So it appears as if two of the East Coast Brothers of the Lodge are making our way to Ink N Iron to do some work…..Brother Nick Schonberger and I will be there to represent and get after some truths…..

Happy Monday!!!!!

Heavy Fucking Metal Bread. Eat this!!!!!

This is American Brilliance…..

Just sayin….

I am sure by now everyone has heard of the terrorist attack in Stockholm. Firstly, I am happy to hear that it didn’t go off as planned, not only because I have lots of friends of Stockholm but also because any such attack, whether or not it takes place in Baghdad or here is bad news.

It is only a question of time before self righteous, wankers that call themselves civil servants will raise their ugly head and call out militant islam for this and cry for more security at home.

Now, each to their own, but this is how I see it:

Our governments, and I say our government, because I sure as hell have never voted for a party that either here in Germany or in England, that would have gone to war- something I am fully against – is directly responsible for pretty much all terrorism in the world. It is “our” foreign policies, which as we now know are directly pre-ordained by economic interests of said civil servants ( Dick Cheney anyone ) and some corporations, that now only cause terrorism but in most cases even trained them-

On a side note, just as the Westboro Bapist Church is no representation of Christianity, neither is Al-Qaida a representation of Islam. Deal with it.

Robin Cook, the former Foreign Minister of the UK wrote a great piece on all the above in the Guardian shortly before his death, which you should read.

“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.”

Duh. Anyone with half a brain should know that, but I assume it is still not general knowledge.

My point being, it is our fucked up world, run by corporate proto-governments that are 100% responsible for all terrorist attacks in our world. We are “over there” bombing the shit out of their lives and world under the pretense of “liberating” them- who ever gave our civil servants this right?- whilst even the dumbest sheep herding AK-47 carrying Afghan warlord knows, that Enron and Co, want their damn oil. So not only are “our” actions directly responsible for the terror acts, but it’s also my tax money that paid for their fucking training.

Which leads to an other side note, who profits from the extra layers of security and paranoia at home? The same damn corpo-governments we install at home. With excess paranoia we are all kept dumb and afraid, which is what every politician wants. Additionally, war is money. Not only are “they” speculating on gaining natural resources by invading half the fucking globe, but also, making a killing at home. The same corps that push into unwanted wars are the same corps that profit from private security keeping us “safe” from the same terrorists we create and train with our tax money.

Just something worth thinking about next time you vote.

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I’m a cold war kid. I grew up in the 80s next to NATO’s biggest base in Europe, and my granddad was stationed there as an English soldier after WW2. The Hohne Camp was only around 150km west of the boarder to the former Iron Curtain, and monthly war games with 1000s of tanks, airplanes and soldiers were a common sight growing up. Fact was, living so close to an army base and close to the “enemies” boarder, the Cold War was a real life fact. I was indoctrinated to believe that the “Soviet” was our enemy, always looking for ways to drop nuclear bombs on our small community. Crazy as that seems to adults these days who were born after 1989/90 that was fact.

As real or perceived the threat was, everyone with half a brain now realizes that essentially after Reagan came to power, the Soviet Union was broke and unable to really pose a threat to anyone- as was witnessed in their war in Afghanistan in the 80s. Fact is also, that western governments have used the Soviet Union and their theory of the Communist Domino Effect to frighten and control us in the name of patriotism. Furthermore, it made a few people very rich. I mean, so rich that I cannot even comprehend the amount of zero’s on their bank statement. The “real”, and mostly, thought-up threat of war by the imaginary enemy to the East was reason alone to increase government spending on war and the war industry to levels unheard of to this point. In fact, some historians claim it was Reagan’s strategy to not outdo the Soviet Union in terms of arms, but to bankrupt them via the arms race. It worked, granted, but I seriously doubt that Reagan and his cronies intention was as noble as that. They wanted to get rich, and they did. In the meantime they scared the living day lights out of us, and stumbled across a means to control their population through willing media channels.

And then the Soviet Union threw in the towel. Over and out. Everyone was stoked, the war was won and over. The only problem was that now, we had a power vacuum, the enemy disappeared and really, there was no reason for that insane spending of tax money to fight a no longer existing enemy. Clinton got on that horse and turned the US budget around ( imagine that! ) only to find out that if you take away the pay check from Haliburton and Co., you’re in serious trouble. Throughout the 90s the people making money of fear looked for an enemy, a new Bogeyman, to scare us all witless. It took 8 long years until Bush 2 came into power until the conservative American think tanks, supported by their ruthless European counterparts, came up with a strategy to have an endless war, an unknown, scary, dangerous enemy called Al-Qaida.

