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Web 3.0

2007-03-24T01:09:46Z

The following article breaks Web 3.0 into a lay person understanding. Please review and discuss the benefits of Paragon Security use or non-use of this capability.
Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense

By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 12, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 11 — From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
Referred to as Web 3.0, the effort is in its infancy, and the very idea has given rise to skeptics who have called it an unobtainable vision. But the underlying technologies are rapidly gaining adherents, at big companies like I.B.M. and Google as well as small ones. Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song.
But in the future, more powerful systems could act as personal advisers in areas as diverse as financial planning, with an intelligent system mapping out a retirement plan for a couple, for instance, or educational consulting, with the Web helping a high school student identify the right college.
The projects aimed at creating Web 3.0 all take advantage of increasingly powerful computers that can quickly and completely scour the Web.
“I call it the World Wide Database,” said Nova Spivack, the founder of a start-up firm whose technology detects relationships between nuggets of information by mining the World Wide Web. “We are going from a Web of connected documents to a Web of connected data.”
Web 2.0, which describes the ability to seamlessly connect applications (like geographic mapping) and services (like photo-sharing) over the Internet, has in recent months become the focus of dot-com-style hype in Silicon Valley. But commercial interest in Web 3.0 — or the “semantic Web,” for the idea of adding meaning — is only now emerging.
The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.
In contrast, the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”
Under today’s system, such a query can lead to hours of sifting — through lists of flights, hotel, car rentals — and the options are often at odds with one another. Under Web 3.0, the same search would ideally call up a complete vacation package that was planned as meticulously as if it had been assembled by a human travel agent.
How such systems will be built, and how soon they will begin providing meaningful answers, is now a matter of vigorous debate both among academic researchers and commercial technologists. Some are focused on creating a vast new structure to supplant the existing Web; others are developing pragmatic tools that extract meaning from the existing Web.
But all agree that if such systems emerge, they will instantly become more commercially valuable than today’s search engines, which return thousands or even millions of documents but as a rule do not answer questions directly.
Underscoring the potential of mining human knowledge is an extraordinarily profitable example: the basic technology that made Google possible, known as “Page Rank,” systematically exploits human knowledge and decisions about what is significant to order search results. (It interprets a link from one page to another as a “vote,” but votes cast by pages considered popular are weighted more heavily.)
Today researchers are pushing further. Mr. Spivack’s company, Radar Networks, for example, is one of several working to exploit the content of social computing sites, which allow users to collaborate in gathering and adding their thoughts to a wide array of content, from travel to movies. Radar’s technology is based on a next-generation database system that stores associations, such as one person’s relationship to another (colleague, friend, brother), rather than specific items like text or numbers.
One example that hints at the potential of such systems is KnowItAll, a project by a group of University of Washington faculty members and students that has been financed by Google. One sample system created using the technology is Opine, which is designed to extract and aggregate user-posted information from product and review sites.
One demonstration project focusing on hotels “understands” concepts like room temperature, bed comfort and hotel price, and can distinguish between concepts like “great,” “almost great” and “mostly O.K.” to provide useful direct answers. Whereas today’s travel recommendation sites force people to weed through long lists of comments and observations left by others, the Web. 3.0 system would weigh and rank all of the comments and find, by cognitive deduction, just the right hotel for a particular user.
“The system will know that spotless is better than clean,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Washington who is a leader of the project. “There is the growing realization that text on the Web is a tremendous resource.”
In its current state, the Web is often described as being in the Lego phase, with all of its different parts capable of connecting to one another. Those who envision the next phase, Web 3.0, see it as an era when machines will start to do seemingly intelligent things.
Researchers and entrepreneurs say that while it is unlikely that there will be complete artificial-intelligence systems any time soon, if ever, the content of the Web is already growing more intelligent. Smart Webcams watch for intruders, while Web-based e-mail programs recognize dates and locations. Such programs, the researchers say, may signal the impending birth of Web 3.0.
“It’s a hot topic, and people haven’t realized this spooky thing about how much they are depending on A.I.,” said W. Daniel Hillis, a veteran artificial-intelligence researcher who founded Metaweb Technologies here last year.
Like Radar Networks, Metaweb is still not publicly describing what its service or product will be, though the company’s Web site states that Metaweb intends to “build a better infrastructure for the Web.”
“It is pretty clear that human knowledge is out there and more exposed to machines than it ever was before,” Mr. Hillis said.
Both Radar Networks and Metaweb have their roots in part in technology development done originally for the military and intelligence agencies. Early research financed by the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency predated a pioneering call for a semantic Web made in 1999 by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web a decade earlier.
Intelligence agencies also helped underwrite the work of Doug Lenat, a computer scientist whose company, Cycorp of Austin, Tex., sells systems and services to the government and large corporations. For the last quarter-century Mr. Lenat has labored on an artificial-intelligence system named Cyc that he claimed would some day be able to answer questions posed in spoken or written language — and to reason.
Cyc was originally built by entering millions of common-sense facts that the computer system would “learn.” But in a lecture given at Google earlier this year, Mr. Lenat said, Cyc is now learning by mining the World Wide Web — a process that is part of how Web 3.0 is being built.
During his talk, he implied that Cyc is now capable of answering a sophisticated natural-language query like: “Which American city would be most vulnerable to an anthrax attack during summer?”
Separately, I.B.M. researchers say they are now routinely using a digital snapshot of the six billion documents that make up the non-pornographic World Wide Web to do survey research and answer questions for corporate customers on diverse topics, such as market research and corporate branding.
Daniel Gruhl, a staff scientist at I.B.M.’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., said the data mining system, known as Web Fountain, has been used to determine the attitudes of young people on death for a insurance company and was able to choose between the terms “utility computing” and “grid computing,” for an I.B.M. branding effort.
“It turned out that only geeks liked the term ‘grid computing,’ ” he said.
I.B.M. has used the system to do market research for television networks on the popularity of shows by mining a popular online community site, he said. Additionally, by mining the “buzz” on college music Web sites, the researchers were able to predict songs that would hit the top of the pop charts in the next two weeks — a capability more impressive than today’s market research predictions.
There is debate over whether systems like Cyc will be the driving force behind Web 3.0 or whether intelligence will emerge in a more organic fashion, from technologies that systematically extract meaning from the existing Web. Those in the latter camp say they see early examples in services like del.icio.us and Flickr, the bookmarking and photo-sharing systems acquired by Yahoo, and Digg, a news service that relies on aggregating the opinions of readers to find stories of interest.
In Flickr, for example, users “tag” photos, making it simple to identify images in ways that have eluded scientists in the past.
“With Flickr you can find images that a computer could never find,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of research at Yahoo. “Something that defied us for 50 years suddenly became trivial. It wouldn’t have become trivial without the Web.”

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[Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality, dies

2007-03-12T11:23:25Z

From the New York Times:

[Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality,
Dies

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: March 7, 2007

The French critic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard, whose
theories about consumer culture and the manufactured nature
of reality were intensely discussed both in rarefied
philosophical circles and in blockbuster movies like “The
Matrix,” died yesterday in Paris. He was 77.

Michel Delorme, director of Galilee, Mr. Baudrillard’s
publisher, announced his death, which he said followed a
long illness.

Mr. Baudrillard, the first in his family to attend a
university, became a member of a small caste of celebrated
and influential French intellectuals who achieved
international fame despite the density and difficulty of
their work.

The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished
photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different
subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to
9/11. His comments often sparked controversy, as when he
said in 1991 that the gulf war “did not take place” —
arguing that it was more of a media event than a war.

Mr. Baudrillard was once considered a postmodern guru, but
his analyses of modern life were too original and
idiosyncratic to fit any partisan or theoretical category.
“He was one of a kind,” François Busnel, the editor in
chief of the monthly literary magazine Lire, said yesterday.
“He did not choose sides, he was very independent.”

With a round face and big, thick glasses, Mr. Baudrillard
was known for his witty aphorisms and black humor. He
described the sensory flood of the modern media culture as
“the ecstasy of communication.”

One of his better known theories postulates that we live in
a world where simulated feelings and experiences have
replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,”
where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced
images from the news, television shows and films dominate,
is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion
reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for
reality.

“All of our values are simulated,” he told The New York
Times in 2005. “What is freedom? We have a choice between
buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of
freedom.”

This idea was picked up by the American filmmakers Andy and
Larry Wachowski, who included subtle references to Mr.
Baudrillard in their “Matrix” trilogy. In the first
movie of the series, “The Matrix” (1999), the computer
hacker hero Neo opens Mr. Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra
and Simulation,” which turns out to be only a simulation
of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks. Mr.
Baudrillard later told The Times that the movie references
to his work “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings.”

He was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which
people bought objects not out of genuine need but because of
the status and meaning they bestowed.

Born in 1929 in Reims, Mr. Baudrillard later attended
university in Paris, earning a doctorate in sociology while
teaching German to high school students. He published his
first book, “The Object System,” in 1968.

In 1986 he published a kind of travelogue called
“America,” in which he wrote, “America is the original
version of modernity,” referring to what he considered the
almost complete blurring of reality and unreality. To his
French readers, he said: “We are a copy with subtitles.”

He retired in 1987 from the University of Paris X, Nanterre,
and then devoted himself to writing caustic commentaries and
developing his philosophical theories. Although he shunned
most media, he frequently wrote for newspapers.

“The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin
Towers” was published just a year after 9/11. In it, he
argued that Islamic fundamentalists tried to create their
own reality; the resulting media spectacle would give the
impression that the West was constantly under threat of
terrorist attack.

The current American invasion of Iraq is an effort to “put
the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world
becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful,” he
told The Times. “It’s a game.”

Like other postmodernists with whom he was often associated
(despite their differences), he was frequently criticized as
obscure. “If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for
the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing,”
Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote in their 1998 book
“Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse
of Science.”

Mr. Baudrillard was not unaware of the problem. “What
I’m going to write will have less and less chance of being
understood,” he said, “but that’s my problem.”]

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Maya Exorcise Shrub

2007-03-09T07:36:33Z

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173173968277&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Mayans to 'purify' sacred site after Bush visit
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 9, 2007

Mayan leaders announced that priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after US President George W. Bush visits next week.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a national association of indigenous people and peasant farmers, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites - which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles - would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

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saudi peak?

2007-02-25T23:24:44Z

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2007/02/20/0220bizoil.html
Saudis' cutbacks raise oil concerns
Some question country's reserves

By MICHAEL E. KANELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/20/07

Drivers who remember those $3-a-gallon days of the past two years, be warned.

Oil prices are up and the world's biggest producer has been cutting back — a recipe for those prices to keep on climbing.

But whether they are still arching skyward by the time summer driving starts depends largely on just why Saudi Arabia has been pumping less crude.

No one outside the kingdom really knows for sure, but some oil experts think the Saudis' oil reserves may not support increased production.

Official Saudi explanations for production cuts cite the recent dips in global prices, arguing that a little shrinkage in supply will help stabilize the market. So when demand accelerates this summer, a little boost to Saudi production would keep prices from soaring.

But what if the Saudis cut back because they had no choice?

"It's going to be a different world if Saudi Arabian production is going into decline," said economist James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego. "If that is the world we are in, we really need to be making plans."

The price of a regular gasoline averaged $2.10 a gallon in metro Atlanta on Monday, up a dime in a month, according to GasBuddy.com. During that same period, the global price of oil has risen about 14 percent.

Meanwhile, Saudi production is reportedly down about 1 million barrels a day from an average of about 9.5 million barrels a day through much of 2005.

It is not just the decline that is troubling, Hamilton said. "I don't know for sure what the answer is, but I find the facts disturbing."

• Cutbacks started when prices were high.

• The Saudis have been nearly frantic in their recent drilling for more oil.

• Some reports show the Saudis increasingly relying on lower-quality, less valuable oil.

The questions about Saudi Arabia tap into an ongoing controversy.

Nearly all geologists agree that sooner or later the world will reach the midway point in the era of oil, the moment when half the Earth's crude has been pumped. But there is a small, vocal contingent who have been warning that the world is approaching peak oil very soon.

Or is already there.

From the moment "peak oil" arrives, the search will be on for cost-efficient alternative fuels. Meanwhile, producers will have an incentive to hunt for and pump lower-quality or hard-to-find crude.

Relentless economic pressures will send oil — now selling for just under $60 a barrel — steadily toward the stratosphere, Hamilton said. "If Saudi Arabia is in decline, then oil is way too cheap."

Saudi Arabia has long claimed a massive oil reserve and — since the decline of U.S. production and the breakup of the Soviet Union — it has been the global production leader.

But many of Saudi Arabia's fields are more than a half-century old.

In the early 1970s, the Saudis led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties in aggressive action. Some of the goals were political, some strictly about boosting revenue.

But a tripling of oil prices spurred recession among the world's largest economies, who were also OPEC customers. For the next several decades, the Saudis pursued a careful strategy: Keep prices high enough to fill the country's coffers, but not so high that customers get serious about conservation and alternative forms of energy.

The Saudis are not always successful, but hardly anyone else could even make the attempt. Saudi Arabia has been virtually the only producer with enough extra capacity — and discipline — to move the market.

Saudi skeptics, like oil investor turned critic Matthew Simmons, say the Saudis cannot admit that their market power is dribbling away. But the scramble to find more oil, Simmons says, is evidence of desperation.

For their part, the Saudis dismiss the concerns — and many experts back them up.

Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the energy program at Rice University in Houston, said that the Saudis are spending enormous amounts of money finding more oil, and they are likely to make up for fields that have peaked — and then some. "They are like people on a treadmill who have to run a little faster," she said.

The Saudis aim to expand capacity by 3 million barrels a day so they can maintain their role, she said. "The Saudis have been explicit. They need more capacity so they can continue to balance the market."

Yet there are other short-term issues, like Iran.

Concern about Iran's ambitions — and a possible confrontation with the United States — only makes it harder to read the Saudis.

Iran is a Shiite state and the world's fourth-largest oil producer. Saudi Arabia is dominated by a Sunni sect that has often been at odds with the Shiites. The two nations are seen as supporters of opposing sides in Iraq, even as they vie for a larger leadership role in the region.

Yet experts say Saudi Arabia, where oil production is relatively cheap, can handle low oil prices better than Iran — whose government has used oil revenue to smooth over recent economic trouble.

So why would the Saudis lower production and raise prices when it serves their Iranian rivals?

It may be, Jaffe argues, that the Saudis do not want to push Iran into a corner yet. It may also be that they want to have lots of extra pumping capacity ready if there is a crisis.

Now, the market is mostly balanced, she argues.

"I'd be surprised to see the price go to $75 a barrel again," Jaffe said. "But if they get into a war and start blowing up each other's oil facilities, the price is going to go way past $75."

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Blackwell Companion to Consciousness

2007-02-16T00:30:56Z

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=9781405120197&site=1
The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness

Edited by: Max Velmans (University of London) and Susan Schneider (University of Pennsylvania)
Reviews

"This outstanding collection of new essays, many by major figures, covers virtually every important topic in current research on consciousness, often in illuminating depth. Nobody interested in cur...
More reviews
Description

With fifty-five peer reviewed chapters written by the leading authors in the field, The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness is the most extensive and comprehensive survey of the study of consciousness available today.

* Provides a variety of philosophical and scientific perspectives that create a breadth of understanding of the topic
* Topics include the origins and extent of consciousness, different consciousness experiences, such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness

TopTable of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Susan Schneider (University of Pennsylvania) and Max Velmans (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Part I: Problems of Consciousness:
1. A Brief History of the Scientific Approach to the Study of Consciousness: Chris Frith (University College London) and Geraint Rees (University College London)
2. Philosophical Problems of Consciousness: Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin)
Part II: The Domain of Consciousness:
Origins and Extent of Consciousness:
3. Consciousness in Infants: Colwyn Trevarthen (University of Edinburgh) and Vasuvedi Reddy (University of Portsmouth)
4. Animal Consciousness: Colin Allen (Indiana University) and Mark Bekoff (University of Colorado)
5. Rethinking the Evolution of Consciousness: Thomas Polger (University of Cincinatti)
6. Machine Consciousness: Igor Aleksander (Imperial College, London)
Some Varieties of Conscious Experience:
7. Normal and Abnormal States of Consciousness: J. Allan Hobson (Harvard Medical School)
8. Affective Consciouness: Jaak Panksepp (Washington State University)
9. Clinical Oathologies and Unusual Experiences: Richard P. Bentall (University of Manchester)
10. Altered States of Consciousness: Drug Induced States: Edward F. Pace-Schott (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and J. Allan Hobson (Harvard Medical School)
11. Meditation: David Fontana (Liverpool John Moores University)
12. Mystical Experience: David Fontana (Liverpool John Moores University)
Breakdowns and the Unity of Consciousness:
13. The Case of Blindsight: Lawrence Weiskrantz (University of Oxford)
14. Split-Brain Cases: Mary K. Colvin (Dartmouth College) and Michael S. Gazzaniga (University of California, Santa Barbara)
15. Philosophical Psychopathology and Self-Consciousness: G. Lynn Stephens (University of Alabama) and George Graham (Wake Forest University)
16. Coming Together: the Unity of Conscious Experience: Barry Dainton (University of Liverpool)
Part III: Some Contemporary Theories of Consciousness:
17. The Hard Problem of Consciousness: David Chalmers (Australian National University)
18. The Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness: Bernard J. Baars (Neurosciences Institute, San Diego)
19. The Intermediate Level Theory of Consciousness: Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina)
20. Representationalism about Consciousness: William Seager (University of Toronto at Scarborough) and David Bourget (University of Toronto)
21. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: Peter Carruthers (University of Maryland)
22. The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness: Giulio Tononi (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
23. Quantum Mechanical Theories of Consciousness: Henry Stapp (University of California, Berkeley)
24. Daniel Dennett on the Nature of Consciousness: Susan Schneider (University of Pennsylvania)
25. Biological Naturalism: John Searle (University of California, Berkeley)
26. Mysterianism: Mark Rowlands (University of Hertfordshire)
27. Dualism, Reductionism, and Reflexive Monism: Max Velmans (Goldsmiths, University of London)
28. Naturalistic Dualism: David Chalmers (Australian National University)
Part IV: Some Major Topics in the Philosophy of Consciousness:
29. Anti-materialist Arguments and Influential Replies: Joe Levine (Ohio State University)
30. Functionalism and Qualia: Robert Van Gulick (Syracuse University)
31. The Knowledge Argument: Torin Alter (University of Alabama)
32. The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness: Jaegwon Kim (Brown University)
33. The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness: Pete Mandik (William Paterson University)
34. Type Materialism for Phenomenal Consciousness: Brian McLaughlin (Rutgers University)
35. Sensory and Perceptual Consciousness: Austen Clark (University of Connecticut)
36. Self-Consciousness: José Luis Bermúdez (Washington University)
37. Consciousness and Intentionality: George Graham (Wake Forest University), Terry Horgan (University of Arizona), and John Tienson (University of Memphis)
Part V: Major Topics in the Science of Consciousness: Topics in the Cognitive
Psychology of Consciousness:
38. Attention and Consciousness: Nilli Lavie (University College London)
39. Inattentional Blindness, Change Blindness and Consciousness: Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley)
40. Preconscious Processing: Phil Merikle (University of Waterloo)
41. Implicit and Explicit Memory and Learning: John Kihlstrom (University of California, Berkeley), Jennifer Dorfman (Northwestern University), and Lillian Park (Rotman Research Institute, Toronto)
42. Consciousness of Action: Marc Jeannerod (Claude Bernard University, Lyon)
Topics in the Neuroscience of Consciousness:
43. Methodologies for Identifying the Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Geraint Rees (University College London) and Chris Frith (University College London)
44. A Neurobiological Framework for Consciousness: Francis Crick (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies) and Christof Koch (California Institute of Technology)
45. A Theory of Micro-consciousness: Semir Zeki (University College London)
46. Global Disorders of Consciousness: Nicholas D. Schiff (Weill Medical College, Cornell University)
47. Large-Scale Temporal Coordination of Cortical Activity as a Prerequisite for Conscious Experience: Wolf Singer (Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main)
48. Duplex Vision: Separate Cortical Pathways for Conscious Perception and the Control of Action: Melvyn A. Goodale (University of Western Ontario)
49. Consciousness and Anesthesia: John F. Kihlstrom (University of California, Berkeley) and Randall C. Cork (Louisiana State University Medical Center)
50. Neural Dominance, Neural Deference, and Sensorimotor Dynamics: Susan Hurley (All Souls College, Oxford)
51. Benjamin Libet's Work on the Neuroscience of Free Will: William P. Banks (Pomona College) and Susan Pockett (University of Auckland)
First-Person Contributions to the Science of Consciousness:
52. Cognition, Fringe Consciousness, and the Legacy of William James: Bruce Mangan (University of California, Berkeley)
53. Phenomenological Approaches to Consciousness: Shaun Gallagher (University of Central Florida)
54. Eastern Methods for Investigating Mind and Consciousness: Jonathan Shear (Virginia Commonwealth University)
55. An Epistemology for the Study of Consciousness: Max Velmans (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Appendix: List of Useful Web Resources in Consciousness Studies
Name Index
Subject Index

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Active Illumination

2007-02-09T02:56:30Z

Begin With the Unknown

The challenge of describing operational processes below the threshold of subspace ends abruptly in conceptual failure where observability and inference both fail. Actual entities arise from the present nanosecond within the flow of phenomenal time, though its assertion of independence may be fleeting. Even if it transcends the threshold of virtuality to appear as an actual physical entity, it may not achieve further extension.

We can only comprehend an actual entity in the process of becoming or duration that is the actualization of the potential of organization embodied in spacetime. Through duration, virtual or etheric matter ascends through the threshold as physical matter. Likewise, as a quantum fluctuation of subspace it descends rapidly in an abbreviated cycle of becoming.

We have some plausibly accurate means of describing how proto-matter arises from a virtual vortex, we have possible descriptions of that deep field, but we have only conjecture what virtual forces impinge on it from more primordial domains. Quantum mechanics doesn’t offer any real explanation how quantum events occur.

Does active information “move” electrons through its active field or is the relation more deeply intimate, structurally? Or is it more like analog spacetime self-organizes into macroscopic/metric SpaceTime from a digital substructure below the microscopic level,QX?

Ambient space could be described as a condensation or epiphenomenon of the atomistic and finite QX network. In a digital universe all quantities in nature are discrete and finite, representable by an integer. There are no infinities (Fredkin 2000; Abraham, Roy; 2007)

Philosophers might eqate Q with the noumenon. The Q continuum is atomized by the actual entity. The physical entity atomizes the timespace as a dynamic dipolar subject. Its subjective pole corresponds to time and the objective to space. The whole dipolar subject occupies the physical world but is undergird by subspace processes.

In our search for wholeness, we have to look deeper no matter where it takes us into inherent order or chaos. So far, the secret of everything appears to be a virtually bottomless pit – a numinous Abyss of transcendent imagination. Science has always provided metaphors of experiential processes, lately from chaos theory and quantum mechanics. But are these analogies more than metaphor?

When we reach the limits of scientific conceptuality we often reach for metaphors of the divine – the infinite sacred. Is this because space, light and timelessness are the prime metaphors of mystical apprehension that they have this seemingly archetypal effect on us when we hit the conceptual lacuna? The investigation often raises more questions than it answers.

Quantum Well/Quantum Wellness

Another common assumption which is enticing is that active space is characterized by primordial sentience, awareness, or even consciousness independent of matter or organisms. This certainly isn't a new idea, but it is enjoying a modern fractal reiteration, yet 'the song remains the same.'

This mystical notion is as old as the Vedas and personified in anthropomorphic notions of God, but has come back in New Age form as a primordial property of the active vacuum, though few even plausible theories have been successfully unpacked and defended.

Distance healers have developed a wireless technology with computer interface for quantum healing. Energetic medicine, biofeedback and custom-calibrated therapies are based on the same assumed principle that directed intentionality can help heal others through subspace.

Energetic healers claim to reprogram diseased informational fields or field disturbances through resonance. The recipient must be open to the emotional/spiritual process. Sincere medical personnel claim real results. But is this a human belief transaction or a subspace transmission?

It is always a mystery when the body goes into a healing cycle, but relief is good even if it is placebo effect, rather than a nonlocal subspace phenomenon.

In a very real sense, what isn't a subspace phenomenon since everything arises from there? Many believe The Secret of the law of attraction follows the formula "ask, believe, receive," backed by an action plan, to potentiate a flow state in the local field with universal support.

But is this an existential truth or a way of being and describing, doing and understanding? It relates to the so-called "hard problem" of the quality of experience. Does it require etheric support? Isn't this a retread of an old Theosophical notion now with a materialistic rationale? Is it a truth or a phenomenological belief? The field is subject to memes, trends, even fads of belief, which should not be ignored in the Big Picture.

In physics, energy trapped in a quantum well is unable to convert to another form of energy, unless sufficient energy is added to the system. Then a particle can tunnel through the walls of the quantum potential well. But in healing is this symbolic or real? How is this different from the psychophysical formula of cyclic rebirth that the old self must "die" before the new self can emerge?

Though supposedly rooted in biophysics, quantum healing may just be literalized wishful thinking for the fantasy-prone. More traditional systems are based in subtle energy fields (Qi, chi, prana) beyond the known EM spectrum. The integrity of an organism is linked to its holistic state, so any intervention at any psychophysical level can create an amplified state-change.

So, research shows these non-local healing avenues are worth more study, whether current attributions of success have been identified or not. How ever it works, holographic repatterning does seem to be a resource we can draw from the living energy universe. Matter becomes imagination, and imagination becomes embodied. The present actual entity as a whole dipolar subject is intentionally combined with each of the eternal objects of the universal field.

Consciousness is a multidisciplinary study that includes cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, parapsychology, memetics, philosophy, semiotics, systems theory, physics, mysticism, comparative religion, transpersonal psychology, spiritual technology, self-regulation, and more.

As in physics, there is no intellectual consensus in consciousness studies as a scientific not merely philosophical investigation. First, you have to choose which theoretical basis from physics to root your theory in, then describe the mechanisms and ramifications. As yet, there are no generally acceptable theoretical frameworks. We have to grope toward that, seeking answers with our intuition, nevertheless.

Some experts in the field (Pribram/Bohm; Penrose/Hameroff; Herbert; Stapp, Chalmers, Laszlo, Dennett, Varela, Ramachandran, etc.) have captured the popular attention but haven't won wide scientific approval. Quantum mind proponents like Chopra, Wolf, Capra, Zukov and later Satinover, Talbot, Swinne, Edelman, Schwartz, McTaggert, and more have done much to mainstream the quantum paradigm as a worldview, even though the mind/matter problem remains unsolved..

Even some front runners in the interdisciplinary field of consciousness are losing favor, in much the same way string theory has in physics. Some were based in pre-geometric twistors, microtubules and 'orchestrated reduction', spin theories, holographic theories, and conventional QM. Nearly every armchair consciousness researcher has his or her own idiosyncratic pet theory with only a short list of colleagues for support. Usually elaborate philosophies are attached to the science.

Like zero point energy (ZPE), which is actually a flux product of the subquantal field, consciousness is often confused with the vacuum field, when it could just as easily be its predecessor or antecedent. Just because it is more fundamental, doesn't mean it should be reified by us.

Whether our own or any consciousness is self-organizing -- primal, emergent or derivative remains a deep mystery. Behavioral complexity of physically modelled organisms is virtually unquantifiable. Much depends on whether one holds a materialistic or spiritual worldview, dead laws or living science. There are many points of view, and little consensus.

The Dynamic Core

Space may play a role in the mystery of consciousness, or it may be an effect of an even deeper domain, as yet unsuspected. Is space in any sense 'conscious', and does it actively entangle with human minds? We simply don't know. No process for the direct connection of primal field is proposed, but the buzzword 'resonance' is most often invoked for what may be a confusion of domains or scale.

The acceleration of spacetime might be a hint that there are deeper forces we have not yet imagined or modelled in any satisfactory way. There may even be realms beyond experiential primordial ground described for centuries by the deepest mystical penetration.

Still, our methodology must include discipline with openness. It is more a matter of opening up the inquiry. Looking from the known to the unknown may not be the way to work when radical revisioning requires paradigm shift.

For example, we have no idea how many dimensions (hyperspace) are in play behind our 4-D universe, and which may be irrelevant to it even if they do exist. Is there a whole order operating in other dimensions of [non]being as different as photonic light is from mass, or mass and energy? Scale invariant space expansion could be one possible hidden variable that could account for cosmic acceleration.

Physics required a certain fixed order that was subverted by QM and then chaos theory. Everything is complex flux, process, transformation – a relationship of energies -- but in some sense, the whole is in each part. Each particle is constantly collapsing inward and expanding outward.

Infinite Potential

Our concept of space is changing from an empty void to a plenum of potential. Space is always flourescing with vast quantities of luminous vacuum photons most of which are rapidly reasbsorbed. But two massless photons interacting at 90 degrees orthrotation create an electron, and this topological modification leads to atoms and molecules.

Space is characterized by the emission of light -- a brilliant radiant matrix, like a liquid diamond. Forms are created by photons and phonons. Mass is a crystallization of the radiant field. It can be visualized as arising from asymmetries in the field or as vortices in a superfluid ether. Creation is an awesome process but that doesn't mean we should worship the turbulence of pre-physical empty space, even if it is beyond conventional spacetime.

For the past few years, The Field has enjoyed a vogue of intuitive sacralization, along with a certain reverence for the human Energy Body (biofield) and its support, so-called Universal Energy. Living organisms are dependent on biophotons for self-regulation; the domains of virtual light and biophotonic light are discrete but entangled. When something manifests, the pre-geometric field continues to inform and support it.

But where is the mandate to divinize a froth of fluctuations, even if it is “infinite”? The amount of that coherent energy may blow our minds, but does it have to propel us down reality wormholes back into the mindsets of by-gone centuries when natural philosophy confounded objective and subjective thinking? What does it really mean to incorporate that realization instead, with an eye on the future?

The human body does respond to an active dynamic field, but we don’t really know what constitutes that electromagnetic energy that is within and without us. Yet, there are some physicists who romanticize this notion.

Energetics and bioenergetics (biophysics) have introduced as many questions about the deep nature of our existence as they have answered. There probably is more to life than simple mechanical dynamics. But just because we can't observe, penetrate or describe virtual processes doesn't mean we need to deify them.

Nothingness is Really Something

There are many ways unexplained energy can be accounted for with abstractions, symbolization, agency, operators, or attributions filling in the gaps in our understanding. Speculative flights are always based on basic assumptions, overt or tacit, which need to be unpacked in their specific context.

Spiritualizing extreme energy density may confound rather than illuminate the nature of primal radiance. Is a hole in the Dirac Sea necessarily holy? Only if it mystifies you will you have that sense.

Does our God or Spirit live at the mere boundary of Cosmos? Aren’t the fixed ideas underlying scientific hypotheses supposed to be aids rather than obstructions to clarity? The plenum certainly isn't a fixed entity but rather the antithesis of that.

Can we sincerely ask the biggest questions if we insist on presenting ideas either the way the public wants to hear them, or for the sake of promotion, personal or academic? You don’t have to be a genius, only able to follow the questions down the quantum rabbit hole.

It does take a deeply honest engagement. When you try to incorporate philosophical metaphors into quantum mechanics, you enter the world of symbolic attributions which are likely not scientific. They may falter as conceptual aids though they can lead to better theories through intuitive analogies for conceptual broad strokes.

Even the models of science can be read as metaphors and are often written in the popular memes of their day. That does not in itself make them wrong, but it should be considered and no model yet produced can be taken literally, since all are only partial descriptions of our lived reality.

For example, in the holographic universe the quantum explicate order unfolds from the noumenal to the phenomenal. If it unfolds further than fluctuation to the atomistic, it creates a macrocosmic form of noumenal space, the atomic form of noumenal or etheric space. Motion of velocity then involves the unfolding and enfolding of the macrocosmic forms of noumenal space and time as phenomenal spacetime. All motion is holomovment.
Contextualization

Flexibility without rigor is more a sign of the spiritual quest than science. If you go looking for the divine with that mindset, you are likely to find it, or attribute it to the level where your concepts fail and we meet the Great Unknown.

Spirit-based science is an attractive notion to some, especially the current generation of armchair scientists. But the domains of science, philosophy and spirituality are not interchangeable and apply to different dimensions of human experience. They are different and weak analogies are not necessarily correlations – though all may contain a sense of the numinous.
Can God live at the boundary of subquantal domains or does imagination kick in when science fails conceptually? Common language requires valid idioms both parties respect for investigating and describing our experience and avoiding category error. We must also avoid confusion of levels or domains of organization.

Nothing is Solid

In our beliefs, do we confound the Creator with the Creation? When we speak of the physical we have to follow the concrete laws that govern the ordinary, even in light of paradoxical findings about the mystifying quantum and subquantal domains.

In this realm, we are all explorers, even though we may deeply feel our human structure mirrors the universe and our relationship to the transcendent. What we do know is that humans will always want to be inspired by imaginative stories, and the stories of science and harmonization of spirituality and science are among them. It is one of the ways we dream ourselves forward.

Primordial creativity is not limited to our notions about it, including visions of wholeness, the light of truth from which we draw our inspiration. In that sense “connecting with Source” is not synonymous with comprehending it, even conceptually. None of us can ever fully comprehend the whole, as spiritual teachers and mystics have always said.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Immune assist LDN

2007-02-06T01:23:28Z

http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/

"LDN may well be the most important therapeutic breakthrough in over fifty years. It provides a new method of medical treatment by mobilizing the natural defenses of one's own immune system." — David Gluck, MD
Low Dose Naltrexone

FDA-approved naltrexone, in a low dose, can boost the immune system — helping those with HIV/AIDS, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and central nervous system disorders.

First Study of LDN Published in US Medical Journal

Dr. Jill Smith’s original article, "Low-Dose Naltrexone Therapy Improves Active Crohn’s Disease," in the January issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology (2007;102:1–9), officially presents LDN to the world of scientific medicine. Smith, Professor of Gastroenterology at Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine, found that two-thirds of the patients in her pilot study went into remission and fully 89% of the group responded to treatment to some degree. She concluded that “LDN therapy appears effective and safe in subjects with active Crohn’s disease.”

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

power out for five

2007-01-31T08:08:18Z

Subject: Feb. 1 Power Out for Five

On the 1st of February 2007 participate in the biggest mobilization of
Citizens Against Global Warming!
POWER OUT FOR FIVE

The Alliance for the Planet [a group of
environmental associations] www.lalliance.fr
is calling on all citizens ALL OVER THE WORLD to create 5 minutes of
electrical rest for the planet.

People in eastern North America turn off their lights and electrical
appliances on the first of February 2007, between 1.55 pm and 2.00 pm, [and
18.55 for London, and 19.55 for Paris, Bruxelles, and Italy, 10.55am on the
Pacific Coast
of North America] .

This is not just about saving 5 minutes worth of electricity; this is about
getting the attention of the media, politicians, and ourselves.
Five minutes of electrical down time for the planet: this does not take
long, and costs nothing, and will show all political leaders that global
warming is an issue that needs to come first and foremost in political
debate.
Why February 1? This is the day when the new UN report on global climate
change will come out in Paris.

This event affects us all, involves us all, and provides an occasion to
show how important an issue global warming is to us.
If we all participate, this action can have real media and political
weight.

Please circulate this call to your utmost ability to your network.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

reverse panspermia

2007-01-30T21:26:49Z

Richard is a retired Montana wheat farmer, who just may be the model for the new movie THE ASTRONAUT FARMER.
"if you build it, we will GO".
io

Copyright © 2004 by Richard Thieltges. Published by the Mars Society
with
permission

MIDNIGHT RIDERS:
STRATEGIES FOR
PERPETUATING LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
by
Richard Thieltges

LONG AND SHORT-TERM THREATS TO LIFE

As far as we know 'for certain', we are the only sentient species in
the universe, on the only living planet. As life-forms ourselves, we
naturally have an interest in perpetuating life. We know that our own solar
system has a finite life-span. Indeed, this is the fate of all suns. We are about
half-way through the life-span of our sun, and at some point, commonly
put at about 5 billion years hence, our sun will run out of nuclear fuel,
and go through a process of expansion, destruction of most of its planets, and
then collapse and explode.

Thus, for the life that has evolved in this solar system to continue to
grow and evolve, some way must ultimately be found to migrate to other
suitable star systems before that point. Mars and all other potential human
habitations in our solar system will be destroyed.

There are other short-term threats to life on our planet. Astronomical
impacts, or other local events such as wars, plagues, or other
ecological catastrophes could destroy some or all of life as we know it before the
technology of space travel is developed.

SEEDING LIFE INTO THE GALAXY-THE SHORT TERM INSURANCE POLICY

The short-term threats to life on our Earth are probably well-know to
all. Since there is at this time no absolute guarantee that life exists
elsewhere, some strategy should be pursued to seed life into the galaxy
in the event of a catastrophe on Earth.

What is hereby proposed is to insert a wide variety of soil, rock, and
waterborne microorganisms and spores into inexpensive canisters, and
fire them directly out into space in all directions away from the sun,
seeding the rest of the galaxy with life.

No attempt would need to be made to aim them at any particular target,
other than to keep them in the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. They would be
dispersed in high numbers with the hope that a small percentage would
encounter a star system with earth-like planets, and that eventually
some
would be captured by such planets and crash on their surface. They
would be constructed in such a way that they would open and release the
microorganisms. The small percentage of these microorganisms and spores
that would be capable of living in the new environment would then commence
to colonize the planet and initiate whatever evolution the new mix would
be capable of producing.

The rationale behind such a seemingly radical proposal is actually very
practical. We will not be going to other star systems very soon, and we
will not arrive there for a very long time. It would be a great advantage to
us if evolution on otherwise lifeless planets had time to progress to the
point of converting carbon dioxide and sulfur atmospheres to oxygen
atmospheres by the time we get there.

There is another more important reason to seed life into the rest of
the universe now. We are in a particular window of time in which such a
technological feat is possible. There is no absolute guarantee that we
will always be such a technologically sophisticated species. Ecological
degradation, world wars, world-wide plagues, or astronomical impacts
could degrade humans' ability to continue to take the slow road to the stars.

In such a case, and if in fact the rest of the universe were empty of
life, and if we were to be the only planet capable of evolving the advanced
civilization necessary to initiate space travel, then the universe
would be forever barren. We owe it to the future of evolution in the cosmos to
insure against this possibility at the earliest possible moment that we can do
so.

The odds that the rest of the universe is barren of life are small.
However, they are not zero. The odds that we will encounter some planetary
catastrophe before we are technologically capable of initiating
conventional space colonization is also quite small. However, once again, those odds
are not zero.

The future is unpredictable. We do not know with certainty what may
occur. There is however, one fact that we do know for certain. It is an
absolute certainty, with odds of 100 per cent, that at some time in the future,
our earth and our solar system will become completely uninhabitable. It is
only reasonable to devote a small fraction of our precious resources to such
an important undertaking.

Ethical Considerations

At first the presumption of this program to seed earth-based life
indiscriminately among the stars may give some pause. However, the
advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

In the case where a planet is barren of life, there should be no
ethical
problems. We will have seeded that planet with our DNA-based
predecessors.
This is what we would have done and will do anyway, as we will
inevitably
bring our plants and animals with us to any planet that we would
contemplate
visiting and colonizing, not to mention the myriad microorganisms
inhabiting
our bodies.

In the case where there might already be life of some kind inhabiting
these
worlds, there are of course other considerations. If there is primitive
life
there, then there will be an interaction between the life forms
originating
from different planets. This normally will result in evolution having
more
variability to work with and thus greater biodiversity and adaptation
in its
resulting biota. Again, this will inevitably happen anyway if we arrive
later.

It is only when we contemplate our capsule landing in another advanced
civilization that an ethical problem arises. Normally a small amount of
an
unfamiliar organism will have little effect on a robust established
population. However, it is possible to contemplate that our earth
organisms
could react unfavorably with advanced life similarly to the importing
of
unfamiliar diseases decimating the New World's populations on earth
after
its discovery.

From a long-term perspective, it may perhaps be preferable to have the
interaction with our biota take place on their world. If there is
another
technological civilization out there, then at some point in the far
future
we will meet (if no catastrophes befall either of us). If either of us
are
carrying potentially incompatible diseases, then this meeting and the
subsequent evolutionary adaptation to them would better proceed as soon
as
possible, and (from our point of view) on their planet, not ours.

Some have suggested encoding or restricting the capsule's decomposition
so
as to warn an advanced civilization of the contents. There will of
course be
much discussion on this important ethical issue.

In short, while there are some questions about the ethics of this
proposal,
the advantages of seeding life into a possibly barren universe outweigh
the
disadvantages. From a purely scientific perspective it probably would
be
interesting to observe and study life on some planets that have evolved
purely on their own track with no outside DNA contamination. However
if
life is as ubiquitous as some think, there would be plenty of such
worlds,
as our capsules would only contact a tiny fraction of available star
systems.

Technology

Because many thousands of capsules should be sent out, this would not
be the
type of expensive rocket launch program we are used to. All we need to
do is
to head straight out from earth with enough speed to escape earth's
gravity
and keep on going out of our solar system.

The payload could be made quite small, as large quantities of inoculum
would
not be required. The canisters could be as small as a few inches in
diameter. The main requirement is that they be able to survive an
atmospheric descent onto a planet's surface without burning up, that
they be
able to disintegrate, and that they have some form of cosmic ray
shielding.

One design would have a mild steel inner casing in which the inoculum
can be
sealed, which would be capable of rusting through. Over this could be
several inches of lead. The lead would be a cosmic ray shielding, and
during
atmospheric entry it would melt and slough off, taking accumulated heat
with
it.

Single stage military rockets should (hopefully) someday be able to be
acquired from war-surplus scrap heaps for pennies on the dollar. These
could
be lifted to the edge of the atmosphere with balloons. Altimeters could
trigger firing at this point, and the rockets would go straight out
into
space. No guidance system should be required other than to ensure
stability.

The design of the rocket could be made simple, inexpensive, and mass
produced. One could even involve amateur rocket societies around the
world,
as this is a widespread hobby, and would generate local interest in and
support for the project. Local clubs and communities could finance
launches
and get to include inoculum samples from their local ecosystems. One
could
also envision this being done in a more sophisticated way, with
guidance
being provided to some targets with more well-researched possibilities
of
success. Many hundreds of capsules could be sent in each launch, and
over
the thousands of years of space flight would disperse quite widely.

One other possible and inexpensive way of launching canisters would be
to
insert them into unsuccessful oil well holes and shoot them out with
high
explosives. There have been many proposals to use various types of
mass
drivers to boost materials into low earth orbit, but currently they are
seen
as impractical for various reasons including trajectory control. In
our
case this would not be so much of a factor.

Bruce Mackenzie has proposed a very intriguing extension to this
project. He
has suggested that we insert the human genome into the genome of a
spore-producing microorganism, and use the very long-lived capabilities
of
spores to carry our genome out and disperse it into the universe.

Chromosomes have only small parts of their DNA strings that actually
carry
active genes of the host organism. In between are long strings of
random
base-pairs that ordinarily do not code for anything. In this proposal,
our
human genome would be inserted into these unused spaces, probably with
novel
starting and ending sequences.

Any advanced civilization discovering these organisms would probably
recognize that they were of off-world origin, and immediately sequence
them.
The specially marked sequences would then be recognized as belonging to
another organism. These advanced civilizations would then hopefully be
motivated to grow out and express this novel genome, with perhaps
interesting results.

The term "Midnight Riders" derives from the timing of the firing near
midnight necessary to ensure that the trajectory would be away from the
sun
and outward into space. The "Riders" would be in for a very long
"Midnight"
journey through the blackness of interstellar space, on their way to an
uncertain but perhaps important future.

LONG-TERM SPACE COLONIZATION STRATEGIES

Most space enthusiasts consider that our ultimate salvation will be
achieved
by developing some form of space colonies or spaceships that will be
sent
off to search for and colonize potential earth-like planets. This is
problematic as an ultimate strategy for several reasons.

The most obvious problem with the spaceship strategy is that even under
the
most ambitious scenario, only a very small percentage of Earth's
population
could ever be accommodated on such a spaceship fleet. This problem is
compounded when one thinks of the vast number of plants and animals
that
would need to be included in each spaceship to successfully populate a
viable, diverse ecosystem on a potentially habitable planet. We are not
just
talking about a Noah's ark-like sampling of a few individuals. We know
that
to maintain a viable population of any small or endangered species,
large
numbers must be maintained in a breeding population to avoid genetic
inbreeding problems. This would also apply to our human population.

Another and even larger problem with this approach is the combination
of the
distance and time required to investigate numbers of potential new
solar
systems. We currently can detect planets through two means. The first
is by
observing a star for wobble, and calculating the size and orbit of
potential
planets that would be required to produce that wobble. This method is
currently only capable of detecting gas-giant planets, and these only
relatively close to their parent star with orbital periods of a
reasonably
short period of observation. This method is probably inherently
incapable of
detecting earthlike planets in the habitation zone of a star.

The second method currently used is the transit method, which observes
a
periodic dimming of the light from a star, and calculates what planet
would
be required to pass between the star and Earth to cause such a periodic
dimming. This can currently be used to detect planets down to several
times
Earth mass. However, it is not capable of any analyses of the
conditions
necessary for life, such as water, an oxygen atmosphere, or a
protective
magnetic field. Of course, another limitation of this method is that it
is
only capable of detecting planets that orbit their star in a plane that
is
perfectly aligned with the Earth.

It is possible that at some point in the future we could develop the
technology to detect Earth-like planets directly, and even analyze them
for
some of the characteristics required for sustaining life in large
numbers.
Indeed, plans are underway to construct such a technology consisting of
a
large linked array of telescopes in space.

However, even with such technology, there would be many unanswered and
unanswerable questions remaining, one of which would be the presence of
a
planetary magnetic field capable of shielding against damaging
high-energy
particles, a necessity for the development of life as we know it.

Thus, even with the help of the advanced technology of the future,
there
would be no real guarantee that any star system we headed for would
ultimately be capable of being colonized. We would therefore need to
plan
for our large colonization spaceship to be capable of very long
multigenerational flights through interstellar distances, searching for
and
investigating perhaps many dozens of potential planets before perhaps
finding one that could support life.
This scenario thus raises the question of the availability of power
sources
to propel, heat and maintain populations through potentially many
centuries
of travel through regions where no significant sunlight is available.

We need to start to think of scenarios in which large sections of the
earth's biota can be transported to distant star systems. One could
conceive
of small moons being colonized, and then somehow used as enormous
spaceships
for a long interstellar cruse. Theoretically the earth itself could be
moved
out of orbit, and transported to a distant star system and re-inserted
into
the orbit of a younger star, although what energy source could
accomplish
this is unknown at present. We would not have to actually find a
replacement
planet, but simply insert the Earth into a similar orbit around the new
star, and get another multi-billion year lease on life.

While these are indeed radical proposals, at some point in our future
we
will be facing extinction of life as we know it in this solar system,
with
the possible exception of a few lucky individuals sent out on
starships. At
that point, all of the remaining beings on this planet will really not
have
much to lose by trying radical proposals. By staying in our Sun's
orbit, our
chances of survival will be zero. At least by attempting to journey to
another nearby sun with large bodies as transport, we will have some
chance
of success.

This chance, however small, should, will, and must be taken, for the
fate of
life continuing to grow and evolve in the universe might just depend on
it.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Next biological revolution

2007-01-30T21:18:31Z

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445369a.html

Nature 445, 369 (25 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/445369a; Published online 24 January 2007
ConnectionsBiology's next revolution

Nigel Goldenfeld1 and Carl Woese2

1. Nigel Goldenfeld is in the Department of Physics and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
2. Carl Woese is in the Department of Microbiology and Institute for Genomic Biology, 601 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.

Top of page
Abstract

The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.

One of the most fundamental patterns of scientific discovery is the revolution in thought that accompanies a new body of data. Satellite-based astronomy has, during the past decade, overthrown our most cherished ideas of cosmology, especially those relating to the size, dynamics and composition of the Universe.
Biology's next revolution

KAPUSTA

Similarly, the convergence of fresh theoretical ideas in evolution and the coming avalanche of genomic data will profoundly alter our understanding of the biosphere — and is likely to lead to revision of concepts such as species, organism and evolution. Here we explain why we foresee such a dramatic transformation, and why we believe the molecular reductionism that dominated twentieth-century biology will be superseded by an interdisciplinary approach that embraces collective phenomena.

The place to start is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the non-genealogical transfer of genetic material from one organism to another — such as from one bacterium to another or from viruses to bacteria. Among microbes, HGT is pervasive and powerful — for example, in accelerating the spread of antibiotic resistance. Owing to HGT, it is not a good approximation to regard microbes as organisms dominated by individual characteristics. In fact, their communications by genetic or quorum-sensing channels indicate that microbial behaviour must be understood as predominantly cooperative.

In the wild, microbes form communities, invade biochemical niches and partake in biogeochemical cycles. The available studies strongly indicate that microbes absorb and discard genes as needed, in response to their environment. Rather than discrete genomes, we see a continuum of genomic possibilities, which casts doubt on the validity of the concept of a 'species' when extended into the microbial realm. The uselessness of the species concept is inherent in the recent forays into metagenomics — the study of genomes recovered from natural samples as opposed to clonal cultures. For example, studies of the spatial distribution of rhodopsin genes in marine microbes suggest such genes are 'cosmopolitan', wandering among bacteria (or archaea) as environmental pressures dictate.

Equally exciting is the realization that viruses have a fundamental role in the biosphere, in both immediate and long-term evolutionary senses. Recent work suggests that viruses are an important repository and memory of a community's genetic information, contributing to the system's evolutionary dynamics and stability. This is hinted at, for example, by prophage induction, in which viruses latent in cells can become activated by environmental influences. The ensuing destruction of the cell and viral replication is a potent mechanism for the dispersal of host and viral genes.

It is becoming clear that microorganisms have a remarkable ability to reconstruct their genomes in the face of dire environmental stresses, and that in some cases their collective interactions with viruses may be crucial to this. In such a situation, how valid is the very concept of an organism in isolation? It seems that there is a continuity of energy flux and informational transfer from the genome up through cells, community, virosphere and environment. We would go so far as to suggest that a defining characteristic of life is the strong dependency on flux from the environment — be it of energy, chemicals, metabolites or genes.

Nowhere are the implications of collective phenomena, mediated by HGT, so pervasive and important as in evolution. A computer scientist might term the cell's translational apparatus (used to convert genetic information to proteins) an 'operating system', by which all innovation is communicated and realized. The fundamental role of translation, represented in particular by the genetic code, is shown by the clearly documented optimization of the code. Its special role in any form of life leads to the striking prediction that early life evolved in a lamarckian way, with vertical descent marginalized by the more powerful early forms of HGT.

Refinement through the horizontal sharing of genetic innovations would have triggered an explosion of genetic novelty, until the level of complexity required a transition to the current era of vertical evolution. Thus, we regard as regrettable the conventional concatenation of Darwin's name with evolution, because other modalities must also be considered.

This is an extraordinary time for biology, because the perspective we have indicated places biology within a context that must necessarily engage other disciplines more strongly aware of the importance of collective phenomena. Questions suggested by the generic energy, information and gene flows to which we have alluded will probably require resolution in the spirit of statistical mechanics and dynamical systems theory. In time, the current approach of post-hoc modelling will be replaced by interplay between quantitative prediction and experimental test, nowadays more characteristic of the physical sciences.

Sometimes, language expresses ignorance rather than knowledge, as in the case of the word 'prokaryote', now superseded by the terms archaea and bacteria. We foresee that in biology, new concepts will require a new language, grounded in mathematics and the discoveries emerging from the data we have highlighted. During an earlier revolution, Antoine Lavoisier observed that scientific progress, like evolution, must overcome a challenge of communication: "We cannot improve the language of any science without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it." Biology is about to meet this challenge.

Further reading

Frigaard, N., Martinez, A., Mincer, T. & DeLong, E. Nature 439, 847–850 (2006).

Sullivan, M. et al. PLoS Biol. 4, e234 (2006).

Pedulla, M. et al. Cell 113, 171–182 (2003).

Vetsigian, K., Woese, C. & Goldenfeld, N. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 10696–10701 (2006).

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

power from underground heat

2007-01-30T21:14:43Z

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2007/01/29/the_power_of_rocks/

By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff | January 29, 2007

As the nation searches for environmentally friendly sources of electricity, some researchers say they have an answer: rock power.
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The continental United States rests on vast slabs of blistering granite heated by the earth's mantle and other geological processes. Using a technology called heat mining, it should be increasingly possible to tap that energy and use it to generate electricity with virtually no pollution.

Already the country is the world's leading producer of geothermal power, which taps steam from underground to turn turbines. This renewable resource generates more electricity than wind and solar combined. But geothermal power today is largely restricted to isolated spots in the West where rocks are hot at relatively shallow depths.

Heat mining -- which takes advantage of advances in drilling and geological understanding -- could make geothermal power practical across much broader swaths of the country.

"What was thought to be impossible 10 years ago is now possible," said Roy Baria , a British geophysical consultant. "The technology has moved significantly."
Related stories from today's Globe
Scientists protest draft of global warming report
The power of rocks
E.O. Wilson sees accord on climate action
GLOBE EDITORIAL: When science isn't

Last week the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study concluding that heat mining could generate enough energy by 2050 to replace the coal-fired and nuclear power plants that are likely to be retired over the next several decades.

While the nation has focused on higher-profile technologies like wind power, scientists say innovative projects overseas show that the United States has a vast and largely overlooked underground treasure.

"The public needs to understand that these are not just Western resources," said Joseph Moore , who was not involved in the MIT study and is a research professor at the Energy and Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah . "And unlike wind and solar, it is always available on demand."

All geothermal systems are built on a simple fact : The deeper you go, the warmer it gets. More and more homes and businesses are tapping into that warmth, using it to save on their heating bills by installing heat pumps connected to relatively shallow wells.

But it takes much higher temperatures and deeper wells to generate electricity efficiently. Power companies have traditionally placed plants at hydrothermal sites: geologically active places with plenty of water percolating through shattered rock, where simply drilling a well will bring up large amounts of steam.

These hydrothermal sites are relatively rare, though, while hot rock is everywhere.

