|
|
|
|
| If Ignorance Is Bliss.....
Then Surely It Must Be Folly To Be Wise!"If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?" I'm starting to blog again. However I will ruffle some feathers so if it pisses you off so be it, and if you have something constructive to add do so. If you just want to be bitchy then be forewarned. It's just a button push away from blogville to banville.
Now if you're wondering why so many posts on January 12, 2007, read just pissed off at Aff
Come See
Blog World
|
|
|
|
|
|
Will Actual Numbers Ever really Matter?
|
Posted:Dec 12, 2007 8:37 pm
Last Updated:Dec 25, 2007 11:55 am
2444 Views
|
It is exactly seven years ago today, since the US Supreme Court illegally intervened in the counting of the ballots in Florida's Presidential Election.
12-12-2000 was the day that this nightmare began.
From this obscenity the flow of treachery began a seismic shift in the direction, not only this nation, but in the global village where the US and Israel have used and abused and murdered so many millions of people in their zeal to finish what others began-so many hundreds of year ago. In seeking an answer to the question of whether numbers matter: this has to count in the yes column.
Their first 'bigtime event' took place on 911. The Bushwhackers used that death-toll for an extreme purpose that sought justification, for the wholesale slaughter of Afghanistan, based on a sketchy plot that envisioned some Arabs in a cave as world- defying terror-agents that could do what no other nation on this earth - would even have considered. The numbers of dead in the World-Trade Center, in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon were paraded daily, nightly almost without interruption-to obtain the License to indiscriminately Kill, from congress; and that license has continued to be used to strong-arm the congress and the public into waging an unending War-Upon-the-World of all those who resist the Owners efforts to destroy all traces of what America once stood for. Did those numbers on 911 matter absolutely!
Finally the public needs to know what this rash and illegal series of invasions has cost the United States and its taxpayers. In monetary terms these wars will end up costing trillions. But in human terms the costs are far more revealing; given the fact that the War-on-Iraq did not begin in 2003. It began with Poppy's-War in 1991 and the Bushwhacker's contrivance of liberating Kuwait. After the camera's ceased to roll the sanctions intensified and the illegal "No-Fly Zones" were established. Counter-intelligence and special-forces continued their missions along with US and British fighters and bombers that operated 24-7 in two-thirds of Iraq, and only occasionally in the remaining third of that country. This matters because the price for this deceit of the American public and most of the world has had a very human price.
Throughout the entire time from 1991 until now the USA has been at war in Iraq. The US Department of Veteran's Affairs has methodically tracked the human costs to US Military personnel throughout this sordid affair.
Here are the numbers they have published, concerning the costs to this nation: Since Gulf War 1 - 73,846 US Dead, and 1,620,906 Disabled
Contrast those numbers with what the War Department says are:
(Officially acknowledged Dead) In U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq 3,888
The War Department also acknowledges the number Of Iraqis slaughtered in the current U.S. War on Iraq as 1,130,689 when the world knows that this number easily exceeds two million: The internally displaced account for another two million; along with two million or more that have fled the country. That's roughly six million people have been directly affected since 2003, by this hostility that has lasted for sixteen years now. Apparently there are no figures for the total number of those Iraqi's mangled, broken, or mentally destroyed, throughout our quest to enslave the state of Iraq.
What is glaringly obvious here is that the numbers given by the US Department of War are nothing but Mega-Lies! Contrast 3,888 against 73,846 and anyone can easily see the scale of this deception. Perhaps this is why the Bushwhackers classified the deaths of all combat personal as SECRET, since the beginning of this latest chapter in this sixteen year long war? Vietnam lasted about fifteen years, and the US casualty count was very similar then, to what is only coming to light now.
On the monetary side of the equation numbers also have a huge meaning-when people stop for a moment and think about them. The financing of the Bush-Wars has devoured everything else that the federal government is responsible for in this country-by current established law. Again the War Department says that the War is costing us $476, 397, 000, 000 plus: Yet when the actuality of the true costs are measured against reality the costs are well into the trillions, because the injuries sustained will cost these men and women throughout the rest of their lives-regardless of who pays for it.
No nation can withstand what we are paying, as a nation, simply to continue to function; which is a Million Dollars a Minute.
There is no reality in what this government continues to tell the world about what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan-and they are about to do the same thing to Iran and possibly to Lebanon and Syria as well.
Cheney is running foreign policy and probably most of what's left of the government. Yet no one seems to care. If this place were a corporation we would have been dissolved long ago-but we actually are the United States Incorporated, not the nation with a Constitution that was supposed to be "of, by and for the people." Instead USA Inc. was created in secret to be 'of, by and for the Corporations,' and their interests are what all those men and women have been fighting and dying for-in American uniforms.
