Let me say in advance that I highly recommend The Lost Gospel, and I hope that the excerpts I am going to present here will stimulate interest in the details that Mack presents in his fascinating discussion of the discovery of Q (the theorized source document for the basic ideas of Jesus) and the subsequent analyses that helped to extract the truth of early Christian history.
According to a book published by German journalist Jurgen Cain Kulbel, the United States and Israel could be linked to the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri
There seems to be a strong feeling on the left that, somehow, 9/11 is irrelevant. That to focus on it distracts from "real" issues such as Iraq and domestic spying. Again, almost to minimize the importance of 9/11, treat it as bygone history, and concentrate only on the misuse of the event by the administration.
There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
The following caught my eye today as I was gathering articles for the Signs page:
McEwan on the afterlife
P.Z.MyersPharyngula Seed sent me a copy of this book, What We Believe but Cannot Prove : Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, and I've been browsing. It's a collection of short essays (sometimes very short) on assumptions held by individual thinkers without solid evidence. It's thought-provoking, even where I think the writer is a dingbat (Ray Kurzweil) or blithering banalities (Kevin Kelly). I rather liked Brian Goodwin's essay on the fallacy of the nature-nurture problem, but so far, my favorite is one by the author Ian McEwan:
What I believe but cannot prove is that no part of my consciousness will survive my death. I exclude the fact that I will linger, fadingly, in the thoughts of others, or that aspects of my consciousness will survive in writing, or in the positioning of a planted tree or a dent in my old car. I suspect that many contributors to Edge will take this premise as a given-true but not significant. However, it divides the world crucially, and much damage has been done to thought as well as to persons, by those who are certain that there is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere. That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound.
McEwan on the afterlife
P.Z.MyersPharyngula Seed sent me a copy of this book, What We Believe but Cannot Prove : Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, and I've been browsing. It's a collection of short essays (sometimes very short) on assumptions held by individual thinkers without solid evidence. It's thought-provoking, even where I think the writer is a dingbat (Ray Kurzweil) or blithering banalities (Kevin Kelly). I rather liked Brian Goodwin's essay on the fallacy of the nature-nurture problem, but so far, my favorite is one by the author Ian McEwan:
What I believe but cannot prove is that no part of my consciousness will survive my death. I exclude the fact that I will linger, fadingly, in the thoughts of others, or that aspects of my consciousness will survive in writing, or in the positioning of a planted tree or a dent in my old car. I suspect that many contributors to Edge will take this premise as a given-true but not significant. However, it divides the world crucially, and much damage has been done to thought as well as to persons, by those who are certain that there is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere. That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound.
Let us consider repossession of what is ours!
This is a call to action. It is addressed to every American who can read, most especially Veterans of any sort. We can and must now consider the option of relieving the regime of George Walker Bush of his command. This includes ALL of his associates. We cannot, and MUST not let this situation degenerate any further.
This is a call to action. It is addressed to every American who can read, most especially Veterans of any sort. We can and must now consider the option of relieving the regime of George Walker Bush of his command. This includes ALL of his associates. We cannot, and MUST not let this situation degenerate any further.
John Negroponte, Henry Kissinger understudy and death squad ambassador to Honduras, has admitted the Straussian neocon and Jabotinsky Likudite plan to break "all Arab states into smaller units" is on schedule (a plan going back at least to Moshe Sharett, the second Israeli PM, according to Livia Rokach, daughter of Israel Rokach, Minister of the Interior in the Sharett government), thus implementing "balkanization and vassalization," as Rokach described it in her book, Israel's Sacred Terrorism and detailed in Oded Yinon's A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.
It oftentimes boggles the mind to try and understand the ease with which the Establishment can manipulate the American citizenry into another warmongering escapade, this time an ominous foray into the Persian lands of Iran, a nation rich in history, culture, location and most importantly to the Evil Empire, oil and gas. Yet upon further inspection it is easy to comprehend this phenomenon, for we live, as Gore Vidal has labeled it, inside the United States of Amnesia, a country where all semblance of the yesterday becomes but a haze of blatant forgetfulness and convenient whitewash, a black hole of Alzheimer's-like darkness from where no recollection of past lessons, mistakes, errors or history can be seen or touched.