With heat mining, engineers tap the massive amounts of heat energy stored in this deep rock, away from natural hydrothermal sites. In theory, this is straightforward. Engineers drill a deep well into hot rock. They pump down water under very high pressure to expand cracks in the rock, creating a chamber where water can flow and absorb the rock's heat. Finally, they drill another well to tap the superheated water.Continued...

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

THE SECRET of the Law of Attraction

2007-01-30T21:11:44Z

is they got rich by selling you products.

A Little Science is a Dangerous Thing

Bruce,
I caught the Larry King show and have seen The Secret, of the so-called Law of Attraction, but I've gotta say there is some new "edge" shadow here for me, and others I know though I'm a fan of Bill Harris and Fred Wolf. That movie is a propaganda machine with tons of emotional appeal, and the hitch in the giddy up is all those people made that law of attraction true by shamelessly digging in the pockets of others (especially the surgically-enhanced JZ Knight) while telling them what they WANT to hear, which is self-serving. So, it's true and not true. And giving examples like a woman who cured her cancer in 3 mo. without chemo or radiation can be deadly to some. Further, it instills reactionary ‘new age guilt’ for those who can't 'create their own reality.' Being positive is fine; being a Pollyanna is silly, and they have grossly oversimplied that, IMHO.

My biophysics http://emergentmind.org journal is running some new protocols on this currently with Roger Nelson of PEARS, and we are all in agreement, though this has been new age and psi litany for some time. Attached is my op-ed article for the coming issue. Also posted at http://ionaparamedia.50megs.com/whats_new_2.html

I agree it's a good intro for the general public, but then again The Secret presents a totally narcissistic approach to it, and THAT is a big problem - one of the biggest this country has. Mostly it's designed to part people from their money, not help humanity. The tone was somewhere between psi-trance and manic consumerism.

Caveat emptor, while pulling rabbits from a hat.

peace in,
Iona
http://ionaparamedia.50megs.com

posted in We love Iona - 6 replies

Dear All - am still here

2007-01-29T23:51:38Z

I hope you don't think I've deserted you all.
Am mostly blogging on my Tribe blog.

I've been under deep cover with a highly interesting counter-intelligence spook who also is an outstanding physicist who works with Zero-point expert Tom Bearden. We've been patching in new experiments to the subquantal theories at http://virtualphysics.50megs.com

But interspersed he keeps telling me things I don't want to know - the inside track on a number of threads many of you have an interest in. Most of it I'm reluctant to share publically. I can only say it hasn't done much to cheer me up about the human race...
but onward we must go.

So, if you are missing me here, sign on for my blog, where the cream of what's going on gets posted, since I've been uber-busy!

Also been doing some articles and cover art for Paranoia zine - on paramedia edge-celeb BOB DOBBS. Don't miss his story - it's a doozey ;))) Also, Virtual Magick published in Der Golem from Germany.

Love you all; let me hear from you.

peace in,

Iona

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

GLOBAL ORGASM - that's what I'm talkin' about

2006-11-21T15:49:33Z

In Magick, the so-called Masonic secret is sex magick - the thoght that occurs at the moment of orgasm HAPPENS.
Let's put it to the test Dec. 22 with what gets you off! ;)))) How HARD is that? !!!!!

http://www.globalorgasm.org/demo.html

io

posted in We love Iona - 3 replies

Freedom Fighters movie with Io

2006-11-15T04:13:18Z

LINK TO PRESS RELEASE: ANDREAS VON BULOW & NEALE DONALD WALSCH

LINK TO PRESS RELEASE: CONNECTING BROADER 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT

press release
GROUNDBREAKING DOCUMENTARY CONNECTS BROADER 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT. CREATED ON THE RUN, WITH 0 % MONEY & 100 % MONEY TO AWAKEN MANKIND

ANDREAS VON BULOW, Former German defense minister
Links CIA with 9/11. "IT WAS A FALSE FLAG OPERATION!"

IONA MILLER, Reality Researcher
About deception dollars & 9/11 truth links

NEALE DONALD WALSCH, Best selling channeling author
"How is 9/11 possible? Whether it was CIA who created it, or whether it was really terrorists?"

JIMMY WALTERS, Filantrop & Freedom fighter
Had to go into exile after questioning 9/11

PHIL BERG, Lawyer & former US attorney general
Suing the US government for 9/11 involvement

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, US member of congress
Reality Portals FREEEDOM FIGHTER of the year 2006

PENNY LITTLE, Filmmaker & Producer
"Democracy can never happen, unless we have an informed public."

KRIS MILLEGAN, Inestigative authour
"It's the same players behind..."

JOSH GILBERT, Director/ a/k/a/ Tommy Chong
"There are no pictures of a plane hitting the Pentagon!"

DANIEL HOPSICKER, Investigative authour
"CIA controls the drugtrade in the United States!"

WEBSTER TARPLEY, Investigative author
"The 9/11 attacks were what the Brittish would call: An own goal in soccer."

SIRIUS DOG, POP star, former REDNEX
"It could be quite obvious that they could create sutch a situation them selfs!"

JOHN KIRBY, Director/ American Ruling Class
"They have to come up with more visible obvious horrible awful pretexts to inspire people to go to war. Which is why those planes hit Pentagon and the World Trade Centers.

SCOTT RITTER, Former UN chief weapon Inspector
"There's nothing good that comes from WAR!"

DAVID RAY GRIFFIN, Investigative author
"Osama Bin Laden was originally a CIA operative..."

+

DENIS HALIDAY, Former U.N. Assistant Secretary General
"United states is the greatest ROGUE STATE!"

+

MIKE RUPPERT, Former L.A.P.D
About insider trading linked with CIAs highest ranks.

THE DOCUMENTARY IS CALLED: REALITY PORTAL, PART 1, FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

And is created by a KEVIN ZAAR, a Swedish documentary filmmaker in exile. He had to flee the country after doing "immoral things", and the Swedish state prosecuter publicly threathend that he had to be "put away" or "taken".

NOW! The 2 hour pilot for the coming Reality Portal Chosen Content Connector site is finished. It's called:

REALITY PORTAL, PART 1, FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

LINK TO PRESS RELEASE: ANDREAS VON BULOW & NEALE DONALD WALSCH

LINK TO PRESS RELEASE: CONNECTING 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT

QUESTIONS ?
REALITYPORTAL@REDIFFMAIL.COM

PLEASE FORWARD THIS INFO!!!

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Israel Detonated a Radioactive Bunker Buster Bomb in Lebanon

2006-11-13T06:26:25Z

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061111&articleId=3813

Israel Detonated a Radioactive Bunker Buster Bomb in Lebanon
What kind of weapon leaves traces of radiation & produces such lethal & circumscribed consequences?

Global Research, November 11, 2006
RAI News (translated from the ItaIian) - 2006-11-09

KHIAM SOUTHERN LEBANON
A BOMB’S ANATOMY

By Flaviano Masella, Angelo Saso, Maurizio Torrealta

The special report was triggered by the radioactivity measurements reported on a crater probably created by an Israeli Bunker Buster bomb in the village of Khiam, in southern Lebanon. The measurements were carried out by two Lebanese professors of physics - Mohammad Ali Kubaissi and Ibrahim Rachidi. The data - 700 nanosieverts per hour – showed remarkably higher radiocativity then the average in the area (Beirut = 35 nSv/hr ). Successivamente, on September 17th, Ali Kubaissi took British researcher Dai Williams, from the environmentalist organization Green Audit, to the same site, to take samples that were then submitted to Chris Busby, technical adisor of the Supervisory Committee on Depleted Uranium, which reports to the British Ministry of Defense. The samples were tested by Harwell’s nuclear laboratory, one of the most authoritative research centers in the world. On October 17th, Harwell disclosed the testing results - two samples in 10 did contain radioactivity.

On November 2nd, another British lab, The School of Oceanographic Sciences, confirmed Harwell’s results – the Khiam crater contains slightly enriched uranium. Rainews24 also took a sample taken by Dai Williams for testing by the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Ferrara. The testing - which is still ongoing - found an anomalous structure: the sample’s surface includes alluminium and iron silicates, normal elements in a soil fragment. Yet, looking inside, estremely small bubbles can be found with high concentration of iron. Further testing will clarify the origin of these structures: what seems to be certain at the moment is that they are not caused by a natural process.

What kind of weapon is this? What weapon leaves traces of radiation and produces such lethal and circumscribed consequences?

Researcher Dai Williams believes this is a new class of weapons using enriched uranium, not through fission processes but through new physical processes kept secret for at least 20 years.

Physicist Emilio del Giudice form the National Institute of Nuclear Phisics came to the same conlcusion: “There are two ways to explain the origin of the enriched uranium found in Khiam:

About the origin of enriched Uranium there are two possibilities:

1) this material was present already in the structure of the bombs, but I am puzzled since one should explain the rationale of the use of a material which is both expensive and dangerous , because of its enhanced radioactivity, to people handling it , including military personnel of Israeli Army.

2) the enrichment has been the consequence of the use of the bomb; this possibility is hardly compatible with the known effects of conventional nuclear weapons and should imply that some newly discovered nuclear phenomenon could be at work.

The Israeli army denied the use of uranium-based weapons in Lebanon. So, how can people defend themselves from potential uranium-related harm? What precautions will the Unifil troops in the area take, and what kind of testing has been carried out to prevent the risks? The documentary directly covers those questions.

Translation by Desiree Berlangieri and Maria Letizia Tesorini

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchieste/09112006_bomba_ing.asp

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Trojan Horse legacy

2006-11-12T01:08:17Z

Try these two on Democrats win:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20061109&articleId=3784

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15549.htm

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

2006-11-11T05:52:39Z

Need we say more? ;)))

io

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Paul Eckman in SciAm

2006-11-04T03:28:54Z

http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007F06E-B7AE-1522-B7AE83414B7F0182&pageNumber=1

A Look Tells All
A person's face will always reveal his true feelings--if, like Paul Ekman, you are quick enough to recognize microexpressions
By Siri Schubert

Scientific American Mind Image: eyes
Image: GETTY IMAGES

We do it automatically. As soon as we observe another person, we try to read his or her face for signs of happiness, sorrow, anxiety, anger. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong, and errors can create some sticky personal situations. Yet Paul Ekman is almost always right. The psychology professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, has spent 40 years studying human facial expressions. He has catalogued more than 10,000 possible combinations of facial muscle movements that reveal what a person is feeling inside. And he has taught himself how to catch the fleeting involuntary changes, called microexpressions, that flit across even the best liar's face, exposing the truth behind what he or she is trying to hide.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Varela DVD

2006-11-04T01:26:56Z

The Mind and Life Institute (MLI) is pleased to offer the film "Monte
Grande" on the life of MLI co-founder Francisco Varela (1946-2001). We
have negotiated with American distributor First Run/Icarus Films to let
us sell this DVD through our website for only $29.95 plus shipping and
handling. Please order your copy today by clicking on

http://www.mindandlife.org/monte.grande.dvd.mediaorder.info.html

Franz Reichle, the filmmaker of Monte Grande conducted in-depth
interviews with Francisco before his death, pulled footage from a number of
video archives and interviewed a large number of Francisco's family and
colleagues. From this footage he has created a moving documentary that
will give you a unique insight into the life and mind of this
extraordinary human being. For anyone interested in the work of the Mind and
Life Institute, this film is a must.

Here are some comments on the DVD:

"Francisco was a master of synthesis -- admired, controversial and
endowed with the passion of an exceptionally gifted researcher. He was
highly instrumental in shaping modern systems theory as well as cognitive
science. He was a friend of the Dalai Lama and an unorthodox inspirer on
the international scientific scene. In Franz Reichle's film "Monte
Grande" -- the documentary account of a man's life in the face of imminent
death -- one gets to know Francisco Varela. This is the story of a man
that is told affectionately and gently, touchingly and astutely. Varela
spent his life building bridges: between Western science and Eastern
wisdom, neurobiology and philosophy, abstract theory and practical life.
This film succeeds in deconstructing the prevailing division between
science and art."

Bernhard Porksen

"Franz Reichle begins this cinematic portrait of Francisco Varela with
Schroedinger's famous question, 'What is Life?' This question also
preoccupied Varela as a scientist, but Reichle subtly and surely transforms
it into another, far more compelling concern, namely, 'What is a life?'
The film follows Varela through his many achievements, but it achieves
its mission most powerfully with Varela's rapprochement with death.
Here, in this journey, Varela finds the meaning of his life as a man, and
Reichle finds his film. A powerful and beautiful achievement."

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Evangelist bought meth

2006-11-03T23:46:16Z

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061103/ap_on_re_us/haggard_sex_allegations

Don't look at the man behind the curtain?
His shadow is showing, oops.

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

update on Aborigine murders by police in Australia

2006-10-13T00:12:07Z

http://australiapalmisland.50megs.com/photo5.html
http://australiapalmisland.50megs.com/photo4_1.html

GOOD PEOPLE SEEK JUSTICE: October 10th Rally, Brisbane
CONCERNED FACES TELL THE STORY TO THE WORLD

Rally and March
Justice for Mulrunji
Stop black deaths in Custody
Rally 10am, Tues Oct 10, Queens Park
(Cnr Elizabeth and George Sts)
March to State Parliament.

The coroner’s report into the death of Palm Island man Mulrunji found that he had been killed by Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley. Mulrunji should never have even been arrested, yet within an hour he was dead in a police cell with 4 broken ribs and a liver almost split in half.

Yet almost 2 years later, Hurley is still working, still being paid by our taxes. We demand: Hurley’s employment must be terminated immediately, and the Department of Public Prosecutions given every assistance to bring proper charges against the parties responsible for the killing of Mulrinji.

All welcome - this is an issue of basic justice and human rights. Imagine if it was your son, brother, loved one?

ALL INQUIRIES – SAM WATSON ( 0401227443 )

MORE PHOTOS AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/indigenous_struggle/sets/

IF YOU HAVE A VALUE, STAND UP WITH US AGAINST PREJUDICE AND RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HATRED. TELL THE GOVERNMENT, THE NATION, THE WORLD ~ THIS MUST NOT GO ON ANY LONGER.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

check out Freedom to fascism

2006-09-28T03:26:17Z

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Who else (you?) has a Permanent Music Track?

2006-09-24T03:36:52Z

Observations on the Perpetual Music Track

Charles T. Tart

Volume 13, Number 6 (2006) of the Journal of Consciousness Studies
arrived in
the mail a while ago, and, after a quick glance at the table of
contents, I put
it aside until I had time for serious reading. I thought I would
probably be
interested in Steven Brown's article on "The Perpetual Music Track: The
Phenomenon of Constant Musical Imagery."

As I started dinner last night I decided I had time for some serious
reading.
As I reached for the Journal, my personal Perpetual Music Track (PMT)
instantly
switched from whatever tune it had been playing to looping the first
line of the
theme from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:

Oh Ho Hi He, Hi Ho, It's Off To Work We Go…..

while an undetailed visual image of the seven dwarfs, picks and shovels
over
their shoulders, marched off into some corner of my mind. What more
apt
representation of my mental intentions could there be? And perhaps a
prediction
that this was going to be work…

My mental version has drifted from the original I heard in the film
more than 50
years ago ("Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Its Off to Work We Go"), but I'm sure the
tune is
right, even if my words have changed slightly.

Reading Brown's article, I at last discovered my "diagnosis." I have
(pick any
or all of the following) (1) got, and/or (2) been cursed with, and/or
(3) been
blessed with PMT. Life has not been a silent movie for me, it usually
has a
rich and varied sound track. Now I have a scientific sounding acronym
for it,
PMT, which is cool!

As Brown reports that his is the first and only serious scholarly
article on
PMT, I will share some observations of my personal experience,
collected over
many years as part of a general project of attempting to understand my
own mind
better, thereby doubling the scholarly literature. I'll generally
write in the
mode of number one, above, I've "got" it, and will try to comment on it
neutrally and as objectively as possible. But there have been many
occasions,
mostly in years past, when the second perspective has been strong and
I've felt
I've been "cursed" with PMT: these have been times when I've wanted my
mind to
be quiet, as in practicing various forms of meditation in order to see
more
deeply into myself, and here's some idiot song using up my mental
capacity! I
also believe that most of the time I'm "blessed" with PMT, as it adds a
generally cheerful emotional tone to the rest of life.

This report can be read on its own, but will be much richer if the
reader has
first read Brown's article.

Frequency:

For most of my life my PMT has indeed been "perpetual," in the sense
that if I
am not concentrating on some other internal process or engaged in
external
sensing and responding, a song will start up, usually just one to a few
initial
lines, and begin to loop. Sometimes these loops will go on for minutes
or
hours, but often a new song will come in and displace the previous one.
Since
learning some basic vipassana meditation skills some years ago, mostly
from
Shinzen Young (www.shinzen.org), I can now have long (minutes to
occasionally
hours) periods without the PMT background if I wish to. Left to
itself, though,
my mind will almost always be playing some music.

Choice and Content:

The "decisions," if such they be, as to what music or song will play in
my PMT
are usually not a conscious process. Some song starts, another song
eventually
takes its place, "I" have not had anything to do with most of these
choices that
I know of, they just happen without conscious intent on my part.
Sometimes an
external stimulus will be clearly responsible for the choice, sometimes
the song
that starts will be related to what I'm consciously thinking about in
an obvious
way.

Occasionally I will deliberately wonder why I'm hearing a particular
song on my
PMT that does not have an obvious relation to what I'm sensing or
thinking, and
with more examination will see that it is actually a relevant comment
or
addition to my conscious thought and feelings. The song theme might
reveal an
emotional undertone to conscious thoughts that I hadn't been aware of,
for
example. As a psychologist, I'm inclined to attribute causality to my
"unconscious mind" in such cases, although some of these relationships
may be
either coincidence or a rationalization on my part.

Control:

I can deliberately decide on a song I want to start and the PMT will
usually
pick up on it and start looping it. If there is already a persistent
song
going, though, I have to keep exercising some conscious intention or
the PMT
will revert to looping the previous song or switch to a new one of its
own
choice instead of the one I've consciously chosen.

At this point in my life, with some skill in concentrative and insight
meditation, I can usually deliberately stop the PMT if I wish.
Sometimes it
will stay stopped, but often it starts again in a few moments after I
stop
consciously intending for it to stop.

If my PMT is looping on some song or music that annoys me and is very
persistent, my efforts to stop it sometimes have almost no effect: I
can't quiet
my PMT. In such cases the only effective way to stop it is not to
actually stop
the PMT but to "switch records," to deliberately start a more congenial
tune
going that I don't mind being stuck on as much. It may take repeated
efforts,
as the PMT repeatedly reverts to the original, annoying tune, but can
be done.

There is one situation in which it is almost impossible to stop my PMT,
short of
a continuous effort of will or strong outside distraction. That is
eating. The
rhythm of chewing activates my PMT and it plays along in
synchronizations to
that rhythm. This has been especially annoying to me, the "curse,"
when I've
been on meditation retreats and trying to practice continuous
mindfulness in all
activities, like at meals, not just during formal meditation practice.
Some
song, often (by meditation retreat standards) an idiotic one like

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts,
There they are a-standing in a row.
There stands me wife,
The idol of me life,
Singin roll or bowl a ball a penny a pitch.

takes possession of my PMT, synchronizing with my chewing. If I
deliberately
stop chewing the song will go on hold, silent - but pick up again right
where it
left off on the next chew! There's no conscious effort on my part to
have such
an exact pause and pick up, it just happens that way. The only thing
I've found
that reliably works, that gets me back into the spirit of a meditation
retreat,
is to deliberately substitute some Sanskrit mantra for the song. That
at least
reminds me that I'm on a meditation retreat and lets me give more
attention to
conscious mindfulness of the external world.

If I'm eating in a social situation, conversing with others, I don't
notice the
PMT at all. Similarly if I am absorbed in reading while eating, I
don't notice
it. I say "don't notice it" to be as accurate as possible, but I think
the PMT
actually stops in these circumstances.

I have no idea why chewing is such a powerful stimulus to the PMT. Was
I so
bored with eating as a child that I had to entertain myself with song?
I don't
know…

Dreams and My PMT:

Unlike Brown, I don't believe I have my PMT running during dreams. I
base this
not only on current observations, but ones from years ago when I was
extremely
interested in my dreams and was a rich dream recaller. While I can
hear sounds
appropriate to the action in dreams, I believe musical accompaniment
has been
rare, if it occurred at all.

Range of Music:

Brown finds his PMT frequently repeats the first lines of music he has
heard
within the past day or two. My music is much more wide-ranging,
probably
including every song or musical composition I've heard in my life.
Frequently I
find my PMT is looping the first lines of some song, musical piece, or
radio
commercial that was popular in the 1930s. While I undoubtedly heard it
on the
radio as a child, or heard my father singing it around the house - he
was a
musician and popular singer in our home town - it's probably the case
that I
haven't heard it played in the external world for more than 40 or 50
years. It
often amazes me when I hear my PMT doing an oldie like this, apparently
quite
accurately as regards the tune and words. Why do these early musical
memories
have such permanence in spite of a lack of external reinforcement?

With an N of two at this initial stage, Brown and I, speculation about
this
difference can only indicate possibilities for future research, but I
will
briefly make one. Brown is a musician, much more consciously involved
with
listening to and creating music in his everyday life. I like to sing,
but have
no training to play any musical instrument. Music is generally
background music
in my life, rather than foreground, as is my PMT. Perhaps this
accounts for
recently heard music being a major determiner of the content of his
PMT. As a
child, I very much wanted to be a good singer like my father, but felt
terribly
inadequate. From an adult perspective, of course I was inadequate,
comparing my
child's voice to his. Too bad I took it seriously. Perhaps as a
semi-conscious
tactic to get better I wanted my mind to get automatically good at
remembering
songs and music? Perhaps these are dimensions that might account for
individual
differences in PMTs?

Quality of the PMT:

I do not have Brown's musical training and so cannot comment on
discrete musical
aspects of my PMT like pitch, tonality, rhythm, etc. But to my
layman's ear,
what I hear in my mind sounds just like what I would hear if the music
were
played on the radio. I was going to write "on the stereo" to indicate
high
fidelity, but realized that my PMT is basically monaural, in the center
of my
head, rather than having clear stereo separation. Could this be the
result of
almost all of my early music exposure being to old-fashioned monaural
radios or
my father singing around the house, rather than to live music? As to
internal
volume, it can range from quite soft, on the fringes of audibility if I
am
distracted by other sensations or thoughts, to experientially quite
loud.

Creativity:

Almost all of my PMT's song activity is an accurate reproduction of the
words
and tune of the original external song. Occasionally there is a
spontaneous
creative alteration of words that is an apt comment on an ongoing
situation, but
only occasionally. In terms of conscious abilities, I am good at
almost
instantly creating novel words to go with familiar tunes, a kind of
sense of
humor, but have no feeling at all for how one creates new melodies.

Corporeal Manifestations of My PMT:

Brown reports frequent corporeal manifestations of his PMT, ranging
from foot
tapping to the rhythm of the PMT to his fingers playing an imaginary
keyboard,
"air piano" as he delightfully calls it. I experience nothing like
this.

Parallel Processing:

Brown notes that "The evidence from PMT is that acoustic consciousness
can be
split into two parallel streams…..most of the time the imagery doesn't
seem to
impair my allocation of attention to other tasks and simply plays in
the
background as an acoustic stream." (pp. 54-55). I can elaborate on
this from a
different perspective.

For some years I have been practicing vipassana (insight) meditation,
mostly
along the lines taught by Shinzen Young (www.shinzen.org). For most of
these
years a major focus has been on cultivating the neutral, objective
observation
of aspects of body sensation, without becoming involved in judging
whether any
sensation is "good" or "bad," and practicing clarity and equanimity
toward
sensation. I had heard various meditation teachers talk about
observing
thought, but never had any luck in it. When a thought came along it
always
swept me up in it, I identified with it as "my" thought and would get
carried
along in some thought train for long periods before remembering that I
was
attempting to meditate.

In the last few years, though, Young has taught me how to observe
thought and
visual imagery quite well, mainly through "somatizing" it, localizing
it in the
tactile space of the body. For me, e.g., internally generated visual
imagery
appears on a "mental screen" which feels located in a plane parallel to
my face,
just behind my closed eyes. By keeping some contact with that area
tactually, I
am more aware of visual imagery and less likely to be absorbed in it.
Similarly, I have located my internal "talk" as occurring in a central
intracranial region on a line slightly below my ears, probably where my
vocal
cords are located, so much, if not all, of my mental talk may be
subvocalization. By keeping some attention on that physical area, I am
more
sensitive to and less likely to automatically identify with and be
swept away by
internal talk. I feel subtle sensations there when internal talk
occurs. By
physically relaxing this area, internal talk decreases.

(To my surprise, when I learned to observe internal imagery and talk in
this
manner I discovered that my vague category of "thought" actually
consisted
primarily of visual imagery and secondarily of actual internal talk.)

The relevance to PMT is this: I have no recognizable tactile sensation
in that
same talk area when PMT is occurring. In fact I have never been able
to find a
physical localization for PMT, and I have tried to find one many times.
My hope
was that if I could find a localized area, relaxing it would decrease
PMT, as I
can do for internal talk.

This is semi-disciplined observational data supporting the theory of
the
relative independence of the PMT process from the internal talk
process. I call
it "semi-disciplined" as I don't think of myself as really skilled in
meditative
observations.

In Conclusion:

OK, I'm ready to sit back, turn off the external background music, and
wait to
see if the next record the PMT puts on will be an apt comment on what
I've
written… I've never made a conscious demand on my PMT before, so I
don't know
how this will turn out. I'm trying not to consciously think about how
it should
turn out in order not to bias it. Perhaps the distraction of checking
my
email….

Wouldn't you know that when I would like a little PMT, my mind is quite
quiet… ;-)

Damn! I shifted my attention to another task and immediately the PMT
came on
with that silly,

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts,
There they are a-standing in a row.
There stands me wife,
The idol of me life,
Singin roll or bowl a ball a penny a pitch.

What kind of comment from my subconscious is that on this scholarly
writing?
That it's all nonsense? That we are starting to line up our coconuts,
our
nourishing bits of information about mental function so they will
become as
valuable to us as my wife is to me?

Perhaps I'd better end with that always safe scholarly admonition,
"More
research is needed."

Charles T. Tart, Ph.D.
Professor, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto CA
Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of California, Davis
Home page & archives: http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/
Editor, The
Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/taste/

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Blows against the empire - Imperial Fictions

2006-09-22T18:55:13Z

1. Hugo Chavez: Address to the United Nations: Rise Up Against the Empi From: Michael Mandeville
2. National Security Alert - Act Now To Defend Your Constitutional Righ From: Michael Mandeville
3. Choussudovsky: Banff Secret Meeting For The Militarization Of NAFTA From: Michael Mandeville
4. The truth comes out: U.S. may send more troops to Iraq From: Michael Mandeville
5. 911 Mysteries. An excellent summary of the demolition of WTC From: Michael Mandeville
6. Sidney Blumenthal: How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime From: Michael Mandeville
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1. Hugo Chavez: Address to the United Nations: Rise Up Against the Empi
Posted by: "Michael Mandeville" mwman@earthlink.net mwmande
Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:25 am (PST)
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MWM: The truly great blessing of the Iway. The ninnies of the Warcast Media almost never convey the logic of an alternative point of view nor a genuine debate about basic truths. So it is ever my great joy to pass on items which fundamentally question the mindsets of American political elites. I especially enjoy this one. Ten thousand years ago the ancestors of the Q'ero predicted that the "heart" for the salvation of humanity would come from the peoples of the south during the time of troubles. Two years ago the Mayan Elders predicted that the hear was rising among the people of the South and the people in the North would begin to hear from them. HERE IT IS.

BULLETIN ITEM: Hugo Chavez: Address to the United Nations: Rise Up Against the Empire

Address to the United Nations: Rise Up Against the Empire
By Hugo Chavez Frias, President of Venezuela
Sep 20, 2006, 17:15
http://www.axisoflo gic.com/artman/ publish/article_ 23036.shtml

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Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it.

Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, '<http://www.amazon. com/Hegemony- Survival- Americas- Dominance- American/ dp/0805076883/ counterpunchmaga>Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.

The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time," [flips through the pages, which are numerous] "I will just leave it as a recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I'm sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.

The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent's statement -- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, "We're suffering because we see homes destroyed.'

The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, "Yankee imperialist, go home." I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.

I don't think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let's accept -- let's be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.

Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel's yesterday, or President Mullah's . Yes, it's good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we've heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That's step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let's see. Well, there's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said "helplessly optimistic," because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I'm here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don't worry, I'm not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to die." But they're going to be disappointed because he didn't. And he's not only alive, he's back in his green fatigues, and he's now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closing my file. I'm taking the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.

<http://www.counterp unch.org/ chavez09202006. html>http://www.counterp unch.org/ chavez09202006. html

BULLETIN ITEM: National Security Alert - Act Now To Defend Your Constitutional Rights

Date: Tues, 19 Sep 2006 13:31:56 -0800
From: The Pen <activist.gb@ gmail.com>

PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE TWO SEPARATE ACTION PAGES IN THIS ALERT

Call Congress NOW at 888-355-3588 or 800-828-0498

There is an apocryphal tale about a child who, having failed to perform an assigned task, invented the most outlandish excuse for why he could not produce the required finished work. We cannot say if there ever was an actual child who claimed that the dog had eaten his homework. But we have its equivalent now in the current president of the United States.

The incredible world spectacle we have is this. First, the president demands that the War Crimes Act, the law of the land, be changed to accommodate the crimes that have ALREADY been committed at his direction, specifically to authorize methods of torture previously and rightfully considered verboten. If this is not a naked admission that he has broken the law in the most hideous way we don't know what is. Second, and at the same time, he is demanding that new laws enacted be to hotrod the prosecution of those he personally deems enemies of the state. What is he trying to tell the world, that those people CANNOT be convicted of an offense under our current law, but that he himself cannot ESCAPE conviction under that same law for what he has done?

Shame on any member of Congress who signs on to any of this in any part. Let us address each of these two points in turn

THE WAR CRIMES ACT MUST NOT BE CHANGED AT ALL

ACTION PAGE 1: http://www.usalone. com/wright/ pnum500.php

If there was an Olympic event for hypocritical lying, the Bush administration would have no peer anywhere. But perhaps the biggest honking lie of all is that the torture of our detainees has given us any intelligence to make us safer. Indeed, it was information extracted by torture (of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) that was used as an EXCUSE by the Bush and Cheney that it was so drop dead critical to attack and occupy Iraq, now recognized by all with an honest bone left in their body as the greatest strategic blunder in our nation's military history. It is all contained in the Phase 2 Senate Intelligence Committee Report, which Cheney claims not to have read himself.

Those who really know interrogation know that information extracted by such means is BAD intelligence, notwithstanding the most extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario the Bush regime constantly throws in our faces. But just as they have systematically done in every other policy area without exception, those who actually know what they are talking about have here again been muscled out of government decision making. We are told for example that the military JAG attorneys were held for hours in a meeting and not allowed to leave until they signed on to the president's demands.

And now Bush directly threatens the American people by saying if they will not rubberstamp his torture program as is, he will scuttle it. That's exactly akin to a bank robber threatening to stop robbing banks unless we change the laws to his specifications. Of course it has to stop. When we have a program that is so destructive to our REAL national security it absolutely MUST stop. Maybe then, just maybe, we could get back to obtaining good intelligence of actual value. But Bush in his patented flim-flam way would make it sound like his critics would have us stop all intelligence operations to protect our families.

They have their talking point, that the law needs to be "clarified", and they are going to keep repeating it like a broken record until we all run screaming from the room. The problem is that they KNEW they were breaking international and U.S. law when they did it, in the most premeditated way, and were so warned in advance by their own attorney general in no uncertain terms. Part of the language they would now unilaterally and retroactively excise from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions refers to "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating . . . " At Abu Ghraib, Bush administration henchmen DESIGNED methods of treatment with the deliberate intent of being maximally offensive to their Muslim victims, most of whom were innocent of any crime whatsoever.

If war itself were not enough of an atrocity, when the depth of the horrors of World War II came to light some to the greatest legal minds ever labored to define in words what civilized people must forever proscribe, even in war. And in the Geneva Conventions they succeeded. Any who dare to violate these mutually accepted definitions of despicable behavior are guilty of war crimes on their face. We need NOT behave as monsters ourselves to protect our people. Such acts only lead to the remaining civilized people in the world shunning us as pariahs, to never again volunteer the good intelligence we really need to thwart those who mean us harm.

In fact, the Bush administration has repeatedly jeopardized intelligence operations of REAL value to score media propaganda points. The British were furious two years ago when they outed a very valuable mole in Al Qaeda, thereby doing incalculable damage to our ability to stop the bad guys. And they did it again by pressuring the British to move prematurely on the recent airline plot, related to so-called "liquid explosives" which had no chemical possibility of ever being operational. The case against those plotters and their associates is accordingly weaker than it would have been otherwise.

Keep in mind that in both the above situations informants were gained by winning people to our side. Such intelligence losses cannot be compensated for by stooping to torture methods which have the exact OPPOSITE effect.

DETAINEES MUST BE PROSECUTED UNDER CURRENT LAW

ACTION PAGE 2: http://www.usalone. com/wright/ pnum501.php

The fact that the detainees HAVE been tortured is precisely the reason why the Bush administration is so determined to deny them any rights they have under current law to see the evidence against them, or to have any other protections thereunder. Secret evidence means keeping also secret their own war crimes. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. And to butcher the law "ex post facto" (after the fact) anytime the result will not be as we would like is to render our entire legal system of no force and effect. It is to tell the world that we have laws of convenience only, and that they are subject to change without notice.

There are disreputable precedents in world history, the Star Chamber, kangaroo courts and show trials. The Supreme Court, even stacked as it is already is with Bush beholden appointees, has ruled that the military tribunals proposed are contrary to the Constitution itself, let alone statutory law. The solution is not to enact further Constitutional outrages in the Congress, perhaps in hopes of stacking a contrary deciding fifth additional vote by the time it arrives back at the Supreme Court.

The detainees must be prosecuted under existing law. To do otherwise is to send the loudest message possible to the entire world that we believe THEY HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME FOR WHICH THEY CAN BE PROSECUTED. Some who were irrefutably innocent have already been released after years of torture, and with no apology or compensation for their ordeal. If the truly guilty cannot be found so under current law, we have no moral standing in the world left at all.

There's a ticking time bomb alright, but unfortunately it's our own current president of the United States. Day by day he becomes more pugnacious and more defiant. It is just a matter of time before he commits an atrocity in our name so heinous that no American will ever be safe ever again anywhere in the world, unless he is peacefully and swiftly removed from office.

And if a dog did eat his homework, it would have been a dog of war.

This alert is brought to you through the activism of James Wright, running for the U.S. House in the 8th Congressional district, and one of the leading progressive voices in the state of Texas. Follow the other links on the action page for Jim's own proposals of bills to REALLY protect us.

When a brave candidate steps forward in such a district as Texas 8th, shall we do anything to show him our support? If so, please also consider making a donation to Jim's campaign so he can spread the call to action message on impeachment, starting to bring our troops home from Iraq, and on so many other issues.

DONATIONS: http://www.usalone. com/wright/ donations. php

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

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The Earth Changes Bulletin Updates are usually published in a brief form and distributed free on a weekly basis. Occasionally Earth Changes Special Reports are produced on timely topics. This is Shareware Information, if it is useful to you, please help support it by making a VOLUNTARY donation (you will not be denied access). A donation of $3.00 per month or $36.00 per year is requested to sustain this work and additional benefits may be available. To provide a mechanism for making a donation, a donation request
will be emailed to new subscribers and periodically to all subscribers via Paypal, or click now on on this URL to make your donation.
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ donations_ for_ec_bulletins .htm
See the bottom of this email message for website and contact URL's. To subscribe to the Earth Change Bulletins:
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Impeach The Gangsters Who Fabricated 9/11 & The Bogus War On Terror
Download WHY from: http://www.home. earthlink. net/~911hoax/

BULLETIN ITEM: Choussudovsky: Banff Secret Meeting For The Militarization Of NAFTA

MWM: As the article concludes, its best to gather your children and lock the doors. This is especially for Canadian subscribers.

Secret Banff Meeting of CEOs and the Defense Establishment : Militarization and the Deconstruction of North America

By Michel Chossudovsky

The url address of this article is: <http://www.globalre search.ca/ PrintArticle. php?articleId= 3274>www.globalresearch .ca/PrintArticle .php?articleId= 3274

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ ++++
The Earth Changes Bulletin Updates are usually published in a brief form and distributed free on a weekly basis. Occasionally Earth Changes Special Reports are produced on timely topics. This is Shareware Information, if it is useful to you, please help support it by making a VOLUNTARY donation (you will not be denied access). A donation of $3.00 per month or $36.00 per year is requested to sustain this work and additional benefits may be available. To provide a mechanism for making a donation, a donation request
will be emailed to new subscribers and periodically to all subscribers via Paypal, or click now on on this URL to make your donation.
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See the bottom of this email message for website and contact URL's. To subscribe to the Earth Change Bulletins:
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PHOENIX FIVE EARTH CHANGES BULLETIN
September 21, 2006 by MW Mandeville (Black Canyon City, Arizona)
Advertising above is not connected to the Bulletins.
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Impeach The Gangsters Who Fabricated 9/11 & The Bogus War On Terror
Download WHY from: http://www.home. earthlink. net/~911hoax/

BULLETIN ITEM:

The truth comes out: U.S. may send more troops to Iraq

September 19, 2006 3:30 PM | <http://www.capitolh illblue.com/ content/news/>News | 3 Comments
By LOLITA C. BALDOR

The U.S. military will likely maintain or possibly even increase the current force levels of more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through next spring, the top US. commander in the Middle East said Tuesday in one of the gloomiest assessments yet of how quickly American forces can be brought home.
Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said military leaders would consider adding troops or extending the Iraq deployments of other units if needed.

"If it's necessary to do that because the military situation on the ground requires that, we'll do it," he said. "If we have to call in more forces because it's our military judgment that we need more forces, we'll do it."

Abizaid said that right now the current number of troops "are prudent force levels" that are achieving the needed military effect.

His comments came as U.S. political leaders continue to face declining public support for the war in Iraq, as they head into the coming congressional elections. Abizaid, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace are expected to meet with members of Congress later this week.

Late last year, military leaders had said they hoped to reduce troop levels to about 100,000 by the end of this year. But Abizaid said Tuesday that the rising sectarian violence and slow progress of the Iraqi government made that impossible.

"I think that this level probably will have to be sustained through the spring," he told military reporters. "I think that we'll do whatever we have to do to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan and use the military power of the U.S. to do that."

Abizaid cautioned that the solution to much of Iraq's violence both sectarian and insurgents is not necessarily "throwing more American units at the problem."

Instead, he said it is vital that the Iraqi government improve the political and economic conditions in the embattled country, as part of an effort to get the "angry young men" off the streets. And he said there will be more emphasis on the U.S. military teams that are training the Iraqi army and police forces.

There are currently 147,000 U.S. forces in Iraq up more than 20,000 from the troop levels in late June. Rumsfeld extended the one-year deployment of an Alaska-based brigade in July, as part of the effort to stem the escalating violence in Baghdad.

Abizaid said Tuesday that there are no plans to further extend the deployment of the Alaska Stryker brigade.

___

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ ++++
The Earth Changes Bulletin Updates are usually published in a brief form and distributed free on a weekly basis. Occasionally Earth Changes Special Reports are produced on timely topics. This is Shareware Information, if it is useful to you, please help support it by making a VOLUNTARY donation (you will not be denied access). A donation of $3.00 per month or $36.00 per year is requested to sustain this work and additional benefits may be available. To provide a mechanism for making a donation, a donation request
will be emailed to new subscribers and periodically to all subscribers via Paypal, or click now on on this URL to make your donation.
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See the bottom of this email message for website and contact URL's. To subscribe to the Earth Change Bulletins:
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Best Wishes, Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA at mwman@earthlink. net
Master Website Index is at: http://www.michaelm andeville. com

Author of "Return of the Phoenix" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/phoenix/ phoenix.htm
Author of "The Coming Economic Collapse of 2006" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar/ collapse2006. htm
Author of "Earth Changes Almanac & Calendar 2003"
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ __
To order any books or products go to
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ cosmic_cat. htm

Email News: everyone concerned about any level of the Earth Changes (geology, climate, economics, politics) must subscribe to:
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To check the latest status of the Change In The Earth and the location of Earth's Axis, go to:
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/earthmonitor /
To connect with the on-going Phoenix Quest, go to:
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/quest/

Best Wishes, Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA at mwman@earthlink. net
Master Website Index is at: http://www.michaelm andeville. com

Author of "Return of the Phoenix" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/phoenix/ phoenix.htm
Author of "The Coming Economic Collapse of 2006" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar/ collapse2006. htm
Author of "Earth Changes Almanac & Calendar 2003"
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ __
To order any books or products go to
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ cosmic_cat. htm

Email News: everyone concerned about any level of the Earth Changes (geology, climate, economics, politics) must subscribe to:
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Impeach The Gangsters Who Fabricated 9/11 & The Bogus War On Terror
Download WHY from: http://www.home. earthlink. net/~911hoax/

BULLETIN ITEM: 911 Mysteries. An excellent summary of the demolition of WTC

MWM: This is a wonderfully high quality synthesis. BTW: It appears that Rudy Guiliani, the Mayor of New York at the time, can be implicated as part of the conspiracy. He is caught on tape referring to the imminent collapse of one of the towers before the collapse. There was every scientific reason to suppose that the buildings were fully capable of withstanding the aircraft and fire and the firemen themselves at that moment were reporting that the two isolated fires could be extinquished. Then the explosions began a few minutes later This directly makes Rudy Guiliani a mass murderer. He's a smooth one, isn't he? He authorizes or explicitly conspires in the murder of at least hundreds of firemen and becomes a national hero for how well he handled the crisis. See if you can pick out the damning remark which should send him to the gallows.

To: "Michael" <mwman@earthlink. net>
From: "Brasscheck TV" <news@brasschecktv. com>
http://brasscheck. com/videos/ middleeast/ me5.html

Michael,

New film:

http://www.brassche ck.com/videos/ 911/911mysteries .html

If you doubt the value of 9/11 research, please read
the following:

I've received more mail about and had more viewings
of "The Science of 9/11" than any film I've posted
since starting BrasscheckTV. com

Some of the mail has been critical.

Some have asked why with everything going
on in the world I would "waste time" on
"nut job conspiracies. "

First, September 11 is the root of many of the
evils we are facing today.

Take away the official 9/11 story and

1. George Bush and his colleagues are out of office,
2. There would have been no Iraq invasion,
3. Israel would have been restrained from its recent
slaughter of Lebanese civilians
4. Civil liberties in the US (such as they are) would
be intact
5. Our economy would not have been bled of nearly
$1 trillion in "Terror War" and Iraq invasion
waste and fraud

I'd say these things make September 11 a subject
worthy of the most exhaustive study.

That's my first point.

My second point is that it is a plain fact is that no one
has ever proven that Osama bin Laden or the mythical,
all-powerful al Qaeda are responsible for 9/11.

No court accepted evidence has ever been presented, there
have been no formal charges, no arrests, no trials, no
convictions. No nothing.

On 9/11, Katie Couric and other millionaire newscaster
know-nothings declared based on "unnamed intelligence
sources" that Osama bin Laden did it and that has been the
full extent of the reporting.

Not only that, but thanks to the anthrax attacks which
took place in late 2001, the FBI - at the order of
President Bush - suspended all investigations
into the 9/11 attacks - and have never resumed them.

In other words, no one knows anything for sure about
what happened on 9/11 other than these two facts:

1. Thousands of innocent people were murdered
in cold blood

and

2. Practically NOTHING that the government
presented about what happened that day has
turned out to be true.

The government said they had no warnings...

There received all kinds of warnings including one
literally put on the President's desk in August of 2000.

The government said there was no time to
activate air defense...

There was all the time in the world to activate
air defense.

The government said they know the identifies
of all the alleged hijackers (and thus their
affiliations) ...

Nearly half of the people they identified are alive
and well and had nothing to do with 9/11.

This does not inspire confidence, nor does the
fact that key witnesses have been ignored (and
in some cases silenced) and key evidence from
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has
been withheld from public view.

Given that the facts of this important case have
been actively distorted and evidence willfully
withheld, I consider the research of the
so called "nut jobs" to be nothing less than
heroic.

Is all their work 100% professional in every
case?

Of course not.

But where *are* the professionals?

* Why did Bush take the FBI off the 9/11 case in
late 2001?
* Why have the CIA and US military stopped looking
for Osama bin Laden?
* How, assuming Bin Laden is even alive, has he managed
to elude capture for FIVE years?

Where is the US news media?

And where is the so called Left Media and the
investigative reporters who've previously done so
much courageous work and analysis over the years?

With few exceptions (like the stalwarts at
the Pacifica Network), the Left has ignored
the issue entirely.

Yes, it's true that the leadership on this issue
comes mainly from people with nothing to lose - young
people without fixed careers, tenured and retired
academics, writers who've made a career of studying
government conspiracies - but that's because
at the present time, no one else has had the guts
and the uncorrupted intelligence to look at
the facts and speak the truth about them.

I've come across a brand new film that addresses
the science of 9/11 and handles it even
better than the previous film I just posted on
this subject.

I didn't abdridge this one because there was no need
to.

It's an hour and a half long - and every minute
counts. It's called "9/11 Mysteries."

It's worthy of your serious attention.

http://www.brassche ck.com/videos/ 911/911mysteries .html

- Brasscheck

P.S. Thanks to your sharing of this information,
the number of subscribers to BrasscheckTV. com has
increased over tenfold in the past seven weeks.

A list of all films available for free online viewing
is at:

http://www.brassche cktv.com

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ ++++
The Earth Changes Bulletin Updates are usually published in a brief form and distributed free on a weekly basis. Occasionally Earth Changes Special Reports are produced on timely topics. This is Shareware Information, if it is useful to you, please help support it by making a VOLUNTARY donation (you will not be denied access). A donation of $3.00 per month or $36.00 per year is requested to sustain this work and additional benefits may be available. To provide a mechanism for making a donation, a donation request
will be emailed to new subscribers and periodically to all subscribers via Paypal, or click now on on this URL to make your donation.
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ donations_ for_ec_bulletins .htm
See the bottom of this email message for website and contact URL's. To subscribe to the Earth Change Bulletins:
mailto:earthchange- bulletins- subscribe@ yahoogroups. com
or you may unsubscribe by:
mailto:earthchange- bulletins- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com
++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++

Best Wishes, Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA at mwman@earthlink. net
Master Website Index is at: http://www.michaelm andeville. com

Author of "Return of the Phoenix" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/phoenix/ phoenix.htm
Author of "The Coming Economic Collapse of 2006" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar/ collapse2006. htm
Author of "Earth Changes Almanac & Calendar 2003"
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ __
To order any books or products go to
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ cosmic_cat. htm

Email News: everyone concerned about any level of the Earth Changes (geology, climate, economics, politics) must subscribe to:
mailto:earthchange- bulletins- subscribe@ yahoogroups. com
or you may unsubscribe by mailto:earthchange- bulletins- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com

Conversation about the Earth Changes:
mailto:phoenix-quest- subscribe@ yahoogroups. com
or you may unsubscribe by mailto:phoenix-quest- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com

To check the latest status of the Change In The Earth and the location of Earth's Axis, go to:
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/earthmonitor /
To connect with the on-going Phoenix Quest, go to:
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/quest/

Best Wishes, Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA at mwman@earthlink. net
Master Website Index is at: http://www.michaelm andeville. com

Author of "Return of the Phoenix" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/phoenix/ phoenix.htm
Author of "The Coming Economic Collapse of 2006" at
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar/ collapse2006. htm
Author of "Earth Changes Almanac & Calendar 2003"
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/calendar
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ __
To order any books or products go to
http://www.michaelm andeville. com/catalog/ cosmic_cat. htm

Email News: everyone concerned about any level of the Earth Changes (geology, climate, economics, politics) must subscribe to:
mailto:earthchange- bulletins- subscribe@ yahoogroups. com
or you may unsubscribe by mailto:earthchange- bulletins- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com

Conversation about the Earth Changes:
mailto:phoenix-quest- subscribe@ yahoogroups. com
or you may unsubscribe by mailto:phoenix-quest- unsubscribe@ yahoogroups. com

Impeach The Gangsters Who Fabricated 9/11 & The Bogus War On Terror
Download WHY from: http://www.home. earthlink. net/~911hoax/

MWM: This looks pretty much like a no-holds-barred book about everything about George Bush except for the 911 Hoax. Here is an exhaustive look at the mean-spirited, cheap, chiseling crook with the silver spoon in his mouth whom the world knows at George Bush.

http://www.lewrockw ell.com/orig7/ blumenthal1. html

BULLETIN ITEM: Sidney Blumenthal: How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime

Following is the introduction to Sidney Blumenthal's new book, <http://www.amazon. com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/ 069112888X/ lewrockwell/>How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, recently published by the Princeton University Press.

No one predicted just how radical a president George W. Bush would be. Neither his opponents, nor the reporters covering him, nor his closest campaign aides suggested that he would be the most willfully radical president in American history.

In his 2000 campaign, Bush permitted himself few hints of radicalism. On the contrary he made ready promises of moderation, judiciously offering himself as a "compassionate conservative, " an identity carefully crafted to contrast with the discredited Republican radicals of the House of Representatives. After capturing the Congress in 1994 and proclaiming a "revolution, " they had twice shut down the government over the budget and staged an impeachment trial that resulted in the acquittal of President Clinton. Seeking to distance himself from the congressional Republicans, Bush declared that he was not hostile to government. He would, he said, "change the tone in Washington." He would be more reasonable than the House Republicans and more moral than Clinton. Governor Bush went out of his way to point to his record of bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Texas, stressing that he would be "a uniter, not a divider."

Trying to remove the suspicion that falls on conservative Republicans, he pledged that he would protect the solvency of Social Security. On foreign policy, he said he would be "humble": "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us." Here he was criticizing Clinton's peacemaking and nation-building efforts in the Balkans and suggesting he would be far more restrained. The sharpest criticism he made of Clinton's foreign policy was that he would be more mindful of the civil liberties of Arabs accused of terrorism: "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what's called secret evidence. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that." This statement was not an off-the-cuff remark, but carefully crafted and presented in one of the debates with Vice President Al Gore. Bush's intent was to win an endorsement from the American Muslim Council, which was cued to back him after he delivered his debating point, and it was instrumental in his winning an overwhelming share of Muslims' votes, about 90,000 of which were in Florida.

So Bush deliberately offered himself as an alternative to the divisive congressional Republicans, his father's son (at last) in political temperament, but also experienced as an executive who had learned the art of compromise with the other party, and differing from the incumbent Democratic president only in personality and degree. Bush wanted the press to report and discuss that he would reform and discipline his party, which had gone too far to the right. He encouraged commentary that he represented a "Fourth Way," a variation on the theme of Clinton's "Third Way."

In his second term, Clinton had the highest sustained popularity of any president since World War II, prosperity was in its longest recorded cycle, and the nation's international prestige high. Bush's tack as moderate was adroit, shrewd and necessary. His political imperative was to create the public perception there were no major issues dividing the candidates and that the current halcyon days would continue as well under his aegis. Only through his positioning did Bush manage to close to within just short of a half-million votes of Gore and achieve an apparent tie in Florida, creating an Electoral College deadlock and forcing the election toward an extraordinary resolution.

Few political commentators at the time thought that the ruthless tactics used by the Bush camp in the Florida contest presaged his presidency. The battle there was seen as unique, a self-contained episode of high political drama that could and would not be replicated. Tactics such as setting loose a mob comprised mostly of Republican staff members from the House and Senate flown down from Washington to intimidate physically the Miami-Dade County Board of Supervisors from counting the votes there, and manipulating the Florida state government through the office of the governor, Jeb Bush, the candidate's brother, to forestall vote counting were justified as simply hardball politics.

The Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, by a five to four margin, perversely sanctioned not counting thousands of votes (mostly African-American) as somehow upholding the equal protection clause of the 15th Amendment (enacted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of newly enfranchised slaves, the ancestors of those disenfranchised by Bush v. Gore). In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that counting votes would cast a shadow on the "legitimacy" of Bush's claim to the presidency. The Court concluded that the ruling was to have applicability only this one time. By its very nature, it was declared to be unprecedented. Never before had the Supreme Court decided who would be president, much less according to tortuous argument, and by a one vote margin that underlined and extended political polarization.

The constitutional system had ruptured, but it was widely believed by the political class in Washington, including most of the press corps, that Bush, who had benefited, would rush to repair the breach. The brutality enabling him to become president, while losing the popular majority, and following a decade of partisan polarization, must spur him to make good on his campaign rhetoric of moderation, seek common ground and enact centrist policies. Old family retainers, James Baker (the former Secretary of State who had been summoned to command the legal and political teams in Florida) and Brent Scowcroft (elder Bush's former national security adviser), were especially unprepared for what was to come, and they came to oppose Bush's radicalism, mounting a sub rosa opposition. In its brazen, cold-blooded and single-minded partisanship, the Florida contest turned out in retrospect to be an augury not an aberration. It was Bush's first opening, and having charged through it, grabbing the presidency, he continued widening the breach.

The precedents for a president who gained office without winning the popular vote were uniformly grim. John Quincy Adams, the first president elected without a plurality, never escaped the accusation of having made a "corrupt bargain" to secure the necessary Electoral College votes. After one term he was turned out of office with an overwhelming vote for his rival, Andrew Jackson. Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison, also having won the White House but not the popular vote, declined to run again. Like these three predecessors Bush lacked a mandate, but unlike them he proceeded as though he had won by a landslide.

The Republicans had control of both houses of the Congress and the presidency for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was elected. But Eisenhower had gained the White House with a resounding majority. He spent his early years in office trying to isolate his right wing in the Congress, quietly if belatedly encouraging efforts to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower greeted the Democratic recovery of the Congress in 1954 with relief and smoothly governed for the rest of his tenure in tandem with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. The outrageous behavior of the Republicans during the brief period in which they had held congressional power and unleashed McCarthy was a direct cause of their minority status for 40 subsequent years. But the Republicans who gained control of the Congress in 1994 had not learned from their past.