This needs to change!
|
|
|
0
Comments
|
|
|
|
It's SHOWTIME!
|
Posted:Dec 12, 2007 5:12 pm
Last Updated:Jan 28, 2008 4:43 am
2006 Views
|
The moment has arrived when everyone that has been following this Outrage needs to get up from their laurels and finally write or print of make that version of their own mega-stories that have been waiting for the just the right moment because that moment that has finally arrived. It's "speak now or forever hold your piece"-because if 'we' don't act now then there will not be another opportunity to do so. At the moment we are all just existing in the shadow of Senate Bill 1959: which when passed, will end all opportunity for any further need for any of us. Whether professional or the most amateur of observers, we must each seize this opportunity before we become completely beside the point! What is and has been happening to the planet is actually widely known by a lot of people, and it is our job to try and connect the dots for the public, in those areas where each of us has special abilities. In the past many knew they would lose their jobs over writing or speaking about these things in detail. This no longer matters now, because the ship is listing and the horizon line is beginning to tilt, over what exactly is to be done about Iran; about the value of US currency; and about the crumbling US Empire in particular. If the cabal does what it always does, which is to underestimate Iran and the global situation, then "jobs" will be the least of our concerns. What is on-the-line now is 'context' and 'strategic critical thinking' as an alternative to the insanity being pursued full force by the puppet-masters and their completely incompetent servants that are loosely seen to be running this quasi-Empire. We cannot continue to hesitate-we must resurrect a Fourth Estate, outside the completely bought and paid for "traditional media." Investigative journalists of all types have always had a major role to play in defeating coups and government meltdowns, in the past: we must do this now, or resign ourselves to becoming politically and physically extinct. Why the Rush? Because there is a new urgency and perhaps only one more real opportunity to severe the head of this beast before it completes the destruction that was planned so long ago. Yesterday: "Iranian oil minister Gholam Hussein Nozari told the press the dollar is not considered a trustworthy currency any more, considering dollar depreciation and the dollar losses experienced by crude-oil exporting countries, according to a report published Saturday by the Iranian Student News Agency, or ISNA, in Tehran." Combine this fact, which was also a key factor in the second attack upon Saddam in 2003, and it appears that Iran has just upped the ante and is now challenging the US to use the Bush Doctrine's most famous weapon-the completely illegal 'preemptive strike,' as a way to prevent this crippling economic blow that will most likely kill the US dollar on the world stage. Then add the tortured thinking that the US and Israel have chosen to apply to this circumstance. Far from taking a deep breath and opening a real dialogue with the several states with which we are psychologically 'at war,' the USA and Israel have apparently chosen to project our paranoid version of colonial ambitions onto a state that has never shown the slightest inclination toward such a stance. We overthrew the elected Government of Iran in the 1950's to install our puppet (the Shah), who ran things until he was overthrown by the Mullahs in 1979. What most Americans remember about this was the 444 days that the American hostages, taken from the American Embassy, were held by the new Iranian government. They were all returned when Reagan was elected, under the terms of a deal struck by GWH Bush, who also engineered the Arms for Hostages Deal, and later the Iran-Contra Affair. Throughout these nefarious dealings Iran was routinely victimized by her wars of resistance, to keep Saddam at bay: The same Saddam Hussein that we later declared to be the new Hitler: but who was at the time "OUR man" in the Middle-East. What short memories Americans always seem to have! The reason we have been shut
|
|
|
2
Comments
|
|
Killer Cliches
|
Posted:Dec 8, 2007 4:47 pm
Last Updated:Dec 30, 2007 7:37 am
2154 Views
|
It's fun sometimes to collect current cliches, which are worn-out uses of the language, such as "at the end of the day." Why can't we just say at twilight or after the sun sets?
Another cliche is "you can run but you can't hide." Osama bin Laden has disproved that, and indeed there are literally thousands of fugitives in the U.S. who have successfully both run and hidden.
Usually when some politician says "the reality is" or "the facts are," the reality isn't and the facts are fiction. The Bush administration continues to claim that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. There is no evidence to support that claim. It continues to claim that the Iranians have called for the destruction of Israel. They have not. They have called for a change of government in Israel.
The Republican candidates for president, with the exception of Ron Paul, seem to be competing to see who will start a war with Iran first. They, like the president, repeat the same lies.
The reason our so-called diplomacy hasn't worked is because the Bush administration position is this: Iran, unless you stop what you are legally entitled to do (enrich uranium for nuclear fuel), we won't talk to you about not doing what you are legally entitled to do. You can't have talks if your position is that the other side must give in to your demands as a precondition.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent and successful visit to Iran seems to have so rattled Mr. Bush that he is prattling on about World War III. If he would read the joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, he would see that the meeting was mostly about doing business. Russia and Iran have the right to do business with each other. Putin, who also doesn't want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, said making threats is counterproductive. He also said that he sees no evidence that the Iranians are pursuing nuclear weapons.
Bush, as if to contrast his lack of knowledge, said that people who want to avoid World War III should want to prevent Iran from getting "the knowledge" to make a nuclear weapon. That knowledge has been available to practically the whole world for decades. The real difficulty is the engineering.
Bush is starting to scare me. His disconnect with reality seems to be growing. Hopefully, he's not really delusional; it's just the way he mangles the English language that creates that impression.
We should keep in mind that Iraq's Saddam Hussein kept saying he had no weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration kept insisting that he did and was about to use them on us. Turns out, of course, Saddam was telling the truth and the Bush administration was not.
Now the Iranians keep saying they are not pursuing nuclear weapons and have no desire to acquire nuclear weapons, while the Bush administration keeps insisting that they are and that Iran represents an imminent danger to Israel and to the U.S. As sad as it is to say, the credibility at this point rests with the Iranians.
And if you are curious as to why the Bush administration and the Republican presidential hopefuls are so fixated on the alleged threat posed by Iran, it's because Israel is pushing the U.S. to attack Iran. Israel, unfortunately, seems to have grown paranoid, even though the idea that Iran could threaten Israel, which already has plenty of nuclear weapons, is absurd.
