2009-02-02

definition

From Spanish and French libre (“‘freedom, liberty’”)

14 comments:

  1. At last, a Webdiary free from right-wing Zionist propagandists and people with their heads well and truly buried in the sand as they attempt to blot out the more unpalatable aspects of recent history hoping that if they don’t talk about it, it’ll all go away and not disturb their insulated little world.

    A chance to discuss and debate how to really build a better world without the crap from liars and fascists is most welcome.

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  2. G'day IDHolm and Damian. Good idea to set up a friendly place for serious bloggers to freely discuss any problem. A problem in need of much free discussion is the problem of Israel being first to breach what the MSM called its "unilateral ceasefire" on the very same day it was "declared." Then the Israelis broke it the next day, and the next day, and the next ... and finally, several days later when a Palestinian (not necessarily a Hamas member nor necessarily allied with or associated with that group) decided to retaliate, the MSM "reports" that Hamas "has broken the ceasefire." The field reports and updates published by the UN OCHA (http://www.ochaopt.org/)certainly don't get highlighted by the MSM, which seems instead to take its feed direct from Israel's National Information Directorate.

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  3. G'day IDHolm, Damian and Orana. I included similar material to that provided by Orana in a post submitted to another blog and it never saw the light of day.

    A couple of stories from Haaretz - one on doing deals and one that won't help at all.

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  4. G'day Damian, Orana and Graeme,

    and nice so 'see' you. Commenting here will remain totally free until any abuser turns up, but looking to the other place, what a sad commentary that a so-called ethical forum could descend into biased censorship and thus cripple its claimed reason for existence.

    Lying hypocrisy has been allowed to dominate over transmitting truth in the main-stream media - a strange way of illustrating the principles of the leadership we have been subjected to, and even stranger that this policy has obviously been bipartisan (i.e. utterly undemocratic). Actual evidence of a foul conspiracy (if the framing-police allow the use of that term, without screeching 'Tin-foil hats!') Much mirth has been made over the dumbing-down of the people, but it does appear to have been deliberately engineered.

    There is much to be done - exposing the lies as a top priority, whilst pointing out that effective work must be directed at saving the planet - before it really does get to late to do so.

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  5. An "easy" start to saving the planet is to simply stop buying rubbish - literally.

    I was looking into waste management issues a while ago and learned that Australians threw away $5.3 billion worth of all forms of food in 2004 which by comparison was thirteen times the amount donated by Australian households to overseas aid agencies in 2003.

    So I reckon step 1 in saving the planet is:

    Stop chuckin' tonnes and tonnes of food (costing billions to buy) into holes in the ground to rot and give off greenhouse gasses causing climate change and leachate contaminating potable water.

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  6. Eat well and exercise more!

    It's obvious almost to the point of triteness, that the individual should try to reduce his/her 'environmental footprint,' and as equally obvious, that one should only buy what one needs (from a pre-prepared list), as opposed to what one has been swindled into thinking one might want - but that flies in the face of the continuous 'conditioning' pouring forth from TVs into living-rooms almost everywhere.

    It's really a leadership thing - and perhaps the current financial-crisis will kick some sense into our leaders' heads - we can help by pointing out how. Start by going for max. happiness (for most) instead of max. profits for the greedy few.

    The current system has failed, too many 'externalities' were hidden (not just shipping jobs off-shore, but pollution too); we have to pay the real (fair!) price for what we use. Colin Chapman (Lotus designer/engineer) may have said "Simplify and add lightness," we could now say "Simplify and add efficiency" - we *must* achieve sustainability, soonest.

    Q: Why can we see this, and those who really run the show not? It's utterly bizarre, to see what's needed, cry for urgent action - and see the idiots marching insouciantly lock-step along: "Problem? What problem?"

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  7. Excellent Q!

    Rephrased: Why are they greedy?

    A. Selfishness.

    New Q: Why are they so selfish?

    A. Egotism. Narcissism. Hubris.

    Q. But why, why, why?

    A. An absence of conscience.

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  8. Re your comment in Dangerous Creation: "I anticipated back then that it had to end in tears"

    Yes, you were right, but even Marx had anticipated and promised that!

    ;)

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  9. Well, what an interesting blog. No posts or trolls, just comments.

    Why didn't I think of that? I could've saved myself a lot of time.

    P.S. The Blog Title is clever.

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  10. Guess what?

    The other day I mentioned how the MSM does not highlight what's been happening in Gaza as reported by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Human Affairs, and now I find a Murdoch paper has done just that ... but there's a twist.

    Today in The Australian there is article by Abraham Rabinovich (writing from Jerusalem) with the title: "UN backs down on 'school massacre' in Gaza"

    All of a sudden a News Ltd paper is interested in highlight this one aspect of a UN OCHA report in which they've clarified that the IDF shelled just outside (not inside) an UNRWA school.

    Of course, they downplay the key point: That shelling just outside the school in which innocent civilians took shelter resulted in the IDF still killing 43 of those innocent civilians.

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  11. G'day David and Orana, a good title indeed.

    On Gaza - here is a legal opinion on the "self-defence" argument.

    Did self-defence justify Israel’s war on Gaza?

    Objections have been raised to this claim on grounds of a lack of both proportionality and necessity. To kill over 1000 Palestinians in 3 weeks, hundreds of them children, and wound thousands more, in order to deter a threat from rockets that did not kill or injure anybody in Israel for the six months the truce was declared by both sides, or even before Israel launched its attack on December 27, is so disproportionate as to be intolerable in any ethical system that holds Palestinian lives equal in value to Israeli lives. It is also so disproportionate as to defy belief that defence against these rockets was the real motive of the war. To ignore the many diplomatic avenues available to avoid even this threat, such as lifting the suffocating 18-month siege, suggests the same thing.

    A more fundamental objection, however, is the self-evident legal and moral principle that an aggressor cannot rely upon self-defence to justify violence against resistance to its own aggression. You can find this principle in domestic law and in the judgments of the Nuremberg tribunals.


    Some might see a problem with that - or try very hard to. Or just ignore it.

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  12. Now look here, Graeme. Israel is just a poor, humble little country trying to survive in the midst of all those terrible heathen Arabs who keep firing rockets at it.

    Surely no reasonable person would deny it the right to act in self-defence even if it only has small, hardly armed forces who, notably, are the most moral in the world (next to the Americans that is).

    I know that the casualty figures suggest otherwise but Israel never ever targets civilians or kids or tells lies. Somehow they just keep getting in the road! What can we do?

    We're victims. Always have been.

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  13. Can you believe it? A moderator at that other, corrupted place (Graeme mentioned) is also highlighting the UN OCHA report in which they'd clarified that the IDF shelled just outside (not inside) an UNRWA school.

    That moderator also fails to mention that regardless of whether the IDF shelled inside or outside the school the result remains: 43 innocent Palestinian residents of Gaza are gone to their graves because of that Israeli attack.

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  14. G'day David and Orana, to the former's comment about the IDF not targeting children, of course that excludes the children doing something to draw attention to themselves such as waving white hankies.

    Yes, Orana, I can believe it. More on the other thread.

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