The Republican radicals in charge of the House of Representatives remained unabashed by their smashing failures of the 1990s. They were willing to sacrifice two speakers of the House to scandals of their own in order to pursue an unconstitutional coup d'état to remove President Clinton. (It was unconstitutional, strictly speaking, because they had rejected any standards whatsoever for impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee in contradistinction to the committee's exacting standards enacted in the impeachment proceedings of President Nixon.) Now these Republicans welcomed the Bush ascension as deus ex machina, rescuing them from their exhaustion, disrepute and dead end. They became Bush's indispensable partners.

Immediately upon assuming office, Bush launched upon a series of initiatives that began to undo the bipartisan traditions of internationalism, environmentalism, fiscal discipline, and scientific progress. His first nine months in office were a quick march to the right. The reasons were manifold, ranging from Cheney and Rumsfeld's extraordinary influence, Rove's strategies, the neoconservatives' inordinate sway, and Bush's Southern conservatism. These deeper patterns were initially obscured by the surprising rapidity of Bush's determined tack.

Bush withdrew from the diplomacy with North Korea to control its development and production of nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell, after briefing the press that the diplomatic track would continue, was sent out again to repudiate himself and announce the administration' s reversal of almost a decade of negotiation. Powell did not realize that this would be the first of many times his credibility would be abused in a ritual of humiliation. Swiftly, Bush rejected the Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and global warming, and presented a "voluntary" plan that was supported by no other nation. He also withdrew the U.S. from its historic role as negotiator among Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, a process to which his father had been particularly committed.

In short order, Bush also reversed his campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and canceled the federal regulation reducing cancer-causing arsenic levels in water. He joked at a dinner: "As you know, we're studying safe levels for arsenic in drinking water. To base our decision on sound science, the scientists told us we needed to test the water glasses of about 3,000 people. Thank you for participating. " He appointed scores of former lobbyists and industry executives to oversee policies regulating the industries they previously represented.

As his top priority Bush pushed for passage of a large tax cut that would redistribute income to the wealthy, drain the surplus that the Clinton administration had accumulated, and reverse fiscal discipline embraced by both the Clinton and prior Bush administrations. The tax cut became Bush's chief instrument of social policy. By wiping out the surplus, budget pressure was exerted on domestic social programs. Under the Reagan administration, a tax cut had produced the largest deficit to that time, bigger than the combined deficits accumulated by all previous presidents. But Reagan had stumbled onto this method of crushing social programs through the inadvertent though predictable failure of his fantasy of supply-side economics in which slashing taxes would magically create increased federal revenues. Bush confronted alternatives in the recent Republican past, the Reagan example or his father's responsible counter-example of raising taxes to cut the deficit; once again, he rejected his father's path. But unlike Reagan, his decision to foster a deficit was completely deliberate and with full awareness of its consequences.

Domestic policy adviser John DiIulio, a political scientist from the University of Pennsylvania, who had accepted his position in the White House on the assumption that he would be working to give substance to the president's rhetoric of "compassionate conservatism, " resigned in a state of shock. "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," DiIulio told Esquire magazine. "What you've got is everything – and I mean everything – being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis ... Besides the tax cut ... the administration has not done much, either in absolute terms or in comparison to previous administrations at this stage, on domestic policy. There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism. "

After just four months into the Bush presidency, the Republicans lost control of the Senate. Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who had served for 26 years as a moderate Republican in the House and the Senate, left his party in response to Bush's radicalism. "In the past, without the presidency, the various wings of the Republican Party in Congress have had some freedom to argue and influence and ultimately to shape the party's agenda. The election of President Bush changed that dramatically, " Jeffords said on May 24, 2001. Overnight, the majority in the upper chamber shifted to the Democrats.

Bush spent the entire month of August on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. His main public event was a speech declaring federal limits on scientific research involving stem cells that might lead to cures for many diseases. Bush's tortuous position was a sop to the religious right. On August 6, three days before his nationally televised address on stem cells, he was presented with a Presidential Daily Brief from the CIA entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside U.S." CIA director George Tenet later told the 9/11 Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States "the system was blinking red." The Commission reported: "The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature ... We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States."

By September 10, Bush held the lowest job approval rating of any president to that early point in his tenure. He appeared to be falling into the pattern of presidents who arrived without a popular mandate and lasted only one term. The deadliest foreign attack on American soil transformed his foundering presidency.

The events of September 11 lent Bush the aura of legitimacy that Bush v. Gore had not granted. Catastrophe infused him with the charisma of a "war president," as he proclaimed himself. At once, his radicalism had an unobstructed path.

Bush's political rhetoric reached Manichaean and apocalyptic heights. He divided the world into "good" and "evil." "You're either with the terrorists or with us," he said. He stood at the ramparts of Fortress America, defending it from evildoers without and within. His fervent messianism guided what he called his "crusade" in the Muslim realm. "Bring them on!" he exclaimed about Iraqi insurgents. Asked if he ever sought advice from his father, Bush replied, "There's a higher Father I appeal to."

After September 11, the American people were virtually united in sentiment. Support for the Afghanistan war was almost unanimous. "The nation is united and there is a resolve and a spirit that is just so fantastic to feel," said Bush. But two weeks after he made this statement, in January 2002, his chief political aide, whom he called "The Architect," Karl Rove, spoke before a meeting of the Republican National Committee, laying out the strategy for exploiting fear of terror for partisan advantage. "We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America," said Rove. His strategy was premised on the idea that Republicans win elections by maximizing the turnout of their conservative base; his method was to polarize the electorate as much as possible. Rove's tactic was to challenge the patriotism of Democrats by creating false issues of national security in which they could be demonized. September 11 gave his politics of polarization the urgency of national emergency.

Bush's politics sustained his remaking of the government that had been the agenda of his vice president from the start. Even before September 11, when "wartime" was used to justify secrecy, Bush resisted transparency. He fought in the courts the disclosure of the names of the participants on Vice President Dick Cheney's energy panel. Kenneth Lay, Enron's chief executive officer, was among them. Enron was the biggest financial supporter of Bush's political career, before that had been a partner in Bush's oil ventures and provided its corporate jets to the Bush campaign for its Florida contest. Bush, who referred to Lay as "Kenny Boy," claimed he didn't get to "know" him until after he became governor and then hardly at all.

Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were the prime movers behind the concentration of power in the executive. Their experience going back to the Nixon presidency had imbued them with belief in absolute presidential power, disdain for the Congress ("a bunch of annoying gnats," Cheney called its members, of which he had once been one), and secrecy.

Executive power was rationalized by a radical theory called the "unitary executive," asserting that the president had complete authority over independent federal agencies and was not bound by congressional oversight or even law in his role as commander-in- chief.

Bush constructed a hidden world of his "war on terror" consisting of "black sites," secret CIA prisons holding thousands of "ghost" detainees deprived of legal due process and approved methods of torture. Cheney insisted it was necessary to go to "the dark side," as he called it.

Attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice wrote numerous memos to justify the "unitary executive" and the president's unfettered right to engage in torture and domestic spying. Bush's White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales (appointed Attorney General in the second term) derided the Geneva Conventions against torture as "quaint" and Bush overruled strenuous objections from the military, Secretary of State Powell and senior officials in the Department of Justice in abrogating U.S. adherence to them. Indeed, Bush signed a directive stipulating that as commander-in- chief he could determine any law he wished in dealing with those accused of terrorism.

At Gonzales's request, on August 1, 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department sent him a memo on torture. It was signed by OLC's director Jay Bybee (later appointed a federal judge) and written by an OLC deputy, John Yoo, who drafted at least a dozen crucial memos justifying absolute presidential power. In this memo, the president's authority to conduct torture without any oversight and by rules he determined was asserted as fundamental to his power: "Any effort by the Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution' s sole vesting of the Commander in Chief authority in the President." The memo defined torture specifically and broadly: "Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent to intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Revelations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the tip of the iceberg of the vast network of the detained and disappeared. The International Committee of the Red Cross was forbidden access. Those at the top of the chain of command were shielded from legal accountability while a few soldiers and the female general in charge at Abu Ghraib were offered up as scapegoats. After FBI agents witnessed gruesome spectacles of torture at Guantánamo, the Bureau issued orders that it would not participate in this netherworld.

At the same time, Bush ordered the National Security Agency to conduct domestic spying dragnets outside the legal confines of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and without seeking warrants from the FISA court. Conservative lawyers within the Justice Department wrote memos justifying the practice on the same grounds as they had rationalized torture – the right of the commander-in- chief to do as he saw fit. Once again, the presidency was construed as a monarchy. Bush and Cheney argued publicly that operating outside the FISA court might have prevented the terrorist attacks of September 11, though nothing stopped the administration from getting warrants to eavesdrop on calls from the United States to al Qaeda before or after.

Foreign policy was captured by neoconservative ideologues, a small group of sectarians rooted in the hothouse environment of the capital's right-wing think tanks. Its principals had been fired from the Reagan administration after the Iran-contra scandal and banished from the elder Bush's administration, but Bush rewarded them with positions at the strategic heights of national security. These cadres operated with a Leninist sensibility following a party line, engaging in fierce polemics, using harsh invective, and showing equal contempt for traditional Republicans and liberal Democrats. Cheney acted as their sponsor, protector and promoter. Under his aegis, they ran foreign policy from the White House and the Pentagon. Secretary of State Colin Powell was sidelined. The Undersecretary of State John Bolton, inserted by Cheney, blocked Powell's initiatives and spied on him and his team, reporting back to the Office of the Vice President. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made a separate peace and turned the National Security Council into an augmented force for Cheney and the neocons. Meanwhile, Republican realists, including elder Bush's closest associates such as Brent Scowcroft, were isolated or purged.

The 60-year tradition of bipartisan internationalism was jettisoned. After the Afghanistan war against the Taliban, the administration elevated into a "Bush Doctrine" the policy of preemptive attack, previously alien to the principles of U.S. foreign policy and expressly rejected as dangerous to the nation's security by presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy during the Cold War.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, an internal campaign was waged against professionals of the intelligence community and diplomatic corps who still upheld standards of objective analysis and carrying on the traditions of U.S. foreign policy. Intense political pressure was applied to them to distort or suppress their assessments if they contained caveats and to give credence to disinformation fabricated by Iraqi exiles favored by the neoconservatives. A special operation of neocons was set up at the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, to "stovepipe" information directly into the White House without passing through the analytical filter of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Cheney made several unprecedented personal visits to CIA headquarters to try to intimidate analysts into certifying the disinformation. The caveats and warnings of the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Energy, and the intelligence services of Germany and France were all ignored.

In making its case for war the administration stampeded public opinion with false and misleading information about Saddam Hussein's possession and development of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. Later his National Security Adviser Rice (promoted to Secretary of State in the second term) admitted that President Bush had made a false statement in his 2003 State of the Union address about Iraq's seeking uranium to produce nuclear weapons. Yet Bush, Cheney, Rice and other officials had constantly suggested that Hussein was linked to terrorism and those behind the attacks on September 11. Secretary of State Powell's best-case presentation before the United Nations was later proven to contain 26 major falsehoods. Not a single substantial claim he made turned out to be true. He explained he had been "deceived." He called it the biggest "blot" on his record. His chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said it was the "lowest point of my life." It was certainly the lowest point of U.S. credibility.

After he resigned in 2005, Wilkerson revealed how a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" controlled national security policy: "Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift – not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and 'guardians of the turf.' But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well."

Less than a year after September 11, the administration was beset by disclosures that it had refused to take terrorism seriously before the attacks and by stories about dysfunction at the FBI. An FBI agent at the Minneapolis bureau, Coleen Rowley, emerged with documentation of how the Bureau had ignored warnings of the coming terrorist strike. On the day that she testified before the Senate, June 6, 2002, Bush suddenly announced a dramatic reversal of his position against the Democratic proposal for a Department of Homeland Security. Rowley's story was blotted out.

Bush now turned the issue of a new department against the Democrats in the midterm elections, following Rove's script. In Bush's proposal the department would not recognize unions, and because the Democrats believed that employees should have the right to form unions they were cast as weak on homeland security and terrorism. Against this backdrop, Rove helped direct attacks on the patriotism of Democrats in the 2002 midterm elections. In one Republican television commercial, the face of Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a Vietnam veteran who had lost three limbs, was morphed into that of Osama bin Laden, and Cleland lost. The Republicans captured the Senate by one seat.

The tactics used against Democrats were also deployed to stifle contrary views within the administration and to taint the motives of those who had served and become critics. Any loyalist, no matter the egregious error of judgment, was vaunted; any heretic was burned. Bush's radical remaking of government demanded a relentless war against professionals who did not operate according to ideological tenets but objective standards of analysis.

In 2003, the disillusioned Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa, a traditional business-oriented Republican, published a memoir, <http://www.amazon. com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/ 0743255461/ lewrockwell/>The Price of Loyalty, recounting that the deficit was deliberately fostered as a political tool contrary to economic merits. He disclosed that the invasion of Iraq was raised at a National Security Council meeting ten days after the inauguration. And he described the president among his advisers as being "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." The administration' s response was to investigate O'Neill for supposedly unlawfully making public classified materials. It was a patently false charge, he was exonerated, but it succeeded in changing the subject and silencing him.

When, in 2003, retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni criticized the administration' s Iraq policy and the neoconservatives' instrumental part played in its formulation, conservative media retaliated by labeling him "anti-Semitic. " The former U.S. commander of Central Command and Bush's envoy to the Middle East, who had endorsed Bush in 2000, had told the Washington Post, "The more I saw, the more I thought that this was the product of the neocons who didn't understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an idea that worked on the ground ... I don't know where the neocons came from – that wasn't the platform they ran on."

In July 2003, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times detailing that he had been sent on a mission by the CIA before the Iraq war to Niger, where he discovered that the administration claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase enriched yellowcake uranium there for building nuclear weapons was untrue. Despite his report and that of two others the president insisted in his 2003 State of the Union that Hussein was in fact seeking uranium for nuclear weaponry. The counterattack against Wilson was swift. A week after his piece appeared, the conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote that "two senior administration officials" had informed him that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, had been responsible for sending him on his mission. The intent was somehow to cast aspersions on Wilson's credibility. (For his service as the acting U.S. ambassador in Iraq during the Gulf War, elder Bush had called him "a hero.") The disclosure of Plame's identity was an apparent felony against national security, a violation of the Intelligence Identity Protection Act, and soon a special prosecutor was appointed, and the president and the vice president were interviewed, along with much of the White House senior staff. Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice.

When, in March 2004, Richard Clarke, chief of counterterrorism on the National Security Council, testified before the 9/11 Commission and elaborated in a book, <http://www.amazon. com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/ 0743260244/ lewrockwell/>Against All Enemies, that the Bush administration had ignored terrorism before September 11, his credibility was attacked by the administration and his motivations questioned. By then, the smearing of whistleblower career professionals had become a familiar pattern.

Traditional Republicans emerged among Bush's most penetrating critics, from O'Neill to Wilkerson, from Zinni to Clarke. They were not hostile to Bush when he entered office; on the contrary, they were willing and eager to serve under him. They observed first-hand, more than opponents on the outside, the radical changes Bush was making within the government. As Republicans, more than Democrats, they understood which traditions of their own were being traduced.

Bush's war on terror melded with his culture war at home. Never before had a president attempted so vigorously to batter down the wall of separation between church and state. In 2005, Bush proclaimed himself a votary of the "culture of life" as he signed unprecedented legislation seeking to reverse numerous state and federal court decisions that the husband of a woman named Terri Schiavo, in a persistent vegetative state for years, could end her life support. Political opportunism in the guise of theology trampled the Constitution.

Bush's appointments to the federal judiciary were an attempt to reverse the direction of the law for at least 70 years. Nearly all of his nominees were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative group of lawyers who seek to propagate certain doctrines and advance each other's careers. One of these doctrines is called "originalism, " the belief that the intent of the framers can be applied to all modern problems and lead to conservative legal solution. Yet another is called the "Constitution in exile," a school of thought that argues that the true Constitution has been suppressed since President Franklin D. Roosevelt began naming justices to the Supreme Court and that its hidden law must be revived. One of Bush's judiciary appointments, Janice Rogers Brown, lecturing before a Federalist Society meeting, referred to the New Deal as "Revolution of 1937," and denounced it as "the triumph of our socialist revolution." It was hardly a surprise that Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, federal appellate court judge Samuel Alito, was a proponent of the theory of the "unitary executive" and a wholehearted supporter of executive power.

No other president has ever been hostile to science. Russell Train, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator under presidents Nixon and Ford, observed, "How radically we have moved away from regulation based on independent findings and professional analysis of scientific, health and economic data by the responsible agency to regulation controlled by the White House and driven primarily by political considerations. "

Bush's opposition to stem cell research was just the beginning of his enmity toward science. The words "reproductive health" and "condoms" were forbidden from appearing on websites of agencies or organizations that received federal funds. At the Food and Drug Administration, staff scientists and two independent advisory panels were overruled in order to deny the public access to emergency contraception. At the Centers for Disease Control, scientifically false information was posted on its website to foster doubt about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV/AIDS. At the President's Council on Bioethics, two scientists were fired for dissents based on scientific reasoning. At the National Cancer Institute, staff scientists were suppressed as the administration planted a story on its website falsely connecting breast cancer to abortion. The top climate scientist at NASA, James Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was ordered muzzled after he noted at a scientific conference the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The president also suggested that public schools should equally teach evolution, the basis of all biological science, and "Intelligent Design," a pseudo-scientific version of creationism. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said.

Bush's antipathy to science had an overlapping political appeal to both the religious right and industrial special interests. Scientific research was distorted and suppressed at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The administration censored and misrepresented scientific reports on climate change, air pollution, endangered species, soil conservation, mercury emissions, and forests. Scientists were dismissed or rejected from numerous science advisory committees, from the Lead Poisoning Prevention Panel to the Army Science Board.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, university presidents, medical experts, and former federal agency directors from both Democratic and Republican administrations, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement entitled "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking. " It declared: "The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease if the public is to be properly informed about issues central to its well being, and the nation is to benefit fully from its heavy investment in scientific research and education."

When Hurricane Katrina landed in August 2005 scientific reality and dysfunctional government collided. Bush had systematically distorted, suppressed and ignored evidence of global warming, which scientists believed was responsible for intensifying hurricanes. The director of the National Hurricane Center had briefed Bush on the devastating impact on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Katrina before it hit, but the president disregarded the advance warning. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which under President Clinton had been one of the most efficient and effective, had become a morass of incompetence and political cronyism. Amid its abject failure, Bush praised its director Michael Brown, whose previous experience was as the head of the International Arabian Horse Association, as doing "a heck of a job." New Orleans, a major and unique American city, was destroyed. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Bush traveled six times to the city, promising to rebuild it to its former glory, but most of the city lay in ruins a year later. In January 2006, Bush declared that he had received no rebuilding plan, apparently unaware that he had already rejected it.

During the 2004 campaign, Bush's essential appeal was that he alone could keep the country safe from terrorists. Before and after the Iraq war, he implied that Saddam Hussein was in league with those responsible for September 11. On May 1, 2002, in his speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, behind a banner reading "Mission Accomplished, " he declared, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 – and still goes on." This theme was at the core of his campaign message and stump speech. When under questioning late in the campaign he admitted Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11, he still insisted Saddam was involved with al Qaeda. Bush's closing television commercial in his 2004 campaign showed a pack of wolves symbolizing terrorists about to prey on the viewer. The voiceover intoned: "And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm."

As his supporters saw him, his simplistic rhetoric was straight talk, his dogmatism fortitude, his swagger reassuring, his stubbornness made him seem like a rock against danger, and his rough edges were proof that he was a man of the people. His evangelical religion was central to his image as a man of conviction and his purity of heart. This persona helped insulate Bush from accusations that he got things wrong, misled and had ulterior motives.

Faith was as important in sustaining Bush's politics as fear. Evangelical ministers and conservative Catholic bishops turned their churches into political clubhouses. At the behest of Karl Rove, right-wingers put initiatives against gay marriage on the ballot in 16 swing states that were instrumental in maximizing the vote for Bush there in the 2004 election.

The White House carefully tended an alternative universe of belief into which its supporters took a leap of faith. From the Schiavo case to Intelligent Design, from the morning after pill to abstinence, Bush sent signals of encouragement to the religious right. His anti-scientific approach helped arouse suspicion and detestation of "experts." Critics were tainted as "elitists." Contempt for contrary facts was cultivated as a psychological prop of the leader's authority.

In 2004, the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes issued a study, "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters." It reported that 72 percent of Bush supporters believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction even after the U.S. Iraq Survey Group had definitively concluded that it had none. Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters believed that Saddam Hussein had been providing help to al Qaeda; 55 percent believed that the 9/11 Commission had proved that point, though the commission's report had disproved it and Bush had been forced to deny it. The social scientists conducting the survey observed that respondents held these beliefs because they said the Bush administration and conservative media had confirmed them.

Near the end of the campaign, a senior White House aide explained the "faith-based" school of political thought to reporter Ron Suskind, who wrote in the New York Times Magazine: "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

The method described by the Bush aide was an updated version of the insight of the philosopher Francis Bacon, who, in 1625, wrote in his essay "Of Vaine-Glory" : "For Lies are sufficient to breed Opinion, and Opinion brings on Substance."

The "separate realities" of Bush and Kerry supporters studied by the University of Maryland extended to the facts of their military records, controversies about which became decisive events in the campaign and case studies in the manipulation of information. Bush had numerous mysterious discrepancies in his Vietnam era service in the Texas Air National Guard, especially being absent without leave for a year. It is indisputable that he never actually completed his service. How he entered his unit through special preference and under what circumstances he was discharged without having finished his requirements was the subject of an investigation by CBS's "60 Minutes." The program's use of documents that could not be authenticated, though various witnesses confirmed the underlying facts, aroused an intense attack from Republican activists and the White House, and the entire exposé was discredited because of the journalistic lapse.

The Bush White House had anticipated the potential scandal in his military background, particularly in contrast to the record of Senator Kerry, who was a genuine war hero, awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. In order to undermine Kerry's strong point and defend Bush's weak one, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was created, funded and its public relations handled by Bush allies, and led by one John O'Neill, who had been selected by the Nixon White House to hector Kerry during the Vietnam era. The group accused Kerry of having falsely earned his medals and subsequently lied about his war experiences. Though the Navy officially affirmed his right to his medals and those who served directly with him upheld his account, the Swift Boat Veterans were granted extensive media attention as if their fabrications were a valid point of view that must be heard. On cable television especially, and on CNN in particular, a perverse form of objectivity prevailed in which the news organization abdicated establishing the facts and allowed defamation to be presented as though it was just one reasonable side of a debate.

The Bush White House, drawing harsh cautionary lessons from the Nixon experience, considered the press an extremely dangerous enemy that must be treated with contempt – isolated, intimidated, and, if not made pliable, discredited. The administration favored Fox News and other conservative media, using them as quasi-official government propaganda organs. Joining the long project by the conservative movement, the administration sought to bring the press into disrepute and marginalize it. If journalists did not support the administration' s talking points or operate from its premises, they were assailed as unfair and biased.

The conservative campaign against journalism as "liberal media" was Leninist in its assumption that truth and fact were inherently sectarian and instrumental. Acting on this premise, the press was subjected to constant and elaborate campaigns of intimidation. The administration enjoyed unprecedented success. Not a single report in any major newspaper or on the broadcast news networks covered the campaign of intimidation, as the press had once readily reported on Nixon's early effort, progenitor of the current strategy.

As giant corporate conglomerates with extensive holdings in industries subject to all manner of government regulation, media outlets were sensitive to pressure from the administration. The effort to make the mainstream media compliant was so dedicated that even Cheney himself called corporate owners to complain about individual correspondents and stories. (In 2005, Time Warner, which owns CNN, hired Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's chief of staff, Timothy Berry, as its chief Washington lobbyist.)

After September 11 and in the rush to war in Iraq, a jingoist spirit infected elements of the press corps and for a long time they largely abandoned holding the government accountable. The New York Times' news reports on weapons of mass destruction and the Washington Post's editorials were indispensable in lending credence to the disinformation on which the administration made its case for the Iraq war. (The Times published a lengthy editor's note on the failures of its coverage and the Times' chief correspondent on WMD, Judith Miller, eventually resigned from the newspaper. The Post refused to acknowledge how it had been misled in its editorials before the war.) The long-term damage to the credibility of the prestige press is incalculable.

Reality was often too radical and threatening for many in the press to venture covering. Those who dared were frequently thrust into fierce conflicts. Some were subject to legal investigations by the Justice Department (for example, the New York Times for reporting on Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance and the Washington Post for reporting on secret prisons for detainees). Some were even subjected to innuendo and invasions of private life (for example, after broadcasting a story on Army morale an ABC News reporter was outed as gay by right-wing gossip columnist Matt Drudge, who claimed he was given the information by a White House source).

A gay prostitute without journalistic background, carrying press credentials from a phony media operation financed by right-wing Texas Republicans, was granted access to the regular White House press briefings and the press secretary employed the tactic of calling on him to break up the questioning of legitimate reporters. The White House also funneled federal funds to conservatives posing as legitimate journalists and commentators. Bush's chairman of the Public Broadcasting System, Kenneth Tomlinson, drove distinguished journalist Bill Moyers off the air for his heretical views and approved a show for the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Tomlinson commissioned an enemies list of "liberal media" on PBS in order to guide purging the network. (Tomlinson resigned in November 2005 after the Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting found he had violated PBS rules by meddling in programming and contracting. )

By containing and curbing the press, Bush attempted to remove another constitutional check and balance on his power. When President Bush made an extended joke at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner about his inability to find WMD in Iraq – "Not here," he said, narrating a film depicting him looking under his desk in the Oval Office – the 1,500 members of the assembled press corps burst into raucous laughter like pledges to his fraternity.

Bush's admirers have cast him in the mold of Shakespeare' s <http://www.amazon. com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/ 0743484878/ lewrockwell/>Henry V, a wastrel royal son who upon rising to the purple realizes his leadership in war. Some detractors offered an opposite portrait of the dry drunk. But these literary and psychological theories failed to assess Bush's radicalism in the historical and constitutional terms of the American presidency.

Bush has deliberately sought to institute radical changes in the character of the presidency and American government that would permanently alter the constitutional system. He used the "global war on terrorism" to impose a "unitary executive" of absolute power, disdainful of the Congress and brushing aside the judicial branch when he felt it necessary (for example, his domestic surveillance outside the FISA court). He issued many "signing statements" (a device originally designed by Samuel Alito when he served as an aide in the Reagan Justice Department) to express his own understanding of the meaning of enacted legislation and how the executive branch would or would not enforce it. The Bush White House concept of the executive was the full flowering of the imperial presidency as conceived by Richard Nixon.

Operationally, within the White House, the Office of the Vice President controlled foreign policy, making the National Security Council its auxiliary, and the flow of information to the president. No vice president was ever as powerful.

Bush was unusually incurious and passive in seeking facts. He never demanded worst-case scenarios. His circle of advisers was tightly restricted. Only a select few of the White House staff were permitted to see him, much less interact with him. He made no effort to establish independent sources of information. He never circulated to his staff articles that sparked a policy interest in him. When his support in public opinion declined, he soaked up the flattery of his aides that the people had momentarily lapsed in their appreciation of his heroic strength and vision.

Accountability was treated as a threat to executive power, not as essential to democratic governance. No one up the chain of command was held responsible for the crimes of Abu Ghraib. No one who committed grievous errors of judgment in the Iraq war was held to account. Instead they were showered with honors, medals and promotions.

Bush's radical White House depended on one-party control of the Congress. The Republican Congress supported the consolidation of executive power, even at the expense of congressional prerogatives. Oversight was studiously neglected. On any matter that might cause irritation to the White House, hearings were not held or quashed. When the White House did not produce requested documents, for example, on its conduct in response to Hurricane Katrina, there were no repercussions from the Republican Congress. The intelligence committees and the House Armed Services, among other committees, covered up administration malfeasance. The Senate Intelligence Committee skewed and distorted its report on intelligence leading into the Iraq war to acquit the administration of responsibility and refused to conduct a promised investigation into administration political pressures on the intelligence community.

The Republicans in Congress enforced discipline by creation of a pay-for-play system. Lobbyists, trade associations and law firms were told that unless they contributed to Republican campaign funds and hired Republicans they would be treated with disfavor. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay developed this political machine, called the K Street Project, to a high degree of control over Washington, until he was forced to resign his post due to indictment for criminal campaign fundraising practices. Jack Abramoff, a super-lobbyist, worked closely with DeLay, and when Abramoff pled guilty in January 2006 to fraud, tax evasion and criminal conspiracy he triggered the biggest congressional scandal in modern history. Abramoff was also plugged into the White House, linked to Rove, and even attended staff meetings.

Bush's presidency was uniquely radical in its elevation of absolute executive power, dismissal of the other branches of government, contempt for law, dominant power of the vice president, networks of ideological cadres, principle of unaccountability, stifling of internal debate, reliance on one-party rule, and overtly political use of war. Never before had a president shown disdain for science and sought to batter down the wall of separation between church and state. None of it seemed in the offing upon Bush's inauguration in 2001. Yet these actions were not sudden impulses, spontaneous reactions or accidental gestures. They were based on deliberate decisions intended to change the presidency and government fundamentally and forever. And these decisions had deep historical roots.

One of the distinctive sources of Bush's radicalism was that he was the first Southern conservative ever elected to the presidency. Southern politics has always contained varied and conflicting traditions. Through Bush, a reactionary Southern political tradition captured the center of the federal government, a phenomenon that has never occurred before. His brand of conservatism is the _expression of a commodity-based oligarchy rooted in Texas, deeply hostile to the New Deal, dedicated to neglect of public services, seeking to maintain class and racially based hierarchies. Using the rhetoric of limited government and states' rights these Texas conservatives claim control over government in order to consolidate power and wealth. Both Bush and Cheney (former chief executive officer of Halliburton, a Texas-based company) come out of the oil patch background. Bush's language about "compassionate conservatism" was a simple emollient to ease the way for his harsher political and policy imperatives.

In method, spirit and goals, Bush's project was the opposite of the New Deal, which was a great improvisation in the spirit of American pragmatism, "bold, persistent experimentation, " as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it. The New Deal, in the face of the greatest domestic crisis since the Civil War, mobilized the capacities of government for the general welfare. The New Frontier of John F. Kennedy and the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson extended the New Deal in its social inclusiveness, reforming immigration policy, ending poverty among the elderly, and expanding education. Most significantly, on racial justice, the frustrated legacy of Reconstruction and the great Civil War constitutional amendments was finally realized.

The three Southern presidents of the 20th century were all progressive Democrats – Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. If Woodrow Wilson were to be counted as a fourth, having been born in Virginia, he would also fit the profile of progressive (though definitely of the pre-civil rights era, given his support for segregation within the federal government). Harry Truman, from the border state of Missouri, must be categorized as one of the great liberals (including on civil rights).

In the 19th century, the Southerners in the White House, from Jefferson through Andrew Jackson, represented expanded democracy. The only Southern conservative to hold the office before the Civil War was John Tyler, who acceded to the presidency after the sudden death of William Henry Harrison, the first Whig president. Tyler was a conservative Democrat from Virginia and a man without a party whose tenure was an accidental one term. Zachary Taylor, the last Whig, from Louisiana, a national hero as the triumphant commander in the Mexican War, was setting himself against the pro-slavery forces from the South, including his son-in-law Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, at the time of his death. Andrew Johnson, another accident and anomaly, was both a vehement populist and conservative, who used the presidency to attempt to scuttle Reconstruction in the name of a white man's democracy. Lyndon Johnson, the first elected Southerner since the Civil War, of course, was the greatest president on civil rights since Ulysses Grant.

The two great epochal crises in American history after the revolution – the Civil War and the Great Depression – were accelerated and deepened by passive, accommodating or stubbornly out of touch presidents – James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. Political and economic forces they failed to control or understand overcame them. But neither sought conflict or courted turmoil, even though they accelerated it. By contrast, Bush purposefully polarized differences in the country for political advantage.

In foreign policy, Bush freely appropriated the language of Woodrow Wilson about freedom and democracy. But Wilson sought to bring the U.S. into a new international system of law. Bush's unilateralism opposed the Wilsonian heritage at every turn, exemplified by his appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations.

Bush also claimed to stand in the conservative tradition of Ronald Reagan. Indeed, Reagan sought to overturn longstanding policies of Democratic and Republican presidents alike in his pursuit of a radical and often fanciful conservatism. But when he found himself cornered by realities, Reagan the ideologue gave way to Reagan the old union negotiator prepared for compromise. Facing reality, he gave up his rhetoric about privatizing Social Security to join with Democrats to fund its long-term solvency. After the Iran-contra scandal, he summarily dismissed his neoconservative aides and forged a détente with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that helped lead to the end of the Cold War. That achievement, which required disenthralling his administration from the right wing, was his finest moment and the enduring basis of his presidential reputation. Had he not cast out the right, he would have remained covered with disgrace in history.

George W. Bush's father, Reagan's vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush, pointedly blackballed the neoconservatives from his administration. Yet the son George dusted off Reagan's discredited zealots and their doctrines to provide him with reasons for a war of choice in Iraq. His rejection of his father's realism in foreign policy was pointed and that rejection signaled a larger radicalism.

Nothing like Bush's concerted radicalism has ever been seen before in the White House. One would have to go back to the Civil War era to find politics as polarized. But not even the president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, ran as extreme and insulated an administration. Davis, a former U.S. senator and Secretary of War, appointed men he knew to be experienced politicians and diplomats to responsible positions within his government, and kept the radical Fire-eaters at bay. As soon as the Fire-eaters' vision of an independent slave republic materialized through secession they were consigned to the sidelines, where they remained as critics of the Confederate president for the duration of the Civil War.

Never before has a president so single-handedly and willfully been the source of national and international crises. The tragedy of September 11 cannot be offered as the sole justification to explain his actions. In his first inaugural address, Bush cited a biblical passage about an "angel in the whirlwind." His presidency has been a self-created whirlwind.

In 1900, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a sympathetic biography of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the short-lived English republic of the 17th century. While Roosevelt admired many of Cromwell's intentions to create representative government, he described how Cromwell's volatile temperament undermined his virtuous goals. "In criticizing Cromwell, however, we must remember that generally in such cases an even greater share of blame must attach to the nation than to the man." Roosevelt continued:

"Self-governing freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole. When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands."

The tragedy that Theodore Roosevelt described is not reserved in its broad dimensions to Britain. Roosevelt wrote his history as a lesson for Americans, who had been spared the travesties of the English revolution. Instead of Cromwell, we had had Washington. Ultimately, a people are responsible for its leaders. Bush's legacy will encompass a crisis over democracy that only the American people can resolve.

September 19, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Sidney Blumenthal

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

El Nino

2006-09-15T18:49:25Z

BULLETIN ITEM: NOAA Joins MWM In Predicting: El Nino weather pattern forms in Pacific

MWM: I stuck my neck out before they did! In the article below they have a couple of things not right. One is that most likely the biggest factor in the mild hurricane season in the Atlantic has to do much more with the normalized Gulf temperature and the anomalously hot North Atlantic sea surface temperatures. All the prime suck patterns were changed favoring cross sheer to prevent the build up of the vortex strength. Also, PRACTICALLY ZIP help from ionic flows from the Sun. There was tremendous help last year for Katrina and the one before it, if you will remember. Almost none this year. Ionic flow expands the atmosphere, creating UP suck to strengthen voxtec formation. No UP suck, weaker storm fronts. Also also, the El Nino formation is not strong enough yet to have had such an impact posited by NOAA. Having said that I do believe that the El Nino is coming along quite briskly, the most briskly since the1997/98 El Nino. Accordingly I have some suspicions that we can in fact "lean" predictively towards a vigorous El Nino, but I also suspect, because of plateauing of solar conditions at low and flat line during last two years of volcanic conditions, that this El Nino might not be as vigorous as the 97/98. My only hesitation in forecasting about this is that we are pretty blind to what is actually happening within the ocean depths and the East Pacific Rise. We do know that the Mid Indian Rise has generated a lot of heat during the last two years and we also know that the East Paciific Rise has been pretty vigorous seismically during the past two years, so, this may be a key indicator which points to a lot of underwater volcanism there and thus a very vigorous El Nino. We shall see what we shall see.

From: "Ian"
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 23:35:21 -0700
Subject: [phoenix-quest] El Nino

Print this article Close This Window
El Nino weather pattern forms in Pacific
Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:19 PM ET

By Rene Pastor

NEW YORK (Reuters) - El Nino, an extreme warming of equatorial waters
in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc with world weather conditions, has
formed and will last into 2007, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration said on Wednesday.

The El Nino has already helped make the Atlantic hurricane season
milder than expected, said a forecaster for the NOAA.

"The weak El Nino is helping to explain why the hurricane season is
less than we expected. El Ninos tend to suppress hurricane activity in the
Atlantic," said Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster for NOAA.

The NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said the El Nino probably
will spur warmer-than- average temperatures this winter over western and
central Canada and the western and northern United States.

It said El Nino also will cause wetter-than- average conditions in the
U.S. Gulf Coast and Florida, and spark dry conditions in the Ohio valley,
the Pacific Northwest and most U.S. islands in the tropical Pacific.

In Asia and South America, the last severe El Nino killed hundreds of
people and caused billions of dollars in damage as crops shriveled across
the Asia-Pacific basin. This El Nino has caused drier-than-average
conditions across Indonesia, Malaysia and most of the Philippines.

Indonesia is the most populous Moslem country with over 200 million
people, while the Philippines have nearly 90 million. Both are major
importers of U.S. grains.

The CPC Web site said surface temperatures were substantially warmer
than normal by early September in the Pacific. Scientists detect formation
of El Ninos by monitoring sea surface temperatures with a system of buoys.

"Currently, weak El Nino conditions exist, but there is a potential
for this event to strengthen into a moderate event by winter," Vernon
Kousky, the chief El Nino expert at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said
in a statement.

"The latest...prediction s indicate El Nino conditions for the
remainder of 2006 and into the northern hemisphere spring (of) 2007," the
CPC Web site explained.

El Nino, which means 'little boy' in Spanish, hits once every three
years or so. Anchovy fishermen in South America noticed the phenomenon in
the 19th century and named it for the Christ child since it appeared around
Christmas, and it normally peaks late in the year.

EL NINO HINDERS HURRICANES

One immediate impact of the El Nino is during the current Atlantic
hurricane season, which follows on the heels of the record 28 storms and 15
hurricanes which struck in 2005.

Last year's howlers included monsters like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita
and Wilma. But this El Nino apparently has helped hinder storm formation in
2006. So far, there has only been seven tropical storms and two hurricanes
halfway through the hurricane season, which begins June 1 and ends November
30.

Scientists said El Ninos disrupt storm formation because it allows
wind shear to rip apart thunderstorms in the center of the hurricanes,
reducing power and intensity as a result.

U.S. NORTHEAST IN FOR MILDER WINTER

An El Nino also usually leads to milder winter weather in the U.S.
northeast, the top heating oil market in the world.

Bell said scientists will have a better idea in the fall how long this
El Nino will last. "There's no way to say at this time how strong it is
going to be. It's too early," he said.

The last severe El Nino struck in 1997/98. The weather phenomenon
caused searing drought in Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines while
causing rampant flooding in Ecuador and Chile, the world's top producer of
copper.

The NOAA's climate prediction Web site is:
<http://www.cpc. ncep.noaa. gov/products/ analysis_ monitoring/ enso_advisory/ index.html>http://www.cpc. ncep.noaa. gov/products/ analysis_ monitoring/ enso_advisory/ index.html

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

stop the madness

2006-09-15T18:47:11Z

BULLETIN ITEM:

With every Bush lie, more American soldiers die

MWM: The Stategic Crux: Below is exhilerating and frightening news. A sea change is rapidly coming. What is exhilerating is that we can now see that the generals will no longer lie and support the Imperial Bushiters. They are now clearly telling everybody that there is utterly no point under existing conditions to remain in the Mideast and that time is running against the army. NO OBJECTIVES CAN BE MET. Greater and greater loss is now inevitable. That generates a strategic necessity to make a real choice in the moral world. Fold your hand and withdraw as graciously as you can. Or up the ante. We already know that the generals are NOT interested in upping the ante. We also already know that the Bushiters in the White House have just told us in their speeches this past week that they WILL up the ante to win if necessary. Accordingly, the world conflict is now in Washington DC and the U.S. AND YOUR MIND. Except for a bunch of crazed neo nazi zionists in Israel, Americans are now pretty isolated and thus must now struggle mainly with themselves. Here below Thompson et al are clearly telling us that Bush has reduced himself to the inevitable estate of any pathelogical liar, he is unable to distinquish the truth and thus can no longer think rationally. Accordingly we have a full blown, raging national psychosis. All thought and actions are currently based on hallucinations, not trippy ones, fubars which cannot be distinquished from reality. The NY Warcast Machinery, as we know, are working 24/7 in ways which actually deepen the psychosis. BUT the ray of hope here is that organizations like Capital Hill Blue is now aware that 9/11 was a part of the criminal hoax and Amy Goodman has also finally come around, still with great hesitancy, to realize that she cannot continue to ignore the deep criminality of this disgusting Bush/Cheney regime. It is not a matter of ideology, issues, competency, programs, and winning debates, as leftists like to posit the world, it is about gangsters, corruptions, crimes, and mass violence where the coin in trade is lies and slap-bitch routines. We are in a vicious street fight where nothing is fair, legal, or just, and do not suppose otherwise.

THE ONLY LEG BUSH HAS LEFT TO STAND ON IS 9/11. The way to defeat this entire imperial coup which has been underway the past several years is to destroy in every way possible the credibility of 9/11. EXPOSE THE HOAX. EXPOSE THE HOAX AND BUSH IS REDUCED TO A SMELLY PILE OF LOWLIFE. You do not have to believe everything which all the exposers are saying. I don't. But the main ingredients are pretty clearly exposed now. There is utterly no way that there was not a lot of governmental crookedness going on. HELP DO SOMETHING TO EXPOSE THE HOAX. AS YOU CRUISE THE WEB, FOR INSTANCE, SEND A COPY OF MY BRIEF ON THE 9/11 HOAX, OR A LINK TO IT, TO EDITORS, WRITERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY, ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY. MY BRIEF IS USEFUL BECAUSE IT HAS CLEAR LINKS TO THE BEST SOURCES OF REASONABLE INFORMATION AND PEOPLE ON THE TOPIC. IT PUTS THE WHOLE STORY TOGETHER AND SHOWS THE RANGE OF OPINION. This type of thing is best sent by people other than the creator, so that is why I am pushing this so hard to subscribers of the EC Bulletins. Or pick anything else you think appropriate. The Loose Change material is very very good. This whole war will be won in the "air" in our media joined minds. PLEASE PICK UP AN INFO-WEAPON AND FIRE SOME ROUNDS AT THE IMPERIALS. Do you remember 2002, and I began using the "Imperial Faction" and talking about their plan to expand empire and how it would all come to a tragic end. A lot of EC Bulletin Subscribers could not see why I abruptly began to cover the international struggle. Understanding the history of the world in classical Hellenic terms (Plato/Aristotle/ Cicero, etc.), not as an "american", I can see it all. Hardly ANYONE was using that terminology. Consistently, day after day I plugged away, amplifying Palast, Phillips, Goodman, Hersch, etc. ...now a great portion of the world is using imperial and empire and tragedy to describe what is going on. Does it make a difference? Obviously. I was part of the wave which built the critical mass for the wave. Please, don't just read there and pass on down the pike. Jones has it right. PIck up an info-weapon and start firing away at the Bushiters. This next wave, if we act together, is gonna be a breaker of tall proportions and it is coming up fast. Give it as much power as you know to do. Thanks, MWM

With every Bush lie, more American soldiers die

From Capital Hill Blue
September 13, 2006 6:31 AM | <http://www.capitolh illblue.com/ content/the_ rant/>Rant | 16 Comments .

By DOUG THOMPSON

It shouldn't surprise anyone that George W. Bush continues to lie to the American people about Iraq. Bush lies so much that it is doubtful now that even he can separate truth from fiction.

But the people who actually fight wars, unlike the coward-in-chief who ran and hid in the Texas Air Guard to avoid defending his country in Vietnam, say we are losing the Iraq war and cannot, under current operational strategies, defeat the insurgents who kill dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Iraqi civilians every day.

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, a senior American commander in Iraq, told reporters in a phone interview Tuesday that the U.S.-led coalition effort cannot defeat the insurgents with present troop levels.

Zilmer says he has the resources to continue training Iraqis to fight the insurgents but he does not have the forces to actually beat the insurgents.

"If there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight - then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here," Zilmer said.

That's a startling admission for a general who was put on the phone by the White House to try and offset the damage by another military assessment that says American forces have lost control of Anbar province, an area now controlled by al-Qaeda.

A classified report by Col. Pete Devlin, Marine chief of intelligence for the Anbar conflict, says both the American military and the Iraqi government have lost control of Anbar to al-Qaeda and that al-Qaeda's influence is growing in Iraq.

Even Zilmer, the General assigned by the White House to put out the fire, won't lie for Bush about the report.

"I have seen that report, and I do concur with that assessment," he admits.

Which adds another irony to Bush's dirty little war. He lied about a so-called link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda to justify his war to a gullible Congress. Now he admits such a link did not exist but he overlooks the fact that the American invasion of Iraq has given al-Qaeda a chance to gain a strong position in the country along with other terrorist and insurgent groups that did not exist under Hussein's rule.

Bush claims we must "stay the course" in Iraq because leaving would let the insurgents and terrorists take over. What he doesn't say is that it was the U.S. invasion that created the conditions that allowed the insurgents and terrorists to gain a foothold in the country.

Most residents of Baghdad must live without electrical power for parts of the day because the U.S. can't keep the power plants running. Most cannot venture out into their own city because the insurgents rule the streets, not American soldiers and certainly not the puppet Iraqi government that the Bush administration installed.

Soldiers returning from Iraq are <http://www.capitolh illblue.com/ artman/publish/ article_7918. shtml>given talking points from their commanders and are told to "talk up" the war in interviews with their hometown media. Most throw the talking points away. They know the Pentagon spin is bullshit and the President of the United States is a liar. They put their lives on the line for a man who would not fight for his country when he had the chance and many of them resent doing so.

And who can blame them for being bitter? Every rationale, every reason, every justification for invading Iraq has been proven false. It is a war based on and fueled by lies. Vice President Dick Cheney <http://www.usatoday .com/news/ world/iraq/ 2003-03-31- then-and- now-usat_ x.htm>bragged that American soldiers would be greeted as liberators. They are booed and cursed as invaders and occupiers. Bush continues to paint rosy pictures of success as increasing numbers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians die.

Yet the President will continue to lie and his lies will continue to get air play thanks to a well-orchestrated media manipulation program put together by his operatives.

"As the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks unfolds, it has come to look less like a sad remembrance of the past and more like a troubling glimpse into the future, a window to a new-age totalitarianism that looms before the United States, where a powerful right-wing government tells lies aided and abetted by friendly media corporations, " says journalist Robert Parry, a former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra scandal stories during the Reagan years.

Writes Parry on <http://www.consorti umnews.com/ 2006/091106. html>Consortiumnews. com:
So, even as the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee finally acknowledge some of the many Iraq War falsehoods told by George W. Bush and his senior advisers, Bush's misfeasance and malfeasance are obscured by Disney's ABC-TV "docu-drama" pinning most of the blame for the 9/11 catastrophe not on Bush, but on Democrats.

With Disney's selection of a right-wing director and with the secrecy that surrounded the project - that gave Democrats little time to react - "The Path to 9/11" also had the sickening feel of a collaboration between a giant corporation and the Republican government in power.

So, less than two months before a pivotal national election, with Americans increasingly wondering how the nation got into the mess it faces today, this joint project of Disney and pro-Bush operatives provides a narrative that focuses not on Bush blowing off CIA warnings of an impending attacks in 2001 but on events dating back to 1993.

Republican sources tell me Bush's political guru Karl Rove was "up to his eyeballs" in personal involvement with the ABC mini-series. That should come as no surprise to those familiar with Rove's modus operandi.

Concludes Parry:
Karl Rove and other Republican strategists project what effectively will be a one-party state, with the Republicans controlling all branches of government, using the federal courts to redefine the Constitution and keeping Democrats around as foils and boogey men to stir up the conservative base with warnings about the enemy within.

On this fifth anniversary of 9/11, President Bush and his Republican supporters are trying hard to revive the lost sentimental unity that followed the attacks. But the saddest legacy of that tragic day may be that it marked the path toward the end of the noble American Republic and the start of a new totalitarianism.

Parry is right. What Bush and his band of co-conspirators have accomplished is no less than a coup to overthrow the government of the United States.

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Doug Thompson also publishes a personal blog at <http://www.blueridg emuse.com>Blue Ridge Muse.

Comments

We need a Million Man March on the White House, of course if we did somehow organize such a march it would become an opportunity for the fascist in chief to order the use of the new "non-lethal" weapons which have been developed.

See the link below for info.

<http://www.cnn. com/2006/ US/09/12/ usaf.weapons. ap/index. html>http://www.cnn. com/2006/ US/09/12/ usaf.weapons. ap/index. html

Posted by: <http://soldatensend er.blogspot. com/>soldat | <http://www.capitolh illblue.com/ content/2006/ 09/with_every_ bush.html# comment-32463>September 13, 2006 8:07 AM

As sad as it may seem, rather than an abject failure, I'm now beginning to believe that Bush and his cabal's plans in the Middle East have actually been a resounding success from their point of view.

For their apparent collective "stupidity" has resulted in continued turmoil in the Middle East, which, in turn, allows the Government of Israel to continue its decades of racism, apartheid and hegemony in the region. What's more, Bush and Rummy's failure to "win the peace" in Iraq and Afghanistan has now virtually guaranteed that our troops will now be there for decades, which is exactly what the Government of Israel wants.

For decades, the Government of Israel has had both our Presidents and our members of the US Congress by the short hairs. Organizations like AIPAC (backed up by the ruthless scare tactics of the Israeli Mossad operating within our borders) have made absolutely sure of that.

Doug, you are absolutely correct...none of what the US is now fighting for in Iraq or Afghanistan has anything to do with finding weapons of mass destruction, bringing "democracy" to nations whose people haven't a clue as to what that word means, protecting our own "national security", or even lowering the price of oil.

Rather, I believe our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has everything to do with keeping the developing Moslem world in the Middle East a constant state of turmoil so as to underwrite and enable the Government of Israel's obsessive need to expand both its borders and its influence in the region. The Government of Israel's recent shameful performance in southern Lebanon…dropping cluster bombs and anti-personnel munitions on civilian targets…should leave absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind as to exactly what the Israeli Government's real intentions are.

In that sense, this is a regional "holy war" with governments comprised of Christians and Jews (along with their willing allies) seeking nothing short of a complete "ethnic cleansing" of the developing Moslem world around Israel. This, my friends, is the real reason why our troops are now fighting (and dying) in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and why they will continue to do so for many, many decades to come.

What's more, this ongoing holy war also guarantees that billions and billions of your and my tax dollars will continue flowing into the coffers of the hopelessly corrupt US defense contractors along with their various lobbyists and "think tanks" (not to mention keeping all those campaign contributions flowing into congressional campaign coffers from the now-fully-employed defense constituencies "back home"!). It's a win-win for everyone. This is, of course, except for the beleaguered US taxpayer and our brave (mostly young) soldiers who are giving their very lives to underwrite such blatant apartheid, shameful collusion and systemic government corruption.

Regardless of who actually caused it, Bush and the neocons nonetheless used 9/11 as a pretense to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. And mark my words, sometime after the mid-term Congressional elections and before the next Presidential election; another manufactured "retaliation" by the Government of Israel against Hezbollah (or some other manufactured terrorist "attack" somewhere else in the world) will be used as Bush's pretense to then invade the next country on the neocon "hit list"…Iran.

The turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan is actually working out far better than even the neocons had hoped. It's providing even more cannon fodder than they'd ever dreamed they'd have to justify their chicanery to a largely ignorant (and therefore easily panicked) American public. This, in turn, insures the US Congress will continue underwriting their overall master plan for the USA to eventually rule the world as the 21st Century's global imperial super-power.

If you want to read the post-Cold-War playbook the neocons (along with their willing co-conspirators in the White House and US Congress) are now following, I invite you all to point your browsers to:

<http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/article324 9.htm>http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/article324 9.htm

It's a lengthy read (particularly if you read all 80 pages of the original document) but well worth it to get a better perspective on where Bush and his handlers are leading us.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

What does professionalization mean in peace research?

2006-09-07T08:48:51Z

http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Galtung_PeaceProf.html

What does professionalization
mean in peace research?

Johan Galtung, TFF Associate

Dr hc mult, professor of peace studies, founder & co-director TRANSCEND:
A Network for Peace and Development

Keynote, International Peace Research Association, Calgary 1/7/2006

On professionalization in general

Generally, the sociology of professions identifies three characteristics of a profession:

[1] There is a range of SKILLS with which a range of professionals will handle a range of problems for a range of clients, with proven competence. The clients have an idea of what to expect from the professional, and the professional of what to expect from a client.

[2] There is a professional CODE OF CONDUCT, defining the relation of a professional to the clients, other professionals and others. The code of conduct may be supported by an oath.

[3] There is a pattern of ACCOUNTABILITY of the professional to the clients, to other professionals, and to others.

Professionalization of peace work moves us beyond peace research and studies, both indispensable for skills. The purpose of peace research is to produce intersubjectively communicable and verifiable KNOWLEDGE according to the general rules of research. Thus, research is incompatible with secrecy, as research has to take place in public space. And one purpose of peace studies is the communication of the findings of peace research, in line with general rules for education, another public space activity. The free access of the rest of society to what happens is of the essence. As peace workers are not planning to hurt or harm, in other words to exercise violence, s/he has nothing to conceal.

In the following a person exercising the peace profession will be referred to as "peace worker", like "social worker", or "peace professional" like "health professional". Others may find "peace specialist" more dignified. "Manager" must be avoided as active participation of the clients, those seeking professional advice, is of the essence. "Facilitator" is much better.

Government realism versus peace movement idealism: tertium datur?