But at the end of the day, the reality is that truth has an uphill struggle in America these days. Know what I mean?
|
|
|
3
Comments
|
|
The Decline and Fall of the Animal Kingdom
|
Posted:Nov 29, 2007 11:47 am
Last Updated:Jan 23, 2008 4:18 am
2238 Views
|
Carl Woese's method for organizing life is a departure from Carl Linnaeus' nearly 300-year-old system.
Image: Science Magazine Some of the greatest moments in the history of biology slip from the world's memory, their anniversaries hardly noticed among the wars, bankruptcies and celebrity detoxifications. But before this month passes, let us stop to remember one of those great moments that came 30 years ago, in November 1977: the death knell of the animal kingdom.
The animal kingdom's decline came in the form of a three-page paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its lead author, Carl Woese, had spent the previous few years trying to find a way to figure out the relationship of all living things, including microbes. A taxonomist can classify a giraffe, a bat and a human as mammals simply by looking at them. They have hair, for example, and they nurse. But microbes are harder to make sense of. They might simply look like a rod or a sphere.
Within a microbe, however, are the same kinds of molecules you can find inside a giraffe, a bat or a human. They all have proteins, DNA and RNA -- which is a single-strand version of DNA that carries out a number of jobs in the cell. Woese recognized that among these molecules he might find a universal rule for measuring the diversity of life. All living things use an assembly of proteins and RNA molecules called ribosomes to build proteins according to the sequence of the genes. Woese selected one piece of RNA from the ribosome and began to painstakingly decipher the versions of it carried by a range of species. Close relatives would have similar RNA molecules, because they shared a recent common ancestor, he reasoned.
Among the species Woese and his colleague George Fox studied were a mouse, yeast and duckweed. They also sequenced RNA from E. coli other bacterial species. When they lined up the species by kinship, they found two strange results. The mouse, the yeast and the duckweed were, relatively speaking, very closely related. They were more closely related than many species of bacteria were to one another. And the bacteria yielded other strange results. Four species of methane-producing bacteria were only distantly related to other bacteria. They were just as closely related to the mouse, the yeast and the duckweed.
To understand just how strange the results were, you have to understand how scientists have classified life for nearly 300 years. Back in 1735 Carl Linnaeus mapped out an elaborate system, assigning every species to a genus, every genus to a family, every family to an order, and so on, all the way up to a kingdom. For Linnaeus, there were only two kingdoms that a species could belong to: animal and plant.
To be an animal was to belong to a major group in the panorama of life. In the centuries that followed, scientists added new kingdoms, such as the protist kingdom comprised of creatures from which animals and plants are believed to have evolved. Mushrooms and other fungi, which Linnaeus had classified as plants, proved to be fundamentally different. They did not catch sunlight like plants, nor did they eat food and then digest it like animals. Instead, they digested first and ate later. So they earned their own kingdom as well. The protists also produced yet another kingdom. Some of them lacked a true nucleus -- a sac for storing DNA. They became the kingdom of bacteria. Even if the animal kingdom was one of five, the title still carried some grandeur. After all, kingdoms were at the top of the hierarchy of life.
But Woese and Fox discovered that the animal kingdom might not be so supreme after all. If it was, then why were animals so closely related to plants and fungi compared to the relationships of bacteria to one another? Life was not split into five kingdoms, Woese and Fox argued, but three "urkingdoms" (think German). Woese later changed this label to "domains."
animals belonged to a domain known as the eukaryotes, along with plants, fungi and protists. Bacteria such as E. coli made up a second domain, and Woese and Fox set apart the methane-producing microbes in a domain of their own, which they called Archaea.
Earlier this month, a group of scientists gathered at the University of Illinois, where Woese teaches, to celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of three domains of life. The three-domain system was initially met with huge resistance. But when other scientists studied new species, they found support for it. You can see one of the newest versions of the tree of life at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, or EMBL, website where the branches have been wrapped into a circle. The three colors of the tree mark Woese's three domains. Scientists have yet to find a species that falls outside them.
While most taxonomists still use Linnaeus's elegant system of species, genus and the rest, most also recognize Woese's three domains.
Woese also gave scientists a way to gauge the genetic diversity of life, and as the new tree shows, the animal kingdom doesn't make up much of it. In the early depictions of the tree of life, it took up a huge portion of its branches at its top -- the crown of evolution. On the new tree, the animal kingdom (marked Metazoa) has been reduced to a small tuft of branches. The EMBL tree only shows a small sampling of life's full diversity, and it's certain that when scientists finally assemble the full tree of life, the animal kingdom will suffer even more humiliation.
Most of life's genetic diversity is turning up in bacteria and archaea. A single quart of seawater can hold 60,000 different kinds of bacteria -- more than 10 times all the species of mammals on Earth. And the differences among those bacteria are not superficial. A greater genetic distance than the one that divides us from duckweed may separate two bacteria that look nearly identical.
Even within our own domain, the animal kingdom is losing ground. Studies on the DNA of eukaryotes suggest that they belong to six main branches. Scientists sometimes call the branches "supergroups," although it's doubtful they can sing like Led Zeppelin. Our once-imperial kingdom belongs to the nearly unpronounceable Opisthokonts, into which the entire kingdom of fungi is now crammed, along with a host of single-celled protists. Scientists are discovering a staggering number of new species of eukaryotes, but most of the genetic diversity is turning up beyond the animal kingdom, among single-celled residents of the oceans.