We live in a nation of gluttonous stupor and comfortable surroundings, easily distracted by the cocktail of materialism that lines our homes. We are trained to live to work, not work to live, sacrificing love of life for love for the Almighty dollar, becoming worker bees and soldier ants, selling our souls to the demons of capitalism in exchange for the happiness and stress-free lives of yesteryear, needing pharmaceutical drugs to escape the depression of our daily lives, willingly choosing to indebt our present and future in order to possess the vast array of adult toys marketed to manipulate our emotions, wrongly thinking this or that product will reincarnate lost happiness. America is the land of plenty, where waistlines expand, stress increases, mental problems grow, work hours increase and vehicles get bigger and bigger, a land addicted to the devil's excrement, like a heroin user injecting black gold into its ever thirsty veins, becoming a violent, warmongering junkie when the perpetual case of cold turkey arises.
If we are to believe the corporate media, Bush's secret eavesdropping program is useless and out-dated because a shrewd al-Qaeda has undoubtedly has changed its means of communication to avoid Washington's monitoring, according to the Associated Press. Does anyone really believe that, after 50 days of having this program on the front page of our newspapers, across talk shows across America, that al-Qaida has not changed the way that it communicates? said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the House intelligence-committee chairman, thus expecting us to believe al-Qaeda once utilized cell phones and email as it planned terrorist attacks. Since al-Qaeda is actually al-CIA-duh, it has no need to communicate via cell phone or email, that is unless it wants to leave a conspicuous trail to be used later to frame patsies.
As we know, the massive NSA violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution at the behest of the Bush neocons is not intended to catch al-Qaeda bad guys, but rather monitor and eventually snare Americans who disagree with the Straussian neocons, Machiavellian followers of Leo Strauss and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt who hate the Bill of Rights and the very idea of a constitutional republic and are in the process of destroying its last proud vestiges. NSA snooping has nothing to do with preventing rogue intelligence terrorism and everything to do with subverting the liberties of American citizens. In the 1960s and 70s, the NSA compiled intercepts on U.S. peace activists and it was this unchecked and illegal behavior that resulted in the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Bush (or rather his neocon handlers) circumvented the FISA process precisely because they were (and are) snooping on their domestic enemiesit has absolutely nothing to do with the CIA-created fake terrorist group called al-Qaeda.
As we know, the massive NSA violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution at the behest of the Bush neocons is not intended to catch al-Qaeda bad guys, but rather monitor and eventually snare Americans who disagree with the Straussian neocons, Machiavellian followers of Leo Strauss and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt who hate the Bill of Rights and the very idea of a constitutional republic and are in the process of destroying its last proud vestiges. NSA snooping has nothing to do with preventing rogue intelligence terrorism and everything to do with subverting the liberties of American citizens. In the 1960s and 70s, the NSA compiled intercepts on U.S. peace activists and it was this unchecked and illegal behavior that resulted in the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Bush (or rather his neocon handlers) circumvented the FISA process precisely because they were (and are) snooping on their domestic enemiesit has absolutely nothing to do with the CIA-created fake terrorist group called al-Qaeda.
In a story appearing in the Sunday Telegraph, the newspaper once owned by the Canadian criminal finagler and neocon Lord Conrad Black, amoral strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a last resort' to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb. If not so deadly serious, the idea that the Straussian neocons will shock and awe Iran only as a last resort would be comical. In fact, they have long planned to bomb Iranimaginary nukes or notand kill as many Iranians as possible and decimate the civilian infrastructure, as they have done in Iraq (some estimates put the death toll thus far above 130,000). Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Greetings from the Swamps of Eugnosia, Forum Friends and Passengers,The old Magus, being of a more formal time than this era we now traverse, simply cannot countenance warping the standards of his tastes so as to pronounce upon the Good Lady's journal such an unkind name as is "blog" (which resonates upon the tongue as though 'twere describing some misbegotten amphibious creature born in a bog on a log); to describe the Signs writ large and the one who writes them there, when both be filled with Graces and Fair indeed for the readers' eyes to behold, indulge me as I quote her sage advice. Taken from Maestra Laura's Missive, "How To Spot COINTELPRO Agents":
"How To Spot a Spy"
One way to neutralize a potential activist is to get them to be in a group that does all the wrong things. Why?
1) The message doesn't get out.
2) A lot of time is wasted
3) The activist is frustrated and discouraged
4) Nothing good is accomplished. FBI and Police Informers and Infiltrators will infest any group and they have phony activist organizations established.