To understand better where peace research may be heading, let me juxtapose governments and one special non-government, the peace movement. The governments of the state system of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia in a eurocentric view of history were successors to feudal lords, kings, emperors. They entered violence-war-peace with ULTIMA RATIO REGIS, the King's last argument, the gun, with frequent use; to he who has a hammer the world looks like a waiting nail. But that also holds for the negation of the government, the peace movement: to he who has a mouth the world looks like an attentive ear.

REALISM as a doctrine is based on the "ultima" above, force, not persuasion from basic principles, nor bargaining offering incentives, nor decision-making by authoritative bodies. A derivative of this thesis would be that the final word belongs to whoever has superior force, the big sticks of the big powers. In the present world Anglo- America; a peace proposal unacceptable to them is not "realistic".

The supreme goal of the realist will be security, meaning low probability of being hurt/harmed by the violence of any Other. The underlying philosophy is that Evil exists, ready to turn violent for violence's own sake, and that the only counter-measure is sufficient strength to deter and/or crush Evil; thereby producing security.

IDEALISM AS A DOCTRINE is based on persuasion from basic principles, particularly principles held to be universally valid, even self-evident. Such principles tend to be of the ought- rather than the is-variety, like the sacredness of (human) life, meaning (human) life should be considered sacred. But what if Other does not share that noble view? Or, "in a war there are only losers". But what if winning can be defined as losing least? An endless debate, with strong statements about human nature. Words, words, words.

Let us try to present the two positions along some dimensions, in no way claiming that the juxtaposition is complete, nor that there is not a solid range of variation. What we are looking for is, of course, a way of bridging the gap, even contradiction bolstered by solid hatred on both sides, and the use of violence, or nonviolence.

more at
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Galtung_PeaceProf.html

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consciousness update

2006-09-02T00:11:25Z

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/PenroseHonderichBragg.html

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housing-bubble-has-popped

2006-09-02T00:02:00Z

http://www.moneyweek.com/file/17452/the-us-housing-bubble-has-popped---what-now.html

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SINISTER FORCES: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

2006-09-01T23:05:15Z

===================
http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/sinisterforces.html

SINISTER FORCES: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: Book 1: The Nine
Peter Levenda
(Tine Day, USA 2005)
Reviewed by: H.P Albarelli Jr.

Peter Levenda poses a series of provocative questions in the Introduction to his utterly fascinating new book, ‘Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft’, the first volume in a series of three. “To what degree does mysticism (including occultism, religious organizations, and secret societies) influence politics? Can it be demonstrated that there is no real separation of church and state, despite most Americans’ belief?” Can it be revealed that the “world’s political leaders are motivated by (at times bizarre and outrageous) religious or spiritual convictions, thus threatening” the “very nature of the American way of life?”

In answering these questions, Levenda who first got his feet thoroughly wet in esoteric matters with his earlier book, ‘Unholy Alliance’, a frightening portrait of obsession and involvement with the occult by Hitler and the Nazisdelved deeply into often overlooked and ignored historical files and archives. Indeed, his research spanned nearly three decades and multiple cities, states, and countries, an arduous undertaking, to say the least.

And in the process a strange thing happened to Levenda: He encountered what some writers refer to as the “Coincidence Goblin,” a peculiar and recurring phenomena by which one experiences odd and disconcerting coincidences, which quickly lead into still odder coincidences until one gets the overwhelming and unshakeable sense that one has been ordained by some invisible higher power to write his or her book because he or she is part and parcel with it. Other writers brush off this bizarre occurrence as an unavoidable consequence of any serious research into subjects that concern the occult, or those sinister forces that always seen to be at play in worldly affairs.

Writers of authoritative volumes, old and new, that deal with the esoteric occasionally publicly remark about their disconcerting experiences related to occult-related research recalling very unusual happenings ranging form long sought-after books mysteriously falling off a library shelf before them to phantom-like visitors from the past or future who appear to share prized knowledge with them. Some writers have found it extremely difficult to cope with such occurrences and have been driven to the edges of sanity and beyond.

James Webb, a brilliant British historian, whose books and writings bear a strong resemblance to Levenda’s, is but one sad example. Webb, who wrote two masterful volumes on the impact of the occult, or irrationalism as some would have it, on world affairs, killed himself not long after he completed a third book. According to those close to Webb, the once highly sceptical historian who scoffed at the occult did a complete reversal and concluded there were hidden and secret dimensions of reality that few ever glimpsed. Webb had visions of alternative worlds and said he had “seen molecules.” Writer Gary Lachman reported in Fortean Times,“Webb tried to fit what was happening to him into some system, calling on Gnostic notions of ‘aeons’ and Hindu accounts of ‘kalpas.’”

Webb’s extraordinary experiences were uncannily close to those of Jacob Boehme, the great Protestant mystic who lived in the late 1500s. In what sounds very much like a modern UFO encounter, Boehme at the age of twenty-five witnessed “a dark metal dish in the sky” which reflected sunlight and whose brightness drove Boehme into a state of mind closely resembling that of an LSD trip. He reported that he felt he was peering straight into the heart of all nature, of the very universe, and that he suddenly understood the world completely and was fully aware of its full meaning and purpose. Later Boehme was attacked from the pulpit of his church by a pastor who pointed him out and screamed, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Astute readers, at this juncture, may also recall other questionable “suicides” by writers who researched secret matters, perhaps the timeliest ones being those of Danny Casalaro, Gary Webb, Mark Lombardi, and J.T. Hatfield, four dissimilar journalists who took headlong and fatal plunges into the netherworld of the CIA and drug trafficking, and other related matters. Readers may also recall the bizarre experiences of speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Dick, before his untimely death at the age of 54, had many amazing and mystical encounters that defy explanation.

Ioan Couliano, an acclaimed religious scholar who specialized in Gnostic studies, observed that Dick’s books were rooted in Jewish-Christian apocalyptic literature. (Couliano’s murder in 1991 remains unsolved to this day.)

Then, of course, there is Colin Wilson, perhaps the very first writer to take serious note of the oddities that often plague individuals who dabble in the occult. Wilson, often belittled by critics, is in my view one of the truly great original thinkers of our time.

Levenda’s journey into the realm of sinister forces begins with a detailed examination of very early (B.C. to be exact) and early American history. He meticulously reveals fascinating details about the mysterious Los Lunas stone of New Mexico, the perplexing mounds and Mound Builders of early America, and infamous early-American religious fanatic Cotton Mather, who “insisted that the Devil himself had brought the Indians to America, since there was no mention of their race in the Bible.” (I must be honest here and note that Cotton Mather wrote a book about Hannah Dustin, a distant relative of my mother.)

The remainder of Levenda’s first volume is devoted to eight additional enthralling chapters that cover a tremendous amount of esoteric terrain. Most fascinating to me is his treatment of the CIA’s Bluebird Project, an initial Cold War behavior modification program that quickly evolved into the notorious (and still largely unexplored) MKULTRA projects. Levenda does an excellent job in revealing the little known role of man-of-mystery Dr. Andrija Puharich in the CIA’s and Army’s mind control experiments, as well as his deep involvement with a group called “the Nine” that claimed to be in touch with cosmic entities that controlled the world’s fate. Puharich worked at Edgewood Arsenal and Camp Detrick at the same time as murdered Army biochemist Frank R. Olson, who on at least one occasion scoffed at Puharich’s beliefs and surreptitious work for the U.S. Army and Pentagon officials. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, past CIA Technical Services Section director, is on record stating Puharich was “an instrumental and early advocate” of the powers of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD and various exotic mushrooms. (Puharich’s death also remains somewhat a mystery to the present day.)

Levenda’s coverage Jim Jones’s Jonestown incident (claimed to be a CIA mind control experiment by some) and the doings of Charles Manson (a possible MKULTRA subject) are especially frightening and leaves one anxiously wondering what is still to come in volumes two and three of ‘Sinister Forces’. With Manson’s story we begin to feel uncomfortably close to that inexplicable force, that primordial glue, that draws together seeming unrelated events and people into synocratic happenings. To this extent we also are able to begin to appreciate Levenda’s statement that his book “is about evil. Evil ordinary and extraordinary.” And about “the sinister forces that rule the world of our dreams, our nightmares, and our sober, trembling, waking reality.”

A nice benefit of Levenda’s book, as former investigative journalist James Hougan points out in his excellent Forward, is that you can open it to almost any page, begin reading, and find yourself an hour later still reading, mesmerized, asking yourself over and over, “Can this really be?”

All in all, if you are the type of person who intuitively understands that there is far more to history than meets the eye, and that history is mere play dough in the hands of its shapers, this book will more than stimulate your notions.

A few years ago, the primary character in Henry Bromell’s wonderful novel, ‘Little America’, said, “I’m interested in what happens inside history, what history hides, what gets left out and what is forgotten.” With ‘Sinister Forces’ Peter Levenda does a masterful job of revealing what history has hidden away from us.

© H.P. Albarelli Jr.
Reproduced with permission

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bad ultrasound?

2006-09-01T18:02:40Z

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060812/fob1.asp
Bad Vibrations? Ultrasound disturbs mouse brains

Christen Brownlee

Prolonged and frequent use of fetal ultrasound might lead to abnormal brain development, a study in mice suggests. The finding sounds a cautionary note for pregnant women getting the commonplace procedure.

In that technique, an ultrasound probe sends high-frequency sound waves into the abdomen of a pregnant woman. The waves bounce back to detectors, creating images of the fetus. Doctors use the pictures to check for birth defects and to assess a fetus' size and movements. Many women also undergo ultrasounds to create collections of early baby pictures.

Ultrasound has generally been regarded as safe. However, a few studies have suggested that it might cause neurological changes, such as delayed speech or an increase in left-handedness. Researchers hadn't studied how the number or duration of ultrasound procedures affects neurons growing in the fetal brain, says neuroscientist Pasko Rakic of Yale University.

Neurons are created in discrete places within the brain as it develops, and they then travel to the brain's outer layers. Rakic and his colleagues study this process, which is known as neural migration.

To determine whether ultrasound affects neural migration, the team worked with mice at a late point in pregnancy, when new fetal neurons have to migrate a long distance to reach the brain's outer layers.

The researchers injected the animals with a chemical that marks newborn neurons and then applied ultrasound to the bellies of some of the animals over the next 3 days. The ultrasound was administered to each pregnant mouse in multiple sessions that totaled 5 to 420 minutes. With the machine turned off, the scientists touched other mice with the ultrasound probe for the same amounts of time. A third group of animals received no procedure at all.

After the mouse pups were born, the team examined brain slices. In animals whose mothers had had ultrasound sessions that added up to 30 minutes or more, the scientists found that a significant number of neurons destined for the brain's outer layers of gray matter had become improperly embedded in inner layers of white matter.

The number of misplaced neurons increased with the total time that a newborn mouse's mother had spent receiving ultrasound. In contrast, the brains of newborns whose mothers had had the sham procedure typically resembled those whose mothers had had no procedure, Rakic's team reports in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"When cells are in the wrong place, they might affect function of the cerebral cortex," which in people controls such higher brain functions as language and movement, says Rakic. "We just don't know yet what this could do."

He and his team plan to conduct studies that will determine whether the results hold up in nonhuman primates.

Rakic cautions that some women might be getting excessive sonography. He's especially concerned about so-called keepsake ultrasounds, which are often performed by untrained technicians in nonclinical settings, such as shopping malls.

The mouse results reinforce guidelines set by the Food and Drug Administration, says pediatric neurologist Verne Caviness of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The basic guidelines in this country suggest using ultrasound as little as possible," he says. "Baby pictures aren't a justifiable use for this technology."

If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.

To subscribe to Science News (print), go to https://www.kable.com/pub/scnw/ subServices.asp.

To sign up for the free weekly e-LETTER from Science News, go to http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/subscribe_form.asp.

References:

Ang Jr., E.S.B., . . . and P. Rakic. In press. Prenatal exposure to ultrasound waves impacts neuronal migration in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0605294103.

Further Readings:

Devi, P.U., R. Suresh, and M.P. Hande. 1995. Effect of fetal exposure to ultrasound on the behavior of the adult mouse. Radiation Research 141(March):314-317. Abstract.

Kieler, H., et al. 2005. Does prenatal sonography affect intellectual performance? Epidemiology 16(May):304-310. Abstract.

______. 2002. First trimester ultrasound scans and left-handedness. Epidemiology 13(May):370.

Newnham, J.P., et al. 1993. Effects of frequent ultrasound during pregnancy: A randomised controlled trial. Lancet 342(Oct. 9):887-891. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0140-6736(93)91944-H.

Stark, C.R., et al. 1984. Short- and long-term risks after exposure to diagnostic ultrasound in utero. Obstetrics & Gynecology 63(February):194-200. Abstract available at http://www.greenjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/2/194.

Tarantal, A.F., and A.G. Hendrickx. 1989. Evaluation of the bioeffects of prenatal ultrasound exposure in the cynomolgus macaque (Macaca fascicularis): I. Neonatal/infant observations. Teratology 39(February):137-147. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/tera.1420390206.

Sources:

Verne S. Caviness
Massachusetts General Hospital
Kennedy 901
55 Fruit Street
Boston, MA 02114

P. Ellen Grant
Massachusetts General Hospital
Neuroradiology Division
55 Fruit Street
Boston, MA 02114

Pasko Rakic
Department of Neurobiology
Yale University
333 Cedar Street
New Haven, CT 06510

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Swami Beyondananda

2006-08-31T21:58:02Z

BULLETIN ITEM: Swami Beyondananda Calls for an Upwising

From: "Kimber"
Subject: Swami Calls for an Upwising
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:01:20 -0700

Swami Calls for an Upwising

"All seriousness aside, only a farce field that combines truth and
laughter can bring down the Irony Curtain once and for all."
*Swami Calls For An Up-Wising - Wise Up, Everybody The Evolution Has
Begun* By Swami Beyondananda 8-23-6
For years now, we've been hearing "shift happens," and wondering when,
where and how. Now finally, it looks as if the shift is about to hit
the fan. This is good news for all those shift fans who've been wondering
if the new age will arrive before old age does. Of course, if you're
looking for signs in the news, you won't find them. At least, not yet.
The news might as well be called the "olds," because the world still
seems stuck in greedlock, ruled by fossilized fools fueled by fossil fuels.
But I have been receiving encouraging intelligence reports that say
indeed, humans are becoming more intelligent. Yes, people everywhere are
wising up. And that's great, because we could sure use an up-wising!
The evolution has begun. But before we see changes in the old
needy-greedy, we humans must change our consciousness -- and the first step is
becoming conscious of how unconscious we've been. As the saying goes,
the truth shall upset you free, and last year saw lots of
disillusionment. But what better to free us from the far more dangerous condition of
illusionment? If we want to stop the abuse of power, the first step is
to disabuse ourselves. So, here's some good news: Despite a massive
media impropaganda machine that feeds the public "babblum" (strained
bullshit made digestible for a simple child's mind), more and more Americans
are reading between the lyins' and peering behind the Irony Curtain.
In 2005, Americans had to face the sad realization that the Bush
Administration's "pro-life" stance appears to be limited to the unborn and
the brain-dead. Despite being panned by critics everywhere, the Iraqi
Horror Picture Show continued its run, as thousands and thousands of born
fetuses - ours and theirs -- lost their right to life. While we may or
may not have saved our face by staying there, we have most definitely
lost our ass. And we've been assured we'll be stuck in that morass until
-- well, until there's no more ass to lose. Meanwhile, more and more
Americans reached another sad conclusion: We're not in Iraq to keep the
peace, we're there to keep the pieces.
The signs of up-wising are everywhere. Even the most unpleasant stories
are beginning to break through the soundless barrier and defy the
President's "don't ask, don't tell" policy: "You promise not to ask us what
we're doing, and we promise not to tell you." Although we've been
inundated with "fear-gnomes" and ominously warned we have to protect
ourselves in this dogma-eat-dogma world, a majority of Americans are no longer
comfortable with the notion that the only way to defeat the
"evil-doers" in the world is to out evil-do them. Although our President has
assured us that "we don't torture," it is now common knowledge that we
simply send detainees to countries that do torture when we want them to
"testify under oaf."
As for those progressives who've been whining that the President "never
listens" to them, well it turns out he's been listening all along. And
thanks to the so-called Patriot Act (which, I understand, is about to
be renamed the Eternal Insecurity Act), it looks like he'll be able to
listen in even more -- all in the name of making us safe. But now even
some Republicans are beginning to see that there's a difference between
protection and the "protection racket." And with the recent revelations
about Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and other gold collar criminals, some of
the more devout conservatives have come to realize that the "family
values" they voted for bear an uncanny resemblance to Soprano Family
values.
If there was any warm feeling in 2005, chalk it up to climate change.
Katrina hit, and in the government's response we saw a future when at
last all Americans will be equal -- where everyone regardless of race or
creed will be treated like Black folks.
Alarming Policies Have Awakened Millions!
Fortunately, this is the State of the Universe Address, and from a
universal perspective, things are humming along quite nicely. It turns out
that the Earth is the talk of the Universe these days. In fact, the
odds-makers at the Intergalactic Enquirer say the odds are actually in our
favor: "We're betting on the human race to reach critical mass before
they get to critical massacre." And we could beat the odds, if we
finally gave up our addiction to getting even and got odd instead. It stands
to reason. If each of us used our unique oddness to improve the odds
for everyone, there would be no need for getting even.
Yes, the up-wising has begun, and intergalactic observers are saying
that we have none other than George W. Bush to thank. How is that, you
may ask? Well, I am reminded of a story my guru Harry Cohen Baba used to
tell. A well-known minister died and arrived at the Pearly Gates at the
same time as a cab-driver from New York. The cabbie was ushered in, but
the clergyman was left waiting outside. After waiting and waiting and
waiting, he finally called over the attending angel. "Excuse me, but I'm
a renowned minister. How come you let that cab-driver in, and I'm left
waiting out here?" "Well," the angel said, "when you preached, everyone
slept. But when he drove, everyone prayed."
For millennia, spiritual teachers have been calling on us to go for the
highest common denominator, but we've always seemed to end up with the
lowest common dominator instead. And now, George W. Bush has done what
preachers, teachers and other far-sighted visionaries have failed to do
up until now: His policies have been so alarming, that he has awakened
a slumbering body politic that slept through all previous alarms. Where
others have failed, he has people all across the world praying, "God
help us!" And instead of waiting for an intervention from above -- after
all, we cannot expect to be fed intervenously forever -- people are
beginning to help themselves, and even more importantly, help each other.
Sure, there are still plenty of Not-Sees out there who insist on not
seeing that we humans are all in the same boat. The good news is, more
and more Americans are getting that sinking feeling that there's only one
Earthship, and ignoring a leak because it's "on the other side of the
boat," is a mistake of titanic proportions.
We Are the Leaders We've Been Waiting For
America, the world's only super-power, doesn't need a revolution. We've
already had one, thank you. What is needed now -- and what has already
begun -- is the American Evolution where enough of us wake up and see
that those two political parties have been partying on our dime, and we
the people haven't been invited. Time to go beyond choosing the lesser
of two weasels. If we want to evolve the dream of our Founding Fathers
-- instead of devolve into the nightmare of Big Brother -- we must
become the leaders we've been waiting for. I've said it before. The only
force more powerful than a super-power is a Super-Duper Power -- the
power of the people plus the power of love. And anyone who doesn't believe
we are a Super-Duper Power, well they have been super-duped!
It's true, many people still feel that the affairs of the world should
be left to the bolder and badder among us. But look what that leaves us
with: Are you satisfied choosing between Saddam Hussein and George
Who's-Not-Sane? Now I know those "God, guns and guts" Old Testament
Christians might have forgotten, but Jesus did say that the meek shall inherit
the earth. In all undue immodesty, maybe it's time for us meek folks to
boldly step forth and accept our inheritance.
For just as 2000 years ago Jesus stood up to a class that placed the
rule of gold above the Golden Rule, today we face the modern version of
the Pharisees -- the Phallusees, I think they are called. They cynically
cloak themselves in religious robes, but the only power they trust is
the power of the stick. Well, there's another old saying: It doesn't
matter how big your stick is, if you stick your stick where it doesn't
belong, you're stuck.
Another sign of the up-wising and coming evolution is that people are
growing dissatisfied with the positionality of "my side vs. your side,"
and are seeing the whole issue of sides from a new angle: Maybe we're
all on the same side. For example, this argument between creationism and
evolution is just another way for dueling dualities to steal our
energy. I believe in both. I believe the Creator created us to evolve,
otherwise Jesus would have said, "Now don't do a thing till I return." I have
it on good authority that the Creator is pulling for us: "Come on, you
children of God. Time to grow up and become adults of God instead."
Time to Overgrow the System From the Grassroots Up
The time for revolution and overthrowing has past. Now we need an
evolution where we "overgrow" the current dysfunctional system from the
grassroots up. You are probably familiar with the story of the Native
American grandfather who tells his grandson that there are two wolves
fighting inside all of us: The wolf of fear and anger, and the wolf of love
and peace.
"Which wolf will win?" asks the young boy. "Whichever one we feed,"
replies the grandfather.
And so when people ask me to predict what will happen, I tell them the
only thing I can predict with certainty is the uncertainty of any
prediction. The future's just too unpredictable these days. This is a
Universe of infinite possibilities, so it all depends on which futures we
invest in.
There is something far more empowerful than predictions, and that is
Tell-A-Vision. If you're fed up with the current programming, my advice
is turn off your TV and tell a vision instead. That way, we will have
healing and functional visions to step into -- and that beats what we've
been stepping into. So I will tell my vision for 2006: This is the year
of the American Evolution, where all those who prefer the Golden Rule
to the rule of gold get past left and right, and come front and center.
I see Americans of all political stripes, plaids and polka dots (not to
mention solids), choosing to face the music and dance together. Sure,
we'll have to learn some new steps, but it's time for a new dance -
A-Bun-Dance. That is where we get up off our assets, move our buns, and
dance together in rhythm and flow. And what better way to turn the funk
into function, and leave the junk at the junction?
I see us in a new reality show -- Extreme Planetary Makeover -- where
everyone can play and everyone can win. Just think. Something more
compelling than reality TV ... it's called reality!
I know, I know. Only a crazy person would dare to propose anything that
sane. But maybe it's time to declare the current institutionalized
insanity illegally insane, and set about building a sane asylum big enough
for all six and a half billion of us. As my guru Harry Cohen Baba has
said, "Life is like a good deli. Even if something isn't on the menu, if
enough people order it they have to make it." So what kind of new world
order are we ordering up? Do we feed the wolf of fear and buy into the
"it's every man for himself" story? Or do we nourish the wolf of love
and evolve into the "we're all in it together" story?
If we're going to be a Super-Duper Power, we have to be super-duper
powerful in activating the power of love, and cultivating the power of
joy. So laugh more. Why not? We all know there's something funny going on.
The wall of lies cannot withstand the vibration of laughter. All
seriousness aside, only a farce field that combines truth and laughter can
bring down the Irony Curtain once and for all.
Release the old story -- been there, done that -- and speak the new
story into the world. Dare to imagine what we could be doing if we weren't
spending so much of our livelihood on weapons of deadlihood. Think
about it ... think tanks where they think about something other than tanks.
Young people living for their country instead of dying for it. Health
and education fully funded, and the Air Force having to run a bake sale
so they can buy a new bomber.
Can we change the course of history? Can we shift our karma into
surpassing gear? I cannot say for sure, but if we choose to give up that old
Dodge and trade it in for an Evolvo, that's a good first step. So ...
let the Evolution begin. We don't have to wait until the first Big Shot
is fired. If we create a powerful enough field, the Big Shots will end
up firing themselves.
May the FARCE -- as always -- be with us.

<http://rense.com/general73/swam.htm>http://rense.com/general73/swam.htm

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

dew dew

2006-08-29T21:22:00Z

ISIS Press Release 24/01/06 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BW.php

Bio-electromagnetic Weapons
A weapon system that operates at the speed of light, that can kill, torture, enslave and escape detection. Harlan Girard

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here

The ultimate weapon
Electromagnetic weapons operate at the speed of light; they can kill, torture and enslave; but the public are largely unaware that they exist, because these weapons operate by stealth and leave no physical evidence. Electromagnetic weapons have been tested on human beings since 1976. By widely dispersing the involuntary human test-subjects, and vehemently attacking their credibility, it has been possible for the United States to proceed with these human experiments unhindered by discussions or criticisms, let alone opposition.

This ultimate weapon system is currently being deployed in Iraq. The US Air Force and the Marine Corps refer to it as “active denial technology”, as if it were used purely for defense, but it is not (see Box 1).

Box 1

The truth about “active denial technology”
There is only one electromagnetic spectrum. Nuclear weapons release a great deal of ionizing radiation in the high frequency range above visible light, where the energy of the radiation is capable of breaking chemical bonds. Ionizing radiation is generally acknowledged to cause cancer.

The US military has weaponized the non-ionizing radiation below the visible range, the microwaves and radio waves that are used in mobile phones and telecommunications. The US government has strenuously denied that there could be health hazards from non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, both as a defence of the involuntary human research it has been conducting for many years but has not yet acknowledged, and to dissuade other countries from developing similar weapons.

The only biological effect of non-ionizing radiation that the US government has acknowledged for many years is heating, and accordingly, it characterizes “active denial technology” as that which produces pain from sudden heating of the skin; but this is not how it really works.

Reading brain waves and mind control
In 1959, Saul B. Sells, a professor of social psychology at a minor US university submitted a proposal to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to build for them the most sophisticated electroencephalography machine that would have an integral computational capacity to analyze and, hopefully, make sense of the brain waves it recorded. In other words, the professor proposed to make a machine that could tell the CIA what a person was thinking, whether or not the person wished to disclose that information.

The CIA approved the project in 1960, adding some library research with five objectives. The fifth objective of the research was, “Techniques for Activating the Human Organism by Remote Electronic Means”. The entire assignment was thereafter known as MKULTRA subproject 119, MKULTRA being the CIA’s notorious mind control programme. It was based on the erroneous notion that the Soviets already possessed the means to control minds and the US had to catch up as rapidly as possible.

The documents pertaining to MKULTRA subproject 119 are now held in the National Security Archives (a non-governmental organization) at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. [1]. John Marks, author of The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, (Times Books, New York, 1979) donated the MKULTRA documents; his book was republished by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1991 and is still in print.

Project Bizarre followed MKULTRA subproject 119 in 1965. The purpose of Bizarre was to record and analyze the complex microwave signal allegedly being beamed at the American Embassy in Moscow by the Soviets from a building across the street. The interesting thing about Project Bizarre is that while the United States has denied to this very day that there could be adverse health effects from microwave radiation, it immediately suspected that “the Moscow signal” was producing a variety of health effects in Embassy personnel, particularly in the successive ambassadors at whose office it was claimed the signal was being beamed. At the same time that the State Department was testing embassy personnel for DNA breaks produced by the Moscow signal, it felt constrained from complaining to the Soviets because the power of their signal was a tiny fraction of what the US said was a safe, human exposure level. Journalist Barton Reppert has written the most authoritative account of the Moscow signal [2]. (Editor’s note: DNA breaks from exposure to mobile phones have been confirmed in recent lab research [3, 4] (Science in Society 24).)

Converting sound to microwaves
In 1973, Joseph C. Sharp, an experimental psychologist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research performed an experiment that was pivotal to the development of the torture equipment being shipped to Iraq today. He had James Lin set up equipment in his laboratory which converted the shape of sound waves into microwave radiation that enabled him to hear himself vocalize the names of the numbers from one to ten in his head, by-passing the mechanism of his own ears. This particular experiment was never published but is mentioned in Lin’s book, Microwave Auditory Effects and Applications, published in 1978 [5].

The experiment has been confirmed in US Patent 6 587 729, “Apparatus for Audibly Communicating Speech Using the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect” [6]. This patent is for an improved version of the apparatus used in the 1973 laboratory experiment, issued on July 1, 2003 and assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force. It provides scientific evidence that it is possible to hear threatening voices in one’s head without suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Why has this patent been published openly at a time when the US Government is practicing a degree of secrecy that rivals Stalin’s Kremlin? I have no satisfactory answer, except to say that the apparatus in the patent has already been superseded by equipment that achieves the same effect by far more sophisticated means. It blocks the normal processes of memory and thought by remote electronic means, while at the same time supplying false, distorted and/or unpleasant memories and suggestions by means of a process called “synthetic telepathy”. The equipment that produces synthetic telepathy is sometimes referred to as “influence technology”.

While voices and visions, daydreams and nightmares are the most astonishing manifestations of this weapon system, it is also capable of crippling the human subject by limiting his/her normal range of movement, causing acute pain the equivalent of major organ failure or even death, and interfering with normal functioning of any of the human senses. In other words, any of the tortures with which the words Guantanamo Bay have become synonymous can be achieved by remote, electronic means.

Instruments of torture
Influence technology is also capable of persuading the subjects that their mind is being read, that their intellectual property is being plundered, and can even motivate suicide or the murder of family, friends, and co-workers. During the years of the so-called “War on Drugs” (which preceded the “War on Terrorism”), letters that the involuntary human subjects had written or were about to receive regularly vanished from the mail, as though the government had a huge covert operation through post offices across the country. When George Herbert Walker Bush became president (in1989), the incidence of co-worker killings in the post offices became so great that the _expression “going postal” began to replace the commonly used _expression of “going crazy”. The killing of co-workers in other workplaces began to command more media attention too [7].

I estimate that the cost of imprisoning a human being in his/her own body and applying unremitting torture is US$5 000 000 to $10 000 000 a year (see below).

By “unremitting torture” I mean exactly that. Because there is no visible evidence left by this new torture equipment such as damage to the skin, it is possible to torture the involuntary human subjects for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This can be done and is being done even on Christmas and Easter [8].

I arrived at my estimate on the cost of testing/using electromagnetic weapons on a human subject by visiting a cable TV channel that specializes in the sale of goods over the air 24 hours a day. I questioned the number of technical staff required, their working hours and salary range; also the number of back-up personnel required to prepare the programming for broadcast. I did not inquire about the cost of electronics and the schedule by which it is depreciated. I have estimated a cost for depreciation that is included in my estimate of the cost of torturing one involuntary human subject for one year.

Torture is a labor-intensive business. What objective would justify this investment? Could it be something as insane as to rule the world by enslaving the democratic governments of the more populous countries? This objective is certainly consistent with the United States’ disdain for, and hostility toward, the United Nations, the international conventions and covenants it has ratified in the past and customary international law [9].

On 1 March 2001, the Marine Corps announced a new non-lethal weapon, “active denial technology”. It produces enormous pain by allegedly boiling the molecules of water in the human skin without damaging the skin itself. As described in an article published in New Scientist, it employs pulsed electromagnetic radiation at a frequency of 95 GHz with a range of about 600 meters [10]. There have been several new reports in the magazine in 2005, including one published in July [11], describing volunteers taking part in tests to determine how safe the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real crowd-control. The ADS weapon’s beam was reported to cause pain within 2 to 3 seconds, and becomes “intolerable after less than 5 seconds”.

Active denial technology is the cornerstone of the system employed to torture 2 000 persons in the privacy of their own homes, not only in the United States but around the world, wherever countries have signed Status of Forces Agreements with the United States [12]. Allegations of torture were first received from countries with which the United States has a special intelligence-sharing relationship i.e. the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Then reports began to arrive from the conquered countries where the United States still has large numbers of troops stationed, i.e. Germany and Japan. When France rejoined the military arm of NATO in the late 90s, we began to receive allegations of torture in France. Very recently we have begun to receive allegations of torture from India, where American companies have begun to outsource, not only help lines, but also programming [13].

And then there is the case of Russia, where the involuntary, human subjects of torture experiments appear to be both numerous and well organized. I have been told reliably that every Russian scientist who could speak English has now found a home in an American university or government laboratory. This is plausible, considering the frequently voiced American worry that Soviet era experts in nuclear weaponry and biological warfare might find employment in Iran. It is a fact that at the end of World War II the US Army swept through Germany in an operation called Project Paperclip, recruiting, in particular, Nazi rocket scientists and experts in aerospace medicine. Some other scientists were recruited simply to deprive the Soviet Union of this resource. So what has become of the Soviet scientists who didn’t speak English? In time we will find out for certain, but for now it is a safe guess that at least some of them have been employed to study the Russian value system and decision making processes by torturing other Russians with American “influence technology” [14].

Two interesting and important articles on bioelectromagnetic weapons have recently appeared in the New Scientist: “Maximum pain is aim of new U.S. weapon” and “Police toy with ‘less lethal’ weapons”, both written by David Hambling [15]. See also US. Patent 6 536 440 of March 25, 2003 [16].

Since completing this article in mid-June 2005, it has come to my attention that the Israelis are deploying a device called “The Scream”, which sends out bursts of audible, but not loud sound at intervals of about 10 seconds. A photographer at the scene of a demonstration said that he continued to hear the sound ringing in his head even after he covered his ears. This suggests to me that the active agent is electromagnetic rather than acoustic. In other words, the Israelis have come up with a device that is far cleverer than our “active denial technology”. It not only deters rioters, but also issues an audible warning that it has been turned on, which the US device does not, leaving it entirely to the enlisted men operating it to determine how much burning pain their adversaries receive. The margin for error with the US device is unconscionable. It may as well be called a lethal weapon because in practice it very frequently will be [17].

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

International Banking and Human Sabotage

2006-08-29T05:17:36Z

From: "Elaine"
Subject: International Banking and Human Sabotage

International Banking and Human Sabotage
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Extracted from The Holy Land of Scotland: Jesus in Scotland & The
Gospel of the Grail, Chapter 8, by Barry Dunford).

note*- that usury (money lending for profit) was forbidden in the
Celtic
Church, unlike the Church of Rome which encouraged it.

This reveals the centralised controlling monetary mechanism of
International Finance which currently dominates the Governments and the
people of this world. There is also information as to how this
anti-social and wholly unnecessary state of affairs can be changed for
the betterment of humanity.

One of the primary mechanisms which has been used (regrettably very
successfully) to control the people of this world, is the financial
credit creation monopoly which has been, and continues to be, exercised
by a handful of supra-national Banking Houses (families). These
families, with their accompanying long term policies, are dynastic in
nature, a kind of grail lineage in reverse, i.e. an anti-grail lineage.
Just as the true Grail lineage has embodied and facilitated the
Christic
vibrational streaming ("I am the true vine" - Yeshua/Jesus), so the
lineage of the anti-grail families has served to facilitate the working
of the anti-Christ forces. As ever, the test is the same, "By their
fruits ye shall know them".[1]

In the 1936 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (vol. 15, money)
appears the explosive statement that "Banks lend by creating credit.
They create the means for payment out of nothing." It may be pertinent
to note that in subsequent editions this revealing statement was
deleted. In fact, both national and international banking transactions
(the source of finance and money in the modern world) are essentially a
matter of simple book keeping. In reality, the only difference between
£1. and £1,000,000. is 6 noughts - and what do 6 noughts add up to? It
really is as simple as that. Yet through the world wide centralised
application of this monetary technique the people of this world have
been, and continue to be, systematically controlled and manipulated to
the point of mutual extermination between various groups or nations via
'wars'. This has been accompanied by the artificial creation of
poverty,
in an age of super-productive abundance, and widespread crimes against
the individual of every kind imaginable.

At the time of the founding, in 1694, of the so-called Bank "of
England", a private monopoly, one of the Directors, William Paterson,
remarked: "The Bank hath benefit of interest on all monies which it
creates out of nothing." More recently, Reginald McKenna, a former
Chairman of the Midland Bank, and ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, when
addressing the shareholders of the Midland Bank, 22nd January 1930,
said: "The Bank of England is the supreme authority in determining the
quantity of money available for the use of the public." On another
occasion (25th January 1924) again, while addressing the shareholders
of
the Midland Bank, Reginald McKenna stated: "I am afraid the ordinary
citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create
money. The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of
the banks in increasing and decreasing deposits and bank purchases.
Every loan, overdraft, or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every
repayment of a loan, overdraft, or bank sale destroys a deposit." In
other words, Banks create the means for payment out of nothing.
Moreover, H.D. MacLeod, in his textbook The Theory and Practice of
Banking explains: "The essential and distinctive feature of a bank and
a
banker is to create and issue credit payable on demand, and this credit
is intended to be put into circulation and serve all the purposes of
money. A bank, therefore, is not an office for the borrowing and
lending
of money; it is a manufactory of credit." The foregoing is confirmed by
Branch Banking, July 1938, which states: "There are enough substantial
quotations in existence to prove to the uninitiated that Banks do
create
credit without restraint and that they create the means of repayment
within themselves."[2]

In reality, money is simply a convenient means of distribution in the
cycle of production, distribution and consumption. The primary object
of
production is consumption, not unimaginable waste and deliberately
built
in obsolescence in order to accommodate a supra-national centralised
banking policy of control and restriction of the financial credit
creation process on a global scale. Incidentally, it may be of interest
to note that usury was forbidden in the Celtic Church, unlike the
Church
of Rome.[3]

The vast majority of people have been deluded into thinking that
without
'money' nothing is achievable. In real terms this is not the case, as
whatever is physically possible can and should be financially possible.
Around 1920, the Scots engineer and economist, C.H. Douglas
(1879-1952),[4] a leading engineer of his day, made the penetrating
observation: "Lay your money down and I will spin the Dome of St.
Paul's
Cathedral on its cross." This was no idle statement as C.H. Douglas had
been called in to check on the wind stress factors relating to the Dome
of St. Paul's Cathedral. Further, he knew that whatever was physically
possible should also be financially possible. If all the paper money
and
gold in the world was to suddenly evaporate overnight, does this mean
that the raw materials with which to build houses, factories, roads and
railways, for example, would no longer be available? Moreover, C.H.
Douglas clarified a realistic and viable course for a sane humanity to
follow when he stated: "It is suggested that the primary requisite is
to
obtain in the re-adjustment of the economic and political structure
such
control of initiative that by its exercise every individual can avail
himself of the benefits of science and mechanism; that by their aid he
is placed in such a position of advantage, that in common with his
fellows he can choose, within increasing freedom and complete
independence, whether he will or will not assist in any project which
may be placed before him." (Economic Democracy - 1920).

Writing in the 1930's, C.H. Douglas observed: "It cannot have escaped
the observation of anyone interested in the welfare and orderly
progress
of society that, more especially in the years which have intervened
since the close of the European War and the present time, the centre of
gravity of world affairs has shifted from Parliaments and Embassies to
Bank Parlours and Board Rooms. It is probable that this shifting is
more
apparent than real; that, in fact, Parliaments and Embassies have not
for a long time been more than the salesmen of policies which were
manufactured elsewhere. But the public is becoming increasingly
dissatisfied with the goods; it has changed the window-dressers with
disappointing results, and in consequence it is, perhaps for the first
time, beginning to take an interest in matters of economics and finance
which previously it had been content to leave to experts. One of the
first results of this awakening interest has been a demonstration of
the
distance which separates exact knowledge from popular understanding of
the methods by which the ordinary necessities of life and the amenities
of civilised existence are placed at the disposal of individuals in the
modern world..Particularly in regard to finance, which may be termed
the
nerve system of distribution, most people hold, with some persistence,
ideas which are both incorrect and misleading, and are supported in
their disinclination to change these views by sectional interests of
great potency and ability in the attainment of their own objectives,
which superficially seem well served by the prevailing ignorance. No
just appreciation of this situation is possible which does not take
into
consideration the peculiar and perhaps unique, position occupied by
finance in the organisation of modern society in every country.
Finance,
i.e. money, is the starting-point of every action which requires either
the co-operation of the community or the use of its assets. If it be
realised that control of its mechanism gives, to a major extent,
control
of both personal and organised activity, it is easy to see that
education, publicity, and organised Intelligence (in the sense in which
the word 'Intelligence' is used in military circles) can be controlled,
first to minimise the likelihood of criticism arising, and should it
arise, depriving it of all the normal facilities for effective action.
Finance can and does control policy, and as has been well said by an
American writer, Charles Ferguson, 'control of credit and control of
the
news are concentric'."

Douglas concluded: "Perhaps the first point on which to be clear is
that
this immense, nay, almost omnipotent, power which is wielded by the
financial organisation, and which therefore must in the nature of
things
be responsible for the situation in the world to-day, has not until
recently been recognised in its true nature. In fact, every artifice,
either of the press or of politics, has been used to identify the
conduct of nations with their titular governments, while at the same
time vilifying them for the progressively disastrous results. It is, in
my opinion, not too much to say that these governments are now
superseded by financial institutions, and that these financial
institutions, so far as can be humanly judged, are in an impregnable
position..It seems difficult to doubt that the efforts of those in
control of financial policy are primarily, if not entirely, concerned
with making the world safe for bankers, rather than making the world
safe..Political democracy without economic democracy is dynamite. The
need is to abolish poverty, not to represent it." (The Monopoly of
Credit)

An American researcher, E.C. Knuth, in his book The Empire of "The
City"
(1946, USA) relates: "In Barriers Down published in 1942, Kent Cooper,
General Manager of the Associated Press, discloses a 20 year battle
fought since the end of World War I for the right to give the American
people the truth about the news of Europe and the world..Mr. Cooper
states that the account is that international bankers under the lead of
the House of Rothschild had acquired an interest in the three leading
European agencies (Reuter, Wolff and Havas). Reuters, whose
headquarters
were in Old Jewry, near the Bank of England, in the City, was the chief
of the three. It was the staggering presumption of this firm that the
news of the world was its own private property, to be withheld, to be
discolored to its own purposes, or to be sold to whom and where they
directed." It is, therefore, worth bearing in mind the statement that
"control of credit and control of the news are concentric." This is why
such economic and financial matters are never discussed in any areas of
the mass media and, moreover, never appear on the curriculum of any
school or university. But, of course, there is no "World Conspiracy".
Why not? Because we are told so. When the vast majority of mankind has
been 'educated' and conditioned into believing that white is black and
black is white, if someone were to come along and say that, in reality,
white is white and black is black, then that person's powers of
perception are bound to be thought questionable, to say the least. The
question is, in reality, where do we go from here?

As C.H. Douglas further observed: "The Money Power does not, and never
did wish to improve the money system - its consequences in war,
sabotage
and social friction are exactly what is desired. This, I think, exactly
defines the task which society must face and solve, or perish. First,
to
attack and defeat the Money Power; then consider the reorganisation of
the money system. All these things, and many more, have convinced me
that one of the fundamentals of genuine Christianity is that the only
true focus of power is the individual, which is simply a matter-of-fact
method of affirming the Immanence of God over the Monotheistic Jehovah.
The conscious man is not born to be ruled, neither is he born to rule
over other people. Jesus said so, and the Jews [Judeans] crucified Him.
They could do no other. I believe we shall be taking the most generally
accurate view of history for at least the past two thousand years if we
view it as a conscious attempt on the one side, and an unconscious
reaction on the other side, to and from the separation of the
individual
and his natural attributes, and to vest them in organisations
controlled
by power maniacs. If you prefer to say that it is a struggle to
separate
man from God, to replace the immanence of God (i.e., power over events)
by the omnipotent Jehovah (i.e., subservience to events), I shall not
quarrel with your choice of words, although it is the practical use you
can make of them which matters." (Programme for the Third World War -
1943).

Twenty years earlier, in a speech in Newcastle, England, in 1923,
entitled The Breakdown of the Employment System, C.H. Douglas
summarised
the essence of the prevailing economic situation saying: "I would
commend to you a most serious consideration of this issue: whether you
wish the economic system to be made the vehicle for an unseen
government
over which you have no control, which you did not elect, and which you
cannot remove so long as you accept its premises, or whether, on the
other hand, you are determined to free the forces of modern science, so
that your need for goods and services may be met with increasing
facility and decreasing effort, this, in turn, permitting humanity to
expend its energy on altogether higher planes of effort than those
involved in the mere provision of the means of subsistence."

Commenting on C.H. Douglas' economic proposals, an Australian writer
and
researcher Eric D. Butler, in his treatise entitled Releasing Reality
(1979, Australia) perceptively remarks: "The overriding policy being
used to deny man access to the potential real security and expanding
freedom which is his birthright, is that of 'Full Employment.' Although
the policy blatantly contradicts every advance in technology, it is
promoted persistently as the most important objective towards which man
can strive. The underlying philosophy is materialistic, treating the
human being as so much raw material to be fed into an expanding mass
production system, and anti-Christian because it denies that the major
factor in modern production is inheritance. When Douglas first put
forward the policy of a National Dividend for the individual as a
right,
reflecting the reality of inheritance, it was scathingly denounced as
'something for nothing'. Life itself is a gift, as are the most
important factors which sustain life - water, air and unlimited solar
energy."

In 1962, the first report was produced by the Christian Doctrine of
Wealth Committee of the Congregational Union of Scotland, presented to
the Assembly, in Dundee, Scotland. That report concluded (in part): "We
believe that the existing system of debt-finance, whereby practically
all money comes into circulation as interest-bearing debt, is
prejudicial to human well-being, a drag on the development and
distribution of wealth, finds no justification in the nature of things,
and perpetuates a wrong conception of the function of money in human
society. We believe that the virtual monopoly of credit enjoyed by the
banking system is contrary to reason and justice..The true basis of
credit is found in the assets of the nation - men, labour, skills,
natural resources and the enormous power for production now in human
hands. The creation and function of money ought to bear a strict
relation to those physical facts, and to nothing else.."[5]

More recently the following pertinent speech by the late Lord Beswick
appeared in HANSARD, 27th November 1985, vol. 468, columns 935-939,
under the title "Money Supply and the Private Banking System". It
begins: "Lord Beswick rose to call attention to the statement made by
the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 23rd July 1985 that the
96.9
per cent increase in money supply over a five-year period has been
created by the private banking system and without Government
authority..The noble Lord said: 'My Lords, on 10th June this year I
asked Her Majesty's Government by what amount the money supply had
increased in the five-year period to mid-April 1985. Interestingly,
they
gave me the answer in percentages and not in pounds. Having given him
prior notice, perhaps the Minister would be good enough later to give
me
the answer in money terms. The Government reply on 10th June was that
the increase had been by 101.9 per cent, and that of that very large
amount only 5 per cent was accounted for by the state minting of more
coins and the printing of more notes. That 96.9 per cent increase
represented not only an enormous sum of money but also a crucially
important factor in our economy. I wanted to know by whom it had been
created, and on 23rd July I again asked Her Majesty's Government to
what
extent this increase had Government approval. I was told by the
Chancellor of the Duchy, speaking for the Government: 'The 96.9 per
cent
represented new bank deposits created in the normal course of banking
business and no Government authority is necessary for this.' Had he
said
that some counterfeiter of coins or forger of notes had been at work
there would of course have been an immediate and indignant outcry; yet
here we have a government statement that private institutions have
created this enormous amount of extra purchasing power and we are
expected to accept that it is normal practice and that the government
authority does not come into it. When I asked whether we ought not to
consider more deeply who was benefiting from this money-creating power,
the Minister said that the implications, though interesting, were maybe
too far reaching for Question Time; and so I raise the matter again in
debate and hope to get more enlightenment. The issues are important;
they are certainly under-discussed; perhaps not adequately understood;
and I hope that I am not being unduly unfair if I say that those who
understand the mechanisms often do very well out of them. I make no
party point; it is all much bigger and wider than that.. the Chancellor
of the Duchy gave the game away when he said that no government
authority was needed for this present system of credit creating." (My
italics - BD)

Lord Beswick went on to say: "The line of action needed to reform this
unacceptable state of affairs was indicated, I believe, by the late Sir
Arthur Bryant, Companion of Honour, upon whose clarity of language I
cannot improve. In the London Illustrated News [February 1983], he
wrote: '..The exercise of the right inherent in every sovereign state
of
creating and issuing a sufficiency of money to make financially
possible
what is physically possible and morally desirable, would enable as much
wealth to be brought into existence as, with its immense inventive and
scientific potential, it is capable of making'..Is it not quite
illogical, indeed indefensible, that the state should be so concerned
to
maintain its sovereignty in the issue of coins or notes that it allows
this new form of money, used overwhelmingly today, to be created
outside
its control? Can the Government not at least agree that the facts known
and the implications involved merit early and authoritative inquiry?
Would not a committee or commission, authorised to consider and report,
be of great national value." This same theme is also to be found in
HANDSARD, 5th March 1997, volume 578, No. 68, columns 1869-1871, in
which the Earl of Caithness is recorded as having stated: "The next
government must grasp the nettle, accept their responsibility for
controlling the money supply and change from our debt-based monetary
system. My Lords, will they? If they do not, our monetary system will
break us and the sorry legacy we are already leaving our children will
be a disaster."

So why is nothing being done at Governmental level to resolve this
wholly unnecessary state of affairs? Perhaps the reason why is to be
found in the observation of Des Griffin who, in his book Descent into
Slavery (1996) writes: "The small clique who rule the City dictate to
the British Parliament. It tells them what to do, and when. In theory
Britain is ruled by a Prime Minister and a Cabinet of close advisers.
These 'fronts' go to great lengths to create the impression that they
are running the show but, in reality, they are mere puppets whose
strings are pulled by the shadowy characters who dominate behind the
scenes..History clearly reveals that the British government is the bond
slave of the 'invisible and inaudible' force centred in the City. The
City calls the tune. The 'visible and audible leaders' are mere puppets
who dance to that tune on command. They have no power. They have no
authority. In spite of all the outward show they are mere pawns in the
game being played by the financial elite."

In The Empire of "The City" (1946, USA) the author, E.C. Knuth, refers
to "..the international financial oligarchy of 'The City' in what is
perhaps the most arbitrary and absolute form of government in the
world.
This international financial oligarchy uses the allegoric 'Crown' as
its
symbol of power and has its headquarters in the ancient City of London,
an area of 677 acres..This tiny area of a little over one square mile
has in it the giant Bank of England, a privately owned institution;
which..is not subject to regulation by the British Parliament, and is
in
effect a sovereign world power. Within the City are located also the
Stock Exchange and many institutions of world-wide scope." Knuth
further
notes: "The late Vincent Cartwright Vickers [Director of the Bank of
England 1910-1919] stated: '..financiers in reality took upon
themselves, perhaps not the responsibility, but certainly the power, of
controlling the markets of the world and therefore the numerous
relationships between one nation and another, involving international
friendships or mistrusts..Loans to foreign countries are organized and
arranged by the City of London with no thought whatsoever of the
nation's welfare but solely in order to increase indebtedness, upon
which the City thrives and grows rich..This national and mainly
international dictatorship of money, which plays off one country
against
another and which, through ownership of a large portion of the Press,
converts the advertisement of its own private opinion into a semblance
of general public opinion, cannot for much longer be permitted to
render
Democratic Government a mere nickname. Today, we see through a glass
darkly; for there is so much which 'it would not be in the public
interest to divulge'.." [Econimic Tribulation, 1940]

Almost a century earlier, a former British Prime Minister, William
Gladstone (1809-1898) wrote: "From the time I took office as Chancellor
of the Exchequer (1852) I began to learn that the State held, in the
face of the Bank and the City, an essentially false position as to
finance. The Government itself was not to be a substantive power, but
was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned." (Life of
William
Ewart Gladstone, 1903, by John Morley). Perhaps what is required to
ensure a satisfactory resolution to the private and centralised
monopoly
of credit scenario is a legal court case i.e. the People versus the
Banks, that is always assuming that the Judiciary cannot be bought off,
for he who pays the piper invariably calls the tune. In reality, we are
confronted with what the late Lord Chief Justice Hewart described as
"administrative lawlessness". Lord Hewart further observes: "A mass of
evidence establishes the fact that there is in existence a persistent
and well contrived system, intended to produce, and in practice
producing, a despotic power which at one and the same time places
Government Departments above the Sovereignty of Parliament and beyond
the jurisdiction of the Courts." (The New Despotism - 1929). The
Treasury is a prime example, and the departments of the so-called
Intelligence Corps are another.

Writing during World War (part) II, C.H. Douglas clarified the essence
of the prevailing world situation. In an essay entitled Programme for
the Third World War (1943), Douglas observed: "If the responsible
individuals during the years 1915-1940 are identified and punished, we
may avoid a Third World War. If not, we shall have a Fourth and a
Fifth..It is the initiators of policy who are responsible for the
effects of policy. The indictment for world crime requires to be
directed to the identification of those individuals who licenced world
crime..This is a gangsters' war, for the benefit of gangsters and the
perpetuation of gangsterdom. You can have just as many like it as you
wish. To that end, the first essential is to demand the right to
interfere in everyones' business, preferably without understanding it.
That encourages everyone to interfere with you, and a good time is had
by all. Then use as many words which have no ascertainable meaning, as
possible. Demand higher taxes for everyone and complain about your own.
Otherwise leave Finance severely alone..A very few years of 'peace'
founded on these principles will ensure a hearty welcome to the next
war."

In another essay entitled The Big Idea (1942) C.H. Douglas perceptively
remarked: "Although the fact is a little obscured at the moment, the
human individual is the highest manifestation of divine attributes with
which we are in day-to-day contact. What differentiates him from the
lower orders, when he is different, in his initiative - the fact that
he
manoeuvres under his own steam. I am confident that there is an
organised attempt to drive him down the scale of existence, so that he
becomes primarily a number on a card index, by taking away as far as
possible any recognisable initiative, his potentially divine attribute.
The present war, and the obliteration of nationalities, the talk of
Federal Unions and United States of Europe..are all directed to that
end. That is to say, war provides the opportunity, perhaps the
necessity, for conditions of existence in which the individual is
wholly
at the mercy of institutions, and those institutions are ultimately
controlled by an international junta..The major strategy was simple, if
grandiose. You bring about a state of affairs in which International
Finance controls trade, industry, and distribution, and would have no
check on its extortions but for private enterprise. You bring about, as
in 1928, major depressions and crises, and when you have intolerable
conditions..you say nothing can be done about it because there's no
money. When these conditions inevitably bring about war, you say War is
the major evil of the world and comes from 'private enterprise'; you
spend eleven million pounds a day in pure destruction when you were
unable to spend eleven million pounds a month for constructive
purposes;
and you set every available type of propaganda to work to advocate that
the affairs of the whole world shall be finally and irrevocably handed
over to a monopoly of the powers operating through finance and
subterranean intrigue, so that effective revolt becomes for ever
impossible. It is, of course, the convenient fashion to say, 'Yes, yes,
but that is all past history - we must forget all about that, and work
for the future.' There is no such thing as past history. Only by being
quite certain what has happened, not merely what we are told happened,
can we understand what can happen. Or to put it another way, only by
knowing and understanding what and who caused the war, can we
understand
how to win the war." More than half a century later, after entering a
new millennium, are we any the wiser?