Scientists still refer to the animal kingdom, but more out of convention than conviction. That's not to say that animals aren't interesting or ecologically important. But as Woese demonstrated, to understand the full reach of life, scientists will have to look far beyond our own little fiefdom.
D S Von Gieserbrechta Phd.
|
|
|
0
Comments
|
|
More on Philosophy: : Technology and Philosophy
|
Posted:Nov 29, 2007 11:16 am
Last Updated:Dec 8, 2007 10:23 am
1971 Views
|
Philosophy is often viewed as a hapless endeavor with no claws to speak of, and no use to modern man. It is viewed as the playground for those with too much time and too little talent: the mental masturbation of academic airheads and pie in the sky punks. Today it is technology that reigns supreme. It is technology that the social eye is turned toward, and it is technology, even technology that isn't available, that is humanities savior. Science fiction rather than intellect offers those with the desire to upgrade their technological toys, the imagination to envision what it is that they desire. But technology is lacking luster and comes too easy to most. Technology is expected to be easy because it is often covered up by layers of GUI,hidden by blinking lights, and accessible by one button. Technology is truly understood by today's new philosopher: the engineer.
Technology is often viewed as the form of human progress that matters, while a contemplative activity such as philosophy is pushed off as antiquated and out of date. But technology without philosophy is nothing more than the mindless push for more by more. To engineers, it is a puzzle, but to most of us, technology is simply a very easy path to the meaning of life. Nevertheless, it is a philosophy of life rather than technology for life that defines us as individuals, that differentiates us from one another as well as from other animals. Human beings can have a philosophy of life because we are capable of a form of intellect that no other animal is seemingly capable of. But, many animals are capable of engineering feats that equate to technology.
Technology for life has replaced a philosophy of life, and the reasons are clear. First, having a philosophy of life is a process that takes a lifetime to achieve. It is a constant re-thinking of and molding of mental processes as well as the search for a clear understanding of who we will be, and how (if it is the case that) we will become that person. Having a philosophy of life involves intellectual curiosity: the kind that comes from years of study, and practice. Technology for life is instant, quickly gratifying, and very easy. If one has the money, technology for life is available. It is nothing more than the question of an available paycheck. As technology advances, it becomes easier and more accessible to more people more of the time. Those that could not before are capable of now. This seems like such a blessing at first, but it is the start of the loss of integrity, and the degradation of what is the most important think in life: thinking.
Secondly, having a philosophy of life is an endeavor that takes practice. The nature of philosophy is to question; it is never satisfied. But, the procession of dissatisfaction leads to more and more curiosity, and motivates the search for answers: some to be found and others to always be just beyond reach. The same can be said about technology for life, but the results are different. Technology for life does not take practice. When new technologies come to the forefront they are not questioned as much as they are accepted, even expected. The desire for new technology is never satisfied, but the process of dissatisfaction leads to nothing more than more desire for more technology. In technology, answers come easy: more technology. It is not curiosity, but expectation that drives the desire for new technology.
Thirdly, having a philosophy of life allows the philosopher to understand possible consequences and predict the outcomes of future events with a higher probability. This ability allows the philosopher to understand both why a decision is made, and why it ought or ought not to be made. Understanding is the handmaiden of foresight and the justification for ethics. When the philosopher considers something right or wrong he is able to understand why he proposes those value judgments both in the present and the future. Technology for life is not conducive for understanding nor is it capable of being ethical, but only conducive for short-sighted instant gratification. This is no more apparent than in the medical industry.
Two examples come to mind. First the desire for has driven some to rely upon hormonal treatment. They take drugs to have . This reliance and use of technology to procreate does not take the problem of overpopulation into consideration; neither does it take into consideration the fact that there are many existing in need of a home. The ethical consequences of hormonal treatments for the sake of procreation are not considered by those who adhere to technology rather than philosophy. Rather, only the desire to have is considered. Secondly, the recent and ongoing controversy concerning the medical use of human embryos for the cure of disease is a good example. Religion has taken the subject on as an ethical issue without considering the ethical consequences of not having such technology. Religion defines the problem as it sees fit (based on dogma as well as a strawman argument) and creates a simply answer: disallow it because it is unethical. It seems a two-edged sword, however. The technology is unethical (so many religious people claim), but not to worry because technology will somehow come up with a more palatable solution (so many religious people tacitly imply).
The reliance on technology is not wrong, but the reliance on nothing but technology is. That more people are able to express themselves and communicate more freely is a wonderful testament to human ingenuity, but to replace true talent and effort with technological prowess is a degradation of human integrity and potential. Having is a natural occurrence, but the fact that we can procreate does not make us good parents, and nor does it give us the right to do so regardless of consequences. Religion is not satisfactory as a philosophy of life because it is based on pat answers and dogmatic solutions rather than honest curiosity and willingness to consider all possibilities. The fact that philosophy is so overlooked by so many does not mean that it is useless, antiquated and un-needed. It simply means that we are relying upon something else to give us purpose, meaning and ethical direction. The question becomes: is that thing the right thing to rely upon: does it offer us the most quality purpose, the right meaning, and the correct ethical direction? Unfortunately, it takes philosophy to shed light on those sorts of questions.
|
|
|
0
Comments
|
|
Lying With The Lights On
|
Posted:Nov 27, 2007 8:04 pm
Last Updated:Dec 2, 2007 4:07 pm
2082 Views
|
It is usually said that "the first casualty in war is truth." To that age-old maximum the New World Order has added something of its own.
