader legacy of Arab-Israeli strife, weighed heavily on
Saddam’s perceptions. “The Zionist entity is not weak and oppressed,”
Saddam explained to his advisers. “It is not an oppressed entity seeking peace….It
is a hostile, arrogant entity that is imposed on the Middle East region.”
...
During the late 1970s and early 1980s,
Saddam frequently said that Israel had to be made to
yield to military force and spoke of his desire for the “next battle.”
He often implied that the conflict would be a Pan-Arab war under Iraqi leadership.
On some occasions, he indicated that the outright destruction of Israel was envisioned;
more often, Saddam seemed to foresee military action designed simply to force Israel
back to its pre-1967 borders. If successful, such a war would significantly weaken Israel’s
geopolitical position and make Saddam a hero throughout the Arab world.
Foreign Policy Research Institute
[2025]
In an address on state broadcaster VTV, Nicolas Maduro appealed directly to Jewish communities worldwide, including those in the occupied Palestinian territories and within Israel, urging them to take action against what he described as Netanyahu’s destructive policies.
Evoking his Sephardic Jewish background, he said: "In the name of the heritage that flows through my veins, I call upon the noble Jewish people around the world, in the occupied Palestinian territories, and within the borders of the State of Israel: You must stop this war. You must stop Netanyahu and put an end to this hellish war madness with neighboring countries – the madness of trying to conquer and colonize all of the Middle East and Western Asia.”
Anadolu Agency
[2004]
I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.
The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn’t forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.
The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn’t include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn’t respond.
In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.
And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children – also in Iraq – as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq’s oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?
Al Jazeera
[2020]
Today is Quds Day, a day created - thanks to Imam Khomeini's (r.a.) intelligent initiative - to unite Muslims on the issue of Holy Quds and in support of the oppressed people of Palestine. It has played an important role in this regard for several decades now, and God willing, it will continue to do so in the future as well. Nations welcomed Quds Day and considered it to be a religious obligation to hold up the flag for Palestine’s liberation. The main policy of the Arrogant Powers and Zionism is to push aside the issue of Palestine in the minds of Muslim communities and to cause it to fade into oblivion.
The most urgent responsibility in this regard is fighting this treachery, which is conducted by the enemy’s political and cultural mercenaries in Islamic countries. The truth is that an issue as important as Palestine is not something that the pride, self-esteem and increasing intelligence of Muslim nations will allow to sink into oblivion, even if the Americans, other domineering powers and their regional minions use all their money and power to achieve this goal.
First, I would like to highlight the magnitude of the tragedy of the occupation of Palestine and the formation of the cancerous tumor of Zionism in that country. Among crimes against humanity in recent times, there is no crime that equals this crime in terms of scope and gravity. Occupying a country, permanently driving its people out from their homes and their fatherland, and continuing this historical oppression for decades using the most horrifying forms of murder, crime, destruction of farmlands, and genocide – this is indeed a new record in brutality and wickedness.
...
The important point that must not be ignored by the political and military elites of the Islamic world is that the policy of America and the Zionists is to transfer conflicts to behind the frontlines of the front of resistance. Starting civil wars in Syria, the military siege and constant killings in Yemen, the assassinations, the destruction, the creation of the Daesh in Iraq and other similar things in some other countries in the region are all machinations to divert the attention of the resistance front and to provide opportunities for the Zionist regime. Some Muslim politicians knowingly, and some others unknowingly, have contributed to these machinations of the enemy. The main way to prevent these machinations is for the proud youth throughout the world of Islam to seriously make this demand. Young people in all Islamic countries, particularly in Arab countries, must pay attention to this advice from Imam Khomeini (r.a.),
“Vent all your shouts on America” and of course, on the Zionist enemy.
Islamic Republic of Iran Ministry of Foreign Affairs
[1939]
The sympathy of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs. This is not only because the Jews have had, at least some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude, but they feel that after all, the country has been Arabic for the last few hundred years, and they naturally feel sympathic. After all, Palestine was hardly Britain’s to give away. The question is further complicated by the fact that both groups are split among themselves.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
One could make the case that the sacred land of Christianity, Islam and Judaism deserves a government built on equality and freedom of religion.
No one should be evicted from their homes. Slaughtered. Oppressed.
But that's just my take.
Is this the full story? No. Go deeper. Education is hard work but rewarding.
It exposes the true nature of media, government and the managed masses. No single source
definitively encapsulates the entire story.
Can We Talk About Israel?
A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted
Daniel Sokatch (Author), Christopher Noxon (Illustrator)