A number of insightful and practical observations in the sphere of
political and economic realism have been made by Eric D. Butler, in a
series of lectures under the heading of Social Dynamics, which the
author defines thus: "Social Dynamics is the science of applying social
power to social organisations in order that individuals may obtain the
results they desire. Social power derives from the belief - faith -
that
individuals in society can in correct association get what they want."
Eric Butler says: "With an understanding of how the present
finance-economic system is being used to attempt to express a
philosophy
which runs contrary to reality, it is now possible to consider
appropriate policies and action necessary to free the individual from
the threat of centralised tyranny. Broadly speaking, what is required
is
a progressive retreat from centralisation of power. But this is not
going to happen simply because a number of individuals understand the
nature of the power problem. Those who have usurped the power which the
individual should be exercising, are not going to voluntarily
relinquish
this power. Many of them consciously seek even greater power..Any
decentralisation of power will only take place through those exercising
the power being compelled to relinquish it. This means conflict between
those who would be free and those who operate policies denying freedom.
There is no way of those standing for freedom to avoid this conflict.
Genuine decentralisation of power is impossible without
decentralisation
of financial or credit power. A start must be made with modifications
to
present credit policies. But these policies can only be modified
through
political action, through government. The first essential for correct
action is to sweep away the modern totalitarian conception of
government. This conception implies that individuals belong to
governments, whereas governments should belong to individuals..The
essence of the situation is that government must be compelled to
disgorge much of the power it has taken from the individual, and
government itself must be decentralised..Any Board of Directors which
provided their shareholders with the type of financial information
provided by governments, would find themselves in the Courts charged
with failure to discharge their proper responsibilities."

Eric Butler further observes: "An effective policy of decentralising
all
power through decentralising financial power will meet with the most
bitter opposition. Such a policy would run counter to the drive towards
organising man into the World State. But it must be implemented if
civilisation is to be saved. The problem is one of the electors
applying
sufficient social power to force a change. The major sanctions
available
to electors are their political votes. Politicians who will not work to
advance the policies put forward by their electors must be penalised in
the same way that consumers penalise business organisations who will
not, or cannot, provide what is required: they must be deprived of
votes. If electors will not make the effort to insist upon the policies
they require, they cannot logically complain if they have disastrous
policies imposed upon them. How can electors resist the policies of
centralisation being imposed upon them, and reverse these policies?
Only
by using the social power they can still exercise by correctly
associating to make their will prevail. Political democracy can only be
a reality when a Member of Parliament is primarily responsible to his
electors, not to party bosses. But electors cannot expect their elected
representative to move openly against the forces of centralised power
unless they make it clear that they will support him. It is a
fundamental truth that in a democracy, electors get the government, and
the representatives they deserve. The basic problem is not going to be
solved by creating still more parties, seeking to persuade the elector
that all he has to do is to vote for them and all will be well. What is
required is a new type of political movement, a type of voluntary civil
service staffed by trained Social Engineers seeking to advise and guide
electors on how to initiate constructive action in all political
spheres..The decisive factor in the crisis threatening Civilisation
will
be Faith. If sufficient individuals have sufficient Faith that they do
possess the capacity to change the course of events from their present
disastrous course, then the mountains obstructing man from entering
into
his rightful heritage will be removed. Politics and economics will be
reduced to their proper role in the scheme of life, while the
individual
enters into that life more abundant which he was told would come
through
the pursuit of Truth."

In a treatise entitled Scotland and Its Money (1991) the author, James
Gibb Stuart, comments on a realistic, practical and alternative
Scottish
approach to the prevailing anti-social international monopoly of credit
scenario. This Scots writer says: "So why should Scotland bother? Why
should she dare? Why not just accept some form of devolved autonomy,
whilst leaving the real business of finance to the big guns in the City
of London? Surprisingly enough, despite the mighty array of banking
power that could be ranged against us, it is mainly a matter of
political and national will. A Scottish Parliament which proclaimed its
sovereign independence by the clear consent of its electorate is most
unlikely to be attacked by tanks and aircraft. The pressures would come
against our currency, our credit worthiness and our external trade. For
a while we might have to keep our heads down, though utterly convinced
of the rightness and wisdom of our position. Much of the pressure would
be psychological. Starting without debt the Scottish economy would
enjoy
taxation relief, worthwhile employment and all-round competititveness
that would eventually make our markets irresistible. Friends and allies
would spring up from every corner of the globe, as our cause caught
their imagination, and they waited to see whether we, the Scots, would
blaze a trail that others could follow."

James Gibb Stuart continues: "Meanwhile the bankers themselves would be
threatening and scaremongering. Like an insect projected by strong
light
onto a reflective wall, they would cast a mighty shadow. And perhaps
that would frighten many, but only through an illusion, for the reality
would still be of an insect. Banking power is thus for ever illusory
against a nation which takes charge of its own credit, and understands
how to monetise its own labour and resources. We would survive, and our
position could only strengthen as the benefits of a debt-free economic
system became more visible. It has long been realised that if one small
nation-state managed to break the bankers' credit monopoly, and
articulated the methods by which this had been achieved, others would
want to follow. That is why the big financial interests have been
concerned to see that no such experiment ever materialises, and to
stamp
fiercely upon its manifestations, wherever they might be found. Thus
far
they have been overwhelmingly successful. We are up against a
resourceful opponent, who has lost several skirmishes and an occasional
battle, but never the war itself. It remains a matter of knowledge and
conviction, of national and political will-power. In the sorry state of
the world's economies - a condition exacerbated in almost every
instance
by mountains of irredeemable debt - it is a reform and a deliverance
just waiting around to happen. With this prospect before them, can the
Scots be energised into taking a leadership role?"[6] As has been said
before, the wise man is one who heareth the word and doeth something
about it. Unless the word is incarnated through practical application
it
becomes meaningless.

C.H. Douglas, Scots engineer and economist, at Fearnan

overlooking Loch Tay, Perthshire, Scotland

"Now it is my own belief....that there is running through the nature of
the Universe something that we call a 'canon'. It is the thing which is
referred to in the Gospel of St. John as the 'logos', the 'word'....The
engineer and the artist refer to it when they say that they have got
something 'right'. Other people mean the same thing when they talk
about
absolute truth, or reality. Genuine success only accompanies a
consistent attempt to discover and to conform to this canon in no
matter
what sphere our activities may lie." - C.H. Douglas.

Notes:

[1] Gospel of St. Matthew, ch.7, v.20.
[2] "As the situation stands at present, the banker is in a unique
position. He is probably the only known instance of the possibility of
lending something without parting with anything, and making a profit on
the transaction, obtaining in the first instance his commodity free."
Taken from a speech in Newcastle, England, in 1923 by C.H. Douglas,
entitled The Breakdown of the Employment System.
[3] Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Messianic
Legacy, 1986, p.108.
[4] The discerning reader is referred to the seminal works of C.H.
Douglas which are centred around a perception of economic and political
realism. (Available from Bloomfield Books, 26 Meadow Lane, Sudbury,
Suffolk, CO10 6TD). For a more recent commentary on C.H.Douglas'
economic proposals see The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild
Socialism by Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt (1997). Curiously, at
the beginning of World War (part) II, C.H.Douglas moved to Fortingall,
Scotland, where he lived in a house called Rose Villa overlooking the
Fortingall Yew tree. Councidence - or synchronicity? Douglas
subsequently moved to Fearnan, a few miles away, where he lived until
his death in 1952.
[5] Money - a Christian View, forward by Rev. Dr. George F. MacLeod
(founder of the Iona Community), 1963 Glasgow.
[6] James Gibb Stuart, Scotland and Its Money, 1991, pp.30-31. The
complete text of this informative treatise is available in booklet form
from Ossian Publishers, 268 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR.

© copyright Barry Dunford

http://www.sacredconnection.ndo.co.uk

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Gates scam?

2006-08-29T05:15:09Z

The Gates And Buffet
Foundation Shell Game
By Sheldon Drobny
Co-founder of Air America Radio
8-26-6

My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious
venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of
wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the
IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law
including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. I have known
for years that a smart wealthy person could keep control of all his
assets without estate or income taxes through cleverly structured
charitable foundations. These foundations are perfectly legal and allow the
donors to keep absolute control of all their money and power and
accumulate enormous appreciation free of taxation. In 1967, the loopholes were
outrageous and the law has tightened some of these tactics for the rich.
However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell
game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the
same. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH BY THESE
TWO WILL BE MUCH MORE MASSIVE BECAUSE THEY WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO PAY
ANY TAXES. The Gates Foundation now has about $60 Billion under the
control of the wealthiest people in America. They do not have to sell any
of their positions in the stocks that they put under the tax-exempt
umbrella. Furthermore, they can vote their stock holdings the same as if
they did before and they can make the same investment decisions about
their considerable corporate holdings. Both Buffet and Gates exhibited
the most predatory capitalistic practices as corporate executives and
investors. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway are not models of socially
responsible capitalism. That being said, this foundation will be in the
long run richer than the Catholic Church, which has accumulated wealth
and power for over 1500 years. However, the results will be exactly the
same. They will never liquidate enough of their assets to do any real
good for the most onerous problem we have as humans; the worldwide
poverty that is caused by the great disparity between the haves and the
have-nots. GATES WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE POPE The Gates
Foundation and the Catholic Church have the same goals. They are to keep the
legacies for which they were created. For Bill Gates and Warren Buffet it
is the control and legacy of family wealth as in the ancient days of
the Pharos of Egypt. And by not paying any taxes, Gates will be more
powerful than the Pope. I realize that this foundation has done more for
disease research and education than any single government institution.
But, that is just a condemnation of how little rich countries do for the
less fortunate. AND THE UNITED STATES IS ONE OF THE WORST EXAMPLES OF
HOW LITTLE IT DOES FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE. The great problems of the
world today are a direct result of the wide disparity between the rich and
poor. But, it is hard for the wealthiest to even look at this as an
issue of most importance. Catholic Charities do a lot for the poor and I
am sure that the Gates Foundation will do a lot for diseases of the
poor. But, that is merely a band-aid for one of the symptoms of poverty.
The real issue today is poverty. The governments that keep their people
in abject poverty while their leaders are obscenely rich from oil
revenues cause many of the problems in the Middle East. But, even the
poorest of their people now have access to satellite TV and Internet
information that shows these people how much they are being exploited. The
simple answer that they hate us for our freedom is absurd. They hate us
because they see the wealthy and powerful as the cause of their suffering.
As was the case in Germany in the 1920s, even a cultured society can
succumb to irrationally violent leaders if they are hungry and poor. It
is a human problem that we saw occur in a 1st world country. The 1968
movie, The Shoes of the Fisherman was a fictional account of a new Pope
who had the conscience to solve world poverty by giving away all the
Church's assets. Below is a summary of the plot from www.imdb.com.
"After twenty years in a Siberian labor camp, Kiril Lakota, the
Metropolitan Archbishop of Lvov, is set free. The Catholic Archbishop is released
and sent to Rome, where the ailing Pope makes him a Cardinal. The world
is in a state of crisis - a famine in China is exacerbated by United
States restrictions on Chinese trade and the ongoing Chinese-Soviet feud.
When the Pontiff dies, Lakota finds himself elected Pope. But the new
Pope Kiril I is plagued by self-doubt, by his years in prison, and by
the strange world he knows so little about. This movie contains extensive
information about Catholic faith & practice, as a television news
reporter steps in from time-to-time to explain the procedures involved in
selecting a new Pope." OUR CHANCES OF SURVIVAL ARE MARKEDLY DECREASED
The movie was not great but it did emphasize the point I am making in
this piece. Unless wealthy people and governments around the world
recognize the threat that poverty has on humanity, our chances of survival
are markedly decreased. And unless the major wealth of the world is used
to help feed its people, the diseases caused by poverty will never be
cured. The prevention of diseases, both physical and mental, caused by
hunger and poverty are the real dangers we face. And with all the
concentrated wealth, we have the capacity to give everyone enough to survive
and still leave the wealthy with plenty of luxuries. IF BILL GATES
GAVE $29 BILLION AWAY AND KEPT ONLY $1BILLION HE WOULD STILL HAVE A
WONDERFUL LIFE. IF HE GAVE IT TO SALLY STRUTHERS, SHE COULD PROBABLY FEED
THE WORLD. SHELDON DROBNY The Gates and Buffet Foundation Shell
Game - Url.: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0823-26.htm>
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0823-26.htm Published on
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

housing mkt dive

2006-08-29T05:13:53Z

MWM: Not that you don't already know this, but...

Recession Will Be Nasty and Deep, Economist Says

Housing is in free fall, pulling the economy down with it, Roubini
argues

August 23, 2006
By Rex Nutting
MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The United States is headed for a recession
that will be "much nastier, deeper and more protracted" than the 2001
recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics.

Writing on his blog Wednesday, Roubini repeated his call that the U.S.
would be in recession in 2007, arguing that the collapse of housing
would bring down the rest of the economy. Read more.

Roubini wrote after the National Association of Realtors reported
Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 4.1% in July, while inventories
soared to a 13-year high and prices flattened out on a year-over-year
basis. See full story.

'This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades:
every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices.'
Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics

"This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades:
every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices,"
Roubini said. The decline in investment in the housing sector will
exceed the drop in investment when the Nasdaq collapsed in 2000 and 2001, he
said.

And the impact of the bursting of the bubble will affect every
household in America, not just the few people who owned significant shares in
technology companies during the dot-com boom, he said. Prices are
falling even in the Midwest, which never experienced a bubble, "a scary
signal" of how much pain the drop in household wealth could cause.

Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University and was a
senior economist in the White House and the Treasury Department in the
late 1990s. His firm focuses largely on global macroeconomics.

While many economists share Roubini's concerns about imbalances in the
global economy and in the U.S. housing sector, he stands nearly alone
in predicting a recession next year.

Fed watcher Tim Duy called Roubini the "the current archetypical
Eeyore," responding to a comment Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher made
last week in referring to economic pessimists as "Eeyores," after Winnie
the Pooh's grumpy friend.

"By itself this slump is enough to trigger a U.S. recession: its
effects on real residential investment, wealth and consumption, and
employment will be more severe than the tech bust that triggered the 2001
recession," Roubini said.

Housing has accounted, directly and indirectly, for about 30% of
employment growth during this expansion, including employment in retail and
in manufacturing producing consumer goods, he said.

In the past year, consumers spent about $200 billion of the money they
pulled out of their home equity, he estimated. Already, sales of
consumer durables such as cars and furniture have weakened.

"As the housing sector slumps, the job and income and wage losses in
housing will percolate throughout the economy," Roubini said.

Consumers also face high energy prices, higher interest rates, stagnant
wages, negative savings and high debt levels, he noted.

"This is the tipping point for the U.S. consumer and the effects will
be ugly," he said. "Expect the great recession of 2007 to be much
nastier, deeper and more protracted than the 2001 recession."
He also sees many of the same warning signs in other economies,
including some in Europe. End of Story

Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7BE18E95AF-DBFF-4EE4-ACF7-530A3CD714D3%7D&print=true&dist=printTop

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Pop Occulture

2006-08-23T18:09:00Z

I have 2 articles in the online zine Pop Occulture at

http://www.popocculture.com

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

high cost of war

2006-08-23T18:07:42Z

not to mention the human costs

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Exodus Decoded

2006-08-22T02:44:25Z

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/arts/stories/DN-spotlightexodus_12rel.ART.State.Edition1.2c5b660.html

Catch it on a rerun. It was a great production and the proposed date, coinciding with Thera's eruption coincides with Velokovsky's predicted time - 3500 yrs ago. The name of the Pharaoh of that time means 'brother of Moses'.

The rub is G-d didn't have to do anything with a supervolcano to account for it all.

The Jews were the Hyksos.

Director picks up trail of Exodus

11:29 AM CDT on Saturday, August 12, 2006

By NANCY CHURNIN / Staff Writer

WHAT: The Exodus Decoded, a documentary about a director's search for the truth behind the biblical tale

WHEN: 7 p.m. Aug. 20

Courtesy
Director Simcha Jacobovici.
WHERE: The History Channel

SLEUTHING IN THE SINAI: Canadian director Simcha Jacobovici takes a controversial detective-type approach to archaeological, geologic and linguistic artifacts. He builds a case that the flight of the Jews from Egypt happened, but in 1500 B.C., centuries before most scholars have thought it did.

He points to a volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini as the origin of the Bible's 10 plagues, showing how it could have turned the water red and brought swarms of frogs and locusts.

DARING ASSERTIONS: Mr. Jacobovici, a two-time Emmy-winner, seems to relish going where few historians have dared. His reworking of the Exodus timeline leads him to believe that the story's pharaoh was Ahmose rather than Ramses.

TANTALIZING FINDS: Mr. Jacobovici finds a hieroglyphic inscription describing the Exodus from an Egyptian point of view; a gold image dating back 3,500 years that he asserts is an image of the lost Ark of the Covenant; and a 3,500-year-old image from an Egyptian museum that may be a sculpture of Moses and the parting of the sea.

WATER TO BLOOD: In one of the strongest segments, Mr. Jacobovici looks at a 1986 volcanic eruption that turned Lake Nyos in Cameroon blood red (as in the first plague).

That eruption also produced fumes that killed people sleeping at ground level, significant because of an account in the biblical plague story. He asserts that in ancient times, the first-born Egyptian sons would have slept and died as in the 10th of the plagues described in the Book of Exodus, and the Hebrew children would have been spared because they were having their first Passover feast instead of sleeping.

FAITH MATTERS: Mr. Jacobovici knows that historians who write off the Exodus as a fairy tale may dismiss him, as will Bible believers who aren't interested in scientific proof. He offers a third option: Natural phenomena may have caused the plagues, but God may have manipulated natural conditions for a purpose.

A GREAT RIDE: The presentation is vivid, with seamless transitions from the director's modern journeys to computer-generated effects, his theories and his finds. Titanic director James Cameron is the executive producer.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

NASA claims to find Dark Matter

2006-08-21T20:28:46Z

I think now my Dark Angels were a premonition...;)))

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/

1E 0657-56: NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.
JPEG (479 kb) Tiff (9.2 MB) PS (2.8 MB)

This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang.

Gravitational Lensing Explanation
Hot gas detected by Chandra in X-rays is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal," or baryonic, matter in the two clusters. The bullet-shaped clump on the right is the hot gas from one cluster, which passed through the hot gas from the other larger cluster during the collision. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxies in orange and white. The blue areas in this image show where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. The concentration of mass is determined using the effect of so-called gravitational lensing, where light from the distant objects is distorted by intervening matter. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark.

The hot gas in each cluster was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance, during the collision. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. Therefore, during the collision the dark matter clumps from the two clusters moved ahead of the hot gas, producing the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the image. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, as proposed by alternative theories of gravity, such an effect would not be seen. Instead, this result shows that dark matter is required.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Presbyterians doubt 911

2006-08-20T00:34:06Z

Brave & wise decision!

*****************************************

“I am human, because you are human. My humanity is caught in yours and if
you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized, and anger resentment and retribution
are corrosive of this great good, the harmony that has got to exist between
people.”

-Desmond Tutu

-----Original Message-----
From: News Service [ mailto:newsservice@CTR.PCUSA.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 5:18 PM
To: PCUSANEWS@HALAK.PCUSA.ORG
Subject: [PCUSANEWS] PPC defends decision to publish controversial book

You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS listserv of
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

============================================================

This story located at: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06414.htm

06414
August 16, 2006

PPC defends decision to publish controversial book

Not disloyal to PC(USA), CEO Perkins says

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE * The Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC)
staunchly defended its decision to publish a controversial
book that asserts the U.S. government helped stage the Sept.
11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a pretext for going to war in
Afghanistan and Iraq, saying the purpose of the book is to
"provoke serious discussion and reflection."

In a prepared statement, PPC officials also rejected the
idea that publishing David Ray Griffin's Christian Faith and
the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is
somehow the fault of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and
has caused further damage to the troubled denomination.

"The views expressed in the book are Griffin's alone," said
PPC Board chair Kenneth Godshall. "PPC provides a variety of
viewpoints in the books we publish. A few of them from time
to time are controversial. This particular book is the work
of an independent author and in no way represents the views
of the denomination or PPC itself."

Conservative groups in the PC(USA) have maintained a steady
drumbeat of criticism in recent weeks, attacking the book,
attributing its publication to the denomination and claiming
its publication is further dividing the church.

PPC President and Publisher Davis Perkins rejected those
charges, saying that critics "rather than engaging the
content of Griffin's work, have chosen to cloud the issue by
claiming, falsely, that the book was published by the
PC(USA)."

PPC is one of six agencies of the PC(USA). It is separately
incorporated and receives no funding from the denomination.
Its board of directors is elected by the PC(USA) General
Assembly but operates with complete editorial autonomy.

"Under the Westminster John Knox Press (WJK) imprint, PPC
publishes a theologically and religiously diverse selection
of books that extends far beyond the Reformed tradition and
the official policies and stances of the PC(USA)," the Aug.
11 statement said. "Books specifically for the PC(USA) are
published under our Geneva Press imprint."

Griffin's book was published under the Westminster John Knox
imprint.

"WJK publishes a plethora of books by non-Presbyterians
without being branded as disloyal to the interests of the
PC(USA)," Perkins said. "For example, no one ever imagined
WJK's popular The Gospel According to The Simpsons reflected
the 'official position' of the denomination on matters of
theology or polity, and, similarly, there was never a word
of criticism about WJK publishing the works of a major
Jewish scholar like Jacob Neusner or an evangelical Anglican
like N. T. Wright.

"This is what academic/trade publishers do, and this is what
the General Assembly intended for PPC and the WJK imprint
when it unanimously approved the documents that created the
organization," Perkins said. "There are close to 1,500
titles in the WJK backlist portfolio and the specter that
they are in or out of kilter with a so-called official
Presbyterian position has never been a serious issue."

Perkins acknowledged the controversy Griffin's book has
stirred up. "We expect people to take issue with our books
from time to time," he said, "but what is disappointing is
that the most vocal critics of the work to date are
dismissing it without having even bothered to read it. What
we intended when we published this WJK book was not that
people would necessarily agree or disagree with the author's
thesis, but that his well-researched argument would provoke
serious discussion and reflection among Christians in this
country who care about these issues. We feel this author *
and all our authors * deserves this courtesy."

Godshall agreed. "PPC and its predecessor imprints have
published books by David Ray Griffin for many years," he
said. "In his new book, Griffin provides a theological
response to contemporary political events that many readers
will find uncomfortable, even objectionable. We invite
Presbyterians to read the book before making up their
minds."

Griffin, a retired professor of philosophy and theology at
the Claremont School of Theology in California and one of
the founders of the "9/11 Truth Movement," has stirred such
controversy before with two previous books from other
publishers: The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about
the Bush Administration and 9/11 and The 9/11 Commission
Report: Omissions and Distortions.

In his preface to the 192-page Christian Faith and the Truth
behind 9/11, Griffin writes: "One of our main tasks as
theologians is to deal with current events in light of the
fact that our first allegiance must be to God, who created
and loves all people * indeed all forms of life. If we
believe that our political and military leaders are acting
on the basis of policies that are diametrically opposed to
divine purposes, it is incumbent upon us to say so."

Presbyterians Today magazine has commissioned Alan Wisdom,
vice-president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy
and a Presbyterian elder, to review the book. His review
will be posted on the Presbyterians Today Web site in the
next few days.

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posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Dark Angels Seek the Light

2006-08-20T00:30:53Z

new Io art
http://ionatopia.50megs.com/photo6_1.html

enjoi,
io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Don't wanna live like a refugee

2006-08-20T00:29:37Z

An irony of life on this planet Earth!
Betty
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0817-06.htm

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by Agence France Presse
US Suffers World's First Climate Change Exodus: Study
by Jitendra Joshi

The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said.

"The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now.

Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago must now be classed as "refugees".

"Interestingly, the country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily responsible for global warming," he said.

The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say are to blame for heating up the Earth.

Many environmentalists had expected the first big population shift to come somewhere like the Tuamotu islands in French Polynesia, the world's largest chain of atolls which rise barely metres (feet) from the Pacific.

Rising sea levels are part of the problem afflicting low-lying places but, experts argue, so are tropical storms that are mounting in ferocity because of warmer ocean temperatures.

Brown said many thousands of people who evacuated last year as Katrina slammed into New Orleans and other populated areas on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts had no intention of returning.

"We estimate that at least 250,000 of them have established homes elsewhere and will not return," he said.

"They no longer want to face the personal trauma and financial risks associated with rising seas and more destructive storms. These evacuees are now climate refugees."

Many businesses have also deserted the coastal towns left ravaged by Katrina as insurance and other costs soar, the study said.

"As rising seas and more powerful hurricanes translate into higher insurance costs in these coastal communities, people are retreating inland," Brown said.

"And just as companies migrate to regions with lower wages, they also migrate to regions with lower insurance costs."

The study also warned: "The experience with more destructive storms in recent years is only the beginning."

The institute said that since 1970, the Earth's average temperature has risen by one degree Fahrenheit, but by 2100 it could rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (six degrees Celsius).

Rising temperatures could melt glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels and displacing coastal residents worldwide.

"The flow of climate refugees to date numbers in the thousands, but if we do not quickly reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, it could one day number in the millions," Brown said.

The institute's study classed "climate refugees" as part of a larger group of people who have been forced from their homes by man-made environmental change such as overgrazing.

"Overgrazing destroys the vegetation which leads then to local sandstorms ... we are looking at growing flows of environmental refugees in Africa, for example in Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania or Kenya," Brown told reporters.

Millions of people in northern and western China have abandoned their villages as the land turns semi-arid because of overgrazing, the study said.

China is also the second biggest greenhouse-gas polluter after the United States thanks to the voracious rise in coal, gas and oil consumption to power its economic growth.

The booming port city of Shanghai could be at risk of flooding from more ferocious typhoons linked to global warming as it is only a metre (three feet) above sea level, Brown said.

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Brain evolution gene

2006-08-17T06:44:18Z

Scientists find brain evolution gene
Body: By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
57 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Scientists believe they have found a key gene that helped the human brain evolve from our chimp-like ancestors. In just a few million years, one area of the human genome seems to have evolved about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code. It appears to have a role in a rapid tripling of the size of the brain's crucial cerebral cortex, according to an article published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Study co-author David Haussler, director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said his team found strong but still circumstantial evidence that a certain gene, called HAR1F, may provide an important answer to the question: "What makes humans brainier than other primates?" Human brains are triple the size of chimp brains.

Looking at 49 areas that have changed the most between the human and chimpanzee genomes, Haussler zeroed in on an area with "a very dramatic change in a relatively short period of time."

That one gene didn't exist until 300 million years ago and is present only in mammals and birds, not fish or animals without backbones. But then it didn't change much at all. There are only two differences in that one gene between a chimp and a chicken, Haussler said.

But there are 18 differences in that one gene between human and chimp and they all seemed to occur in the development of man, he said.

Andrew Clark, a Cornell University professor molecular biology who was not part of Haussler's team, said that if true, the change in genes would be fastest and most dramatic in humans and would be "terrifically exciting."

However, the gene changed so fast that Clark said that he has a hard time believing it unless something unusual happened in a mutation. It's not part of normal evolution, he said. Haussler attributed the dramatic change to the stress of man getting out of trees and walking on two feet.

And it's not just that this gene changed a lot. There is also its involvement with the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for some of the more complex brain functions, including language and information processing.

"It looks like in fact it is important in the development of brain," said co-author Sofie Salama, a research biologist at Santa Cruz who led the efforts to identify where the gene is active in the body.

The scientists still don't know specifically what the gene does. But they know that this same gene turns on in human fetuses at seven weeks after conception and then shuts down at 19 weeks, Haussler said.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

coercion

2006-08-16T08:17:34Z

via www.cyberjournal.org

BRITISH TERROR PLOTS
Mr. Craig Murray is the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was dismissed from his job after he exposed the fact that there were no actual Islamic terrorists in Uzbekistan. His investigations showed that the alleged terrorists were merely innocent local Muslim people who were being systematically tortured into signing false confessions. These confessions were then gleefully received by the US and the UK despite the fact they knew them to be false. For these and other favours from the Uzbek dictatorship the US paid a lot of money and supported this tyrannical regime.

As British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray obtained from a relative photographs of the corpse of an Uzbek person who died under interrogation in prison in Uzbekistan. He sent the pictures to a forensic specialist on the UK who expressed the view that in his professional opinion the pictures clearly show that the person had died under torture (boiled alive).

This item below is his thoughts on the the UK terror plot.

=========

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html
August 14, 2006
www.craigmurray.co.uk

The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

--

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Bob's film

2006-08-15T06:24:58Z

Bob Judd, who was animator of South Park cartoon and movie the first 2 years, has loaded his 2 minute video spoof, 'Bovine Vendetta' from '98 up on YouTube. It features a female bovine saying Charles Manson lines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxxJJj5pVZM

Bob's latest political art soon appearing at
http://theeantichrist.com

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Middle Eastern DEW weapons

2006-08-14T23:32:15Z

More horrors of war.
Betty
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAN20060807&articleId=2918

New and unkown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces
'direct energy' weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare

By Professor Paola Manduca

August 7, 2006

By now there are countless reports, from hospitals, witnesses, armament experts and journalists that strongly suggest that in the present offensive of Israeli forces against Lebanon and Gaza 'new weapons' are being used.

New and strange symptoms are reported amongst the wounded and the dead.

Bodies with dead tissues and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed.

Many of these descriptions suggest the possibility that the new weapons used include 'direct energy' weapons, and chemical and/or biological agents, in a sort of macabre experiment of future warfare, where there is no respect for anything: International rules (from the Geneva Convention to the treaties on biological and chemical weapons), refugees, hospitals and the Red Cross, not to mention the people, their future, their children, the environment, which is poisoned through dissemination of Depleted Uranium and toxic substances released after oil and chemical depots are bombed.

Right now, the Lebanese and Palestinian people have many urgent and impellent problems, yet many people believe that these episodes cannot and must not pass ignored. In fact several appeals have been launched to scientists and experts with a view to investigating the issue.

With the intent of responding to such appeals, we have set up a team to investigate the testimonies, the images, and possibly the material evidence that delegations and NGOs will be able to bring from the affected areas. We want to offer support to the health institutions of Lebanon and Palestine, which ask constantly for help and external verification and monitoring, and we are examining all available materials in order to formulate hypotheses which can be verified or disproved.

We ask for the active participation of our (Italian) scientific institutions, and, following the request from medical personnel in the conflict area, we are requesting that the UN set up an international independent verification and investigation committee, with a view to facilitating entry into the conflict zone, as well as collecting material and testimonies directly in the field, and undertaking inquries and verifications concerning the various claims regarding these new kinds of weapons of mass destruction being used by Israeli forces in Lebanon. We request that such investigating teams be set up immediately, and that procedures be defined and implemented with a view to supporting future investigations. Of particular concern is the issue of how to collect and store samples from the different theatres, with a view to preserving important information regarding the various impacts of these weapons.

We ask that the international committee have access to all sources of information, that it be fully operational, while abiding by relevant investigative procedures, including cross-checking of information between different laboratories. The international committee is to report to the competent authorities, including the Human Rights tribunals and international courts, if appropriate..

As people and as scientists, we are offering our time and expertise in order to reach an understanding of the underlying facts, in the belief that a perspective of justice, equity and peace among people can be reached only with the respect of the rules defined up to now within the international community of nations. The issue pertains to the behavior of the parties in an armed conflict.

We ask that the respect of these rules be verified in the context of the present conflict.

We invite scientists to contribute to this effort by offering their specific competences. In particular we seek collaboration of toxicology experts, pharmacologists, anatomy pathologists, doctors with an expertise in trauma and burns, chemists.

They can reach the working group at the E-mail address: nuovearmi@gmail.com Paola Manduca, Professor of.Genetics, University of Genova, Italy

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

The Rabbit test

2006-08-14T21:02:22Z

The Rabbit

The LAPD, The FBI, and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and has each of them try to catch it.

The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten raccoon. The raccoon is yelling: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"

The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

my new NEUROTHEOLOGY site

2006-07-29T10:55:20Z

Comprehensive intro and updates for all writing and art.
Art Manifesto 2006
http://ionatopia.50megs.com

8/06
NEWEST SITE: August, 2006 NEUROTHEOLOGY
http://neurotheology.50megs.com
Neurotheology, also known as biotheology, is the study of the neural basis of spirituality. Neurotheology deals with the neurological and evolutionary basis for subjective experiences traditionally categorized as spiritual. Aldous Huxley introduced the term neurotheology in his utopian novel Island. The term is also sometimes used in a less scientific context or a philosophical context. Keywords include 'deity', 'neurophysiological bases', self-transcendence, 'spirituality' and 'mysticism'.

7/06
NEW SITE: July, 2006 CONSCIOUS ALCHEMY – NLP 2006
http://consciousalchemy.50megs.com
CONSCIOUS ALCHEMY is the art of modulating your own psychophysical chemistry for increased quality of life. We need to learn the art of living well, instead of living better. Through CONSCIOUS ALCHEMY you can retrieve the psychophysical biochemistry of your balanced and peak performance states. You can apply this to pain management as well as emotional issues or boosting your potential. By recalling vital times, you essentially regress your body chemistry to a more youthful you, and minimize the toxic chemistry of stress. This allows both body and mind to relax and recalibrate homeostasis. You can also draw on the support and encouragement of your evolving future self through imagination. Just as one incident can create trauma, one healing moment can change that instantly.

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Empire to Earth Community

2006-07-24T18:37:00Z

Positive and hopeful - Betty
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0718-31.htm
Published on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 by Yes! Magazine
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
by David Korten

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth’s capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet’s resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

A Defining Choice

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

A Turn From Life

According to cultural historian Riane Eisler, early humans evolved within a cultural and institutional frame of Earth Community. They organized to meet their needs by cooperating with life rather than by dominating it. Then some 5,000 years ago, beginning in Mesopotamia, our ancestors made a tragic turn from Earth Community to Empire. They turned away from a reverence for the generative power of liferepresented by female gods or nature spiritsto a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the swordrepresented by distant, usually male, gods. The wisdom of the elder and the priestess gave way to the arbitrary rule of the powerful, often ruthless, king.

Paying the Price

The peoples of the dominant human societies lost their sense of attachment to the living earth, and societies became divided between the rulers and the ruled, exploiters and exploited. The brutal competition for power created a relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled dynamic of violence and oppression and served to elevate the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. Since the fateful turn, the major portion of the resources available to human societies has been diverted from meeting the needs of life to supporting the military forces, prisons, palaces, temples, and patronage for retainers and propagandists on which the system of domination in turn depends. Great civilizations built by ambitious rulers fell to successive waves of corruption and conquest.

The primary institutional form of Empire has morphed from the city-state to the nation-state to the global corporation, but the underlying pattern of domination remains. It is axiomatic: for a few to be on top, many must be on the bottom. The powerful control and institutionalize the processes by which it will be decided who enjoys the privilege and who pays the price, a choice that commonly results in arbitrarily excluding from power whole groups of persons based on race and gender.

Troubling Truths

Herein lies a crucial insight. If we look for the source of the social pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these pathologies depends on a common solutionreplacing the underlying dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot look to imperial powerholders to lead the way.

Beyond Denial

History shows that as empires crumble the ruling elites become ever more corrupt and ruthless in their drive to secure their own powera dynamic now playing out in the United States. We Americans base our identity in large measure on the myth that our nation has always embodied the highest principles of democracy, and is devoted to spreading peace and justice to the world.

But there has always been tension between America’s high ideals and its reality as a modern version of Empire. The freedom promised by the Bill of Rights contrasts starkly with the enshrinement of slavery elsewhere in the original articles of the Constitution. The protection of property, an idea central to the American dream, stands in contradiction to the fact that our nation was built on land taken by force from Native Americans. Although we consider the vote to be the hallmark of our democracy, it took nearly 200 years before that right was extended to all citizens.

Americans acculturated to the ideals of America find it difficult to comprehend what our rulers are doing, most of which is at odds with notions of egalitarianism, justice, and democracy. Within the frame of historical reality, it is perfectly clear: they are playing out the endgame of Empire, seeking to consolidate power through increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic policies.

Wise choices necessarily rest on a foundation of truth. The Great Turning depends on awakening to deep truths long denied.

Global Awakening

Empire’s true believers maintain that the inherent flaws in our human nature lead to a natural propensity to greed, violence, and lust for power. Social order and material progress depend, therefore, on imposing elite rule and market discipline to channel these dark tendencies to positive ends. Psychologists who study the developmental pathways of the individual consciousness observe a more complex reality. Just as we grow up in our physical capacities and potential given proper physical nourishment and exercise, we also grow up in the capacities and potential of our consciousness, given proper social and emotional nourishment and exercise.

Over a lifetime, those who enjoy the requisite emotional support traverse a pathway from the narcissistic, undifferentiated magical consciousness of the newborn to the fully mature, inclusive, and multidimensional spiritual consciousness of the wise elder. The lower, more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for young children, but become sociopathic in adults and are easily encouraged and manipulated by advertisers and demagogues. The higher orders of consciousness are a necessary foundation of mature democracy. Perhaps Empire’s greatest tragedy is that its cultures and institutions systematically suppress our progress to the higher orders of consciousness.

Given that Empire has prevailed for 5,000 years, a turn from Empire to Earth Community might seem a hopeless fantasy if not for the evidence from values surveys that a global awakening to the higher levels of human consciousness is already underway. This awakening is driven in part by a communications revolution that defies elite censorship and is breaking down the geographical barriers to intercultural exchange.

The consequences of the awakening are manifest in the civil rights, women’s, environmental, peace, and other social movements. These movements in turn gain energy from the growing leadership of women, communities of color, and indigenous peoples, and from a shift in the demographic balance in favor of older age groups more likely to have achieved the higher-order consciousness of the wise elder.

It is fortuitous that we humans have achieved the means to make a collective choice as a species to free ourselves from Empire’s seemingly inexorable compete-or-die logic at the precise moment we face the imperative to do so. The speed at which institutional and technological advances have created possibilities wholly new to the human experience is stunning.

JUST OVER 60 YEARS AGO, we created the United Nations, which, for all its imperfections, made it possible for the first time for representatives of all the world’s nations and people to meet in a neutral space to resolve differences through dialogue rather than force of arms.

LESS THAN 50 YEARS AGO, our species ventured into space to look back and see ourselves as one people sharing a common destiny on a living space ship.

IN LITTLE MORE THAN 10 YEARS our communications technologies have given us the ability, should we choose to use it, to link every human on the planet into a seamless web of nearly costless communication and cooperation.

Already our new technological capability has made possible the interconnection of the millions of people who are learning to work as a dynamic, self--directing social organism that transcends boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality and functions as a shared conscience of the species. We call this social or-ganism global civil society. On February 15, 2003, it brought more than 10 million people to the streets of the world’s cities, towns, and villages to call for peace in the face of the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They accomplished this monumental collective action without a central organization, budget, or charismatic leader through social processes never before possible on such a scale. This was but a foretaste of the possibilities for radically new forms of partnership organization now within our reach.

Break the Silence, End the Isolation, Change the Story

We humans live by stories. The key to making a choice for Earth Community is recognizing that the foundation of Empire’s power does not lie in its instruments of physical violence. It lies in Empire’s ability to control the stories by which we define ourselves and our possibilities in order to perpetuate the myths on which the legitimacy of the dominator relations of Empire depend. To change the human future, we must change our defining stories.

Story Power

For 5,000 years, the ruling class has cultivated, rewarded, and amplified the voices of those storytellers whose stories affirm the righteousness of Empire and deny the higher-order potentials of our nature that would allow us to live with one another in peace and cooperation. There have always been those among us who sense the possibilities of Earth Community, but their stories have been marginalized or silenced by Empire’s instruments of intimidation. The stories endlessly repeated by the scribes of Empire become the stories most believed. Stories of more hopeful possibilities go unheard or unheeded and those who discern the truth are unable to identify and support one another in the common cause of truth telling. Fortunately, the new communications technologies are breaking this pattern. As truth-tellers reach a wider audience, the myths of Empire become harder to maintain.

The struggle to define the prevailing cultural stories largely defines contemporary cultural politics in the United States. A far-right alliance of elitist corporate plutocrats and religious theocrats has gained control of the political discourse in the United States not by force of their numbers, which are relatively small, but by controlling the stories by which the prevailing culture defines the pathway to prosperity, security, and meaning. In each instance, the far right’s favored versions of these stories affirm the dominator relations of Empire.

THE IMPERIAL PROSPERITY STORY says that an eternally growing economy benefits everyone. To grow the economy, we need wealthy people who can invest in enterprises that create jobs. Thus, we must support the wealthy by cutting their taxes and eliminating regulations that create barriers to accumulating wealth. We must also eliminate welfare programs in order to teach the poor the value of working hard at whatever wages the market offers.

THE IMPERIAL SECURITY STORY tells of a dangerous world, filled with criminals, terrorists, and enemies. The only way to insure our safety is through major expenditures on the military and the police to maintain order by physical force.

THE IMPERIAL MEANING STORY reinforces the other two, featuring a God who rewards righteousness with wealth and power and mandates that they rule over the poor who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins.

These stories all serve to alienate us from the community of life and deny the positive potentials of our nature, while affirming the legitimacy of economic inequality, the use of physical force to maintain imperial order, and the special righteousness of those in power.

It is not enough, as many in the United States are doing, to debate the details of tax and education policies, budgets, war, and trade agreements in search of a positive political agenda. Nor is it enough to craft slogans with broad mass appeal aimed at winning the next election or policy debate. We must infuse the mainstream culture with stories of Earth Community. As the stories of Empire nurture a culture of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership. They affirm the positive potentials of our human nature and show that realizing true prosperity, security, and meaning depends on creating vibrant, caring, interlinked communities that support all persons in realizing their full humanity. Sharing the joyful news of our human possibilities through word and action is perhaps the most important aspect of the Great Work of our time.

Changing the prevailing stories in the United States may be easier to accomplish than we might think. The apparent political divisions notwithstanding, U.S. polling data reveal a startling degree of consensus on key issues. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe that as a society the United States is focused on the wrong priorities. Supermajorities want to see greater priority given to children, family, community, and a healthy environment. Americans also want a world that puts people ahead of profits, spiritual values ahead of financial values, and international cooperation ahead of international domination. These Earth Community values are in fact widely shared by both conservatives and liberals.

Our nation is on the wrong course not because Americans have the wrong values. It is on the wrong course because of remnant imperial institutions that give unaccountable power to a small alliance of right-wing extremists who call themselves conservative and claim to support family and community values, but whose preferred economic and social policies constitute a ruthless war against children, families, communities, and the environment.

The distinctive human capacity for reflection and intentional choice carries a corresponding moral responsibility to care for one another and the planet. Indeed, our deepest desire is to live in loving relationships with one another. The hunger for loving families and communities is a powerful, but latent, unifying force and the potential foundation of a winning political coalition dedicated to creating societies that support every person in actualizing his or her highest potential.

In these turbulent and often frightening times, it is important to remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting moment in the whole of the human experience. We have the opportunity to turn away from Empire and to embrace Earth Community as a conscious collective choice. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network. This article draws from his newly released book, " The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community." Go to www.yesmagazine.org/greatturning for book excerpts, related articles, David’s talks, and resources for action.

© 2006 Yes!

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Spiritual TV and radio free online Heaven to Earth

2006-07-23T20:59:21Z

Check out…

http://www.heaventoearth.com/home.html
http://www.success-talk.com/index.asp?ch=37

Enlightening TV

Bridging Heaven & Earth, an international spiritual talk show, produced by The Bridging Heaven & Earth Foundation (for more information on the Foundation, please go to the Foundation Page), focuses on opening the heart; bridging the spiritual and the physical, the human and the divine, heaven and earth within each one and the Oneness in all Life.

In an article in the California Sun, Editor Nicole Shoong stated that “after researching this article, it is our understanding that, for this type of show, whose only purpose is to speak to the upliftment of Spirit, and to the Oneness in all Life, without any specific spiritual or religious orientation, “Bridging Heaven & Earth” is the most watched and admired show on the planet.”

Begun in 1995, “Bridging” has spread its message of Love and Oneness across the international spiritual scene through many cable stations (for full listing, click on Stations Icon) and the Internet (for the ability to hear the audio portion of all the “Bridging” shows, go to Bridging Heaven & Earth's Own Channel of the Success-Talk site.

Originally hosted by Wistancia & Allan, two spiritual teachers and mystics, and now hosted by Allan alone, “Bridging” has featured many of the spiritual communities most prominent Lights. “Bridging” recently finished taping its Fifteenth Season and 195th show in Santa Barbara, CA with a lineup of guests that were both powerful and inspiring. To see a full list and short biographies of our amazing guests for the full Fifteen Seasons, click on the Seasons Icon. “Bridging” is shown in approximately 150 cities across the United States (see Stations Page).

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Bozzetto

2006-07-22T02:32:52Z

The value of the bozzetto

July 21, 2006

Dear iona,

"Bozzetto" is an Italian term for a sculptor's small-scale
model, usually in wax or clay, made in preparation for a
full-scale work in more permanent material. Like the French
"maquette," a bozzetto is often exploratory. The word bozzetto,
however, can also mean a sketch for a painting--even a
sketch-for–its-own-sake that can march out into the world and
have a life of its own.

Artists of all stripes need to know that the bozzetto is not
just a sketch but a state of mind. With its low degree of
commitment and expectation, it gives high value and ongoing
reward as a creative tool. Lending itself to the magical ploys
of series and set, it frees the mind of great obligation and
prepares the groundwork for visual freshness. Together with the
golden rule of "chuck it," regularly practiced, bozzetto-making
is a sure route to style and an individualist personality. It
also goes a long way toward overcoming obsessive overworking
and the perennial inability of some artists to wind up their
work. Because of its casual nature, bozzetto-making simply and
directly self-teaches the painterly virtues of audacity,
paucity, experimentation and elan.

Audacity: Daring, bold and impudent, the audacious painter
wades into action without knowing what she's getting into.
"Just do it" is her motto, and ego-force is her operating mode.

Paucity: Paucity is the absence of, or mere implication of
subjects or areas within a work. It also includes cursory,
lost-and-found lines and the minimal number of strokes
necessary to do the job. Paucity is the ultimate economy of
means.

Experimentation: The artist constantly asks "what could be?"
and shucks off the temptation to go for the tried and true. In
some ways, experimentation is the most stimulating act of the
creative process. With small stuff, the artist speculates:
"What the heck, I'll try this."

Elan: Flushed with energy and enjoying a vivacious rush, the
artist commits, conducts and masters. Elan itself releases the
genie of imagination. The artist looks and acts like a maestro
and thus becomes one.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "What is important is not the motif itself, so much as your
ability to imagine, speculate, organize, and above all, to
simplify." (Richard Busey)

Esoterica: Underlying all the enthusiasm I have for
bozzetto-making, there's the value of simplicity. Small,
inconsequential works facilitate simplicity, and the
broad-based habits so generated pass into larger pieces. Many
creators have experienced this epiphany. "Less is more," said
Robert Browning. The great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson
noted, "It is by great economy of means that one arrives at
simplicity of expression." Small work clears the mind of
impedimenta and complexity--and sets higher ambition in motion.
"Out of clutter, find simplicity." (Albert Einstein)

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Anxious Adults

2006-07-22T02:30:14Z

Anxious Adults Judge Facial Cues Faster, But Less Accurately
Adults who are highly anxious can perceive changes in facial expressions more quickly than adults who are less anxious, a new study shows. By jumping to emotional conclusions, however, highly anxious adults may make more errors in judgment and perpetuate a cycle of conflict and misunderstanding in their relationships.

"Facial cues play an important role in how individuals perceive information that is relevant to attachment concerns," said study co-author R. Chris Fraley, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our findings suggest that highly anxious individuals - people who are very insecure about their relationships - are more vigilant in monitoring the facial cues of others, but also make more mistakes in interpreting the emotional states behind facial expressions."

To investigate the relationship between attachment style and perception of facial cues, Fraley and his collaborators asked participants to view movies of faces in which the _expression gradually changed from emotional to neutral, or vice versa. The participants were instructed to stop the movie at the point at which the _expression had changed. The researchers report their findings in the August issue of the Journal of Personality.

"We found that highly anxious people tended to judge the change in facial expressions faster than less-anxious people," Fraley said. "Importantly, highly anxious individuals also tended to make more perceptual errors than less-anxious individuals."

Highly anxious adults were more sensitive and much more likely to jump to emotional conclusions, thus undermining their ability to perceive emotions accurately, the researchers found. Indeed, when highly anxious adults were forced to take the same amount of time as everyone else, they were able to judge emotional states more accurately than less-anxious adults.

"This 'hair trigger' style of perceptual sensitivity may be one reason why highly anxious people experience greater conflict in their relationships," Fraley said. "The irony is that they have the ability to make their judgments more accurately than less-anxious people, but, because they are so quick to make judgments about others' emotions, they tend to mistakenly infer other people's emotional states and intentions."

With Fraley, the paper's co-authors are psychologist Paula M. Niedenthal at the National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France, and Illinois graduate students Michael Marks, Claudia Brumbaugh and Amanda Vicary.

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060717221058.htm

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: New York Time Opines On "The Real Agenda

2006-07-21T00:51:36Z

BULLETIN ITEM: New York Time Opines On "The Real Agenda" Of the
Bush/Cheney Junta

MWM: Hooray for the New YorK Times, after six years of non-stop lying
out of the White House, the NY Times has finally figured out that they
REALLY are liars who are stripping people of their rights and Republic.
Perhaps they will now begin to figure out and report back to us in
about two years that the 911 Hoax REALLY was a fraud after all. Less
facetiously, what is most amazing about the Gangsters who control the White
House is that six years of duplicities have essentially cost them the
credibility of mainstream people at 911 ground zero. From this we can
see the jig really is up. New York and California will turn first, at
the people level, with increasing dramatics pushing all envelopes, but
of course all the neutered institutional gov/media people will do their
best to Sieg Orwell to the bitter end.

From: June Wortman <junesrag@cox.net>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: THE REAL AGENDA NY Times editorial

Don't miss an astounding fact in the seventh paragraph.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16sun1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>

*The Real Agenda*
The New York Times | Editorial

Sunday 16 July 2006

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full
picture of the Bush administration's response to the terror attacks is
becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting
Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between
following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power,
the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when
the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative
Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While
no one questions the determination of the White House to fight
terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by
another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and
always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded
on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a
less effective war on terror.

*The Guantánamo Bay Prison*

This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme
Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both
applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment,
it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it
could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the
president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure
for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as
suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.

But by week's end it was clear that the president's idea of
cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made
it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush's
illegal actions - to amend the law to negate the court's ruling instead
of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva
Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically
blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international
consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.

The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military
lawyers - who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were
established - endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the
Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and
obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not
coddling the masterminds of terror.

The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting
terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the
life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken
captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and
sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first - as military
lawyers wanted to do - many would never have been kept in custody, a
continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would
actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the
world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding
of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder
that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the
terrible crimes of 9/11.

The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly
humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the
mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with
limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to
do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose
political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most
embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could
not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which
has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a
century, was too vague. Which part of "civilized peoples," "judicial
guarantees" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" do they find confusing?

*Eavesdropping on Americans*

The administration's intent to use the war on terror to buttress
presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping
program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls
of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special
court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch
warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And
Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process
in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the
administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became
public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the
rules. As usual, the president's most loyal supporters simply urged that
Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.

Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Mr. Bush on
how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that the
president was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.

The bill the president has agreed to accept would allow him to go on
ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to
obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about - or
for any other program - from the special intelligence surveillance court.
It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket
approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants
required by the Constitution. Once again, the president has refused to
acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.

And while the bill would establish new rules that Mr. Bush could
voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal
challenges to the president's wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court
made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is
unconstitutional.

If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will
promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of
the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Mr. Bush had a
record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make
the determination. In addition, Mr. Bush could appeal if the court ruled
against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the
surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.

*The Cost of Executive Arrogance*

The president's constant efforts to assert his power to act without
consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and
sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion
and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need
to go it alone - everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in
Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession
with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to
occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned
more efficiently within the rules.

Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the
constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3
issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick
Cheney's long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of
Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed
more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.

To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take
up this cause behind the shield of Americans' deep insecurity. The
results have been devastating. Americans' civil liberties have been
trampled. The nation's image as a champion of human rights has been gravely
harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the
prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents
"disappear" people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to
torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed
at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress
has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as
pro-terrorist at election time.