'The second casualty of wars that do not end is reality.'
Today, the world is being treated to a global display of this fact from Annapolis, Maryland. Over forty countries are attending a farce of major proportions that is meant to finish fogging over the war-crimes of the last fifty years, with no end in sight. Their goal is to stretch a mosquito net of platitudes across the entire Middle-East, while changing absolutely nothing that matters in that war-torn hell.
Israel says it wanted this conference and that they are serious about improving the lives of the Palestinian people. Yet none of their crimes, their settlements and borders, their walls, or their medieval denials of food, water, fuel, medicine or freedom for the Palestinians will even be discussed. Palestine is their Apartheid version of ethnic cleansing, in a half-century of prison camps and murder, mega-lies and deceits of every kind-all with the same purpose: to exterminate the legitimacy of the Palestinian people.
The West has been complicit, along with many of the other Arab nations in the region as well as the EU and the UN in blocking any real legitimacy for the people of Palestine. This huge-slice of Doublespeak has largely failed to convince most of the people of the world, and because of the resoluteness of the people of Palestine-this 'problem' is still alive and angry!
Three parts of the problem were not invited to Annapolis. Iran, Hamas, and Reality! Israel is bloodied from the ass-kicking they received from Hamas in their criminal attack upon Lebanon and Hamas: which Israel clearly lost for all the world to see. That loss also took a huge chunk out of the reputation of Condoleezza Rice, when the US Secretary of State told the world during Israel's attack upon Lebanon; that the time had not come to call for a cease-fire. This led to the extension of Israel's failed invasion from one week to thirty days and gave the USA a black eye that was thoroughly deserved.
The meetings at Annapolis are being held with the preconception that Hamas and Iran are instigators of the problems in Palestine, when in fact the major impediment to peace in the region, is and has always been Israel.
Hamas won the free and open elections which the US demanded be held to decide the political leadership of Palestine-and when the result was Hamas-instantly Israel and the USA began to cut all aid and money to Palestine, and to intensify the suffering throughout the camps. Thereafter, Israel and the US conspired to engineer a coup within the legitimately elected government of the Palestinian people a coup that only half-succeeded. It is this Palestinian half-leader that is cooperating with Israel in this conference. So the leader of Israel, the failed warrior against Lebanon and Hamas, will meet with the turncoat 'leader' of the West Bank, who claims to speak for all Palestinians.
These two losers agreed to meet with the decider who is claiming to have suddenly decided, after seven years of stonewalling the entire situation to now be seeking some kind of 'solution.' This hardly qualifies for anything like a legitimate attempt to do anything but create more excuses for those continued failures that will no doubt be blamed on the absent parties to this dog-and pony show in Maryland.
Israel could immediately lift its self-imposed sanctions and provide fuel, food, water and jobs to the Palestinians, as well as the freedom to travel within what was their own country: but the world knows that this will not happen, so why all the pomp and ceremony?
Apparently the boycotts against Israel are being noticed, and the corrupted Arab governments are beginning to feel some heat over their refusal to help the Palestinians this meeting is intended to furnish some cover for their failures to date, and maybe some kind of flimsy 'hope' for the future.
But whatever happens at Annapolis, will be no substitute for what is actually done on the ground in Palestine. There must be consequences for the crimes of Israel that go back so very many years: along with all the universal laws they continue to ignore when it comes to their treatment of an occupied people that have suffered immeasurably at the hands of this century's version of the Nazi party.
The threadbare netting that is attempting to cover this contrived farce seems to be very convenient in other ways as well: Because despite the bluster and the chest thumping, the US is losing in Afghanistan and has already lost in Iraq. They say exactly the opposite and point to this new fact that has just been "accomplished."
"Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America'. Encapsulated in this document is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US.
Far from 'liberating' the Iraqi people from the 'yoke of tyranny' for them to become a 'free and democratic' model to which all other Middle Eastern states could aspire, which was the propaganda and rhetoric used by the neoconservatives that convinced the Coalition of the Willing that Iraq was a 'noble and righteous cause', the declaration instead condemns Iraq to an endless occupation designed to enhance the power of the elite puppets of Iraq, and to ensure that Iraq's resources remain firmly under American control and enriching American controlled oil companies. In short, the document is the instrument by which Iraq has effectively become a colony of the US."
If Cheney-Bush think the above charade will survive the forced pullout of US troops (the only member of the phony coalition still in Iraq), then they really are as brain-dead as the whole world believes them to be.
The reality that is being banned from discussion in Annapolis can no longer be shoved under the rug of global politics. In the real world our money is no longer any good, and the US is struggling to avoid the Depression that is on the way. The insiders in Washington know that virtually nothing this government has attempted to do, has worked, and they're voting with their feet. The people too are finally beginning to see through the now threadbare flags that have covered so many cynically criminal actions that this pretence now at being part of the community of nations, is nothing more than a last gasp to con the world just one more time!