And before you know it, we had an axis of evil, the twin towers were brought down and the thankfully, we now could once again, draw a line in the sand. You’re either with us, or for them.

We all know what happened next. War, 100 of thousand of innocent victims dead, whole regions destabilized, and in the meantime, the Neo Cons grew richer again, from war. Thanks to the new Bogeyman, called Al-Qaida. Crimes were committed unthinkable in their atrocity, all in the name of freedom, democracy- in reality, all in the name of money, fear and breeding generations of new terrorists, to guarantee an income for the next generation of war hawks.

Eerie. This should be no news to anyone with half a brain, but sadly, I think the majority of people in the west still believe this. Psychologically, it’s easy to understand. The vacuum created by “winning” the Cold War, made life in the West difficult, there were no clear lines anymore, the world turned grey and the black & whites were diminished. Sadly, it’s a fact, that figuring out the way of the world, takes time and patience, and nothing is black and white.

Forward to today, and something is happening in Germany which thoroughly disgusts me. As per usual, Germany takes a few years to catch on, and from what I can gather this has been happening in the US for some time, but I can’t talk about it, as I don’t live in the US and the information I get I don’t trust, either “right” or “left” wing media is tainted by unprofessionalism, and I cannot base my arguments on them. So let’s stick to Germany.

Most recently, really only for the last 18 months of so, the “conservative” -side note, they’re not conservative at all, they’re populist right wing idiots that want utilize fear for monetary gain -members of German society, media and politicians have thought to themselves, “Well, if the yanks can do it, we sure can”.

Lo and behold, I and everyone in this country has all of a sudden been bombarded, through the media mostly, by a new Bogeyman. The Muslim. No longer contend with singling out a group of religious fanatics, we are now at war, abroad and in our own communities with THE MUSLIM. To explain, Germany has a large Turkish, Kurdish and for a lack of a better word “Arab” community. We welcomed people from those regions to Germany in the 50sand 60s to support our booming economy. A lot of them stayed in the country, were integrated into German society and as far as I am concerned were and still are a huge benefit to our country.

Most recently, the politicians, paid for by the conservative media and large corporations that benefit from war ( we have a lot of them here, think of all the German steel manufactures, for example, that build weapons ) have gotten on the horse, that, the Islamic religion is undermining the “Christian & Jewish traditions of this country” – I kid you not, that’s a direct quote from one of those muppets.

They are basing this fear mongering on the fact that small, and I mean very small, portions of the followers of Mohammed in this country, mostly 3-4th generation of Germans ( longer than my family has been German for that matter ) are not willing to integrate into German Society, and are fighting a war to turn us all into suicide bombers. Which, quite frankly, is total nonsense and only a simplification of our own racism and unwillingness to genuinely help integrate those small groups into our own society.

I wager that there are more white bread Germans in Germany that reject our current constitution and call themselves Neo Nazi’s that there are radical Muslims in this country. But hey, they’re ok, because they go to a Christian Church. It’s flat out disgusting, wrong  and I feel ashamed at this.

I liked Germany once, because it was mostly secular, and religion really didn’t play a part in how you were treated. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care who you believe in, or if you don’t believe at all. If you want to live here, you’re welcome, there’s the law, follow it, pay your taxes and it’s all good. That’s not the case anymore and I am seriously considering moving, to pull my taxes ( which are a lot ) out of this country as I cannot support this, and I am, through my taxes.

What’s happening here now is the same thing we saw in the 1950s. The only thing “our leaders” have changed is our “new enemy”, the Muslim. What’s even more disgusting is that people are buying it.

There are idiots in every culture, and demonizing a whole religion, because of them is flat out wrong. In our case it serves only this purpose: to rally the people behind a cause, no matter how wrong it is, to lead them into stupidity and to be able to shape them in any form that these leaders want them to be. For what? To get rich. To start more wars. Because that’s really what this is all about. Making money.

I am against this, and will do anything in my power to not only fight this demonizing of a people because of their religion -something that’s happened here before.