We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court's powerful
and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to
account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has
made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Political Face Off

2006-07-18T00:21:47Z

> Source: University <http://www.ucla.edu> of California - Los Angeles
>
> Posted: July 13, 2006
A new UCLA imaging study finds political party allegiance affects the brain
> activity of partisans viewing the faces of candidates.
>
> Published online July 9, 2006, by the peer-reviewed journal
> Neuropsychologia, the study finds a partisan's brain responds to the
> opposition candidate's face by activating cognitive networks designed to
> regulate emotion.
>
> Researchers at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human
> Behavior at UCLA suggest the neural activity has one of three goals: 1)
> suppression of unpleasant emotions; 2) suppression of latent positive
> feelings toward an opposing candidate; or 3) an increase in negative
> feelings toward an opposing candidate.
>
> "We still have much to learn about the neural basis of political decision
> making; however, these findings show party allegiance has a clear impact on
> brain activity," said lead author Marco Iacoboni, associate professor in
> residence at the Semel Institute, the David Geffen School of Medicine at
> UCLA and the UCLA Brain Research Institute.
>
> "Most importantly, our findings show how political attitudes can guide the
> activation of emotional systems in the brain and influence how people
> regulate those emotional responses," Iacoboni said. "Politics is a
> ubiquitous form of human social interaction and may very well be an
> effective way of learning more about the neural basis of social behavior."
>
> Using powerful fMRI equipment at the Semel Institute's Ahmanson-Lovelace
> Brain Mapping Center, the research team scanned the brains of 10 registered
> Democrats and 10 registered Republicans as the subjects viewed the faces of
> 2004 presidential contenders George Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader. The
> study was conducted in the heat of the campaign that year.
>
> Viewing an opposition candidate produced signal changes in cognitive control
> circuitry in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior
> cingulated cortex (ACC), as well as in emotional regions in the insula and
> anterior temporal poles. The ACC is important to attention control and
> self-monitoring, and together with the DLPFC forms a network that monitors
> response conflict and, when necessary, regulates emotion.
>
> The level of network activity in study participants correlated with
> self-reported ratings about how the subject felt emotionally about the
> candidates. The more negative the feelings about the opponent and more
> positive the feelings about the favorite candidate, the greater the brain
> activity discriminated between the two faces.
>
> The effect was strongest for ratings of George Bush, which tended to differ
> more between Democrats and Republicans than did ratings of John Kerry. In
> addition, Republicans showed widespread signal changes looking at Nader,
> compared with Bush. Those changes were not seen in Democrats as they viewed
> Nader.
>
> The research was supported in part by FKF Applied Research LLC. Other
> support was provided by the Brain Mapping Medical Research Organization,
> Brain Mapping Support Foundation, Pierson-Lovelace Foundation, The Ahmanson
> Foundation, Tamkin Foundation, Jennifer Jones-Simon Foundation, Capital
> Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Robson Family, William M. and Linda
> R. Dietel Philanthropic Fund at the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation,
> Northstar Fund, and National Center for Research Resources grants.
>
> Co-investigators with Iacoboni were Jonas T. Kaplan and Joshua Freeman of
> the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the
> David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Meme Therapy

2006-07-16T19:08:13Z

http://memetherapy.blogspot.com/

check it out - lots of food for thought.

xo,
io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Cancun Summit

2006-07-14T13:42:16Z

<http://my.opera.com/prosperingbear/blog/show.dml/305326>The Cancun
Summit Mandated The North American Union by 2007

Monday, 19. June 2006, 18:17:31

Liberty Gone Forever

The Cancun Summit Mandated The North American Union by 2007
by Jan Allen

I. Summary
The Cancun Summit produced the Leaders Joint Statement of March 31,
2006 <http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk>http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk

It mandated six action points to insure that the North American Union
be in place before the end of the year.

The North American Union is the creation of the Security and Prosperity
Partnership (SPP) which established totally new state corporate rule
over the entire North American Continent
<http://tinyurl.com/eey4x>http://tinyurl.com/eey4x

II. The Leaders Joint Statement of March 31, 2006
<http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk>http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk presented six action
points to insure that the North American Union be in place before the
end of the year:
1) Establishment of a Trilateral Regulatory Cooperative Framework
The leaders said: We affirm our commitment to strengthen regulatory
cooperation in this and other key sectors and to have our central
regulatory agencies complete a "trilateral regulatory cooperation framework" by
2007.

2) Establishment of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC)
The NACC is to be the council, junta of business executives and
government ministers, who make recommendations for executive action.

3) Provision for North American Emergency Management
Develop a common disaster response, for events whether natural or
man-made; and there will be coordinated training and exercises, with the
participation of all levels of government in all countries.

4) Provision for Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza Management
Develop a comprehensive, science-based and coordinated approach within
North America to avian influenza and human pandemic influenza
management.

5) Development of North American Energy Security
Collaborate amongst business executives and governmental agencies for
energy security.

6) Assure Smart, Secure Borders North American Borders
Establish checkpoints at borders; develop the North American trusted
traveler program and provide a trilateral network for the protection of
judges and officers.

III. The North American Union Is The Plan For Global Governance Of The
Entire Continent
1) Global governance is the application of universal principles of
democracy, order, security and prosperity. Global governance combines state
power and corporate resources for rule over the people; it is this
state corporatism that directs domestic and foreign policy.

2) The Cancun Summit’s Leaders Statement shows that global governance
is being installed via democratic institutions consisting of meetings,
summits, councils and working groups; these replace constitutional law
and statute law. Leaders set policy at meetings
<http://tinyurl.com/eh8l5>http://tinyurl.com/eh8l5 and summits
<http://tinyurl.com/fzu2x>http://tinyurl.com/fzu2x Then councils
<http://tinyurl.com/ej2r3>http://tinyurl.com/ej2r3 and working groups
<http://tinyurl.com/n9q8c>http://tinyurl.com/n9q8c consisting of
governmental ministers and businesses executives establish deep integration of
government with industry, commerce and trade -- these provide the
infrastructure for new governance. National sovereignty is sacrificed as the
interests of the region rise in pre-eminence.

Yes, at the Cancun Summit “Next Steps Meeting”, George Bush and Robert
J Stevens of Lockheed Martin together with other business leaders
finalized their plan for The North American Union
<http://tinyurl.com/h2rg3>http://tinyurl.com/h2rg3

3) Global Governance is synonymous with Tyranny, meaning rule from
above. The Age of Tyranny began March 23, 2005 when President George Bush
signed the SPP thereby abrogating the US Constitution, signing away
America's National Sovereignty and committing the US to a region of state
corporate governance <http://tinyurl.com/r42wp>http://tinyurl.com/r42wp

The President's actions have gone unchallenged by Congress: the reason
is most likely they have
acquiesced <http://tinyurl.com/oxx2x>http://tinyurl.com/oxx2x to George
Bush being the Unitary Executive who establishes government policy and
action. The term Unitary Executive means that the President has
Universal and Inherent Authority -- Plenary Power to respond to emergencies
and to response to terrorism which threaten the Homeland's security,
prosperity and order.

Since the President's word, will and way have become the law of the
land (and the continent), The Liberty Bell and The US Flag have been, for
all practical purposes retired
<http://tinyurl.com/lykgc>http://tinyurl.com/lykgc

4) The Trilateral Regulatory Cooperation Framework = The Executive
Branch Of The Forth Coming N. American Government. No specifics were given
on this "framework"; one could assume the "framework" is Doublethink
<http://tinyurl.com/omyu4>http://tinyurl.com/omyu4 for the Executive
Branch of tyrannical state corporate rule; the Executive Branch is
complimented by NORTHCOM, the Military Law Enforcement Branch
<http://tinyurl.com/hmfhj,>http://tinyurl.com/hmfhj, and the NAFTA
Tribunal, the Commerce Judiciary
<http://tinyurl.com/myecx>http://tinyurl.com/myecx

Action point six listed above provides for a trilateral network for the
protection of judges and officers; one could assume that the judges
will be given physical protection from people who might express hostility
to the introduction and administration of global governance.

The SPP <http://tinyurl.com/rofvg>http://tinyurl.com/rofvg made use of
the word stakeholders, councils and working groups, these recommend
policy for Executive Action. Thus, the US Congress is largely an
irrelevant body -- it is a relic of a bygone era. The SPP is the document for a
secure, prosperous and orderly North American Homeland. The three
presidents and their Trilateral Regulatory Cooperation Framework are the
ruling body in the North American Union.

5) The NACC was actually put in place 6-14-2006
<http://tinyurl.com/rpyrh>http://tinyurl.com/rpyrh The NACC may become
"NAFTA on Steroids".

6) Just as the "911 terrorist incident"
<http://tinyurl.com/mvbl5>http://tinyurl.com/mvbl5 and "so called international terrorism"
<http://tinyurl.com/luka9>http://tinyurl.com/luka9 and "Sadaam's WMDs"
<http://tinyurl.com/ljns6>http://tinyurl.com/ljns6 led to military
involvement in Iraq, a soon coming continental-wide emergency such as a
currency devaluation, a shortage of gasoline due to a conflict with Iran or
the outbreak of pandemic bird flu
<http://tinyurl.com/qroe6>http://tinyurl.com/qroe6 will require that NORTHCOM deploy the
military, global peacekeepers and Blackwater USA security guards
<http://tinyurl.com/q2ee9>http://tinyurl.com/q2ee9 under the terms of
the terms of the SPP, for the Homeland's Security and Order
<http://tinyurl.com/pu4kn>http://tinyurl.com/pu4kn

Here are various articles suggesting that a pretext will be used to
install state corporate rule over America:
6a) Bird Flu Quarantine: Pretext For A Globalist Martial Law Takeover
Of America? <http://tinyurl.com/s6t6c>http://tinyurl.com/s6t6c

6b) Urban Warfare Training Exercises: Practice For Martial Law Troop
Deployment? <http://tinyurl.com/z54sf>http://tinyurl.com/z54sf

6c) Neocons Build World Army To Subdue Hotspots And North America
<http://tinyurl.com/rjr7y>http://tinyurl.com/rjr7y

7) The trusted traveler program, mentioned in action point six, is the
foundation for what will likely become an "internal travel permit"
program <http://tinyurl.com/s94v9>http://tinyurl.com/s94v9 whereby one
presents papers for travel within the Union -- within the Homeland

8) Action point number three above mandates coordinated training and
exercises for emergency management with the participation of all levels
of government in all countries. Such a training exercise took place as
reported by the The-Free Lance-Star article 'Police Training Guard'
dated 6-21-2006 where thirty five of Fredericksburg's Army National Guard
members received urban assault training from eight members of Fairfax
County's SWAT team. The police officers drilled members of Alpha Company,
116th Brigade Special Troops Battalion--formerly the 229th Engineer
Battalion--in techniques they use in urban, and suburban, scenarios. The
group trained at Fort Pickett's MOUT, or Military Operation Urban
Terrain section. It's a cluster of white concrete buildings built to simulate
a neighborhood in Baghdad or Kabul -- a manufactured ghost town. Here
they practiced commands such as Police! Get Down. The police officers
remained humble while training the unit; they said they were honored to
work with the soldiers.
<http://tinyurl.com/l2bgv>http://tinyurl.com/l2bgv

Such a training exercise corrupts the National Guard in two way: First,
the training is a subterfuge for what is really taking place: that
being creeping tyranny to build the “homeland security state
infrastructure” to control the people. Secondly the training destroys the ethic and
underlying principle of historical law, that being, the Posse Comitatus
Act. This is the U.S. statute prohibiting the use of “armed force” for
law enforcement; its intent, purpose and application described quite
well by Libertarian Gene Healy in ‘What of Posse Comitatus’
<http://tinyurl.com/f963p>http://tinyurl.com/f963p

9) The institution of the North American Union manifests the Straussian
philosophy of the Bush administration
<http://tinyurl.com/pz3qu>http://tinyurl.com/pz3qu which is based upon the University Of Chicago
Professor, Leo Strauss who taught that "philosopher kings" arise; these
elite Few are to rule over the vulgar Many.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Earth Changes Bulletin Updates are usually published in a brief
form and distributed free on a weekly basis. Occasionally Earth Changes
Special Reports are produced on timely topics. This is Shareware
Information, if it is useful to you, please help support it by making a
VOLUNTARY donation (you will not be denied access). A donation of $3.00 per
month or $36.00 per year is requested to sustain this work and additional
benefits may be available. To provide a mechanism for making a
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posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Robotics vs Heliotics

2006-07-07T19:08:39Z

Robotics vs. Helotics
Robotics vs. Helotics

(Will Japan be the mid-21st century superpower?)

by John Derbyshire (July 2006)

Let’s start this month’s column with a movie. If your PC and internet connection are happy to play a moderate-sized video, here is the movie. If not, I’ll just tell you that the star of this movie is a gadget named Robomow**, made by Friendly Robotics, a firm based in Kadima, Israel, founded by two former F-16 pilots for the Israeli Air Force. Robomow is a robot lawnmower. It labors away day and night keeping your grass neat and short. When its battery gets low, it heads to the recharger and plugs itself in. When fully recharged, it unplugs itself and continues its task.

Household robots of this kind have been around for some years, of course. Friendly Robotics was founded in 1995, and even that makes them five years younger than iRobot, manufacturers of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, the most successful domestic robot so far. Roomba has been selling well in the U.S. for four years now, with over two million units shipped. Robots for industrial and military uses go back further. Production-line factory workers began losing their jobs to welding and assembling robots in the late 1970s, and the Wheelbarrow robot began saving the lives of bomb disposal specialists half a decade before that. Further back yet go the robots of our imagination, through the tales of Isaac Asimov that enlivened my own childhood, via Karel Capek’s 1921 story “R.U.R.,” which actually gave us the word “robot,” to the 16th-century golem legends of Central Europe.

Announcements that we are approaching some technical turning-point or other are always hazardous. That the capabilities of robots have not, in a third of a century, advanced much from spot welding and grass cutting, might suggest that getting machines to perform any really complicated physical tasks is extremely difficult. So it is, especially if you want some reliability and safety in the performance.

Technological progress rarely goes at a steady pace, though. It has its spurts and leaps, generally driven by force of necessity, and there are signs that the advance of robotics may be about to speed up dramatically. Another third of a century from now, Robomow and the Roomba (and its pal the Scoomba, which will mop your kitchen floor for you) may look as quaintly primitive as the wire-and-canvas biplanes of WW1 looked to the jet pilots of 1950. Necessity, well-known as the mother of invention, may be about to go into labor.

* * * * *

The force of necessity in this case will be—in fact, as we shall see in a moment, already is—the Great Demographic Plunge. Modernity has now seeped into all but the most remote and tradition-bound societies of the world, one result being that few women anywhere are willing to comply with the old one-pregnancy-a-year pattern of procreation. Fertility rates are going off a cliff. This is true everywhere, though the mathematics of demography means that the effect in actual population numbers can take a while to work through. Population can swell even as fertility declines, because babies born during the higher-fertility period take twenty years to join the fertile population. Still, fertility rates win in the end, and they are dropping world-wide. Mexico, which was averaging seven births per family in the 1970s, is now down to just over two. Even the Middle East has declining fertility, with 1970 vs. 2005 fertility rates of 6.6 vs. 2.9 for Egypt, 6.8 vs. 1.8 for Iran, 7.3 vs. 4.0 for Saudi Arabia, and so on.

Some nations will go off the demographic cliff before others, of course. You can make a case that the still-increasing populations of regions like the Middle East and Indonesia are demographic threats to the now-or-soon-declining populations of regions like Europe and northeast Asia. No right-wing ranter can get through a column nowadays without at least a passing whine about Our Demographic Deficit: not Mark Steyn, not the War Nerd, not me.

Perhaps we make too much of this. Certainly there are other factors in play. Military clashes, let alone civilizational ones, are rarely decided by demography alone. The Sweden of Charles XII had only one tenth the population of Peter the Great’s Russia, yet Charles gave Peter a run for his money, and his kingdom was not overwhelmed even when Peter triumphed at last. Sweden is still with us, for better or worse (see below). The steppe nomads who terrorized medieval Europe, and stole entire regions from it, were demographically far inferior to their victims. Even more sensationally, early-Victorian Britain, pop. 25m, easily trounced late-Qing China, pop. 350m, in the Opium Wars, in spite of being handicapped by 8,000-mile-long lines of communication.

One important factor in the last two of those encounters was decadence on the part of Byzantium and China, respectively—a sort of civilizational tiredness, and the complacency induced by too much gazing backwards at a long and glittering history. That is what we conservatives worry about when we contemplate Europe’s position vis-à-vis the Moslem world. Whether the Europe of today is really as far gone in decadence as 11th-century Byzantium or 19th-century China is a matter of opinion. So, for that matter, is the question of whether the Islamia of today really has the gut-busting vitality of those bumptious Seljuk Turks and Victorian Britons.

The example of the Opium Wars, at any rate, suggests a possible rule for figuring out which nation is likely to become Top Dog in any historical epoch. Britain was able to do to China what she did, and to then dominate the 19th century, by virtue of having been the first nation to accomplish an industrial revolution. Assuming that all nations were bound to have industrial revolutions sooner or later, there was a huge prize waiting for the nation that had it first—even if that nation was one of modest population and inconvenient location, like Britain.

Since demographic collapse seems as inevitable a feature of the 21st century as industrialization was of the 19th, it may be that the nation that dominates the coming era will be the one that gets through that inevitable demographic transformation first, and comes out the other side. Which nation will that be?

* * * * *

Japan was the first important nation to go over the fertility-rate cliff, passing downward through replacement level—2.1 children per woman—in 1960, to a present 1.3. The actual population of Japan began to decline last year. The Japanese are falling into the demographic black hole ahead of the rest of us. This is a topic of endless worried discussion in Japan. The government there has tried to encourage women to have more children, so far without any noticeable effect. If you read much political commentary, you will be familiar with all the gloomy predictions about the impact of aging, graying populations on current economies and welfare systems.

However, if it is really the case that every other nation will face this issue in the coming decades, then the Japanese are, in a sense, ahead of the game. They may be dropping into a demographic black hole; but there are physicists who argue that falling into a black hole does not mean utter annihilation—that, in fact, you may pass right through the black hole and out into another place***. If that’s right, the Japanese will get to that place, and adjust to it, ahead of the rest of us.

What form will the adjustment take? There are all kinds of speculations. Longer working lives seem to be inevitable, with much less indulgence of the old. The word “old” itself will change meaning, very likely with the help of pharmacological perk-up aids to mind and body. Our grandchildren may think of 45 as young and 70 as middle-aged. The health fanatics’ slogan “Live long, die fast” may come to represent the norm—no bad thing, in my opinion.

And then there will be robotics. With a shortage of young hands willing to do low-paid physical chores, the robots will come into their own. The Japanese are definitely ahead of the game here, with the South Koreans (whose fertility rate is even a tad lower than Japan’s) close behind. “Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020.” That’s from a report in the June 10th Economist.

The Europeans are waking up to robotics, too, with a series of European Robotics Symposiums started up this year. The first symposium was held in Palermo, Sicily, in March. One of the participants, Dr. Henrik Christensen of Sweden (I told you we’d get back to Sweden), got my attention, and a paragraph in National Review’s “The Week,” with his claim that robot sex partners are in our near future. As Dr. Christensen says: “People are willing to have sex with inflatable dolls, so initially anything that moves will be an improvement.”

(I had better warn readers that if you raise the topic of robotic sex in a room full of married American males, you will be greeted with many anguished cries of: “Been doing it for years!” Ladies should not take offense. This is just a harmless and very common male way of venting about the general frustrations of married life. Some years ago a business colleague of mine, whom I knew to have been very happily married for over twenty years, had some major work done on his property, work that required shutting off the power for several hours. The contractor suggested that the homeowner might want to give a thought to the food in his freezer, perhaps transferring it to a neighbor’s freezer. “Nah,” replied my colleague, “I’ll just put the wife to bed and pack the food around her.”)

Sexbots illustrate the ethical issues we shall come up against with robotics. What, for example, would be the ethics of selling child-sized robots to pedophiles, or four-legged robots to zoophiles? And while I can’t imagine that any male has ever got into a life-threatening situation with an inflatable sex toy, women might be more vulnerable. Remember Jane Fonda and the Orgasmotron.

* * * * *

Japan might, therefore, be on track to become the superpower of the mid-21st century, having by then put behind her problems the rest of us will still be struggling with. It is no use arguing that a superpower needs big armies, which an older, grayer population won’t be able to supply. Military affairs are roboticizable too****.

It would be nice to think that we, the U.S.A., will be up there with the Japanese and Koreans, winning the technological game. Unfortunately we do not feel the pressure of necessity as keenly as the East Asians do. One reason is that our fertility rate has not dropped as dramatically low as theirs. Another is that our attitude to immigration is much more generous than theirs.

Actually these two reasons are one, because while native American fertility is now below replacement level, the fertility rate of legal immigrants is about a third higher, and that of illegal immigrants higher yet. Immigration into Japan and South Korea is essentially nil. This is not because nobody wants to go and live in those countries—several hundred million Chinese, Filipinos, and Indonesians would love to—but because the Japanese and Koreans don’t think immigration would be good for their countries. They prefer robots over helots.

We might ask ourselves whether that preference might not, in the long run, prove to be a wise one. Our fathers mowed their own lawns. We hire gangs of helots—illegal immigrants—to mow our lawns. Since the demographic crunch will dry up the supply of helot labor everywhere, our children, in their middle age, will likely have their lawns mowed by some descendant of Robomow.

The East Asians, however, with their aversion to cheap immigrant labor, and their fascination with robotics, will have got there long before us. With the demographic transition behind them, and, one assumes, their economic inefficiencies long since corrected, they will be sailing under clear skies through the mid-21st century, while we are still fighting our way through demographic gales.

-------------------------------------------------------

** The promotional material also calls the gadget “RoboMower,” I don’t know why.

*** There need to be some very special conditions here—your black hole needs to be rotating, for instance—and even then the physics isn’t conclusive. There is also the drawback that the entire process, seen from the outside, may require an infinite amount of time. But heck, I’m just making a loose analogy.

**** Though we had better take care not to end up in the situation of the humans in Philip K. Dick’s story “The Defenders,” who retreat to underground caves when the earth is devastated by a long war, leaving robots on the surface to continue the war. The robots keep sending down film reports of tremendous battles and huge destruction wrought upon the enemy by the new weapons the humans spend all their time inventing. After several decades without either side looking like winning the war, a party of men gets up to ground level. They find that the robots, having called off hostilities the moment the last hatch was sealed, and agreeing that mankind could never be trusted not to start things again, have been spending their time faking their reports as interestingly as possible.

John Derbyshire's most recent book is Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra, published by Joseph Henry Press in May.

--

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

addenda on Leary

2006-07-04T22:32:43Z

see my NEW MEDIA page on Mark of Cyber-Alley at
http://mindcontrol.chaosmagic.com

Folks:

A few "facts" (not in the Greenfield biography) . . .

1) Leary's history with personality assessment brought him in touch with the CIA at an early point in his career. In particular, it appears that the CIA funded the Berkeley Institute for Personality Assessment Research (IPAR), as an extension of its efforts to devise personality tests for "recruitment" purposes. Leary's personality "Wheel" -- in which the two primary dualities are "dominant/submissive" and "friendly/unfriendly" -- are a direct followup of the earlier work of Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan, an Army psychiatrist who is buried at Arlington, was senior staff at Chestnut Lodge, the MKULTRA asylum where Frank Olson was heading before his "LSD suicide."

2) Despite its availability from Sandoz, which supplied him with Psilocybin, and his familiarity with the literature, Leary (and the Harvard Psychedelic Project) chose to *not* use LSD in their initial projects. According to participants at Harvard, this Project was also supported by the CIA, as known by Leary. In short, while a "rogue", Leary was very much an "establishment" figure at this stage who was very consciously working for the "man."

3) LSD entered the Harvard scene through Michael Hollingshead, who then went on to promote acid in London with his "World Psychedelic Center." Hollingsheads' purported intelligence connections are more likely British (or very possibly Soviet) than American. Based on the published evidence, it is reasonable to question whether Leary would have become so involved with LSD if Hollingshead is removed from the picture. Furthermore, as detailed by Greenfield, Leary was apparently "selected" for his role by Aldous Huxley (and others) -- as footnoted in "Flashbacks" but often overlooked.

4) In any event, San Francisco played a far greater role in the popularization of LSD than Boston (or New York) in the mid-1960's and Leary had little to do with these developments. Leary's participation was intentionally limited by event organizers and the significance of Owsley etal (and the Dead etal) was much greater at that time. From the standpoint of the Midwest, where I was growing up at the time, SF was Mecca and that's where the "good stuff" all came from. No one outside of a fairly small circle really knew or cared about Leary or Millbrook.

5) The eventual legal crackdown also had little to do with Leary. The CIA had already wound down MKULTRA etal and the FBI etal had significant concerns that "foreign powers" might wish to use LSD etc to "destabilize" American youth -- at a time when the Cold War was being fought in the rice paddies of South East Asia. The scientific community was no longer being funded and the cops had a legit "national security" concern. That's why LSD was scheduled -- not Leary.

My point?

Leary was not particularly responsible for the widespread interest in LSD in the 1960's and, if he had not been involved, the overall pattern of what happened would have been largely the same.

The "facts" are that LSD in the 1950-60's was deeply intertwined with the Cold War and its major opposing "agencies." Forces that were at work in the population then were clearly far larger than the admittedly outsized personality of Tim Leary.

Interesting guy. Enjoyed my time with him. Remove him from the picture and someone else would have been "invented" to take his place.

Conclusion: Leary is now being scapegoated unfairly and this biography is a nasty hatchet-job that assassinates his character while (deliberately?) missing the bigger picture.

Best,

Mark Stahlman
New York City

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Jeff Mishlove of Intuition Network on Art Bell 2nite

2006-07-02T18:43:56Z

From: Jeff Mishlove
Subject: I'll be on the "Art Bell" show tonight 7-10 pm, Pacific Time
Date: Sun Jul 02 01:00:35 UTC 2006

Also: Join us over in the Psi Pod at zaadz.com

coio

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

new JFK inside track

2006-07-01T00:21:50Z

Hello All,

The letter below was written to radio-talk show host Greg Szymanski and other media outlets. On Friday June 30, 2006 I was a guest on Greg’s program for the third segment of his two hour program.

Greg’s program can be heard for free at http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg06.html

Click on M3U or RAM

When your computer audio program is launched, click and hold on curser that controls the ability to fast forward the audio to the end of the bar and the second hour of the program will automatically start. Some audio programs break-up download in segments so click on second segment.

When you listen to the audio program, you will be informed why I will be returning for a second appearance in the next 10 days to two weeks.

Brian

___________

I was 11 years old while attending St Luke’s Catholic School in Irving, Texas when John F. Kennedy entered Dealy Plaza.

My ultra liberal older brother of two years pleaded with my ultra conservative father who worked in an office in downtown Dallas to permit him to skip school so he could watch JFK from Dealy Plaza.

My father refused to grant my brother’s pleadings. My father probably saved my brother’s life because my brother is a keen observer and a stickler for details and would have been an excellent eye-witness despite being only 13 years-old.

On the morning of November 22, 1963, my father made the joking statement to my mother that “he didn’t want any of his sons taking a pot shot at the President.”

My father viewed the Kennedy’s from the 7th Floor of the Simmons Building in downtown Dallas moments before they rounded the corner for Dealy Plaza.

After the bullets flew in Dealy Plaza, the nuns marched us off the playground so we could listen to the local radio report from KLIF AM.

Within an hour after the announcer stated JFK was dead, he stated the arrested and accused Oswald lived in the 2000 block of West 5th Street in Irving, Texas.

My family lived at 1526 West 5th Street in Irving, Texas.

My nine year old younger brother and I walked home from school in shock, fear and looking over our shoulders just in case there were more Oswald’s out there. This was not the first time we had walked home in fear because one year earlier we and all of America experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis.

When my brother and I open the door to our home, we beheld a sight neither of us had seen before.

My father, a Golden Gloves boxing champion and high powered corporate executive, was laid out on the living room couch crying and flaying hysterically with grief and remorse.

We moved from the West 5th Street house when I was 13 years old to 1629 Glen Valley Drive in Irving.

Dr. Charles Rufus Baxter M.D. (no relation to Cleve) lived at 1633 Glen Valley Drive with his wife and sons who were about six to 10 years younger than me.

Dr. Baxter was the Coordinating Emergency Surgeon when the body was wheeled into Parkland Hospital.

Dr. Baxter fanatically never spoke about what happened on November 22, 1963 while he became an authority on victims who had suffered burn trauma.

I began working for Dr. Baxter as a medical cinema photographer specializing in training films for burn management in the summer of 1975.

On November 23, 1975, I was filming a surgery of person who had suffered a severe burn to the hand with Dr. Baxter leading the proceedings. The night before, CBS-TV had aired a total primetime whitewash of the happenings in Dealy Plaza 12 years earlier.

At the beginning of the operation, an intern asked Dr. Baxter what happened when the body was rolled into the emergency room. I thought to myself that this poor intern was going to be banished to Outer Mongolia for asking that forbidden question.

But to my surprise, Charlie backed away from the operating table as he let the Resident and Intern doctors take over the operation while he talked for the remainder of the approximately one hour operation about the events that occurred on November 22, 1963. Regretfully the camera I was filming with had no sound capabilities.

Yep, everyone was totally blown away and you and your audience will be also knocked-over when you learn how the body that was rolled into Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963 REALLY died and other crucial conditions and events.

For years I repeated what Dr. Baxter stated that day to countless friends and acquaintances but they would just nod in disbelief.

On the 40th anniversary, Dr. Baxter appeared on the Larry King Live Show with the other Medical Doctors who were in the operating room at Parkland. Larry King specifically addressed Dr. Baxter with the question “You stopped all CPR and life saving attempts? Dr. Baxter answered, “Yes, because I felt to continue to do so would have been malpractice.”

I was partially vindicated and validated but Larry King did not ask any follow-up questions to Dr. Baxter.

And these are only a few of the countless bizarre and weird connections I have had in this lifetime to the Kennedy abdication.

Thanks

Brian David Andersen

P.S.

When I was a freshman in high school my father bought the book published by the Warren Commission immediately after it was released.

While sitting at a family evening dinner I held the Warren Report between both of my hands and never opened the cover or reviewed any pages.

To this day I do not know what possessed me but I blurted, “This is a bunch crap and lies.”

My mainstream, brainwashed and logical father and emotional older brother went ape and raged for two days after my illogical but from the gut declaration.

Was my gut wrong?

I have numerous more “make everyone go ape and rage” from the gut declarations.

Since holding the Warren Report in my hands at my family dinner table in the late 1960s, I have been waging a private and public version of Info Wars based upon inside and outside of the box research, far-out but real experiences and my gut.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

I'm in it too, but can't remember what I said ;)

2006-06-30T00:22:01Z

Reality Portal/Part 1:
FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

When: Saturday 01.07.2006
Where: Overtoom 301// (old filmacademy)Amsterdam
From: 19:00-21:00

A 2 hour awarness expanding documentary pilot about LSD, SEX & GOD with LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, channeling author Neale Donald Walsch, UN chief, former chief weapon inspector, German
punkrockpop singer Nina Hagen, pornstars, streetkids and Dalai Lama.

See it for your self and make your own mind up.
LIMITED AMOUNT OF SEATS.
FREE ENTRANCE! Donations appreciated!
COME EARLY!

More info/graphics/press info etc:
www.realityportal.info

Questions: realityportal@rediffmail.com

Tel: 06- 43 80 99 98

/Kevin Zaar, Documentary filmmaker in exile

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

art - South Beach Shindig

2006-06-29T19:36:41Z

Laurence Gartel is 50 years young
BY LYSSA OBERKRESER
When you reach the half-century mark (if you haven’t done so already), will you say you have accomplished all you had hoped to? The 50-year-old digital media artist pioneer Laurence Gartel thinks he has done a pretty good job of reaching his goals. “I pounded the pavement in the early Seventies ... I showed my work to everybody, but nobody got it ... but you’re not going to stop because people don’t get it,” the exuberant Gartel muses. “I’ve had a very rich life and have met many fantastic people. I’ve traveled to Australia, Russia, India, Europe, Canada, and will be headed to China this summer. It’s all been adventurous, and I have indeed lived life on my own terms.” Gartel -- and technology -- has come a long way since a time when he had to photograph the video screen in order to capture digital images. Celebrate with the artist at the Gartel @ 50 Birthday Bash tonight from 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. at Social Miami at the Sagamore Hotel, 1671 Collins Ave., Miami Beach. Call 305-491-9877, or e-mail gartelmuseum@yahoo.com to RSVP. Visit www.gartelmuseum.com to learn more about the artist.
Date/Time: Sat., July 1
Sagamore Hotel
1671 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, FL
305-535-8088

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Brion Gysin bio

2006-06-27T23:40:28Z

http://earmap.com/
The multimedia artist, poet and novelist Brion Gysin may be the most influential cultural figure of the twentieth century that most people have never heard of.

Gysin (1916-1986) was an English-born, Canadian-raised, naturalized American of Swiss descent, who lived most of his life in Morocco and France. He went everywhere when the going was good. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the "interzone" of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.

Gysin's ideas influenced generations of artists, musicians and writers, among them David Bowie, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. None was touched more profoundly than William S. Burroughs, who said admiringly of Gysin: "There was something dangerous about what he was doing."

It was Gysin who introduced the Rolling Stones to the exotica of Morocco and took Stones' guitarist Brian Jones to Jajouka where he recorded the tribal musicians performing the Pipes of Pan. It was Gysin who provided the hashish fudge recipe published in Alice B. Toklas' cookbook, promising "ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes." It was Gysin who introduced Burroughs to an automatic writing method called the cut-up, a literary progenitor to sampling. And it was Gysin who developed-with Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine-a device that allowed people, with the flick of a switch, to access altered states of consciousness without drugs.

Working with the authorization of Gysin's literary executor, William S. Burroughs, John Geiger has produced the first-ever biography of the painter, poet, piper Brion Gysin.

http://realitystudio.org/interviews/john_geiger
Interview with John Geiger

Author of Books on Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine

John Geiger is the author of four books. His first two concerned Arctic exploration. His next two, Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and The Dream Machine and Nothing Is True - Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, concerned the Beat movement. In an age when many authors opt for specialization, publishing book after book on the same topic, the range of Mr. Geiger's publications might strike the casual observer as odd. Here's a guy who is a Governor and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. What's he doing writing about the Beats?

Impressed by the Gysin biography and curious to know more about the juxtaposition of Mr. Geiger's interests, RealityStudio prepared the following interview questions and Mr. Geiger graciously agreed to respond.

RealityStudio: What first drew you to study Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, their peers and their era?

Geiger: I had written two books concerned with geographic exploration, and — at the time — didn't want to write a third. I was interested in Gysin and Burroughs both as another kind of explorer, of inner space... I was also intrigued by the idea that someone like Gysin, a bohemian, gay, had come from Edmonton, Alberta, which was a small conservative town in the 1920s. He was such a fascinating creature, Brion: how is it that such a barren landscape — then — could produce such a harvest? But the idea for the book came from a lovely guy, James Grauerholz.

RealityStudio: How did you come to be fascinated enough by the dream machine to write an entire book about it? Have you experimented with a dream machine yourself?

Geiger: My interest in flicker grew out of research into the life of Brion. I started to investigate the claim that there was actual science behind the Dream Machine, that it was something more than a revolving lampshade. It's true: it is possible to experience an altered state of consciousness with the flick of a switch, and what's more light at intervals of 8 to 13 flashes per second can potentiate certain drugs. There was also this amazing cast of characters, people like W. Grey Walter, John R. Smythies. So I decided there was a separate book in it. I am a Dream Machine user and experience the most common response, colour, pattern and movement.

RealityStudio: You interviewed Burroughs for your books on Gysin and the dream machine. What was it like to visit Burroughs? Was it your research that brought you to him, or had you met him previously?

Geiger: Burroughs is branded on my memory. He could have lived a very different life, and he knew it. His alter ego was a crooked sewer commissioner. Thank God for the Ugly Spirit that Gysin once glimpsed through a hashish fog, that Thing that inhabited Burroughs and ruined and saved his life. He really was that which he attributed to Gysin: "An alien eruption." He didn't fit the stereotype. No black jeans. No Turkish cigarettes. He recited Robert Service to me, not Ginsberg. He asked me about Canada's gun laws. I tried to explain the rationale behind the registry, his answer came straight out of the NRA handbook: "Registration is the first step towards seizure." He showed me a handgun he kept under his pillow, explaining he'd been "threatened by lesbians." He asked me all about the Arctic, where I have been fairly often: He wanted to know about the insects there.

RealityStudio: Did you ever meet Gysin?

Geiger: Never did. Burroughs thought that a good thing. He said no one came away from meeting Gysin feeling ambivalent. He said I would have either loathed him or loved him, and neither was appropriate in the circumstances. But of course I wish I had met him. Gysin died in 1986.

RealityStudio: How did you find the experience of writing a biography of someone who passed away relatively recently? Did friends or relations pressure you in any way or discourage you from writing frankly about Gysin?

Geiger: Gysin was a mythomaniac, so the hardest part was cutting through all the bullshit and that process was not always helped by his old friends. I had one of his acolytes tell me in hushed tones that Gysin had been CIA. Yeah right, the CIA's going to recruit a rapacious gossip as an operative. Good cover though: gay, druggie, avant-garde artist. Couldn't hide his moods, little more a state secret. Nobody'd ever guess that he was really passing the goods to Uncle Sam.

RealityStudio: Do you have any particularly memorable moments from your meetings with Burroughs? Any quotable quotes?

Geiger: Here's one: "The thought is the strike."

RealityStudio: Burroughs often professed his admiration for Gysin. Your biography gives a lot of insight into the productive years of friendship between Burroughs and Gysin, but it also suggests that in later years even Burroughs felt that Gysin's work was something of a failure (e.g. Burroughs never liked the NL screenplay; Burroughs only wrote an introduction for The Last Museum "despite his own very real misgivings"; etc.). Did you sense that Burroughs had grown disappointed in his mentor?

Geiger: Not at all. Burroughs retained an immense respect for Gysin right to the end. He thought, however, that Brion was a better painter than writer. He feared that Gysin wrote with his tongue in his cheek and he's right.

RealityStudio: Do you have any general thoughts about why Gysin's work has failed to achieve much renown, in spite of its great influence on Burroughs and others? Do you think it deserves to be more highly considered?

Geiger: I think Brion Gysin will be much better known in a hundred years than he is now. It's going to take a while to catch up.

RealityStudio: Finally, are you planning any further books or research on Burroughs, Gysin, or the Beat movement?

Geiger: I have a few ideas but nothing imminent. I am just in the process of finishing a book that combines two of my interests, geographic exploration and altered states.

Published February 2006. Many thanks to John Geiger. You can learn more about Mr. Geiger by visiting his web site at johngeiger.co.uk.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

FUTURE is in front of EGO; Past is behind EGO. or is it?

2006-06-27T23:01:06Z

June 27, 2006
Side Effects
Does This Mean People Turned Off, Tuned Out and Dropped In?
By JAMES GORMAN
Back in the 60's, when cognitive science was a popular amateur pursuit and experimental protocols often involved multicolored buses, light shows and infinitely long guitar solos, Richard FariÃ±a, the brother-in-law of Joan Baez, wrote a book called "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."

Although I read the book long ago, I remember very little of it (go figure), but I do recall puzzling over the title. Did it mean: I've been down so long there's nowhere to go but up? Or did it mean that after being down for so long, down itself started looking good?

Now, 40 years after the book's publication, some professional researchers have written "With the Future Behind Them," an article in the journal Cognitive Science that sounds from the title as if it might be a sequel to Mr. FariÃ±a's work.

Not exactly. The paper is a lengthy discussion of the evidence that speakers of Aymara, an Indian language of the high Andes, think of time differently than just about everyone else in the world. They see the future as behind them and the past ahead of them.

This is a truly mind-bending idea. As the experimentalists of the 60's used to say: Far out.

The full title of the article is "With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time," and that's what most of the roughly 50-page paper reads like, so it's not something I'd recommend for casual or recreational users of scientific literature.

But if you make your way through it, the research does suggest that there are sciences other than chemistry that can take you down the rabbit hole.

It seems that humans began conflating time and space long before Einstein ever picked up a piece of chalk. Instead of equations, however, we use what are called conceptual metaphors, in which space sits in for time.

Most of us describe the future as ahead or in front of us, and the past as behind us. Until the view of the Aymara speakers was deconstructed, no significant exceptions to this way of thinking about time had been demonstrated, according to Rafael E. NÃºÃ±ez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and Eve Sweetser, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, who wrote the report in Cognitive Science.

But the Aymara call the future qhipa pacha/timpu, meaning back or behind time, and the past nayra pacha/timpu, meaning front time. And they gesture ahead of them when remembering things past, and backward when talking about the future.

These are not mere mannerisms, the researchers argue; they are windows into the minds of Aymara speakers, who have a conception of future and past that is different from just about everyone else's.

The authors say the Aymara speakers see the difference between what is known and not known as paramount, and what is known is what you see in front of you, with your own eyes.

The past is known, so it lies ahead of you. (Nayra, or "past," literally means eye and sight, as well as front.) The future is unknown, so it lies behind you, where you can't see.

If they are right, this is bigger than anything the 60's tossed up.

Is it possible that human concepts of time can vary this much because of language and culture? And what would it be like to think this way? Do I have the rest of my life behind me? And how can I let bygones be bygones if they're right in front of me?

I can't quite process these ideas, unless, perhaps, I swing my 20/20 hindsight around 180 degrees. And what about other aspects of space that we use metaphorically â€” up, down, in, out, high, low?

Could people feel up when they're sad, and low when they're elated? I suppose. I do think the low and mighty are all around us.

Certainly you could be down so long that it looked like up to you, which solves one puzzle. In fact, in the 60's that I see ahead of me now, a motley crew of pranksters, professors and guitarists are nodding in agreement and mumbling, "Far in, man, far in."

What a long, strange trip lies ahead of us.

posted in We love Iona - 2 replies

tips and talent

2006-06-27T19:59:54Z

The mother of all tips

June 27, 2006

Dear iona,

It seems that a struggling young composer asked Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart to give him a few tips. Mozart told him to go
home and work at composing for a few years. "But," said the
young man, "you didn't have to work at it for years." Mozart
replied, "Yes, but I didn't have to ask for tips."

Whether this story is true or not, my memory of it was prompted
by Nancy Bea Miller's remark in a recent clickback that many
would-be artists confuse interest with aptitude. Interest alone
does not a great artist make. Otherwise, art museums would be
full of artists. Most of us who would make art need a bit of
talent, a dose of character, and good work habits. Having said
that, we've all noticed how some go far with little, just as
others go nowhere with lots. That's one of the reasons why
those of us who like to encourage others must be even-handed in
our distribution of tips. One never knows from where the stars
are going to arise and shine.

To find potential in someone we must look for an intrinsic
something called "attitude." The artist's attitude determines
how she acts as her work is in progress. "Thinking while on a
roll" invites ease, audacity and derring-do. Engrossed in a
self-anointed process, these artists become part of the terrain
they're attempting to render. They accept the gift of art,
surrender to its puzzles, and know that their own solutions, if
not perfect, will be appropriate. For some reason, they're
often nuts about their jobs. "Writing music is my one and only
passion and joy," said Mozart.

"Respect" is another word for those who might excel. This means
respect for the stars that have gone before, as well as current
travellers in the Brotherhood and Sisterhood. "Follow the
advice of the masters, but do something different," Edgar Degas
wisely asserted. Our own Resource of Art Quotations is a
community of masters--yours and mine. A human frailty, perhaps,
but we do tend to respect the ones we admire.

And then perhaps creative excellence is a brain thing, like the
ability for math or spelling. Some have it, and some don't. In
my private searches among my masters, many I've admired have
simply and smartly divined the mother of all tips: It's the
work itself that gives the best tips.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor
both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love,
that is the soul of genius." (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756-1791)

Esoterica: The image of Mozart as a divinely inspired
effortless creator, dramatized by the film "Amadeus," is an
unlikely one. The idea that he never changed his compositions
is refuted by looking at Mozart's many heavily-revised
manuscripts. Mozart was studious and a hard worker. His
extensive knowledge and abilities developed from his study of
European musical tradition. Nevertheless, the myth goes on.
Albert Einstein said, "The music of Mozart is of such purity
and beauty that one feels he merely looked around and found
it--that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of
the universe." Good tip though.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

The Anxiety of Obsolescence

2006-06-27T19:50:12Z

Is it hopelessly middlebrow to write about television?
io

http://www.anxietyofobsolescence.com/2006/04/introduction

Print is undead.
—Stuart Moulthrop

The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and has been since the invention of television.

So, at least, seems to be the argument made by a range of cultural critics, both from the Right and from the Left, both academics and public intellectuals, both those who publish in highbrow venues and those who publish in more popular locales, both those who write fiction and those who write nonfiction.

What all these cultural critics have in common, by and large, is print, and the belief that Gutenberg’s medium and the literature that it has made possible must be saved from the twentieth-century technologies—among which they number television, of course, but also film and the Internet—that threaten to end more than five hundred years of print’s dominance in Western culture and drive it into obsolescence.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

5th dimension

2006-06-27T05:15:36Z

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060626/sc_space/miniblackholesmightreveal5thdimension

Mini Black Holes Might Reveal 5th Dimension

Ker Than
Staff Writer
SPACE.com Mon Jun 26, 11:00 AM ET

A space telescope scheduled for launch in 2007 will be sensitive enough to detect theoretical miniature black holes lurking within our solar system, scientists say.

By doing so, it could test an exotic five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is, of course, if the tiny black holes actually exist.

The idea, recently detailed online in the journal Physical Review D, is being proposed by Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Arlie Petters of Duke University in North Carolina.

Branes

The Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, named after the scientists who created it, states that the visible universe is a membrane embedded within a larger universe, like a strand of seaweed floating in the ocean. Unlike the universe described by General Relativity-which has three dimensions of space and one of time-the braneworld universe contains an extra fourth dimension of space for a total of five dimensions.

If the braneworld theory is true, it would "upset the applecart," Petters said. "It would confirm that there is a fourth dimension to space, which would create a philosophical shift in our understanding of the natural world."

The braneworld theory predicts the existence of tiny black holes seeded throughout the universe, remnants of the Big Bang. Thousands of them should exist in our solar system. General Relativity, in contrast, predicts that such primordial black holes evaporated long ago.

The researchers predict that braneworld black holes are about the size of an atomic nucleus but have masses similar to that of a tiny asteroid.

Gamma ray ripples

Petters and Keeton say their theory is testable. The mini-black holes should warp the fabric of space-time differently from other types of black holes-thos of stellar-mass and the supermassive variety-due to their close association with the fifth dimension. Light, specifically gamma-rays, should be distorted differently when they whiz past braneworld black holes compared to conventional black holes.

"Our calculations show that braneworld black holes will give you a certain ripple in the gamma rays that would be different from general relativity," Petters told SPACE.com.

The researchers think that the Gamma-ray Large Space Telescope (GLAST) scheduled for launch in 2007 should be sensitive enough to detect the gamma ray distortions.

* Vote for the Strangest Thing in Space
* Exploding Miniature Black Holes: Galaxy May Be Stuffed With Them
* The Big Rip: New Theory Ends Universe by Shredding Everything
* New Model Simulates Einstein's Vision of Black Hole Mergers
* Recycled Universe: Theory Could Solve Cosmic Mystery

This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday series.

Visit SPACE.com for more offering rich and compelling original content about space, astronomy, technology, information, education, entertainment and business news. Explore our huge collection of Astronomy and Spaceflight Image Galleries and Space Videos, view our Space Image of the Day and Amazing Images. Follow the latest developments in the search for life in our universe in our SETI: Search for Life section. Join the community, sign up for our free daily email newsletter, listen to our Podcasts, check out our RSS feeds and other Reader Favorites today!

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Neurons self-organise to make brain chips

2006-06-27T01:22:02Z

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9391-neurons-selforganise-to-make-brain-chips.html

Neurons self-organise to make brain chips
18:21 22 June 2006

Researchres say the cell networks could be used in novel biosensors (Images:Yael Hanein) Brain cells can be enticed into forming uniform functioning patterns using a nano-engineering trick.

The technique could allow the development of sophisticated biological sensors that use functioning brain cells, the researchers say. This type of device would identify a compound - a deadly nerve agent or poison, for example - by measuring its effect on a functioning network of neurons.

A team led by Yael Hanein of Tel Aviv University in Israel used 100-micrometre-wide bundles of nanotubes to coax rat neurons into forming regular patterns on a sheet of quartz.

The neurons cannot stick to the quartz surface but do bind to the nanotube dots, in clusters of about between 20 and 100. Once attached, these neuron bundles are just the right distance from one another to stretch out projections called axons and dendrites to make links with other clusters nearby.

Electrical activity
Axons and dendrites carry electrical signals between neurons. The electrical activity of the neural network can easily be measured because carbon nanotubes conduct electricity and so can function as electrodes.

Existing methods for growing networks of neurons cannot produce such neat patterns and clean links between cells. This is because neurons are normally deposited on surfaces that do not prevent them from growing out of ordered clusters onto projections, which makes for a messier network. This is not a problem for Hanein's group. "There is no chance of the cells migrating outside of there," she says.

Uniform networks
The process makes it possible to create more uniform neural networks, Hanein says. In experiments they last longer than other artificial networks, surviving for up to 11 weeks. This could be crucial for building biosensors using the cells, she claims.

"It is clear they grow very nicely and cleanly," says Leslie Smith, a neural computing researcher at the University of Stirling in the UK.

Smith says finding ways to connect to individual neurons in similar arrangements would be even more useful. "That's the holy grail," he told New Scientist. "The best labs can only really put an electrode near a neuron of interest. Finding a way to connect directly and non-invasively is much harder."

Journal reference: Journal of Neural Engineering (vol3, p95)

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Dick loses head

2006-06-26T06:15:37Z

June 24, 2006
A Strange Loss of Face, More Than Embarrassing
By SHARON WAXMAN
LOS ANGELES, June 23 â€” Philip K. Dick has gone missing, and now Hollywood finds itself an android short.

An actual android.

This famed science fiction writer, whose work was the source for many a Hollywood blockbuster, from "Blade Runner" to "Minority Report," has been dead since 1982. Last year an admiring doctoral student and evident computer whiz, David Hanson, built a life-size facsimile of Mr. Dick, using the latest artificial intelligence technology, robotics and a skinlike substance he calls "frubber."

The android, which looked just like the author and was able to conduct rudimentary conversations about Mr. Dick's work and ideas, was at the cutting edge of robotic technology, able to make eye contact and believable facial expressions.

The robot made several public appearances last year, including at the Comic Con in San Diego, where he (it?) was on a panel for the coming movie, "A Scanner Darkly," which is based on a Dick novel.

Indeed, Warner Independent Pictures, which on July 7 is releasing the film, an experimental, animated thriller directed by Richard Linklater, had intended to send the robot on a promotional tour to promote the film.

That is, until its head went missing.

"We thought we might have him do a junket, we would have pitched him to Letterman," said Laura Kim, a senior executive at Warner Independent, the art-house arm of Warner Brothers. "I don't know if they would have had him on, but it would have been fun and interesting and perfect for the film."

What happened to the android is a mystery, one that is more than mildly intriguing to fans who knew Mr. Dick as a futurist who advocated freedom and compassion for robots in an evolving world, and that has been debated in the technology press.

Less intrigued, rather more like depressed, is Mr. Hanson, the robot maker who left the head on an America West flight from Dallas to Las Vegas in December. En route to San Francisco, Mr. Hanson, 36, had to change planes in Las Vegas, something he hadn't expected.

He had been traveling for weeks, pulling all-nighters in a race between his work as a roboticist (he also made a much-discussed robotic head of Einstein); as the founder of a fledgling company, Hanson Robotics; and his doctoral work. But unlike his creation, Mr. Hanson is, apparently, distressingly human.

"They woke me up, I got my laptop from under my seat, and being dazed, I just forgot that I had the robot in there," said Mr. Hanson, referring to the head in a black, American Tourister roller bag, left in the overhead compartment.

After landing in San Francisco, he notified the airline, whose officials apparently found the head in Las Vegas, packed it in a box and sent it on the next flight to San Francisco. Mysteriously, it never arrived.

"It's hard to know where they went wrong," said Mr. Hanson. "Did it go on to another city? Did it get mistagged? Did it end up in a warehouse? What happened?" He still doesn't know, though he is in touch with America West every few weeks in a vain quest for answers.

The rest of the android's body was traveling separately, and arrived at San Francisco without incident.

The robot was only coincidentally tied to the film, an unusual project that looks much like a graphic novel come to life: it uses live-action photography overlaid with advanced animation.

The movie, a cautionary tale about drug use, stars an animated Keanu Reeves as an undercover police officer who is ordered to start spying on his friends, played by Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. When he is directed to begin surveillance on himself, he finds himself in a paranoid web, where people's true loyalties become impossible to decode.

Over time, Mr. Dick â€” who himself struggled with drug abuse â€” has become a cultural hero in science fiction circles, known for futuristic novels and stories that pose many of the moral and philosophical dilemmas that come with advancing technology.

And Hollywood has had its own love affair with the writer, successfully basing huge franchise movies on his work, including "Blade Runner," with Harrison Ford, and "Total Recall" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as smaller films like "Impostor" and "Paycheck."

For Mr. Hanson the missing android is an open sore, straining his relations with Mr. Dick's foundation and the author's two surviving daughters, who provided access to much of Mr. Dick's nonpublished materials, which were downloaded into the android's brain. Sorry, database.

It took Mr. Hanson and a team of other experts six months to build the robot, and required $25,000 from student loans and investors. He also regards it as an artist might a masterpiece, one of a kind and invaluable in its own right.

The film's promotion might have been an opportunity to educate a wider public about Mr. Hanson's â€” and Mr. Dick's â€” preoccupations regarding the limits of technology, and the dangers. The robot, Mr. Hanson said, referring to the author by his initials, "realizes science fiction, it transitions it from fiction to reality, to some extent."

"It implies that transition," he continued. "And it's supposed to provoke one to consider issues that P.K.D. was considering."

However satisfying to those with a sense of irony, Mr. Hanson is not comforted by the idea of his homage to Mr. Dick on a jaunt somewhere or, more likely, stuck in storage.

"It's almost like it has some free spirit to it," he said. "A lot of people have said that it's almost like a P.K.D. narrative, like one of those absurd twists that would occur in a P.K.D. novel. But emotionally it doesn't feel that way to me."

In Hollywood, though, executives have found a way to turn the loss to their advantage. Noting the oddity of the story, Ms. Kim said of the android: "He was perfect for the film. Now he's disappeared â€” and that's perfect for the film too."

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Phil Farber's transformative magick

2006-06-25T16:44:50Z

www.meta-magick.com

Which came first, the gesture or the attitude? What's the connection between body, mind, and magical gestures? Meta-Magick Podcast #3, with Philip H. Farber, is now online with an exploration of how your state of consciousness is closely associated with body position. Get ready for intriguing discussion and an exercise that you can practice as you listen (unless you're driving or sleeping or something else like that).

www.meta-magick.com/

“A SPOONFUL OF MAGICK HELPS THE NLP GO DOWN”
A Review of THE BOOK OF ATEM: SECRETS OF MODERN EVOCATION
by Phillip H. Farber

Iona Miller, 6-2006

Phil Farber has a genius. He knows how to make learning and what might otherwise be painful or frightening change tremendously fun. In his latest, THE BOOK OF ATEM, he doesn’t bore us up front with a tired historical review of the entire subject. He also doesn’t show us the way to a more positive future. He immediately engages us in the present and we find ourselves already changing right now, already identifying with that which is greater than ourselves.