One last thing: If this conference is meant to set up Iran and Hamas as the next targets that are required to quench our thirst for pre-emptive strikes: then the peoples of the countries represented in these talks will have to make their views known to their leaders-just as US citizens must begin to scream aloud about what has happened to everything that has been even touched by these international thugs that have hijacked this nation, in full view of a disapproving planet!
Resignations and Impeachment proceedings would do far more for Palestine, than this charade could ever possibly envision. But then obeying the laws of this country was one of the very first victims of the Cheney-Bush War-Upon-the-World why would they change now!
|
|
|
1
comment
|
|
Who Are You Anyway?
|
Posted:Nov 27, 2007 4:58 pm
Last Updated:Feb 7, 2008 1:13 pm
2088 Views
|
Supposedly, your friends know you better than you know yourself. I have heard this little aphorism thrown around and I have always wondered if it were true. How is it possible to test something as vague and indistinct as the 'self'? As it has been pondered and pontificated upon for some time, we are aware of what we call the 'self', but we cannot put definite boundaries on what exactly makes that 'self' up. This concept is an old, but important, one.
"There is obviously some sense in which I am the same person as I was yesterday, and, to take an even more obvious example, if I simultaneously see a man and hear him speaking, there is some sense in which the I that sees is the same I that hears. It thus came to be thought that, when I perceive anything, there is a relationship between me and the thing: I who perceive am the "subject" and the thing perceived is the "object." Unfortunately it turned out that nothing could be known about the subject: it always perceived other things, but could not perceive itself."
-Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science
Mr. Russell is certainly not the first philosopher to notice the inherent perplexity in something that most of us deem so simple: our self. Descartes is probably the most famous mathematician/lover-of-wisdom that broached the subject of self, with his now famous: "Cogito Ergo Sum" statement. But how is it that with the exception of a few exceptional thinkers, the most of humanity assumes that we know our 'self' best and others only secondary to that knowledge? How can we become so comfortable with something that we never know? It's as if we have an alien inside of us that we are never aware of, but at the same time think that we know it so well (for those interested in following up on "aliens inside of us", please refer to L. Ron Hubbard)?
The key clue in our problem of 'self' is the word "assume". I would not only claim that most of us assume we know our 'self', but that we are not aware that we are making an assumption at all. This problem of awareness is key not only in knowing the 'self', but also in the religiously-minded, in those that purport that progress, that an external prize is always the goal etc. We make assumptions all of the time because we induce most of the knowledge that we come by. Inductive reasoning is great, but its strength is also its weakness. Our assumption of 'self' stems from the fact that, as Mr. Russell states it, "when I perceive anything, there is a relationship between me and the thing" and that relationship becomes the 'self' that we all think that we know, and hopefully love. That relationship is what most of us deem as self without ever knowing it.
If all of this is true, then we not only have problem of knowing our 'self', but a bigger, but albeit, a more accepted problem, of knowing others. Perhaps we can only know others in regards to perspective? That person that I see, whom I consider an acquaintance, is an object that I associate with that person's 'self', that 'self' that we make an assumption of knowing in the first place. For example, if the Hindu religion is right, the person stuffed in the body that I deem as my acquaintance may not be the person that I believe. Of course, this presumes the separation of body and what many consider to be a "soul", but of which I am alluding to as the "self". So, I know the body and associate the person inside that body as my acquaintance, or I know the body and the body is the person that is my acquaintance. If the first hypothesis is true, then I would seriously consider signing up with the L. Ron Hubbard folks. If the second hypothesis is true, then I only know a physical entity that happens to be sentient.
If I (whoever that is) were to make the presumably wildly false statement that I know my acquaintance better than I know myself, I would most likely be met with bellowing laughter or simply a blank, disbelieving stare, or perhaps, both. But from what it seems so far, the statement that I know my fellow man better than myself is just as true, if not more, than the statement that I know myself. So far, that "self" that I go around with is nothing but the relationship that it has with the rest of the world around it. Does that mean that my relationship with my cat becomes who I am…maybe. This whole shenanigan of "self" begins to wreak of another favorite subject: moment. Maybe, "self" is whomever or whatever is conscious in the moment. That is to say, not just the subject doing the perceiving (if there really is one), but the whole shebang: the perceiver, the perceived, the body, the physical world that becomes as we notice it. The world around us is all that there is, and we are around the world, and that is all that there is.
No metaphysics here, just a statement that maybe we have been looking in all the wrong places for the person that we always thought we knew so well. So far, the "self" is not diminishing, but rather, taking on the world around it, that which it has been perceiving since consciousness arrived on the evolutionary table. Maybe the "self" is not only the perceiver after all, but rather, both the perceiver and the perceived. If that is the case, then I do indeed know my acquaintance at least as good as I know my "self" because both are one and the same. What a concept! I am my acquaintance just as much as he/she is me. I am the cat,, the table, the chair that I am sitting in, the sky, the trees; all that "stuff" outside of the point-of-perspective. The world is me, and I, the world. Being the staunch individualist that I am, this whole concept of "self" goes straight against beliefs such as individual rights, liberties, and freedoms, or does it? Those rights are still applicable, but not to a "self" as an entity, but rather a point-of-reference, i.e. my own.
|
|
|
1
comment
|
|
Bush's New Resume
|
Posted:Nov 26, 2007 9:37 am
Last Updated:Nov 26, 2007 6:13 pm
2144 Views
|
This individual seeks an executive position. He will be available January 2009, and is willing to relocate.
RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington , DC 20520
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
Law Enforcement
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
Military
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
College
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS
- I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
- I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
- I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.
- With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
- I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
- I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
- I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
- I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
- I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
- I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
- I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
- I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
- I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
- My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.
- My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
- I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
- I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
- I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
- I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.
- I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
- I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
- I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
- I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
- I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
- I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.
- I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
- I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
- I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.
- I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.
- I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.
- In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
- I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71% ) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
- I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.
- I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES
-All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
- All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
- All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
Now I ask you, would you hire this fool? You can bet that somebody will, and at high paying position as well, not to mention Important like teaching English. 
|
|
|
3
Comments
|
|
this film could make you angry
|
Posted:Nov 22, 2007 8:11 pm
Last Updated:Nov 25, 2007 9:59 am
2231 Views
|
At university, we male students used to say that it was impossible to take a beautiful young woman to the cinema and concentrate on the film. But in Canada, I've at last proved this to be untrue. Familiar with the Middle East and its abuses - and with the vicious policies of George Bush - we both sat absorbed by Rendition, Gavin Hood's powerful, appalling testimony of the torture of a "terrorist suspect"' in an unidentified Arab capital after he was shipped there by CIA thugs in Washington.
Why did an Arab "terrorist" telephone an Egyptian chemical engineer - holder of a green card and living in Chicago with a pregnant American wife while he was attending an international conference in Johannesburg? Did he have knowledge of how to make bombs? (Unfortunately, yes - he was a chemical engineer- but the phone calls were mistakenly made to his number.)
He steps off his plane at Dulles International Airport and is immediately shipped off on a CIA jet to what looks suspiciously like Morocco - where, of course, the local cops don't pussyfoot about Queensberry rules during interrogation. A CIA operative from the local US embassy - played by a nervous Jake Gyllenhaal - has to witness the captive's torture while his wife pleads with congressmen in Washington to find him.
The Arab interrogator - who starts with muttered questions to the naked Egyptian in an underground prison - works his way up from beatings to a "black hole", to the notorious "waterboarding" and then to electricity charges through the captive's body. The senior Muhabarat questioner is, in fact, played by an Israeli and was so good that when he demanded to know how the al-Jazeera channel got exclusive footage of a suicide bombing before his own cops, my companion and I burst into laughter.
Well, suffice it to say that the CIA guy turns soft, rightly believes the Egyptian is innocent, forces his release by the local minister of interior, while the senior interrogator loses his in the suicide bombing - there is a mind-numbing reversal of time sequences so that the bomb explodes both at the start and at the end of the film - while Meryl Streep as the catty,uncaring CIA boss is exposed for her wrong-doing. Not very realistic?
Well, think again. For in Canada lives Maher Arar, a totally harmless software engineer - originally from Damascus - who was picked up at JFK airport in New York and underwent an almost identical "rendition" to the fictional Egyptian in the movie. Suspected of being a member of al-Qa'ida - the Canadian Mounties had a hand in passing on this nonsense to the FBI - he was put on a CIA plane to Syria where he was held in an underground prison and tortured. The Canadian government later awarded Arar $10m in compensation and he received a public apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But Bush's thugs didn't get fazed like Streep's CIA boss. They still claim that Arar is a "terrorist suspect"; which is why, when he testified to a special US congressional meeting on 18 October, he had to appear on a giant video screen in Washington. He's still, you see, not allowed to enter the US. Personally, I'd stay in Canada - in case the FBI decided to ship him back to Syria for another round of torture. But save for the US congressmen - "let me personally give you what your government has not: an apology," Democratic congressman Bill Delahunt said humbly - there hasn't been a whimper from the Bush administration.
Even worse, it refused to reveal the "secret evidence" which it claimed it had on Arar - until the Canadian press got its claws on these "secret" papers and discovered they were hearsay evidence of an Arar visit to Afghanistan from an Arab prisoner in Minneapolis, Mohamed Elzahabi, whose brother, according to Arar, once repaired Arar's car in Montreal.
There was a lovely quote from America's Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzales, the US attorney general at the time, that the evidence again Arar was "supported by information developed by US law enforcement agencies". Don't you just love that word "developed"? Doesn't it smell rotten? Doesn't it mean "fabricated"?
And what, one wonders, were Bush's toughs doing sending Arar off to Syria, a country that they themselves claim to be a "terrorist" state which supports "terrorist" organisations like Hizbollah. President Bush, it seems, wants to threaten Damascus, but is happy to rely on his brutal Syrian chums if they'll be obliging enough to plug in the electricity and attach the wires in an underground prison on Washington's behalf.
But then again, what can you expect of a president whose nominee for Alberto Gonzales's old job of attorney general, Michael Mukasey, tells senators that he doesn't "know what is involved" in the near-drowning "waterboarding" torture used by US forces during interrogations. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional," the luckless Mukasey bleated.
Yes, and I suppose if electric shocks to the body constitute torture - if, mind you - that would be unconstitutional. Right? The New York Times readers at least spotted the immorality of Mukasey's remarks. A former US assistant attorney asked "how the United States could hope to regain its position as a respected world leader on the great issues of human rights if its chief law enforcement officer cannot even bring himself to acknowledge the undeniable verity that waterboarding constitutes torture". As another reader pointed out, "Like pornography, torture doesn't require a definition."
