Follow Me Online

Making Change Podcast

Facebook

Twitter

Gopin Associates, LLC

YouTube

Month: September 2014

  • Judgment Day

    daily life
    Every day is judgment day
    When you are mad with vision,
    When the world as it is,
    And the world as it should be,
    Are enemies to the core.
    Every day is judgment day,
    When you see what you could be,
    And peer at what you are.
    Every day is judgment day,
    When every day,
    Every damn day,
    Someone else, someone new,
    Looks at you for help,
    For your power,
    Your power,
    Which is an illusion.
    …

  • Analysts Where Art Thou: A sad look at media

     

    This is not the first time in history that jihadi armies destroyed by their own funders. Analysts!! Think! Look into conquest of Arabia at the beginning of the 20th century.

    It is amazing how enthralled analysts become with trees when paid not to look at forests.

    Analysts are so enthralled with all the jet toys Gulfies are throwing at ISIS they forgot to ask who financed such extremism to begin with.

    I am just amazed and appalled at the lack of questions being asked about the coalition and I for one want to do anything to protect Syrians in any way possible from ISIS. And I understand what Obama is doing, but if we do not name the problem with the Gulf, we cannot escape this insanity.

    Obama

     

    (Photo: Los Angeles Times)

    …

  • “Iran and the ‘Coalition of Repenters'”- from The New Yorker

     

    Read every word. This is the dark truth about why the United States is on the wrong side of the Gulf. Why its allies have destroyed the democrats of the Arab Spring, deliberately, turned it into an Islamist and jihadi nightmare, and why we must completely rethink our allies and adversaries. Someday the story will be told of the decline of America at the hands of its despotic and repressive allies who made this country die on the altar of military and oil sales. And I include right-wing led Israel and Pakistan in this disaster of allies. yes, Iran must give up or neutralize Assad, but that is impossible as long it faces an American armed coalition surrounding it on all sides. We have solutions here, and the greatest victims, are Sunni peoples, held hostage by desperately insane Wahhabi regimes.

    The New Yorker, Iran and the ‘Coalition of Repenters’…

  • Men and Women in War

    “Force protection”. A clean phrase, and its cousin “collateral damage”, that actually mean together that today, men don’t get killed in war much. The vast majority of the dead and wounded are women and children. From Syria to Gaza, from Afghanistan to Congo. The luckier women escape the bombs aimed at them, the luckier ones escape the rape aimed at them. They are merely left to care for abandoned children who have lost their food and lost their minds. People think that ISIS and Boko Haram are the great evil of the world against women, formerly it was the Taliban as the great embodiment of evil against women. But in truth, they are just the caricatures, the showpiece cowards, who flaunt their insanity. The truth is that the entire modern construct of male war is an act of cowardice, where the majority of victims are women and children. Men have …

  • Reflections upon Explaining the Middle East to Washington

    To Washington

    DRUGS

    Don’t go to a drug dealer for a cure,
    When the drug addict is deteriorating.
    Don’t go to funders of extremism for a cure,
    When their victims are deteriorating.

    MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES

    Being a majority is no excuse for amnesia,
    Being a minority is no excuse for paranoia,
    If you are both, then you are screwed.
    Destined to ignore the past,
    But be suspicious about why everyone hates you.

    RETIREMENT

    Do not ever retire,
    From the purpose
    Of your life.…

  • Event Appearance at Johns Hopkins University

    This morning, I was privileged to talk at an great event of SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, as one of the speakers.
    Please check out the website and the video of this whole event.

    “IS THE WORLD FALLING APART?”
    September 16, 2014
    Conflict Prevention & Resolution Forum
    at Kennedy Auditorium, SAIS- Johns Hopkins University

     
    Screen shot 2014-09-16 at 4.00.49 PM

     …

  • Of Gods, Tribes, and Battles

    GOD
    If you cannot find God,
    Find the persecuted,
    Then you are home.

    TRIBE
    Tribalism is an infectious disease
    Human rights is the antidote
    But force feeding can kill the patient

    BATTLES
    Some battles that you want to win,
    Will defeat you if you win.
    Some battles if you lose,
    Then you will win.
    Think.
    Blessed be reason.

    hug

     

    (Photo: A Different Angle)

     …

  • Manhood

    manhood
    Who is a real man?
    He who turns an enemy
    Into a friend.

    Who is a real man?
    He who conquers
    His worst impulses.

    Who is a real man?
    He who takes the blows,
    For innocents in harm’s way.

    Who is a real man?
    He who stands up to anyone,
    Especially his own tribe,
    In defense of the defenseless.

    Who is a real man?
    He who willfully withholds,
    His strong fist.

    Who is a real man?
    He who admits
    His sins.

    DNA Poker Player!
    Please create such men,
    And dispense with us Neanderthals.

     …

  • Encyclopedia Humanica

     

    Water- encyclopedia humanica
    Every human being,
    Is a walking encyclopedia,
    Infinite indigenous knowledge,
    Of local realities,
    That no one,
    Will ever,
    Fully know.
    Why do we walk past?
    We are discoverers,
    Above all else,
    We wander,
    To the farthest reaches,
    Of the earth.
    Why do we walk past?
    Melville, Conrad,
    Escaped to the high seas,
    To discover the world.
    But the boat,
    It contained infinite depths,
    Even deeper than the sea,
    That anyone dared ever discover.
    The journey to the strange other,
    The darkest, most dangerous,
    Most joyous,
    Adventure.

     …

  • “Escaping Death in Northern Iraq” -International New York Times

    This is very important in the ISIS issue.

    International New York Time, Escaping Death in Northern Iraq

    Ali Hussein Kadhim, an Iraqi soldier and a Shiite, was captured with hundreds of other soldiers by Sunni militants in June and taken to the grounds of a palace complex in Tikrit where Saddam Hussein once lived.

    “I saw my daughter in my mind, saying, ‘Father, father,’ ” he said.
    He felt a bullet pass by his head, and fell forward into the freshly dug trench.
    “I just pretended to be shot,” he said.
    A few moments later, Mr. Kadhim said, one of the killers walked among the bodies and saw that one man who had been shot was still breathing.

    …The story of the massacre tells as much about the woeful state of the Iraqi military, a force created and trained by the United States at a cost of billions of dollars,

    …

Categories