Phil Farber has a genius for transformative info-tainment. His writing captures the warmth and liveliness of his workshops because multisensory experiential processes are part of every page. This master of psychosensory evocation is a brilliant, innovative practitioner of NLP. He teaches us to stand in the Mystery without unnecessary mystification.

This supercharged fusion of tried and true magickal and psychological techniques moves beyond trauma, healing and recovery into self-fulfillment and self-transformation. Combining techniques from both disciplines, such as visualization, personification, and experiential journeys is a powerful combination.

Phil Farber has a genius, and he’s decided to share his with us all. A major goal of magickal practice is the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, the higher self, Daemon, or one’s genius for self-actualization. ATEM and Farber share secrets, among them a shorthand for simple yet elegant creative processes and how to effectively modulate your psychophysical states. ATEM is a generic stand in for our own genius while we build that bridge of relationship with our deeper selves.

Clearly, Farber’s self-transformative magick has worked. He reveals his obvious connection with an ancient guide, ATEM, the opener of the manifesting way. Curiously, spelled backward this is META, as in “beyond”, or metaphor and meta-model. And this technique opens a way beyond and that way is more than metaphorical. The changes evoked by applying this participatory spiritual-tech are quite real. They cover the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions.

The meme ATEM is sure to be a strengthening egregor as more people work this system. Permutations of this name include MEAT and TEAM, suggesting its tangibility and ability to mesh seamlessly. Personification is a powerful psychological tool for interacting with your subconscious. Jung suggested it as a means of dialoging and developing a relationship with this repository of our as-yet-unrealized potential.

ATEM is a living Magus, an icon for the 21st century. Part shaman, part inner guide, part inner healer, part role model, ATEM becomes a personal therapist, a guide to self-initiation. The Six Elements of this process are attention, language, passion, fitting, trance and making. The Eight Powers it evokes in us are communication, neuroplasticity, transformation, transmission, beauty, understanding, balance and opening.

The edge of chaos is the creative edge, the leading edge and Farber is there bringing us along with him. He shows us by evoking our own personal imagery and experiences just how guided focused attention is one of our most important allies. Whether you are healing, exploring or aspiring this is a journey to the frontiers of consciousness, the cutting edge of human potential.

If I were you, I wouldn’t wait any longer to begin opening this provocative book.
Let Phil and ATEM evoke your hidden potential now.

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

virtual Forbidden City, China, er, IBM

2006-06-23T02:37:11Z

IBM ANNOUNCES “THE FORBIDDEN CITY: BEYOND SPACE AND TIME”
A major initiative to bring Chinese art and culture to the world
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19827.wss

Beijing - 16 Jun 2006:
IBM today announced "The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time," a new
cultural heritage initiative that will present the history and splendor
of
China's Forbidden City to a global audience. The project, undertaken in
partnership with The Palace Museum, will bring Chinese culture to the
world by
creating a virtual online recreation of the Forbidden City and
associated
sites in Beijing. This online environment will be a fully immersive,
interactive world that corresponds architecturally and historically to
the
vast grounds of the current Palace Museum, allowing visitors to
experience
three-dimensional representations of cultural artifacts and places such
as the
majestic Hall of Supreme Harmony.

"The interconnectedness of architecture and history at the Palace
Museum
creates a unique sense of culture that has no equal. It is this unique
spatial
experience of Chinese culture that "Beyond Space and Time" seeks to
bring to
the world," said Henry Chow, general manager, IBM Greater China Group.
"To
create this experience requires an innovative approach and IBM is set
to use
the latest technology to tell the stories of Chinese culture through
artifacts, people and places."

Chow and Xin Miao Zheng, China’s vice minister of Culture and head of
The
Palace Museum, participated in a signing ceremony to officially begin
work on
the multi-year project, one that represents the merger of real space –
the
grounds of The Palace Museum – with a virtual presence. The result of
this
merger, a participatory cultural environment, permits remote visitors
the
chance to experience the culture and stories of The Forbidden City in a
way
never before possible. Though three-dimensional representation is
widespread
in the field of cultural heritage, fully interactive, participatory
cultural
worlds do not exist. The "Beyond Space and Time" participatory cultural
environment is a first-of-a-kind idea.

Visitors to the actual Palace Museum in Beijing also will find their
experience enhanced by the project. A suite of location- and
context-based
services will utilize aspects of the participatory cultural environment
to
deliver virtual point-of-view images that help indicate how one should
move
through the physical environment. Exhibit-based technology will allow a
"window" into the virtual world through which on-site visitors can
learn more
about their physical location.

IBM is granting significant technology and services to create "The
Forbidden
City: Beyond Space and Time." The project will begin immediately and is
expected to be completed by the spring of 2008. It will be presented in
Chinese and in English.

"This project will help people around the world understand the rich
culture of
China, our history and our people," said Zheng. "We look forward to
working
with IBM on ‘The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time’ to help educate
people
in China about our fascinating history and to introduce our culture to
millions outside our country."

"The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time" is the next significant
step in a
series of major IBM initiatives to demonstrate the powerful role
technology
plays in bringing the arts to people all over the world and in
advancing the
understanding of art and culture. For more than 10 years, IBM has
partnered
with organizations to bring their art and culture to the world. For
example,
in 1998, IBM unveiled the results of its partnership with the Hermitage
State
Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, which, for the first time, captured
some of
the world’s most beautiful masterpieces online in striking detail to be
enjoyed and studied by anyone, anywhere with access to the Internet
(www.hermitagemuseum.org).

And in 2004, IBM announced the results of its Eternal Egypt project –
breakthrough collaboration with the Egyptian government to provide
worldwide
access to more than 5,000 years of Egyptian history
(www.eternalegypt.org).
"IBM’s cultural heritage projects are examples of how our company
demonstrates
that innovation matters," said Stanley Litow, president of the IBM
International Foundation and vice president of IBM Corporate Community
Relations. "We are proud to be a part of a project that will help share
a
unique view of China and its culture with the world."

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

'Thirst For Knowledge' May Be Opium Craving

2006-06-22T06:53:27Z

'Thirst For Knowledge' May Be Opium Craving
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.

The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.

"While you're trying to understand a difficult theorem, it's not fun," said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

"But once you get it, you just feel fabulous."

The brain's craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.

"I think we're exquisitely tuned to this as if we're junkies, second by second."

Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence.

Only more pressing material needs, such as hunger, can suspend the quest for knowledge, he added.

The same mechanism is involved in the aesthetic experience, Biederman said, providing a neurological explanation for the pleasure we derive from art.

"This account may provide a plausible and very simple mechanism for aesthetic and perceptual and cognitive curiosity."

Biederman's theory was inspired by a widely ignored 25-year-old finding that mu-opioid receptors – binding sites for natural opiates – increase in density along the ventral visual pathway, a part of the brain involved in image recognition and processing.

The receptors are tightly packed in the areas of the pathway linked to comprehension and interpretation of images, but sparse in areas where visual stimuli first hit the cortex.

Biederman's theory holds that the greater the neural activity in the areas rich in opioid receptors, the greater the pleasure.

In a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging trials with human volunteers exposed to a wide variety of images, Biederman's research group found that strongly preferred images prompted the greatest fMRI activity in more complex areas of the ventral visual pathway. (The data from the studies are being submitted for publication.)

Biederman also found that repeated viewing of an attractive image lessened both the rating of pleasure and the activity in the opioid-rich areas. In his article, he explains this familiar experience with a neural-network model termed "competitive learning."

In competitive learning (also known as "Neural Darwinism"), the first presentation of an image activates many neurons, some strongly and a greater number only weakly.

With repetition of the image, the connections to the strongly activated neurons grow in strength. But the strongly activated neurons inhibit their weakly activated neighbors, causing a net reduction in activity. This reduction in activity, Biederman's research shows, parallels the decline in the pleasure felt during repeated viewing.

"One advantage of competitive learning is that the inhibited neurons are now free to code for other stimulus patterns," Biederman writes.

This preference for novel concepts also has evolutionary value, he added..

"The system is essentially designed to maximize the rate at which you acquire new but interpretable [understandable] information. Once you have acquired the information, you best spend your time learning something else.

"There's this incredible selectivity that we show in real time. Without thinking about it, we pick out experiences that are richly interpretable but novel."

The theory, while currently tested only in the visual system, likely applies to other senses, Biederman said.

Edward Vessel, who was Biederman's graduate student at USC, is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Neural Science at New York University.. Vessel collaborated on the studies and co-authored the American Scientist article.

Source: University of Southern California
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060620170342.htm

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

peace in, man

2006-06-20T19:42:31Z

Greetings,
SIPRI [Stockholm International Peace Research Institute] has published its 2006 Year Book. They are the world's most diligent monitor of Armaments, Disarmament and International Security. Details are available on line:
http://yearbook2006.sipri.org/
Betty

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Thinkers Anonymous

2006-06-20T19:12:25Z

Remember, thinking for yourself is dangerous, and possibly subversive!
io

A Cautionary Tale

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and
then -- just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to
another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it
wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally
I was thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the
TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at
her mother's. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and
employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir,
Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused,
asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it
hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If
you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my
conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confess, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as
college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if
you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to
deal with the emotional drama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into
the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.
They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that
night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a
poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it
asked.

You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers
Anonymous poster.

This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a
TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week
it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided
thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just
seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the
road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I took the final step............ I joined the Democratic/Republican (insert the one you don,t like) Party.

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

UR sites could be blacklisted and erased, too - it's spreading.

2006-06-17T22:03:41Z

Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 12:16 PM
Subject: BLACKLISTED and targeted

All 3 of my major ADRIAN REPORTS have been deleted by some external agency in the last 24 hours. These websites had been up for almost 2 years on Tripod.com without any incident.
http://unemployment_crisis.tripod.com/fannie-mae.html

http://unemployment_crisis.tripod.com/mitigationbanks.html

http://unemployment_crisis.tripod.com/IMMIGRATION.html

Not one of them remains as of today, Saturday at 2:33 pm. [It is now 3:02pm, and I just checked on my oldest and most coveted websites, all over ten years old, at Angelfire.com under /CassandraCrossing/, which contained my HOLLYWOOD TATTLER, and the websites on my fathers spy satellite career, among several others, and they have all been terminated with extreme prejudice also, in the last 24 hours. The Adrian Reports were with the provider Tripod.com, and the Hollywood Tattler and a dozen other ten year old websites were under Angelfire.com, thus is it becoming crystal clear that this is a coordinated, concerted, and collaborative effort to damage my work of the last ten years.]

In addition, the computer i am using in the Library of Congress, ten video cameras trained on me and other internet users herein, just started to crash and freeze up on me like it has a major virus or lethal cookie. I am having to run from computer to computer to get this email finally sent out from DRAFT form and to you.]

This comes on top of a month or two of really punishing [targeting or something that we speculate but do not yet deelply admit is happening to our citizens] via the completely unrestricted hand NSA and affiliated agencies have usurped, thus enabling them to spy on and to jail Americans and people on our soil for whatever reasons they deem appropriate, but we dare not yet believe it to be more than an Easter Bunny mythical boogeyman, rather than a behemoth werewolf prowling our streets with an empty stomach and blood all over its muzzle.

Get wise brothers and sisters, if you don't help now to become part of the solution, you will just become part of the problem. Believe me, at this point even little acts of resistance and disobedience will help to save us all. Do you want to be in a LONG MARCH like the Chinese did for Chairman Mao? That is where the U.S. government and outsourcing forces and social engineers are taking us here in the USA; it is our turn now, not the Soviets under Stalin, and not the Chinese under Mao. It is our time under GW Bush. Only you and me can stop it, and not with just idle left wing reveries after watching Amy Goodman on Link TV for an hour.

TAKE myself for example. I have tested at up to 7 or 8 employment agencies in the last three weeks, scored 97% nearly every time on MS Word advanced software tests, Powerpoint exams, Excel tests, and several other exams, taking up to four or five hours to complete the process at each employment agency or outsourcing business. My typing is still 70 wpm with no errors. Every day you hear that the outsourcing and temp businesses are the wave of the future and a service to us all. Even Hillary Clinton's voice is among the loudest in this chorus.

When i leave the outsourcing agency testing center it is all smiles from the staff and sincere faces of enthusiasm to send me out to a paying client very very soon. "My your scores are HIGH," they exclaim!

Within two or three days, inexorably for months and months now, the agency that honored me now suddenly avoids me and shuns me like I have AIDS, karposis, scabies, bedsores, rabies, Lyme Disease, and TB, with other nefarious turnoffs thrown in. I know it is not my job referrals because I have done top level desktop publishing jobs for several PhDs rather recently, use them as my references, and they had asked me with tears in their eyes "is there anything I can ever do for you," after i completed the one month desktop publishing project for them, or for their Board.

The BIG CHILL I am speaking about could happen with a simple phone call or drop-in from one of these intelligence goons that has nothing better to do for their comfy wages than to monitor targets [by law today, now at this exact time in your life too, whether you have been following in the media the "skinning" of our civil rights or not, if one of these G-men or women contacts you and asks about a person, say one Bryan Adrian, or another friend or acquaintance or co-worker of yours, and you notify this "target" that agents have come around with questions, you will do about ten years in federal prison for warning or notifying the targeted person, if caught. NO SHIT. Look into this.].

Here in DC nearly every job is generated by a military or defense or intelligence community agency or contractor or subcontractor. Very few if any jobs are not beholden to these people here. And DC is the boom town of the entire USA now just for this reason. NYC and SF are not even a sniffle compared to Wash DC in these times. In the Era of the War Against Terror, 'The Beltway' rules.

I will probably be homeless and very very reed thin at the end of July, when the apartment rental security desposit I initially paid will be used up for next month's rent because I have no cash to give the landlord. Right now I am looking at an article in the newspaper about the black residents of New Orleans who are being run out of Houston now after very patiently waiting it out there, trusting the authorities, for some sensible and sincere action from the federal government, and they still cannot enter their homes in New Orleans, the government has installed 12 foot barbed wire fencing all around their apartment complexes to block them out. All their legally owned property requires, they swear, to be more than reasonably habitable, is a Clorox sponge wall washing, but FEMA and even HUD are obstructing tens of thousands of homelander New Orleaners from their own homesteads, still today, while you are eating a toxic Big Mac and watching sell-out Oprah the Shill on TV, and not even taking note of the diametrically different news casts from abroad, saying just the opposite of our entire media-government-education system, in this age of global cable and satellite TV. My life now is quite parallel to theirs down in the "former" Big Easy. Betrayed.

I have $12 to my name and nobody to borrow money from at this moment.

My most piercingly revealing websites were not any of THE ADRIAN REPORTS, however, even though the Adrian Reports contained lots of original research data that criminalized Fannie Mae, FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and most of GW's appointees, with links to New York Times and Washington Post articles to back up these assertions. I kept the most provocative material anonymous in decoy websites to "protect" myself, via 'stray' websites, which are backed up on disks and hidden around the city.
http://www.geocities.com/exim_bank_weaponsystems/TREASURY.html
http://www.angelfire.com/blog/zog/ZOG_PROMIS.html

Now, what is there to protect?

This must be what Palestinians and Iraqis ask themselves at some point in their bitter lives. Just remember, I am not a sacrificial lamb nor a sheeple and am returning the hard ball served to me. My father was a Cold War warrior with a long career in spy satellites [type in keyword David H. Adrian on Google], I grew up around this reality. I take after him in some respects, in that defeat is not an acceptable alternative.

HERE is a BACKUP website about my father's career:
http://kal007mystery.tripod.com/satellite-escapades.html

If something unforward should happen to me, don't forget that first the economic and physical freedoms, and then maybe even the lives of the first pioneers and early resistance leaders are taken away, and then everybody suffers the same fate if there is no effort at resistance. You will be next, I promise you that.

With hope for all of us for tomorrow,

Bryan
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/aisling/ElectronicWhip.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/Boiishaft/god-of-war.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/Boiishaft/B-Traven-Circle.html

click to enlarge captured unicorn
http://bryanadrian_writer.tripod.com/biography.html

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

adapting to the electronic environment

2006-06-17T22:01:53Z

For millions of years to evolve has meant to adapt to the environment. The rule of the dinosaurs lasted nearly 150 million years, while humans have only been here 200,000. In that relatively short time both the environment and ourselves have changed markedly and will continue to do so. For humans, survival has meant living by our wits. Even newer in evolutionary time is the electronic environment which leads us inevitably into an era where the human race is a mix of natural, transhuman (Homo Mutans) and posthumans (Homo Lumen), enhanced with exponentially changing technology.

Using our wits to enhance our quality of life is natural for us, with both soft and hard technologies. Religions no longer hold a monopoly on mind-altering techniques. The generic aspects of self-regulation, healing, creativity have been synthesized and extracted from their superstitious, pre-scientific contexts.

In the past religions imposed pre-baked mythic structures on the beliefs of their cultures. Before that, shamans held sway over the deeper layers of the human psyche. This was the original form of mind control, often enhanced with psychoactive drugs which alter and condition experiences and behavior by reinforcing cultural beliefs. The modern world has its own drugs, pharmaceutical and electronic which modulate the pain/pleasure spectrum, reinforcing their desirability.

Now we are learning the nature and process of creativity for ourselves and applying it to ourselves. Throughout our history and prehistory, someone has manipulated the minds, emotions and physical health of others. This doesn't mean religion is obsolete, but it has a shadow side in which it competes ruthlessly as a cultural meme for your energy and attention. It aggresively seeks to control all aspects of life. Perhaps an even greater threat comes from militarily applied technology, and the seemingly more benign though pernicious influence of new media, which has become the fundamental electronic ground of our experience, mimicing a virtual voluntary ESP.

Dr. Nick Begich http://earthpulse.com highlights the post-postmodern technological dilemma:

"From the invention of the wheel to where we are right now technology will double every ten months. At this rate of change there is little time to consider the consequences, much less create solutions, for what we are facing in the future. These new technologies will either free us to our individual higher potentials, as created human beings, or enslave us to the devices of the elite and corporately corrupt governments around the world. In true democracies and democratic republics the average person controls the destiny of nations. In the 21st Century it is technologies that define the strength and power of nations."

Traditionally, all methods of self-regulation of body, emotions, mind and spirit have been tied to religions, with specific and strict rules for living. But when it comes to spirituality, one size doesn't conveniently fit all. Reproduction serves the species - the selfish gene, but self-regulation and self-development serves the individual.

Unfortunately, we've bred ourselves into a population bomb. A staggering 6 billion people strains Earth's resources; growth cannot be sustained at that rate. So reproduction has become self-destructive to the species (and planet) as a whole, though not necessarily for the individual.

Optimizing our potential and regulating our state are two of the most rationally adaptive activities we can engage in and it can be done in a non-religious or spiritual context. We can reclaim our power through self-regulation, education, applied technology and frank discussion of new technologies, planetary stewardship, responsibility and most importantly the opportunity to create real change in the directions we are otherwise headed.

It is time for an awakening of the spirit within each of us that has the potential to reclaim our birthright as human beings. Enhancing human performance or controlling human outcomes are challenges of the century raising serious questions on the ethics of the science of mind control. Control of the human mind by external means is now a reality, both for self-enrichment and for subversive purposes.

Technologies are transforming our lives, raising serious questions about privacy, safety and their proper uses. Military planners and others are attempting to use these breakthroughs to create a more directed and controlled society while ignoring the positive applications of many of these new discoveries.

Where are the boundaries of conscious experience and self, and why do these boundaries exist? How do they develop in interaction with parents, carers and others? In what ways are they conditioned by prevailing systems of belief, philosophy, sociocultural history, and environment? How is adult experience and sense of self altered by psychological, social or spiritual development? How does subjective experience relate to intersubjectivity? How do changes in conscious experience affect one's sense of self, for example through meditation, mysticism, or in pathological states?

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

My fave paramedia ecologist

2006-06-17T04:20:45Z

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlOu6Wh6mr8

Intro to documentary of Marshall Mcluhan's top dog archivist and whirlwind avant edge lecturer, Bob Dobb, during his '05 Los Angeles tour.
Tags:Frank Zappa Marshall McLuhan James Joyce Mae Brussell SubGenius Jesus Christ George Bush Lyndon LaRouche Bob Dobbs

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

check it out

2006-06-15T21:03:40Z

http://www.rbnlive.com/mechanic.html#emai

io

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Swept away

2006-06-15T20:34:23Z

It wasn't just me, apparently, but a concerted effort:

S said: "and how can they hack you off the net forever? i don't get it. do you have copies? can you put it back up again somewhere else? you prompted me to google "mind control" and check out the editor's note at the very first page i went to:

[Editor's Note: May 31, 2006. Somewhere between May 18 and May 30, 2006, this mind control index page was surreptitiously erased from my web server and even from my hard drive. Apparently, someone doesn't want this topic ventilated before the public. I had to retrive an old copy of this Mind Control index page from a disc which I had saved in November 2005, therefore the more recent articles which I had posted on this page up to April 2006 will not appear in this version, but will be restored shortly after I've had a chance to retrive this page from a mirror site which was recently established in Europe. Thankfully, the synchronistic offer to set up the mirror site in early May from a very thoughtful person in Switzerland, came at just the right time. I will publish the url of the mirror site as soon as I find the e-mail sent to me by the person who set up the mirror site. ..Ken]

from http://educate-yourself.org/mc/

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Grey Ghosts: Stranger than Fiction Dept.

2006-06-15T19:36:23Z

reply
Stranger than Fiction dept.
ionamiller said 10 minutes ago:

I felt bad last week when the usual suspects hacked my Mind Control site out of existence. Silly me; I didn't back it up, so I had to attempt a reconstitution, but it's not the same - now at http://mindcontrol.chaosmagic.com where I hope it will stick.

But when I heard the very bizarre story of my friends, I realized I was on the Games Light list:

See http://www.myspace.com/xprotest for the 411 on the dumping of X-Ops from Discovery Channel and the powers that be.

The above video has pictures from the $300,000 production that Discovery Channel funded and over saw the production. The team doing X-Ops captured with high resolution cameras an entity while investigating a supposed ghost alien at Roswell NM. During the filming of X-Ops the team was followed by unmarked white SUVs and stopped for questioning. They were kept under government observation. After the completion of the pilot show several of the team members had very odd occurances including being detained and questioned at a post office by HomeLand Security, and having agents show up lurking around their homes repeatedly.

Jim Marrs Discussing Show And Problems With Discovery Channel.

The airing of X-Ops after much praise by the CEOs of Discovery was suppose to take place first of the year. After a long delay and no communications with the staff of X-Ops the CEO at Discovery in charge of producing this show has vanished off the face of the earth. Even trying to contact her at her home or through known associates has been to no avail. A new team of CEOs came into Discovery and demanded that the X-Ops team ridicule and deminish the people making these claims at Roswell and each other if the show was to air. They demanded the show be re-edited and watered down to change the appearance of the results and deminish the claims of the group. They demanded also that at least one member of the X-Ops team ridicule the reût of the group. They team said NO and stood by the results they had captured and documented with high resolution video cameras and scientific instruments while the events were happening as is supported by the Discovery crew who was there. They were told by the new Discovery Channel CEOs since they did not comply the show at best could hope for was to be a watered down series and turned into a vacation promotion show on Travel Channel.

The X-Ops Team consists of the most respected names in the Paranormal Community including, Ruben Uriarte, Richard Alaniz, Karyn Reece, Joshua P. Warren, Brian Irish, Laura Lee, Jim Marrs, Heidi Hollis, and Nick Redfern fashioned by the creator of the series X-Files to be the real life reality of the idea.

Iona

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

coldness in Chile

2006-06-14T20:33:51Z

Subject: Valle de San Felix, Chile Sth America.

In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in
Chile
runs from 2
rivers, fed
by 2 glaciers.
Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be
fought for it.

Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no
unemployment, and they
provide
the second largest source of income for the area.

Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver
and other minerals.
To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy
the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history
of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain,
one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is
called Barrick Gold. (Barrick Gold is mining at Lake Cowal-NSW
Australia at the moment!)
The operation is planned by a multi-national company,
one of whose members is George Bush Senior.
The Chilean Government has approved the project to
start this year, 2006.
The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the
farmers have got a temporary stay of execution.

If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just
destroy the source of
especially pure water, but they will permanently
contaminate the 2
rivers so
they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption
because of
the
use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction
process.

very last gram of gold will go abroad to the
multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is.
They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.
The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have
been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the
Ministry of the Interior.
HOW CORRUPT IS THIS?

Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project
is to get help from international justice.
The world must know what is happening in Chile. The
only place to start changing the world is from here.

We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the
following way.

Please copy this text, paste it into a new email
adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book. Please,
will the 100th person to receive and sign the petition, send it to

noapascualama@yahoo.ca
to be forwarded to the Chilean Government.

No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean
Cordillera on the
Chilean-Argentine frontier.

We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama
project to protect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the
water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of the
agricultural land of the
region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole
population of the region.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Builder Burgers for lunch?

2006-06-14T20:04:57Z

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/080606alexjones.htm

Alex Jones Detained On Orders Of Bilderberg Group
15 hours of hell at the hands of immigration who knew they were coming

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 8 2006

Alex Jones and his team were detained by Canadian immigration on orders of the Bilderberg Group for a 15 hour nightmare of interrogation, accusations and threats of arrests in anticipation of the conference in Ottawa which starts today.

The group were detained at 11:45pm last night and only released after 2pm today.

Customs openly told Alex as soon as they brought him into custody that the Bilderberg Group was aware of his arrival and that this was the reason for his detainment. All three members of the team were instantly detained despite going through different immigration desks.

Officials knew everything about Alex, even the fact that George W. Bush had once had him arrested in 1998.

"I was screamed at, I was cussed at, I was interrogated," said Alex.

Jail threats were issued as officials seized and searched through Alex's equipment for 15 hours. He was told that if any trace of pornography was found on his three computers that he would be arrested.

"They were talking about how I was a criminal - they hooked our laptop computers up and said that if they found any porn, even mainstream porn, that it's illegal to take it across lines and that we'd be going to jail," said Alex, thanking God that no trace of any porn was found on his office computers.

Searches continued throughout the night and again in the morning.

Immigrations officials seemed to take a gleeful satisfaction in detaining the team, claiming they were liars and not part of the media despite one admitting to having seen an Alex Jones documentary. Accusations of drugs and weapons smuggling were thrown around without recourse.

"You Americans shit all over us Canadians think you can do anything you want to us," said one immigration official who was acting more like a drill sergeant.

Towards the end of the ordeal national media, including the Ottawa Citizen and CBC, got wind of what was unfolding and sent journalists to the airport to talk to Alex.

A CBC journalist vouched for the fact that Alex was in the media and that she was planning on interviewing him, after also being subjected to a barrage of questions by officials.

At this point immigration officials sharply changed their attitude, reversed a likely decision to deport the team and by the end were apologetic and conciliatory about the entire issue.

Alex would like to make it clear that the immigration officials on the whole were just doing what they were told in trying to prove who Alex was and they should not be the focus of any vitriol. Alex himself admits that his behavior was not perfect and he smarted off a couple of times when he should have remained quiet. The major element of this story is that the pressure was brought to bear by Bilderberg.

The point to emphasize again is that it was brazenly stated that the Bilderberg Group were behind the decision to detain Alex and his team. Bilderberg have acquired a notorious reputation of harassing journalists, including Jim Tucker and Daniel Estulin, who are simply trying to report on a meeting of the world's most influential powerbrokers.

The immigrations officials said that their reason for detaining Alex was because they feared he was in the country to infiltrate the Bilderberg meeting.

Since being allowed to enter the country the team have been watched and tracked by several nefarious individuals and also followed by car.

The team booked a decoy hotel in order fool Bilderberg security as to their real location. The decoy hotel has been receiving numerous calls from individuals within Bilderberg's Brooke Street hotel - despite the fact that Alex told no one he was staying there.

Further reports on this incident and developments from the Bilderberg conference itself will feature here over the next few days.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/080606alexjones.htm

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

things u can't discuss in Amerika

2006-06-09T20:02:47Z

I just discoveredd that my Mind Control site has been removed from the web without notifying me in any way. I can only conclude that's a product of homeland insecurity, since it was a pretty soft site, in the sense it emphasized thinking for yourself, not being a sheeple, but certainly didn't rail against powers that be - it was mostly McLuan oriented.

Doesn't bode well, boys and grrrls...

Io

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

it's no joke

2006-06-09T19:58:18Z

Hey Don,

They want to draft your children for Iran.

http://rense.com/general71/dd.htm

Brian

____________

Brian,

Get a life. If you believe everything you read on the internet your in trouble.

Don

_______

Don,

This is not a delusion. This is a stone-hard reality.

Democratic Representative Rangel of New York introduced H.R. 4752: Universal National Service Act of 2006 in February of 2006.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-4752

The United States Congressional Record does not lie nor is it an illusion and is not an internet belief that will get me in trouble.

On June 6, 2006 the House of Representatives began debating this bill for a vote sometime over the next 60 days. All persons male and female 18 to 42 years old will be drafted for a minimum of two years of service with no exemptions or deferments such as marital or parental status. H.R 4752 also states draftees may be forced to provide service to Homeland Security or in other words be guards and staff for Civilian Inmate Labor Camps.

Go to http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf#search='Civilian%20Inmate%20Labor%20Program’ for the official U.S Army Document on Civilian Inmate Labor Camps.

Haliburton has been allocated 340 million dollars to build additional Civilian Inmate Labor Camps across the United State and in other countries. Four Civilian Inmate Labor Camps already exist in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Each camp will hold a minimum of a million inmates.

The existing and future Civilian Inmate Labor Camps are as real as the Patriot Act and the proposed H.R. 4752.

The illusion and diversionary Anti-Gay marriage amendment that will never pass is a smoke screen so there is no debate on H.R. 4752 and the immigration amnesty bill.

If H.R. 4752 passes in the Lame Duck House, the Lame Duck Senate will rubber stamp H.R. 4752 so the law will be enacted by January 1, 2007.

H.R. 4752 will be fast tracked if there is another fake and self inflicted wound such as 9-11 or the Black Op London bombings during the next 30 to 90 days. The United States in the summer and early fall of 2006 is the most vulnerable to another fake attack and self-inflicted wound by Black Ops.

Why?

Because a fake but deadly attack will be an excuse for H.R. 4752 to be rushed into law in the aftermath of the created violence like the horrific Patriot Act was enacted with no debate after black branches of our government carried out the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Timing is everything.

http://prisonplanet.tv/audio/070606jones.htm This a good one—worth the listen and your jaw will drop.

http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

http://jonesreport.com/articles/220506_zogby.html

My daughters ages 20 and 23 are reviewing H.R. 4752 and we have discussed and I have advised the how, when, and where they can migrate or escape to another country should the bill become a reality. I advise you and your wife to do the same with your children.

My youngest daughter stated she wouldn’t be drafted nor have to migrate to another country if she cut-off her trigger finger.

I informed her that weapons can be fired with 10 good fingers or just ONE good finger so she should plan on living by her knuckles if she really wants to avoid being drafted into the out of control mass institutional murder (military).

In the winter of 2006, a U.S. Army recruiter stealthy and deceptively signed up an 18 year old male diagnosed as having medium autism since the age of four. The unaware and shocked parents are appealing for a dismissal but with no success as of the date of this e-mail.

I do wish our reality was not so harsh but FOX, CNN et. others communicate only part of the truth, lies or ignore the truth all together.

A partial truth is no different from a lie.

A carefully crafted and purposeful omission is no different from a lie.

Therefore the corporate owned news media and the corporate owned political leaders are blatant liars due to their partial truths and calculated omissions.

I have a great life cousin Don and so do you.

Today I played five games of full court basketball with men 15 to 25 years younger than me and afterwards I had delicious brown rice sushi with a great bottle of rice wine sake. Living in Southern California has advantages. This weekend you will most likely have a great game of golf, a relaxing dinner and some good times with your wife and buddies in the North Dallas area.

We have been blessed and fortunate as we both turn 54 years old in July and October of 2006. We grew up together and had memorable “rock-outs” when I attended the University of Missouri and you attended the University of Nebraska in the early 1970s. In the 1978, I introduced you to the realm of personal and commercial insurance and you carried that mantel to a very successful and prosperous career like countless free and opportunistic Americans of our generation. Our histories and successes are repeated by countless Americans of our “baby boom” generation.

By my being a just above average athlete early and late in life, I can say with authority that had conditions been different, you had the abilities and talent to play professional baseball. Yep, I do miss getting those free ballpark tickets to watch my cousin make the major league plays. Woulda, Coulda & Shoulda.

By blood we are cousins. By my heart you are and will always be a brother no matter what disagreements we have now or in the future.

Let us not make our differences a true bloody and deadly civil war with you and I pitted against one another as occurred in the Unites States during 1860s. That is a real possibility over the next 10 years.

My concern based upon investigating and revealing the stark and gruesome realities of the past and present, is that our children and our grandchildren will be living a nightmarish hell in the near future. Future generations might not have the great memories we created in our youths if current patterns and plans continue. Also future generations might not have the free and open opportunities we had in our youths if certain and very minor factions get their way.

We now live and participate in the most pivotal time of American and human history.

Based upon what is happening and not happening over the past five years, will the grandchildren and great-great grand children of our generation of Americans look back in horror of how our generation was asleep, apathetic and allowed our Constitutional Republic to be destroyed by a small minority of the elite?

Will your grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren feel you did your very best to protect and defend the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

Do you care how your descendants will feel about your efforts or non-efforts?

I care.

All my descendants will know that I did everything I could to preserve protect and defend the imperfect and flawed yet very functional United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I will do all I can and persevere to wake-up you and others to the perils that threaten our present day reality and the future.

I am sending e-mails, faxes and making phone calls to as many Americans and politicians as possible to voice my opposition to H.R. 4752 and much more. I plead with you and anyone reading this e-mail to do same.

A great American Patriot in Missouri states everyday on a sterling radio program, “There is no left and there is not right. There is only right and wrong.” Thank you, Dave and Joyce for all your efforts.

I received your terse “Get a Life” response e-mail late Thursday evening just as my hometown Dallas Mavericks started play with the Miami Heat in game one of the National Basketball Association finals for the championship of 2006. As you and others know I love playing and watching basketball but I decided not to turn on the television until I wrote and edited this reply to you. As I transmit this e-mail, the game is way over by hours.

The content of this letter and so much more than sports and entertainment programs on corporate manipulative television are the true and important priorities of my life.

So Cousin Don and all persons reading or hearing this e-mail… WHAT ARE THE TRUE AND IMPORTANT PRIORITIES OF YOUR LIFE?

Take care,

Brian

Want more?

Go to http://www.gcnlive.com

http://rbnlive.com

http://thepowerhour.com

http://infowars.com

http://rense.com

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/

http://www.vaticanassassins.org

www.tarpley.net

http://www.trivortex.com

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Reality Portal film

2006-06-03T04:58:07Z

I was interviewed for this film in Amsterdam.

http://realityportal.info
download trailer here.

Iona

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Under Cnstruction: TEMPLE OF LIVING LIGHT - QBL 2006

2006-06-03T04:49:05Z

6/06
NEW SITE: June, 2006 TEMPLE OF LIVING LIGHT – QBL 2006
http://templeoflivinglight.50megs.com

Wild Divine
Qabalah is an underground spiritual current, a distillation and synthesis of some of the main threads of western spiritual technology. It is a path of Knowledge, gnosis, a living Way of being in the world enlivened and informed by deeper dimensions. It is a path of love, discipline, practice, and service.

Kabbala is the traditional term applied to the practice of Jewish mysticism with a visionary, intuitive nature; it is uncompromisingly monotheistic. Qabala and Qabalah are spellings for the culturally diverse, polytheistic, hermetic path, while QBL reflects the magickal root. Each type of qabala has its own subculture with its own woldview, developed in its own era.

We need a contemporary qabala for today, a 21st Century qabala, suitable for our "ground", our electronic environment. There is no advantage in our remaining locked up in any cultural cycle, exchanging hoary grimoires and number matrices, as if in a trance or a dream. If you go obsessively looking for something in the matrix, you are sure to find it. But it may be an idiosyncratic delusion – a sterile attention trap.

We have no need to journey down obsolete reality wormholes into 14th - 20th century mindsets. But some of us have discovered the means of living simultaneously in all cultural modes while quite conscious. All spiritual worldviews, including science, are narratives or interpretations of the nature of reality and our nature. We can make our practice and service contemporary by drawing on each era and drawing them forward into the future.

The strength of Jewish kabbalah is its accent on worship, mindfulness, humility, human relations and redemptive action. It is illuminated by religious commentary, community, service and healing the world.

The strength of hermetic qabalah is society, brotherhood, and its encyclopedic array of the phenomenology, myth, and symbolism of the collective unconscious. It is illuminated by group initiation, cyclic celebration, enlightenment, and transpersonal psychologies.

The strength of QBL is divergent thinking and its transgressive attempts to break free of the lockdown mind control of conformist culture in renewed attempts to fly free in emergent creativity. It embodies the fluency, spontaneity and flexibility that prevents religious ossification. It is illuminated by self-expression, self-direction, self-initiation - the Holy Guardian Angel or inner genius.

All recognize a transcendent reality whether it is called divine, transpersonal, or void/plenum. Each looks into the Abyss and finds it smiling back. Each recognizes and embraces hierarchies of embedded fields within fields, holographic aspects of the Universal Field. Qabalah represents an intuitive, NEGENTROPIC way of being that constantly, deliberately feeds and nourishes itself from the wellsprings of life and manifestation - the inexhaustible geyser of creative flux.

QBL is all about enliving that conscious connection with primordial SOURCE, via The Middle Pillar, or Middle Way. It is wisdom, understanding, knowledge, mercy, strength, integration, emotion, cognition, instinct, and corporality. The balanced integration of all potential faculties opens the portal of Real-I-zation.

Hermetic Qabalah is the basis of Western occultism, the Renaissance, The Enlightenment and many threads of Theosophical, New Age and Postmodern thought. It reflects Eatern notions, such as yin and yang, and subtle energy centers. Both traditional and metaphysical currents offer profoundly personal experiences of the divine nature of life, transforming the ordinary and creating a journey to the center of the self, where all things are made whole and holy, kindled by divine love and intentionality.

Influx: Priming the Cosmic Pump

Qabala is a chaotically evolving artform. Its wild nature cannot be contained in any static institutional form. Magick suggests that as Nothing becomes Something in the subquantal oscillation of matter/energy there is room for human intervention, for intentionality at the quantum level. These subtle changes can be pumped up to the macro scale through the self-organization and butterfly effect of Chaos Theory.

Surfing the wake of the creative edge of culture, underground movements often herald the shape of things to come - what will shortly be mainstreamed into global culture. Modern magick has uprooted QBL from both the religious and secret society formats, creating a personalistic framework for self-help, self-initiation, and self-transformation.

Nonlocal qabala isn't rooted in ancient cultural traditions; digital qabala is an infinite virtuality not confined by consensus reality. It is rooted in the ZERO-POINT fluctuation of subspace, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, synchronicity, parapsychology, and hyperdelic consciousness. Radical things and experiences are possible that weren't before. For example, Magick's "cloak of invisibility" is being literalized by DARPA using stealth metamaterials.

The new QBL relies on radical self-confrontation and self-commitment. Practice does generally retain a connection with the wisdom of Tarot and the elegantly symphonic symbolism of the correspondence system, and often classical number mysticism. There are many self-styled idiosyncratic cults based in this maverick eclectic strain of so-called qabalistic practice. Many embrace novelty-seeking rock and pop culture elements, others "tales from the darkside", yet others realize it's all a "put on" and that identity and personality are mutable facades through which we can reinvent ourselves.

THE THIRD WAVE: The Wake of Human Progress

Old cultures are dying as they are assimilated into global awareness; we exchange the wake for being awake. Like an indicator species, art and artists often reveal long in advance where humanity is heading. They express what cannot yet be articulated or lived in the common culture. This is no more true than in the artistic expression of Qabala and the art of magick.

The interplay in colloidal mixture of all components of human technology extends our senses and shifts their ratios. Our very nervous systems have been extended and morphed by the electronic environment and the advent of 'voluntary ESP'. Postmodern "generic" forms of magick, in particular Thelema and/or Chaos Magick strip the religious veneer from the purely technological spiritual practices. Qabalistic practice has jumped the theological framework into idiosyncratic, neo-pagan, humanist, and atheistic formats.

This isn't black or white magick, but a highly saturated social kaleidoscope in living color, sometimes coming together through the common heartbeat of tribal sensibilities. As paths of self-development, they are esoteric psychologies with a worldview. They substitute an exploratory, experimental and pragmatic philosophy of self-reliance and self-realization for the religious bedrock of the traditional forms.
A pomo sensibility toward psychological and spiritual life reveals a permissive, de-centered perspective not just in phenomenology, quantum physics, chaos theory, aesthetics, deconstruction, and imagistic poetry but also in body, everyday consciousness, aesthetics, memory, dreams, alchemy, psychology, and mysticism.

The Bleeding Edge

The Postmodern attitude inclines toward interval--between I and not-I, body and world, forming and being formed. It is tribal diversity and ritual, transgressive aesthetics, body modification, X-treme everything, the hinterlands of experience, cyberpunk, the undiscovered territory. Shaken by context, facts are dissolved, meaning become elusive, contextual, and words cannot escape relativization.

Deprived of consolation of alignment with authority, consciousness is freed up to play in the Now, a carnivalesque event - the global spectacle, from Burning Man to Las Vegas, to the Mall and beyond. Understanding becomes unfixed, a matter of allusion or play, as interpretation caves in on itself.

My spoof concept is called NO WAY QABALA. Its motto is "There's NOWHERE to go and we're all gonna get there." Its mantra is "No Way, No Way, No Way. It's mission is, "No Path; No Problem!" It's worldview is "No Thing is Now Here."

This is not your Mother's Qabala, nor Madonna's neatly pre-packaged variety either. It is QBL for an electrified and digitized nervous system - for Homo Mutans and Homo Lumen. The modern search for the Self in a conformist culture is encompassed in the Spheres from Malkuth (Earth) to Tiphareth (Heart). The object is to pick a path with Heart and to develop one's inherent potential artfully and heartfully, whether you "believe" in God, or not. This "church of self-amplification" recognizes the potential latent in us all, and it is divine. The self to be amplified is the transpersonal not finite Self.

Magick is a commited lifestyle. The emphasis can be on mysticism and meditation, or ritual and magick. Some favor obsolete wormholes back to other centuries - grimoires and goblins - while others are busy creating the next-new-way-on. These essays, artwork, and visualizations here are not meant as a new dogma, practice, or school of thought. They are simply the result of my own decades of qabalistic work. I hope they provide a springboard for your own thought. As food for thought, they are meant to stimulate and provoke your own speculations, insights, and experiments.

Occulture Club

Qabala is not a static doctrine, but a living Way. Qabala is an experiential path, an experiment which lasts throughout one's life. Qabala is ultimately about access to and experience of discrete states of consciousness, ways of being and becoming. To glean its wisdom, we must "sample the dish," not simply read the recipes. It is a subject which cannot be exhausted.

We must make QBL our own, even while honoring its tradition. In this way, we have the best of both worlds. Qabalistic traditions and models are validated by modern research everyday. It has a vast capacity to incorporate the entire repertoire of human knowledge and understanding, coordinating through its primary glyph, the Tree of Life.

We can update our models and create revolutions in our own beliefs and thinking, much the same as happens in science. Therefore, we will be drawing on resources from post quantum physics, Jungian and Transpersonal Psychology, and traditional and modern philosophical speculation, such as Buckminster Fuller's SYNERGETICS. I hope you find valuable concepts here for bootstrapping into your own worldview and facilitating your journey toward Union.

Tweeking Consciousness

The dazzling phenomenology and sparkle of consciousness has perhaps led us to think that its function must be equally dazzling and discrete - the fruit of human evolution. But it may be foundational - the very mindstuff or maya of Eastern philosophy, that is the primordial basis of both manifesting matter and energy. This common candidate has something to do with increased intelligence and choice, perhaps even 'free will'.

Increased intelligence is a cognitive and emotional function: I.Q. and E.Q., including rapport and empathy with life and cosmos. Reality might be tweekable by consciousness, but there is no obvious requirement for this. We can change ourselves by applying our will at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. In doing so, we alter the very fabric of those domains of human experience, adding our voices, our contributions to the evolutionary thrust.

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Music & Consciousness U.K.

2006-06-03T04:44:22Z

An International Conference on Music and Consciousness, co-organised by the
Department of Music at the University of Sheffield and the International Centre
for Music Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, will take place in
Sheffield July 17-19 2006. Speakers addressing the topic from a wide range of
perspectives. Full programme and registration/accommodation information
available on the conference website at:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/music/muscon

Register soon to be sure of accommodation

All enquiries to the conference administrator:
Susan Pennington (s.h.pennington@shef.ac.uk)
+44 (0)114 222 0495

Eric Clarke
e.f.clarke@shef.ac.uk

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

play that HAARP

2006-06-02T03:11:36Z

More goodies from "the intelligent species"....

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5648945725257661397

HAARP has recently been upped to 3.6 Gigs from about 1.5 (not exactly sure but in that neighbourhood). and on the planning document it shows they plan to take it to 100 Gigs...!!!!
Jeanne Manning talks about the way changes in our electromagnetic surroundings effect our bodies--especially the heart and brain. Mind control anyone? Now you know why you've been feeling funky lately. This is especially true (for me anyways) on chemtrail days (that will be pretty much any 'clear' day) as chemtrails make the atmosphere more conductive; and it is especially true for the past few months since they've cranked HAARP to 3.6 Gigs. I've also noticed electrical malfunctions--computers etc...
This video was made when HAARP was still at the lower levels....imagine....

As Eastlund (scientist who invented HAARP) said "This is just a great big toy---and scientists love toys"

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

stepping up the game

2006-06-02T02:39:13Z

BULLETIN ITEM: New CIA director Hayden plans massive expansion of
spying on Americans

MWM: As should be known: Thompson is a fairly conservative guy, a
non-partisan veteran of both military service and a long time of
journalism in Washington DC. On the web several years now, he has gotten
consistently better and has created an extensive network of informed
bureaucracy insiders who apprise him and us about what is really going on.

The Rant

New CIA director Hayden plans massive expansion of spying on Americans
By DOUG THOMPSON
May 31, 2006, 08:19
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Now that he is officially sworn in as the new head of the Central
Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden plans to build a vast domestic
spying network that will pry into the lives of most Americans around the
clock.

President George W. Bush told Hayden to "take whatever steps necessary"
to monitor Americans 24/7 by listening in on their phone calls, bugging
their homes and offices, probing their private lives, snooping into
their financial records and watching their travel habits.

Can I prove this in a court of law? No. Do I know it is happening? Yes,
without a doubt. Enough sources within the CIA, FBI, NSA and Pentagon
have come forward in recent days to warn about Hayden's plans for an
expanded, consolidated spy network aimed at Americans, not terrorists, and
violating numerous laws that prohibit such activities against citizens
of this country.

"What Hayden plans to do is not only illegal, it is immoral," says a
longtime CIA operative who may retire early rather than participate in
what he sees as an illegal extension of the spy agency's activities.

Hayden, who oversaw the National Security Agency's questionable
monitoring of phone calls and emails of Americas, plans to consolidate much of
the country's domestic spying into a new desk at the CIA, calling it a
"domestic terrorism prevention" operation.

The desk will oversee not only NSA's increased monitoring of electronic
communications by Americans but also the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency's "terrorist information awareness" program that monitors
travel and financial activities by Americans by gathering real-time data
from banks, airlines, travel agencies and credit card companies.

The CIA operation will also coordinate with the Pentagon's domestic
spying program that monitors activities of anti-war groups, organizations
critical of the Bush administrations and others tagged as enemies of
the state.

FBI agents will step up monitoring of journalists to identify leaks of
stories embarrassing to the government. The bureau is already
monitoring phone calls and emails by reporters on a routine basis and has
increased surveillance of writers for major news organizations and monitoring
of travel and financial records using the DARPA computers.

"This is not 'total information awareness' but 'total information
control' aimed at watching Americans fulltime and ignoring the protections
that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution," says an FBI
agent familiar with the programs. "I didn't sign on for this and I'm
getting the hell out."

In fact, resignations at major U.S. spy agencies are at an all-time
high. Exact numbers are classified but sources say field agents, data
analysts and others are leaving in droves rather than join the frenzy to
spy on Americans.

Hayden sailed through the Senate confirmation process defending his
domestic spying program at NSA, claiming it was legal. Privacy experts and
Constitutional law professors say otherwise but the Senate
rubber-stamped Bush's choice anyway, choosing to ignore the threats to freedom.

Hayden will have little problem concealing the operation from the
public and Congress. Many of the CIA's programs are classified and the
agency has, in the past, concealed programs even from the intelligence
committees in both the House and Senate. The DARPA project and the Pentagon
domestic spying programs are "black bag" operations that do not require
Congressional approval or oversight.

Likewise, many of the details of the NSA domestic spying program were
withheld from Congress and escaped public notice until media reports
unearthed them and the Bush administration now threatens to jail the
reporters who broke the story.

I wish I could prove this. I wish one, just one, source on the inside
was willing to come forward and allow his or her name to be used but
those who might be tempted see what happened to Mary McCarthy, the CIA
employee fired and under threat of prosecution for leaking information
about CIA torture camps in Europe.

But I know it is happening. People I've known for years and trust tell
me it is happening and the past record of spying, lies and deceit by
the Bush administration point to just such an operation.

This nation is under attack. We, the people, are under attack. And the
enemy in this case is not an Islamic radical hiding in a cave in
Afghanistan but a cabal of truly evil men and women at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue and on Capitol Hill aided by carefully-picked, law-ignoring
appointees at the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, a black glass-walled
building at Fort Meade, MD, and a complex in Langley, Virginia.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

going to pot

2006-05-29T19:53:17Z

Subject: MAPS: Boston Sunday Globe: Weed Control (on Amherst MMJ
facility)

Just this weekend, the Boston Globe published as lead article in
their Sunday paper's "Ideas" section "Weed Control", a discussion of
the proposed growing facility at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst, the current government monopoly on marijuana
grown for medical research, and the attempt to end this monopoly.
This piece came out with multiple graphics, and is in a section that
many people read, since it has editorials and other feature articles.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/05/28/weed_control/

Weed control
Research on the medicinal benefits of marijuana may depend on good
gardening--and some say Uncle Sam, the country's only legal grower of
the cannabis plant, isn't much of a green thumb

By Jessica Winter | May 28, 2006
Boston Globe

LYLE CRAKER HAS a number of plants on his mind. An agronomist and
professor in the Department of Plant, Soil & Insect Sciences at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he's currently analyzing the
active ingredients in black cohosh, which is used to alleviate
symptoms of menopause. He is also studying goldenseal, a native
American plant that shows promise as a treatment for some skin
irritations, and exploring the possibility that certain Chinese
medicinal plants could be cultivated in Massachusetts for research
purposes.

There is another medicinal plant that Craker would like to grow and
study, but in this instance, his prospects will be determined in a
courtroom. Since 2001, Craker has been seeking a license from the
Drug Enforcement Administration to establish a medical-marijuana
growth facility at UMass-Amherst. It would be the second such
facility in the US; at present, the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
a federal agency, produces the only legal supply of cannabis in the
country at the University of Mississippi.

The DEA lists cannabis as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has a
high potential for abuse and no accepted medical uses. However,
marijuana is unique on the Schedule I roster-which also includes
cocaine, LSD, and MDMA (Ecstasy)-as the only substance that is not
available from multiple independent producers for clinical research
purposes.

``There are two issues here: quality and access," says Rick Doblin,
the Belmont-based founder and president of the nonprofit
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which
is sponsoring Craker's suit against the DEA. The government holds
that its Mississippi operation obviates the need for a second crop.
Craker and MAPS counter that NIDA cultivates a product of poor
quality and does not make it readily available to qualified
researchers, and point to NIDA's previous refusals to supply cannabis
to two scientists with FDA-approved protocols as grounds for
establishing an independent facility.

On April 20, the Food and Drug Administration released a
controversial statement declaring that marijuana ``has no currently
accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." The outcome
of Craker's case-especially if it reaches federal court, as is
likely-could realign the terms of the national debate over medical
marijuana. For now, the suit, which has the expressed support of
Senators Edward Kenedy and John Kerry, as well as 38 members of the
House of Representatives, is in the hands of DEA Administrative Law
Judge Mary Ellen Bittner, who's expected to make her recommendation
to the agency on the application sometime this summer. Final briefs
were filed on May 8.

There is abundant anecdotal evidence and personal testimony to
support myriad uses of cannabis to treat symptoms of cancer, AIDS,
multiple sclerosis, and other ailments. As the FDA reiterated in its
statement, however, scant clinical evidence exists to back these
claims-or, for that matter, to contradict them. Paradoxically, the
controls on official research of cannabis in America undermine both
the medical-marijuana movement's efforts to prove the drug's benefits
and the government's assertions of its dangers. Strangely enough, the
case for pharmaceutical cannabis may, in the end, come down to good
gardening-and may depend on whether the government is willing to give
up its monopoly on marijuana.

. . .

Cannabis sativa was once widely recommended by American physicians as
a mild sedative, much as the popular herbal treatments valerian and
camomile are used today. By 1937, however, the drug had been
effectively outlawed by the Marihuana Tax Act. The Federal Bureau of
Narcotics had aggressively pursued this ban with Congress, and cited
marijuana's perceived popularity as a smoked narcotic among Mexican
farm laborers, hysterical tabloid reports on its deranging effects,
and results from tests on canine subjects.

Punishments for pot-related offenses remained light into the 1980s,
and President Carter favored decriminalization. It wasn't until the
War on Drugs gathered momentum midway through the Reagan
administration that penalties became fearsome enough to drive
marijuana growers indoors-which, it turned out, was the best possible
place for a cannabis plant to thrive. In ``The Botany of Desire: A
Plant's Eye View of the World" (2001), author Michael Pollan has an
epiphany while visiting a ``grow room" run by an acquaintance. ``[I]t
dawned on me," he writes, ``that this was what the best gardeners of
my generation had been doing all these years: They had been
underground, perfecting cannabis."