Yet all is not lost for the torture lovers in America. Here's what Republican senator Arlen Spector - a firm friend of Israel - had to say about Mukasey's shameful remarks: "We're glad to see somebody who is strong, with a strong record, take over this department."
So is truth stranger than fiction? Or is Hollywood waking up - after Syriana and Munich -to the gross injustices of the Middle East and the shameless and illegal policies of the US in the region? Go and see Rendition - it will make you angry - and remember Arar. And you can take a beautiful woman along to share your fury.
|
|
|
2
Comments
|
|
Thanks Giving
|
Posted:Nov 22, 2007 4:16 pm
Last Updated:Dec 12, 2007 4:30 am
1913 Views
|
Lets all give a collective Thanks to GW Bush for all that he has done.
|
|
|
0
Comments
|
|
101 things to do with a used diaphragm
|
Posted:Nov 22, 2007 10:40 am
Last Updated:Dec 7, 2007 5:12 pm
2348 Views
|
(For those of you who haven't actually SEEN a diaphragm, it's round, about three and a half inches in diameter, and made of latex. )
For example:
Sew up the edges and use it as a change purse.
Give it to a group of midgets with palsy to use as a safe frisbee
A yarmukle for Jewish infants who spit up a lot
Send it to the women down in Texas
Stick a pinhole in it and send it to Condi Rice
Sneeze guard for baby bottles
Overshoes for baby elephants
Knee protectors for young skaters
Adjustable mutes for trombones
Line with foil and use as unbreakable, flexible pocket mirror
Toss your old coasters in the trash! You won't need them any more with the new SteinGuard (TM) the Coaster That Stays Attached to Your Beer Mug!
Source of endless amusement for NET subscribers with too much time Handy dish for holding flesh removed in nasal operations
Collection plate for very small (or poor) churches
Cat beret
A cap to seal open beverage cans and half full tumblers
Paint it and use it as window decoration
Add a pole and use it for a beach umbrella for mice
Hi frequency radio receiver dish
Poke a pencil though it and sell it as a top (for $9.95)
Poke sapling through it and use as an ant shield
Pack it away with some rubber cement: voila! Rubber Raft Repair Kit!
Snow saucer for mice
Cup trivet
An earring for Boy George
Half a set of pasties
Reusable liner for petrie culture dishes
Poke holes in it, place in front of a light source and use it to project star patterns
Replacement pad for electronic drum heads
Decorative pendulum cover (paint it with your own patterns)
Serving appliance for cupcakes and dinner rolls
Helpful grip for opening those stubborn jar lids
Golfer's driving target/ball return
Golfer's cheat: seal the hole just below the rim
Poke candle through it: wax guard
Circle template
Mute/spit guard for microphones
Wading pool for ants
Sound membrane for a really big kazoo
Matte material for a framed picture of Newt
Lens filter for Rush Limbaugh camera crews
A trampoline for gerbals
As a pair, with a small rubber ball, a new beach badminton game
An emergency parachute for any member of the Republican party
An inner thigh exercise device to rival Suzanne Summer's success
A sort of but not quite safe sex audio visual screen
A heavy duty oral sex dental dam
A target for circle jerks
Ok so it's only 47, but who's counting?
|
|
|
0
Comments
|
|
FREE Red Neck Bar-B-Q Grill
|
Posted:Nov 21, 2007 3:37 pm
Last Updated:Nov 23, 2007 5:52 pm
2022 Views
|
As every southerner knows it's time to get ready for that all important cooking technique of the south---outdoor grilling!
I have just found out that there are several stores (not just in the south) where you can get a FREE Bar-B-Q Grill! You can get a free BBQ grill from any of the following stores:
A&P
Albertsons
Costco
Dan's
Food Lion
Fry's
Home Depot
Kroger
Big Lots
Brookshire's
Lowes
Publix
Safeway
Sam's Club
Target
Vons
Trader Joe's
Wal-Mart
Winn-Dixie
I especially like the higher rack - which can be used for keeping things warm!
|
|
|
1
comment
|
|
To link to this blog (rm_swallow22us) use [blog rm_swallow22us] in your messages.
|
|
|
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
71
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
|
|
|
Most Recent Comments by Others
| Ghosts from our recent tragedy spring at us. (4) | LoveHoochies
Nov 17, 2010 5:03 pm |
| There was a time (8) | Cockeyedoptmist2
Aug 10, 2009 6:17 pm |
| just pissed off at Aff (9) | itsall4you20053
Feb 15, 2009 8:54 pm |
| If You Americans weren't so close I'd think it almost Funny. (7) | alissatim
Feb 8, 2009 5:44 am |
| Crime and Punishment (3) | mmmlike2taste
Jan 13, 2009 5:41 pm |
| Who are you anyway? (5) | 4fntsy
Dec 23, 2008 8:11 am |
| THE LORELEI (3) | PixieKittySC
Dec 15, 2008 11:13 am |
| SURPRISE! (4) | mmmlike2taste
Dec 1, 2008 11:08 pm |
| Long live the anti occupation resistance in Afghanistan! (7) | rm_skyeone2
Nov 13, 2008 6:55 am |
| And a heartfelt thanks to Stupidest people on the planet (5) | BuffyBitchSlayer
Nov 12, 2008 4:23 pm |
| This is not a gun REALLY! Lets just call it a Party Favor. (4) | SolarPowered0
Nov 9, 2008 12:15 am |
|
|