From the standpoint of both the scientist and the connoisseur,
perfect cannabis can be achieved with unseeded, genetically identical
female plants. The original crop is harvested from seeds, and
subsequent generations are bred from cuttings. Characterized by the
``buds" from which marijuana derives one of its many slang names,
these virgin female plants carry high levels of molecules unique to
the cannabis plant, called cannabinoids. The two most well-understood
cannabinoids are THC and CBD, which many physicians and patients
believe can alleviate nausea, stimulate appetite, ease pain and
anxiety, and lessen the muscle stiffness and spasms associated with MS.

In the UK, the GW Pharmaceuticals company has a government license to
grow cannabis under highly regulated conditions. At a secret location
in southern England, in greenhouses that are computer-controlled for
temperature, humidity, and light, the GW research team has compiled a
veritable library of plant strains, with precisely determined ratios
of cannabinoid content.

The upshot is Sativex, a liquid extract of equal parts THC and CBD
that is sprayed under the tongue to treat neuropathic pain. Britain
permits the use of Sativex in MS patients, and the drug has been
approved for marketing in Canada. Cannabinoids also have a presence
on the US market, in the recently approved Cesamet, a synthetic
cannabinoid, and in Marinol, a THC extract in pill form that the FDA
approved back in 1985. But Marinol contains no CBD, and ingested THC
is metabolized differently from smoked marijuana-the palliative
effects take much longer to kick in, and the psychoactive effects are
far stronger.

Craker's intentions for a Massachusetts site are similar to the GW
template: an indoor facility housing female clones, with strains made
to order for researchers according to exact cannabinoid content. In
contrast to the methods practiced by GW and by America's outlaw
gardeners, however, NIDA grows the majority of its marijuana
outdoors, under conditions that result in unwanted pollination and,
according to some users, a harsh product. The Institute harvested its
most recent marijuana crop in Mississippi in 2002, and stockpiled the
supply in vaults and freezers. Cannabinoid content of NIDA pot is
highly variable, and a THC potency of 6 to 8 percent is about as high
as researchers can hope for. By contrast, Canada distributes medical
marijuana to patients at 12.5 percent, and medical marijuana in the
Netherlands ranges from 13 to 18 percent potency.

``I've spoken to patients who have used [NIDA marijuana], and they've
said it's everything from worthless to other descriptions I should
not use," Craker says. ``The patient has to smoke one cigarette after
the other to get any effective relief from pain." Ethan Russo, a
neurologist and now a senior medical adviser to GW Pharmaceuticals,
conducted patient studies with NIDA marijuana and reported, ``A close
inspection of the contents of NIDA-supplied cannabis cigarettes
reveals them to be a crude mixture of leaf with abundant stem and
seed components.. . .The resultant smoke is thick, acrid, and
pervasive."

Then again, it's not in NIDA's job description-or even, perhaps, in
NIDA's interests-to grow a world-class marijuana crop. The
institute's director, Nora Volkow, has stressed that it's ``not
NIDA's mission to study the medicinal use of marijuana or to advocate
for the establishment of facilities to support this research." Since
NIDA's stated mission ``is to lead the Nation in bringing the power
of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction," federally supported
marijuana research will logically tilt toward the potential harms,
not benefits, of cannabis.

Under these circumstances, evidence in support of medical marijuana
tends to materialize as a byproduct, not a primary goal, of official
research. For example, Donald Tashkin of UCLA intended to demonstrate
via a NIDA-supported study that marijuana smoke increases the risk of
lung and upper-airways cancer. But the findings of the study,
announced this past week, indicate that heavy marijuana smokers
actually show lower cancer rates than tobacco smokers, indirectly
supporting claims by medical-marijuana proponents for the
tumor-inhibiting properties of cannabinoids.

. . .

At the moment, federal law prohibits pot cultivation even in those
states (11 at last count) that have passed medical-marijuana
referenda. In 1996, Californians voted in favor of the Compassionate
Use Act, also known as Proposition 215, which permitted the use and
cultivation of marijuana by qualified patients. According to the act,
patients with a referral from a physician can obtain medical
marijuana from one of some 200 dispensaries or ``buyers' clubs,"
which procure their high-grade stock from tucked-away farms and
discreet greenhouses. Despite the ever present threat of a crackdown
from the federal government, these companies are thriving-some clubs
even offer their employees healthcare benefits and 401(k) plans-and
have created a market for medical marijuana.

``For evidence in support of the healthy competition fostered by a
marketplace economy, you need only to look at the quality of
marijuana available in California," says Mark Blumenthal, who directs
the nonprofit American Botanical Council of Austin, Texas.
``Pluralism and economic competition are good for the consumer. We
generally don't allow and empower monopolies in our culture-it's
contrary to the tenets of our economic system."

The invocation of a government monopoly on marijuana helps to explain
the strange bedfellows on the pro-cannabis side of this issue. The
conservative historian Richard Brookhiser and the late Reagan aide
Lyn Nofziger both spoke out in favor of medical marijuana, and
supporters of Craker's suit against the DEA include not only several
nurses' associations and the United Methodist Church but Grover
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a staunch
defender of small government and an unfettered free market.

``The use of controlled substances for legitimate research purposes
is well-established, and has yielded a number of miracle medicines
widely available to patients and doctors," Norquist wrote in his
letter of support. ``This case should be no different. It's in the
public interest to end the government monopoly on marijuana legal for
research."

Given Norquist's many successes on the lobbying circuit, perhaps all
medical marijuana needs is a new pitch man.

Jessica Winter is a freelance journalist in New York. She writes for
The Village Voice, the Guardian (UK), Time Out London, and other
publications.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Abby Travis plays the Viper Room

2006-05-29T01:09:39Z

Abby is my pal, Doc Gorilla's niece. Check her out if you're in LA.
io

Hello everyone!

My band and I are performing on June 8th at The Viper Room with Donita Sparks (L7) and Firebug. I'll be singing and playing bass, Kristian Hoffman is on keyboards, Dave Bongiovanni is on guitar and Petur Smith is rocking the drums. This is my first band show of the year. Please come out and show your support!!! (It'd make me very happy). Firebug play at 8:30, I play at 9:30 and Donita and her badass band are on at 10:30. The show is $8 instead of $12 with the password "Lazlo"

GlitterMouth is available July 18th!!! At least in LA... The reason the release date has been pushed back a couple of times is music business timing stuff. (Believe me - figuring all this minutiae out is SO NOT my favorite part of being an independent artist!!!!!!!!) I really appreciate all the patience and eagerness to get this new album which I am very proud of. Not only does it sound great (if I do say so myself), but the packaging is UNBELIEVABLE.

I've had some adventures as of late. Playing the LA Coliseum with The Bangles was super fun! I had an excellent “rock star” moment rocking the riff from "Satisfaction" on the end jam of "In Your Room". It was another one of those times that felt like playing air guitar as a kid. I actually play air drums more than any other invisible instrument.

I also had fun rocking the great lakes region with Kathy Valentine, Clem Burke, and guitarist extraordinaire Jason:) I just finished scoring my first TV show- It's a pilot so who knows what will happen with it; and will be teaching bass part time at The Paul Green School of Rock Music which just opened here in Los Angeles. If any of you are local parents and want your kids to learn classic Sabbath and Zeppelin selections in an ensemble setting then check it out. Highlights from the intimate opening party for the school included a Nuno Brettencourt sighting (cute!) and jamming "Ramble On" and "Whole Lotta Love" with several 17 year old kids from Philly. "Black Dog" was not such a highlight:)

Let’s see what else- I saw Ministry last week and Al Jorgensen really reminds me of the James Earl Jones character in the first Conan the Barbarian movie. They somehow seem relevant again in the current politcal climate. “New World Order” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod” were highlights. Their soundman is amazing!!

I guess that’s it for me today- See You All at The Viper Room on June 8th. Bangles play LA Gay Pride on June 10th!!

Abby Travis
www.abbytravis.com

www.clubmatahari.com www.cdbaby.com/abbytravis

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posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Divine Strake on hold

2006-05-29T00:49:42Z

http://feeds.renonews.net/?rid=1da03ef4f8974079&cat=bc9f1091e6c70d36&f=1
Friday, May 26, 2006 · Last updated 4:43 p.m. PT
Mushroom cloud blast in Nevada delayed indefinitely
By KEN RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
LAS VEGAS -- The federal government on Friday indefinitely postponed a massive explosion that planners said would generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert and critics feared would spread radioactivity across the West.
Officials said delaying the non-nuclear explosion dubbed "Divine Strake" would allow time to answer legal and scientific questions about whether it would kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"The previously announced date of no later than June 23 is no longer accurate," said Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in North Las Vegas. "The experiment will be scheduled at a date later to be announced pending the legal action."
Anti-nuclear activists, an Indian tribe and Utah and Nevada congressional lawmakers have pressed the government to address safety concerns raised since James Tegnelia, director of the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said the blast "is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons." He later retracted the statement, saying it was inaccurate.
A federal judge in Las Vegas let government lawyers on Friday withdraw a finding that there would be "no significant impact" from the blast without acknowledging any shortcomings alleged in a lawsuit filed by the Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders."
U.S. District Court Judge Lloyd George said he wanted questions about the test resolved.
"You tell the bureaucrats that the time has come for this thing to move in a timely fashion," the judge told Justice Department lawyers as he canceled a June 8 hearing but called for written filings from both sides within four weeks.
"I will not endure delay after delay," the judge said.
The explosion was first scheduled June 2 and delayed to June 23 to allow time for a court review of the lawsuit filed by Reno-based lawyer Bob Hager. The suit claims the federal government failed to complete required environmental studies before
planning to detonate the 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb.
Designers said the blast would be of the same material but some 280 times larger than the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
"This is the second time they have announced the intention to explode this bomb at the Test Site and the second time that we've stopped them," Hager said. "Until they do the science right, they'll never be allowed by the court to do this test, and that's the way it should be."
A spokesman for the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency declined comment. The agency has said the explosion would help gather data about penetrating hardened and deeply buried targets.
Critics have called the planned blast a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb.
This week Hager filed an affidavit from John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy in New York, calling the test "wholly inconsistent" with U.S. nuclear weapons nonproliferation treaty obligations.
Hager also submitted opinions from experts, including Richard Miller of Houston, author of the "U.S. Atlas of Atomic Fallout," and Dr. Thomas Fasy, a board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility in New York City, that the blast posed a risk of increased cancer to people living downwind of the Test Site.
The planned blast rekindled fears of illness among "downwind" residents in Nevada, Utah and Arizona who recalled government assurances that nuclear tests in the 1950s and early 1960s posed no risk. Since 1990, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has provided for payments to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases.
Opponents have collected signatures in Utah to block the explosion, and a Memorial Day weekend protest is planned at the Nevada Test Site.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate minority leader, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, issued statements welcoming the delay.
"We have always been concerned about background radiation at the site," Hatch said. "We have been repeatedly told ... that this was not a concern. But since we've asked them to back up their conclusions with scientific evidence, it looks like our concerns are justified."
A spokeswoman for Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said the postponement showed explosion planners were "proceeding responsibly and with appropriate caution."
--
Associated Press Staff Writers Erica Werner and Jennifer Talhelm contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

The Z Machine

2006-05-27T18:48:27Z

The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure.

The machine operates by releasing an electrical pulse and associated magnetic field. The energy from a 20-million-ampere electrical discharge vaporizes an array of thin tungsten wires and a powerful magnetic field crushes the ensuing plasma. The collapsing plasma produces X-rays which create a shock wave that bears on the material being tested. The powerful fluctuation in the magnetic field (or "electromagnetic pulse") also generates electric current in all of the metallic objects in the room (see picture at right).

It gets its name because current travels vertically into the target, which is conventionally the z axis (x and y being horizontal, see Z-pinch).

Originally designed to supply 50 terawatts of power in one fast pulse, technological advances allowed this to increase to 290 terawatts, enough to study nuclear fusion. Z releases 80 times the world's electrical power usage for a few trillionths of a second. However, only a small amount of electricity is consumed for each test (equal to the usage of 100 houses for two minutes). Marx generators are slowly charged with energy prior to firing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_machine

posted in We love Iona - 1 reply

Mirror Neurons

2006-05-27T18:43:41Z

Monkey see, monkey do?

Intentional Attunement. The Mirror Neuron system and its role in interpersonal relations

Vittorio Gallese

The dominant view in cognitive science puts most efforts in clarifying what are the formal rules structuring a solipsistic, representational mind. Much less investigated is what triggers the sense of social identity that we experience with the multiplicity of “other selves” populating our social world. Is the solipsistic type of analysis inspired by folk-psychology, the exclusive explanatory approach to social cognition? In particular, does it do full justice to the phenomenal aspects of our social intentional relations? My answer is no to both questions.

Instead of Mr. Spock, the famous alien character of the Star Trek series, our social mental skills are not confined to a declarative, conceptualized, and objective perspective. Usually, we are not alienated from the actions, emotions and sensations of others, because we are attuned to the intentional relations of others. By means of intentional attunement, “the others” are much more than being different representational systems; they become persons, like us.

In this paper I will show that the same neural circuits involved in action control and in the first person experience of emotions and sensations are also active when witnessing the same actions, emotions and sensations of others, respectively.I will posit that the mirror neuron systems, together with other mirroring neural clusters outside the motor domain, constitute the neural underpinnings of embodied simulation, the functional mechanism at the basis of intentional attunement.

http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1

posted in We love Iona - 3 replies

new Nick Begich radio show

2006-05-27T18:36:31Z

Dr. Nick Begich’s Earthpulse News Flash May, 2006

New Radio Program

Dear Friends and Supporters:

We have been busy as usual trying to get the word out on our issues through lectures, radio and writing again after a few very tough years. We appreciate the help and support we have received from every one of you over the years.

We are participating in a new radio program for the Republic Broadcasting Network (www.rbnlive.com) as not only a guest on many of their programs, but also as a host once a week for two hours. The program will be on the air from 12:00–2:00PM EST Every Wednesday beginning on May 24, 2006. They are heard throughout the country, on short wave and on the Internet. Past shows will be available on the web as well.

Changing the Way We See the World with Dr. Nick Begich

Host: Dr. Nick Begich
Website: www.earthpulse.com
Research provided by: The Lay Institute on Technology, Inc. (www.layinstitute.org)
Time: Wednesdays, 12:00 – 2:00PM Eastern Time

From the invention of the wheel to where we are right now technology will double every ten months. At this rate of change there is little time to consider the consequences, much less create solutions, for what we are facing in the future. These new technologies will either free us to our individual higher potentials, as created human beings, or enslave us to the devices of the elite and corporately corrupt governments around the world. In true democracies and democratic republics the average person controls the destiny of nations. In the 21st Century it is technologies that define the strength and power of nations. This radio program is about the issues that will return power to people through education, applied technology and frank discussion of new technologies, planetary stewardship, responsibility and most importantly the opportunity to create real change in the directions we are otherwise headed. It is time for an awakening of the spirit within each of us that has the potential to reclaim our birthright as created human beings. Created in the image of our Creator – It is time to remember who we are and the directions we want our world, nations and communities to go.

Dr. Nick Begich is Executive Director of The Lay Institute on Technology, Inc., a Texas non-profit corporation and is the co-owner of Earthpulse Press Incorporated. He is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr., and political activist Pegge Begich. He is well known in Alaska for his own political activities. He was twice elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education. He has been pursuing independent research in the sciences and politics for most of his adult life. Begich received his doctorate in traditional medicine from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines in November 1994. He authored and co-authored five books and has published articles in science, politics and education and is a well known lecturer, having presented throughout the United States and in nineteen countries. He has been featured as a guest on thousands of radio broadcasts since 1994 on his research activities including new technologies, health and earth science related issues. He has also appeared on dozens of television documentaries and other programs throughout the world including BBC-TV, CBC-TV, and TeleMundo. Begich has served as an expert witness and speaker before the European Parliament, GLOBE and for many other organizations.

Thank you all again for your continued support of our work in 2006.

Sincerely,
In Service,

Dr. Nick Begich

May 23, 2006
Anchorage, Alaska

Please post, circulate and spread this message on to others.
Thank you for all of your support.
Please visit www.earthpulse.com and www.layinstitute.org

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Weather or Not???

2006-05-11T21:52:59Z

Weather Modification a Long-Established, Though Secretive, Reality

http://pesn.com/2005/09/06/9600160_Weather_Modification/

New legislation not designed to foster pleasant or productive
weather, but planned as tool of weaponized weather control, already well
tested and in use since 1976. Amateur and hostile weather-makers alike
likely to lose their technology to the military.
by Mary-Sue Haliburton
Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2005

New Weather-Control Board to Set up Shop in U.S.

It’s late fall of 2004. Fred McKenna* surveys his beloved radionics
equipment with sorrow. “I am expecting a visit from the boys in black,” he
sighs to me. Because he has been engaged in storm mitigation and
deflection, he’s sure that military and other authorities know of his
location and activities. Fred has already begun to dispose of the reagents,
the active principle used for the “broadcast” of specific corrective
energies to persons or the environment. By transferring their activity to
the land itself, he hopes this might at least protect a passive aspect
of his operation. But he fears that the machines themselves may no
longer be in his possession by the end of the following year.

It’s for good reason tha Fred is concerned about confiscation of his
radionics machines. He has received numerous threatening phone calls;
his computer has been sabotaged while connected to satellite
weather-data sites; and he has even been subjected to a psionic attack intended to
cause a car crash which would have happened if he had not
serendipitously made an unplanned turn off the highway. Just as he was stopping
the car, he was suddenly plunged into unconsciousness (for which no
medical explanation could be found). Had he continued on the road, he said,
the car would have smacked into a rock face.

Long before there was any public announcement, Fred and others like him
have been aware of planned legislation in the United States. Just
because Fred lives in Canada, he is not exempt from interference or even
being arrested. The U.S. military has a very long arm. As evinced by many
examples, the US feels it has the right to reach into any nation on
earth to take whatever it wills by force, whether this is oil fields or
weather-influencing technology. Set forward as Bill S. 517 on March 3,
2005, and scheduled to take effect on 1 October 2005, is the Weather
Modification Research and Technology Transfer Act.

What Kind of Weather Control Will this Be?

Bill S.517 sets up an eleven-member board of directors to oversee all
the research on weather control, and to direct funding to projects. The
wording sounds typically bureaucratic and innocuous. Except for the
fact that the title of the act includes the words “technology transfer”,
there is no specific reference to possible confiscation of
privately-held equipment. However, there are gray areas, such as "and for other
purposes" and other vague phrases that periodically appear in the text.

This is what rings alarm bells for independent, benevolent weather
modifiers like Fred who want to normalize rainfall for farmer, and to
lessen storm damage. For example, under Section 5, DUTIES, the following
statement appears:
(2) assessments and evaluations of the efficacy of weather
modification, both purposeful (including cloud-seeding operations) and
inadvertent (including downwind effects and anthropogenic effects). (Ref.)
Note the reference to cloud-seeding, an old method largely superseded
by new technology, but still popularly equated to weather control as it
is the only one discussed in the mass media. However, some aerial
spraying continues, of which the nature and purpose are hotly debated.
(Refs)

The statement only partly conceals an expectation that they will be
recording evolutionary probably genetic changes, and that this will
regarded as merely be a “normal” part of data collection. Because the
word "anthropogenic” refers to "the origin and evolution of humans" we
should be asking, “What sort of testing is planned here?” Is this new
Board going to be approving weather experimentation that includes genetic
modifiers, treating whole human populations as guinea pigs? If so, we
should all be as concerned as Fred.

Transfer of Technology to Whom?

Not explained in the text is why "Technology Transfer" is in the title.
Unless that is related to the right of the Board of Directors to
“receive, use, and dispose of gifts" (emphasis added), we are left to guess
what this means.

If the government’s objective is to control the weather for military
advantage, then some of these transfers may be involuntary. There is also
no mention of any upper limit on gift value, or whether the board
members could take them for personal use, which would be gross conflict of
interest if this were for the public good. Will owners of radionics and
other types of equipment be expected to “give” their equipment,
inventions and patents over to the Board? And why would the words “dispose of”
be included in relation to these “gifts” possibly of technology? Does
this mean that the Board has a carte blanche to destroy confiscated
technology? Remembering that the military document on weather control is
titled “Owning the Weather by 2025”, (emphasis added) it is implied that
no one else will be allowed to own anything that could influence the
weather for either military or non-military purposes. We must all be at
the “mercy” of the distinctly unmerciful Armed Forces.

According to one website, crediting as its source another site that no
longer carries this report, Canada and the U.S. have entered into an
agreement to exchange information about these technologies and their
transboundary effects. (Ref.) Article IV of this agreement requires both
parties to inform the other of weather-control experiments and activities
"prior to" the commencement of such activities. However, apparently to
cover their backsides, Article VII states:
"Nothing herein relates to or shall be construed to affect the
question of responsibility or liability for WEATHER MODIFICATION
activities, or to imply the existence of any generally applicable rule of
international law. " (Ref.)
Also on the books in Canada is a law concerning public notification
of weather-modification activities. Apparently this means that people
must submit proposals with full details of what they plan to do, how
large an area will be affected, and other details. As worded, the act
appears to be designed to allow people in the affected area to be informed
and to raise objections if they are negatively affected. An example is
the use of a hail cannon, which uses a powerful supersonic shockwave to
break up the hail formation process in the clouds. (Ref) Due to the
high decibel level, a warning whistle must be sounded in advance of each
firing of the cannon so that any people who are nearby can protect their
ears.

However, when citizens of Canada have attempted to use this act to
obtain information about the weather-modifying activity known as chemtrail
spraying, the public disclosure principle does not seem to be
applicable. One caller in Ontario ended up talking with a someone in an office
in Manitoba who attempted to persuade him that this was only
crop-dusting, one of the usual disinformation tactics. Whether or not the
information exchange agreement between Canada and the U.S. means that the
Canadian government is being informed about this program, the information is
not trickling down to the public. The spirit of this act is more
honored in the breach than in the observance.

What will happen to this agreement and the information legislation when
the new American Weather Authority comes into being? Given all the
qualifiers and the national security acts that override all other laws, it
doesn’t likely have a future. And if the planned annexation of Canada
and Mexico by the U.S. goes ahead, the question will be academic anyway.

A Brief and Partial History of Weather Control

The official recognition given to weather control technology by setting
up a Board to oversee it at this time might suggest to some that this
technology is a new field, and that the research is just beginning.
However, weather control has a long history, and if various observers and
researchers are correct in their interpretation of documents and data,
we have been seeing it in use for at least three decades.

The ancient way to govern weather was for especially trained and
disciplined individuals to interact with the spirit dimension.
"In many cultures, weather-working ability seems to be part and
parcel of the shaman's job description and is considered necessary for the
survival and well-being of the community. Successful weather-working
also demonstrates the shaman's strong relationship with the spirits and
the forces of nature. Implicit in these demonstrations is not an
opportunity for self-aggrandizement, but ideally, an opportunity to support
the community in the certain knowledge that the spirits are really at
work and that miracles can indeed be expected! "
The co-authors point out that compassion and relationship were part
and parcel of the shaman's weather control. This aspect of supporting
the human social fabric is entirely missing from to the weaponized,
inhuman imperative to manipulate weather, usually for the domination of one
group over against another. (Ref)

Wilhelm Reich discoverer of an actual, scientifically verifiable
"life energy" he named "orgone" developed a device he called the
Cloud-Buster. This consisted of pipes grounded in water, and connected to
layers of material from living and inorganic sources which functioned as an
orgone accumulator. He was able to use this device to both shut off and
bring rain. It was so powerful that it had to be used sparingly and
with caution, to avoid creating either drought or flood. Some of Reich’s
experiments had remarkable results. In 1954, he brought rain to
drought-stricken Tucson. Even before the rain actually arrived, the grass had
reached a foot in height due to the enhanced and balanced life energy
(orgone). (Ref)

Trevor J. Constable continues in the Reich tradition, but mounts the
pipes on aircraft and flies them through the area to be treated. His site
describes Operation Clincher, a series of smog-reduction operations
conducted in California under the auspices of the National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration. In 2004 Constable authored an article
rebutting the heavy-handed conventional ideas for control of hurricanes.
He writes:
"Lunatic suggestions to explode atomic bombs against the eye wall
of these immense vortexial systems, attest to orthodoxy’s dangerous
bankruptcy, and also to orthodoxy’s perpetual readiness to embrace the
murderous."
Constable's work, arising directly from that of Reich, draws on
life-energy principles, which orthodox mechanistic science still refuses to
acknowledge as existing. (Ref.) Since Descartes first dissected living
dogs without anaesthetic, ignoring their howls of pain because he had
convinced himself that “lower animals” had no conscious awareness,
mechanistic scientists have regarded living and dead as being essentially
the same.

Even when confronted with evidence, film, time-lapse video, and data,
the conventionally-educated scientists and engineers still refuse to
accept that the "etheric" technology based on this life-energy concept
is able to diminish storms, even though it is etheric forces that play
a role in creating them, according to Trevor Constable.
"The cardinal technical principle involved in any hurricane control
measures, is to use the colossal energies of etheric force in a
hurricane, AGAINST THE HURRICANE. A science that thinks an octave too low,
with no understanding of what vital energy actually is, cannot access and
technologically utilize that force. The chief characteristic of vital
energy is that it flows from low potential to high potential the
reverse of conventional, standard concepts of energy potentials."
Constable wrote this in 2004, indicating that with some minor
resources provided and "protected status"-- to avoid the fate of his mentor
and predecessor Reich who died in prison --
"with a year of such preparatory work, our entire posture vis-à-vis
the Florida hurricane season, would be totally transformed from terror
to confidence that we were finally doing something meaningful about
hurricane diversion and control, instead of just standing in the rain."
(Ref.)
Of course he did not receive any permission, recognition, or
protection. And as we all know, Florida storms continue unabated some say,
with an extra push from one or another covert secret weather controller
with nefarious intentions. (Ref.)

Weather Control As A Weapon

For many, weather control suggests the ability always to have pleasant
weather and to avoid serious storms or long droughts. Due to the
frequency destructive storms, hurricanes and the consequent floods, or to
their total absence and consequent droughts, such people assume that
weather control has not been mastered and therefore is not being used. This
naive view assumes that weather would always be controlled for the good
of humanity.

Human nature seems to dictate otherwise. The discovery of any new power
is considered to confer a military advantage, and therefore its very
existence is kept secret for as long as possible. While the general
public is being told that all phenomena, including some highly anomalous
ones inexplicable by natural forces, are "Mother Nature" at work, various
military and even private agencies have been flexing their
technological muscles and playing havoc with the weather.

Although the American military has actually published a detailed
document "Owning the Weather by 2025", many people will simply say "I don't
believe it" when confronted with this. Why? They may say because it has
not been reported in the mass media, it must not be real. (Some others
will say this is a prime indication that it is real, because most of
what the mass media publishes is fantasy.) But normally any military
power must be kept secret, and the major media outlets are well aware that
they must not cross this line or they could be shut down. Freedom of
the press is allowable only if "national security" policies are not
breached.

Some apologists attempt to argue away the frightening contents of this
policy document by focussing on the disclaimer that it represents only
possible future scenarios and should not be taken to be factual:
"2025 is a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief
of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and
technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air
and space force in the future. Presented on 17 June 1996, this report was
produced in the Department of Defense school environment of academic
freedom and in the interest of advancing concepts related to national
defense. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and
do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air
Force, Department of Defense, or the United States government. This
report contains fictional representations of future situations/scenarios."
Emphasis included in original. (Ref.)
But such theoretical reports have a tendency to be implemented behind
the scenes, even while being denied in public. In his article The
Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: "Owning the Weather" for Military Use,
professor and independent analyst Michel Chossudovsky cites other
official documents to arrive at his conclusions that weaponized weather
control is already in use. He also explores how public opinion is being
misled. At the time this was written, the UN was avoiding dealing with the
issue of deliberate human-caused climate change. (Ref.)

More recently, the UN has showed more concern about weather and climate
change. In July of 2004, they granted official advisory status to the
Planetary Association for Clean Energy (PACE), which served as "NGO in
Special Consultative Status with Economic and Social Council of the
United Nations". PACE members with scientific expertise have been doing
analyses and opinion concerning the overriding nature of the
climate-change issue. (Ref.)

Covert Harassment of Humanity?

Evidence from the environment and from independent researchers and
analysts suggest that this type of weather control is already being
exercised as in effect a weapon of mass destruction. Public disclosure
occurred at an April 1997 counter-terrorism conference. Secretary of
Defense William Cohen stated:
"Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism
whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes
remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of
ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they
can wreak terror upon other nations and it's real, and that's the reason
why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts." (Ref.)
According to Lt.Col. (Ret'd) Tom Bearden, the Russians developed
weather control several decades ago, and have been using it over North
America since 1976. Using over-the-horizon (OTH) radar, the beams are
transmitted in the 3-30 megaHertz band. His website explores the theory of
scalar interferometry, and explains how such beams can be used to direct
the weather patterns as well as to transmit disease patterns of
interaction to cells of living beings, affecting bio-electrical functioning.
(Ref.) No chemicals are necessary to cause disruption of living tissues,
if this alarming theory is true.

Bearden also alleges that after the breakup of the Soviet Union,
Russian scientists sold this technology to other hostile elements such as the
Yakusa. And Russia continues to operate its “Woodpecker” system. In his
view, it is these outside rogue weather controllers working hard to
make our lives difficult by causing storms and droughts. However, some of
these economically displaced Russian scientists are attempting to
benefit humanity and agriculture. One group ended up in Mexico, where they
have built an effective rainmaking system that has gained the blessing
of that country. Mexico plans to have 19 more of these rainmaking
stations installed in the dry north by 2006. (Ref.)

AARP: Pure Research or Active Manipulation?

Ostensibly, HAARP the High-Altitude Active Auroral Research Program
is a research station, gathering data about the atmosphere and “radio
propagation conditions”, presumably for the benefit of scientists in
general as well as for civilian and military communications. Their public
website states that they are “monitoring and archiving the naturally
occurring variations that take place in response to the sun's day-to-day
and long term variability.” This phrase “in response to” implies that
this is passive research. Continually-updated, colorful charts are
available online (Ref.) for each type of instrument, ranging from
magnetometer readings to spectrum monitors and total electron content.

However, there seems to be much more going on behind this public face.
Weather-control patents have been issued for several decades. Patent
No. 3564253 is summarized as: "A system and method for generalized
irradiation of relatively large surface areas of a planet, such as the earth,
the moon, etc. for illumination, heating, weather control, etc.,
employing one or more planet-orbiting self-erecting planar-reflector
satellites controlled in attitude and orbit position to reflect energy from the
sun to a desired area on the planet's surface." (Ref.) Although this
patent called for a satellite, HAARP ground installations are capable of
directing energy to any spot on the planet, as is the Russian system.

That “Woodpecker” system uses the 10 Hz frequency, which by coincidence
or otherwise is the frequency at which the human brain operates when in
“alpha” rhythm (made famous by the “Silva Method of Mind Control”).
This mental state fosters active imagination, and if the user learns to
work with guided imagery, he or she can achieve some interesting effects
both in personal health and also in influencing others’ moods and
behavior. Some believe that it’s also possible for human thoughts and
empowered wishes to influence even the air, water and earth. Why not? If 10
Hz/alpha is the same frequency that HAARP and Russian weather-control
systems are using, perhaps we humans need not think of ourselves as
victims of any weather-weaponry systems. Maybe we should all try sending out
our positive thoughts for equalization of rainfall, for the health of
the planet and for the integrity of its vital envelope of ozone.

Looking for Evidence from Meteorology

One of the primary indications of manipulated weather is the anomalous
blocking high, a “ridge” in the jetstream that stays locked in one
place for months instead of moving around in its normal fashion. These
stationary high-pressure areas tend to occur just off the coastline, and
are noted for preventing rain systems that would normally come inland
from bringing much-needed moisture.

Typically, the weather reporters on TV refer to this as “Mother Nature”
being contrary, but it’s neither maternal nor natural for the jetstream
to lock in place like this, guiding all rain to be dumped uselessly
over the ocean instead of onto land. Such a stationary high persisted over
British Columbia for several months in 2003 and 2004, drying out the
coastal rainforest as well as the interior to the point of creating two
of the worst forest-fire seasons known. Why on earth, you might well
ask, would anyone want to burn up the forests of B.C.? In reply one can
only ask another question: “Who would benefit from doing this?” Would it
have anything to do with the “softwood lumber” dispute between Canada
and the United States? American lumber businesses don’t want competition
and have vigorously opposed imports from the north. Despite the “free
trade” deal between the two countries, the American lumber industry
succeeded in having an exorbitant tariff charged against Canadian
wood products.

Tom Bearden’s website presents numerous photographic evidence of cloud
and weather patterns apparently being controlled by non-natural means.
Grids, radials and other peculiar structures do not seem to be created
by winds. (Ref.) While admitting that in a few cases it might be
possible for natural forces to form unusual shapes, he believes overall,
there are too many such occurrences to be accounted for by unassisted
nature.

Meteorologist Scott Stevens has also gathered examples of cloud
anomalies that do not have a natural explanation. (Ref.) His examples of
clouds being directed by a scalar grid include both photographs from the
ground, and wide-image satellite cloud formations showing where the clouds
are adhering to square grid lines.

The author of this essay has also observed anomalous cloud forms that
are impossible to explain based on wind direction, such as a square
configuration, with one bar of cloud lying at right angles to the next,
covering an area too wide to capture in a photograph (unless one had a
panoramic or video camera). Further, just in watching the weather channel
one sees anomalies, which the anchor person does not notice, or to
which he or she does not want to draw attention.

One example was the so-called "Pineapple Express", which for a few
weeks early in 2004 was bringing what the on-air personalities described as
"regular pulses" of rain across the Pacific to British Columbia. This
kind of description ought to be a red flag. When does nature produce
"regular pulses", and how would natural forces explain the neat arc shapes
of those cloud pattern crossing the ocean, each equidistant from the
next? They looked exactly like those diagrams of how broadcast radio
waves expand outward from a central point, the transmitter, like rings of
ripples from tossing a stone into a pond. These cloud arcs suggested
that a synthetic but benevolent weather-making system of some kind must
have been operating in Hawaii. The Pineapple Express stopped running when
the blocking high moved in that spring.

News Blackouts Feed Public Frustration

Numerous individuals and “indy-media” web publishers are observing
anomalies in the sky and in weather patterns, and publishing their
concerns. These articles and image banks express a wide range of manner from
the careful, sober analysis and data collection, including documenting
the existence of patents and other material evidence (Refs) to equally
thorough documentation but sensationalistic and attention-grabbing in
tone. (Ref.)

The edge of emotional indignation and sometimes active fear-mongering
may be simply an "equal and opposite" reaction to the dead-eyed
stonewalling of the major media outlets. Occasionally a snippet leaks through,
and the gap is firmly closed. Hearing a radio report of anomalous
surface heating of the sub-arctic ocean in November two years ago, I
promptly wrote to the broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to
ask for further details and analysis. I specified that we should find
out whether this was an accidental or deliberate effect. However, I never
got a reply, and the story was not either repeated or followed up.
Apparently even the public broadcaster does not have the right to give out
this kind of information.

It is not that these independent investigators are all inherently
wild-eyed fanatics or crazy "conspiracy theorists", but frustration builds
up in the absence of trustworthy information when people can see
something happening and know that we are not being told the truth about what
it is or why it is being done. Whatever the tone, all agree that
something is going on, and it does not appear to be beneficial to humanity.
Where do we go from here? Unless we learn, en masse, to use our innate
human abilities to, in effect, return to the most ancient way and
compassionately balance our environment through mental/spiritual means, there
will be no place to hide from the storms and droughts to come.

Post Scriptum (Sept. 27, 2005)

To the extent that the ocean warming and the increased violence of the
hurricanes is caused by direct and deliberate targeting by HAARP and/or
some other similar powerful world-scale technology, that is the extent
to which we are under attack from agencies that can only be called
"weather terrorists" -- because they operate in secret in an undeclared war
on humanity. And that is the extent to which we must resist that
unnatural dimension of the weather.

It is equally important to seek to expose these hidden agencies and
their purposes, sources of funding, supporters, and last but not least
their minions and mouthpieces holding public office. For this reason I
feel that we have to be suspicious about the reason anyone would have to
suppress this information, and to expect us to bow to the self-appointed
weather gods wielding their technology in secret.

Why should we accept being told not to take notice of or to question
anomalies in the weather, much less try to mitigate these crimes against
humanity and nature? Yes, storms are generated by natural forces and
are part of the planet’s self-balancing dynamics. But there is an added
dimension in these new storms.

I believe human beings must exercise our human right to lessen the
destructive power of these extreme, weaponized storms -- down to the level
nature would be using to accomplish purposes of balancing the
environment. I affirm that this right is "inherent" and "inalienable" by virtue
of our being alive. Life doesn’t lie down and give up, or humanity
would have vanished long ago. Life seeks to continue and to defend itself.

Therefore, any simple method of directing heart-energy in co-operation
with the Loving Creator (ref.), or directing “orgone” or life energy,
or employing radionics for benevolent purposes is totally legitimate,
and we must defend the rights of all who do so.

Taking away weather-mitigation concepts, beliefs and technologies from
ordinary citizens is the same thing as taking away legally-owned guns.
It leaves the people defenceless and completely under the heel of this
weaponized weather-control/mind-control/total domination system. Pretty
much in the same position of the citizens of New Orleans, who found
themselves suddenly homeless, without food or shelter, and being treated
as criminals even when they were not offering resistance. That's the
position into which we may all be put, if this agenda goes ahead as it has
begun.

The propaganda machine puts forward the loss of freedom as inevitable
due to these alleged "natural" effects of "global warming". An article
in the weekend newspapers owned by the right-wing CanWest Global chain
in Canada argues for the weather war. It states: “A Pentagon report,
written well in advance of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, says weather
catastrophes will create a new world order.” (Ref.) This was hardly a
“prophecy being fulfilled” if it was a military plan based on secret war
technology. The appearance of this major feature article on the day that
Rita was expected to have devastated Houston is a dead give-away that
weather manipulation is being used to achieve political and financial
goals, circumventing all laws and constitutions.

We can't sit on the fence. We have to make a choice: either condone
this or reject it, based on as much information as can be gathered.

In my view, the only ILLEGITIMATE use of weather control is this "force
multiplier" concept: to cause droughts, floods, famine and enslavement
of whole populations. Unlike farmers and small operators, this is not
done for altruistic or benevolent reasons: multiplying force in this way
enables a few wealthy companies and individuals to profit from
expropriation and even genocide while blaming it on "the weather" and getting
off scot-free.

As long as Weather Control is kept secret, it can and will be used for
nefarious purposes, Bringing it into the public eye is the first step
toward accountability, and toward ensuring that weather is controlled
for beneficial purposes, to balance the needs of humanity and the planet.

So, while working toward public accountability for all
weather-management activity, pray earnestly to God, use your radionics, or your
orgone-generator, or even just your alpha-rhythm and imagination. Let's
mitigate all these super-storms.

# # #

REFERENCES:

Fred McKenna, not his real name, has many years of experience with
weather modification, working mostly for and with farmers.

http://www.theorator.com/bills109/s517.html The official wording of the
act to create this weather-control authority.

http://proliberty.com/observer/20040501.htm ,
http://www.willthomas.net/Chemtrails/index.htm
http://www.holmestead.ca/chemtrails/digital.html

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/ca_us/en/cts.1975.11.en.html
Wording of Canada-U.S. Agreement on Weather Modification.
http://www.airapparent.ca/library/full_text/canada_us_wmagreement.htm
This Toronto-based site includes an introduction to the topic.

The Weather Modification Information Act:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/W-5/C.R.C.-c.1604/text.html
http://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroRegs/eng/SearchDetail.cfm?intReg=74
The various websites featuring this act have a disclaimer: “These
documents are not the official versions.” Even clicking on Environment
Canada’s link takes one back to these “unofficial” versions. It makes one
wonder how seriously this legislation is being taken.

http://www.missouri.edu/~chemrg/wade2004/chapter9/Article_Blast.html
Normally “right to farm” legislation is considered to deal with issues
such as the smell of manure, but this technology brings noise issues to
the forefront.

http://www.shamanism.org/articles/1027870279.htm
Shamanism and the Spirits of Weather, by Nan Moss and David Corbin.

http://proliberty.com/observer/20030310.htm
Reich’s work was suppressed, even to the extent of burning his books, a
blot on the history of a supposedly free society.

http://www.rainengineering.com/
Click on links for “Clincher” and "Hurricane Control" in the sidebar;
the URL does not change for these articles.

http://educate-yourself.org/zsl/katrinacuttingleylines05sep05.shtml
A believer in esoteric philosophy, this author has an unusual insight
into possibly dynamics leading to Katrina’s apparent targeting of oil
rigs.

http://www.letxa.com/issue_2025.php Promotes orthodox view, denies all
evidence and allegations to the contrary, employing standard memes.
"Owning the Weather" for Military Use

The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: "Owning the Weather" for
Military Use
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO409F.html

Washington's New World Order Weapons Have the Ability to Trigger
Climate Change, Third World Resurgence, January 2001,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO201A.html

PACE as consultants to the U.N.:
"Over the next decades, the instability of the planetary environment
will be of greater concern than wars, threats of war and terrorism.
"The ways of handling these perturbations, however, requires more
ingenuity than what has been attempted to date. Our international
collaborative network of advanced scientific thinking aims to be part of the
remedy."
-- Dr. A. Michrowski, PhD, in private email 12 August 2004

. http://www.freepressinternational.com/wc.html

http://www.cheniere.org/books/ferdelance/s63.htm
Many pages from Bearden’s book Fer de Lance are online, giving overview
of cold-war technologies.

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj
Russian Scientists create successful rain technology in Mexico.

http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/data.fcgi The public face of HAARP:
innocent data collection

Observational data about HAARP substations and weather manipulation
http://www.earthpulse.com/src/subcategory.asp?catid=1&subcatid=7
Sober accumulation of evidence and argument by Dr. Nick Begich,

See Bearden’ index of cloud photographs that appear to indicate scalar
engineering, at http://www.cheniere.org/clouds/

http://www.weatherwars.info/ The meteorologist’s professional eye picks
out the grid lines in satellite photos as well:
http://www.weatherwars.info/late2004_sat.htm

http://www.chemtrailpatrol.com/cp_altering_earths_atmosphere.htm
Several of the weather patents are numbered and described on this site.
http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm reports analysis of samples
collected.

http://www.geocities.com/marksrealm/project337.html The history of
weather engineering. Frequent use of exclamation points indicates that the
writer is very concerned about the significance of these collected
data.

http://www.cuttingedge.org/articles/weather.cfm
This site has as its thesis the “New World Order” which is said to be
taking control of the world and to be ready to overturn or enslave all
existing governments and peoples. Weather anomalies causing social and
economic devastation are said to be evidence of world-takeover policies
being covertly implemented.

Ephesians 3:20. God as a loving Father knows our needs, and can do
“infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” -- as Saint Paul affirms. It
is totally legitimate -- perhaps the most legitimate human recourse of
all -- to cry out to God our Creator, repent of the abuses we may have
committed that got us into this mess, and ask Him to intervene on our
behalf.

“The Climate Revolution” by Donna Jacobs. The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday
Observer section, Saturday September 24, 2005. Page B2.
Still More References (Added from email by Mary-Sue, Sept. 25, 2005)
1. < http://www.enterprisemission.com/weblog/weblog.htm >
This site includes content from a network of independent data
collectors who have recently found "smoking guns" in the radar images captured
from official sources and from televised weather reports that strongly
indicate use of advanced scalar technology. Most of these images are
rapidly purged from official sources, but have been archived and are (at
least up until this moment) visible at the above site.

Two major revelations:

(a) a radar signature, impossible to explain with Newtonian physics,
preceded arrival of Katrina and may have drawn the storm to New Orleans
as to a target.

(b) a radar oddity, as if of a "fence" set up between Rita which was
tracking toward Houston, apparently deflected the storm northward.

There is of course no way to determine who was actively manipulating
the weather in either incident, but apparently some agency was using
advanced, possibly a hyper-dimensional weather-control method.

Some additional background:
2. This site has data for tracking current storms:
< http://hurricane.terrapin.com/ >

3. This one has archives of previous storms going back over many years,
with the ability to generate an animated storm track from the archived
data using Java:
<http://weather.terrapin.com/hurricane/process_name.jsp> E.g. Select
2004, and enter "Hurricane Ivan" in the search bar and watch what that one
does.

4. And not least, based on the concept that human beings can actively
intervene with our psychic/spiritual innate abilities given by God, this
site urges action:
< http://educate-yourself.org/pnl/hurricanforcereduction08sep05.shtml
>,
with a corollary at:
< http://educate-yourself.org/cn/cnnhurricanerita22sep05.shtml >
More Documentation
Captain May's "Battle of New Orleans page, just for the record:
<http://www.spiritone.com/~pazuu/pow-mia/GhostTroopCaptMayBONO.htm>

He states: "The fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by
journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from
LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and
perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9216831/#050907c

Further links from Captain May:
Medical Worker said that by Sept. 6, 43,000 body bags had been used in
New Orleans alone (not all of them for single bodies)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/7/02749/28047

Pathologist involved in body ID-ing forbidden to talk about body count
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/...?AID=/20050909/NEWS01/509090338
http://www.orgonise-africa.net/category.aspx?categoryID=39 - Low-tech
rainfall-normalization device reveals microwave rain-inhibition grid in
the sky.

---------------------------------

See also
Weather Modification - index at PESWiki.com
Marketing Social Darwinism: Emergency Services by Mary-Sue
Haliburton
Media silence concerning the extent of damage and number of deaths
allows expropriation and displacement of the poor. This is being sold to
the public as the way that a free and responsible society would act.
Meanwhile, executive orders have created a monster that allows everything
to be confiscated, and citizens converted to slave gangs. (Sept. 9,
2005)
PESN (Pure Energy Systems News) - feature stories
FreeEnergyNews.com - daily news
This Week in Free Energy™ - Weekly five minute blurb.

Page posted by SDA September 6, 2005
Last updated December 29, 2005

About Mary-Sue Haliburton
Email: mary-sue@pureenergysystems.com

Mary-Sue is a freelance journalist, designer and editor. She is a
member of Planetary Association for Clean Energy. She has served as a
Graphic Designer for the Canadian “Department of National Defense” (DND). She
has been very involved in campaigns for political and social change,
chairing citizens’ groups, setting up meetings and lectures, and writing
policy proposals addressed to municipal, provincial, and federal levels
of government.

Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2005

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Consciousness - The Movie - Tucson speaks

2006-05-09T23:24:21Z

Hi everyone

A film about consciousness based on events at the recent Tucson conference
is being prepared, tentatively entitled

Consciousness: The Movie
Science, Brain, Mind and Being

Filmmaker Maurizio Benazzo and his crew shot interviews, plenary
sessions, informal discussions and numerous conference activities.
Additional material (including many cartoon animations by Steven Lehar),
simulations, and pictures of relevant people (e.g. Plato, Descartes,
William James and modern day figures) will be woven in with music and
didactic excerpts in a fun, Monte Python-like style by a highly regarded
film editor. All approaches to the problem of consciousness will be represented.

'Consciousness: The Movie' is intended to be part of a new genre of
entertaining science...e.g. see
http://www.indiewire.com/ots/2006/05/tribeca_06_tryi_1.html

A partial list of those who will appear in the film (interview, lecture or
informal cameo) include (alphabetically)

T.R. Anantharaman, Roy Ascott, Bernie Baars, Sue Blackmore,
David Chalmers, Paul Davies, Peter De Weerd, John Dunne, Ralph Freeman,
Walter Freeman, Temple Grandin, Stuart Hameroff, Craig Hamilton,
Allan Hobson, Douglas Hofstadter, Uriah Kriegel, Stephen LaBerge,
Hakwan Lau, Steven Lehar, Antoine Lutz, Steve Macknik,
Susana Martinez-Conde, Paavo Pylkkanen, Dean Radin, David Rosenthal,
Maria Sanchez-Vives, Alwyn Scott, Marilyn Schlitz, John Searle,
Dan Simons, Mark Solms, Jeff Tollaksen, Giulio Tononi,
Robert van Gulick, Alan Wallace and others.

Still needed are additional *visually appealing* animations/simulations
demonstrating neuronal activities, synapses, neuronal networks,
brain anatomy, functional imaging, EEG, evoked potentials, single unit
recordings, theories of consciousness... whatever YOU think helps explain
consciousness. Citation will be given in the credits for any material.

Send inquiries, material or url information to
Samantha Clark, CTM Research Associate
sam-2005@comcast.net

Many thanks

Stuart Hameroff

Stuart Hameroff M.D.
Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology
Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

posted in We love Iona - 0 replies

Multiverse conference

2006-05-09T04:21:05Z

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060330_multiversefrm.htm

One universe or many? Panel holds unusual debate

March 30, 2006
Special to World Science

Scientific debates are as old as science. But in science, “debate” usually means a battle of ideas in general, not an actual, politician-style duel in front of an audience.

Occasionally, though, the latter also happens. And when the topic is as esoteric as the existence of multiple universes, sparks can fly.

According to one proposal, new universes could sprout like bubbles off a spacetime "foam" that's not unlike soap bubbles. (Courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Such was the scene Wednesday evening at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Museum staff put together five top physicists and astronomers to debate whether universes beyond our own exist, then watched as the experts clashed over a question that’s nearly unanswerable, yet very much alive in modern physics.

New universes may appear constantly in a “continual genesis,” declared Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at City College of New York and key supporter of the idea that there exist multiple universes, or a “multiverse.”

“The multiverse is like a bubble bath,” with a bubble representing each universe, he added. There are “multiple universes bubbling, colliding and budding off each other” all the time.

Another panelist backed the multiverse idea, but three more insisted there’s virtually no evidence for the highly speculative concept.

A brief history of other universes

Some versions of the many-universes concept date back to ancient Greece, said panelist and science historian Virginia Trimble of the University of California, Irvine. But scientific justifications for the idea began to appear in the second half of the 20th century, when U.S. physicist Hugh Everett proposed it as a solution to a puzzle of quantum mechanics.

Physicists in this field found that a system of subatomic particles can exist in many possible states at once, until someone measures its state. The system then “collapses” to one state, the measured one.

This didn’t explain very satisfactorily why the measurement forces the system into that particular state. Everett proposed that there are enough universes so that one state can be measured in each one. Each time someone makes a measurement, the act creates a new universe that branches off the pre-existing ones.

The “multiverse” theory later reappeared as a consequence of another theory of physics, that of “inflation,” developed by various physicists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The theory solved several gnawing problems in the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was created from an explosion of a single point of extremely compact matter, by postulating that this expansion was stupendously fast in the first infinitesimal fraction of a second, then slowed down.

As part of this initial superheated expansion, known as the inflationary period, the universe could have sprouted legions of “baby universes,” said Andrei Linde of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., a panelist at Wednesday’s event and a developer of the inflation theory.

A third argument for the multiverse theory comes from string theory, seen by some physicists as the best hope for a “theory of everything” because it shows an underlying unity of nature’s forces and solves conflicts between Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum mechanics.

String theory proposes that the many different types of subatomic particles are really just different vibrations of tiny strings that are like minuscule rubber bands. The catch is that it only works if the strings have several extra dimensions in which to vibrate beyond the dimensions we see.

Why don’t we see the extra dimensions? A proposal dating to 1998 claims we’re trapped in a three-dimensional zone within a space of higher dimensions. Other three-dimensional zones, called “branes,” could also exist, less than an atoms’ width away yet untouchable. The branes are sometimes called different universes, though some theorists say they should be considered part of our own because they can weakly interact with our brane in some ways.

In part the question rests on definitions, noted Lisa Randall, a Harvard University physicist who was one of the panelists on Wednesday night. Different universes can be defined as zones of spacetime that interact with each other weakly or not at all, she said.

Where’s the evidence?

Marshalling their best evidence for extra universes, Kaku and Linde—the two panelists who back the notion—presented a variety of arguments, which all boiled down to two basic points.

One, explained Linde, is that the multiverse solves the problem of why the laws of physics in our universe seem to be fine-tuned to allow for life. “If you change the mass of the proton, the charge on the electron,” or any of an array of other constants, “we’d all be dead,” he argued.

Why is this so, Linde asked—“did someone create this special universe for us?”

Steering clear of the straightforward answer many religious believers would give, “yes,” Linde argued that the multiverse explains the problem without resorting to the supernatural. If there are infinite universes, each one can have different physical laws, and some of them will have those that are just right for us.

The second key argument they presented is the one based on inflation, a theory considered more solidly grounded than the highly speculative string theory and its offshoots. The equations of inflation, Kaku explained, suggest spacetime—the fabric of reality including space and time—was initially a sort of foam, like the bathtub bubbles.

New bubbles could have sprouted constantly, representing new universes, he added. Linde has argued that this occurs because the same process that spawned one inflation can reoccur in the inflating universe, beginning a new round of inflation somewhere else. This would occur when energy fields become locally concentrated in portions of the expanding universe.

Scientists might one day create a “baby universe” in a laboratory by recreating such conditions, Kaku said. This would involve resurrecting the unimaginably high temperatures of the early universe. A spacetime foam can be recreated by literally “boiling space,” he said, adding that a sort of advanced microwave oven could do the trick.

Experiments already planned could “test the periphery” of these ideas, he added including a super-powerful particle accelerator to switch on next year, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Randall countered that the new accelerator won’t bring particles anywhere near the level of energy needed to recreate the spacetime foam envisioned by multiverse proponents. The energies attained will be lower by a factor of 10 followed by 16 zeros.

Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and astronomer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said the whole multiverse idea is so speculative as to border on nonsense. It’s an outcome of an old impulse, which also gave rise to the correct notion that other planets exist, he argued: “We don’t want to be alone.”

It also caters to our desire for stability, he added: the universe changes, but “the multiverse is always the same.” And if there are many universes, you don’t have to make any predictions that will subject your pet theory to awkward tests, “because there’s always one in which the answers work out.”

Krauss allowed that he might buy the multiverse idea if it’s a consequence of some new theory that also successfully accounts for many other unexplained phenomena. But otherwise, multiverse concepts “are extending into philosophy” rather than science, he added, “and may not be testable.”

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