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The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.
Allan Bloom The Closing of the American Mind

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." - Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. --Voltaire--

Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of the body depends only on type and polarity.
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease. [Gurdjieff]

Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the "past." People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the "Future." [Cassiopaea 09-28-02]

 

May 5, 2003 Today's edition of Brought to You by The Bush Junta, Produced and Directed by the CIA, based on an original script by Henry Kissinger, with a cast of billions....The "Greatest Shew on Earth," no doubt, and if you don't have a good sense of humor, don't read this page! It is designed to reveal the "unseen." If you can't stand the heat of Objective Reality, get out of the kitchen!

Twisters death toll rises to 32 - The death toll from dozens of twisters and severe storms that ripped through the Midwest and South continued to climb Monday, with the number at 32 by midday. Eleven of the deaths occurred overnight in and around Jackson, Tenn. As homeless families combed through rubble and sought shelter, officials warned of the possibility of more severe weather in the region. THE DEATH TOLL had been 19 until Monday morning, when the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital in Tennessee confirmed 11 fatalities from a tornado that hit shortly before midnight. Sixty-six people were treated for injuries and the hospital was expecting more victims from and around the city of 85,000. Much of Jackson had no power Monday and the hospital was operating off a generator. “It’s like downtown Baghdad,” resident Joe Byrd said of the damage. With winds of at least 100 mph, the tornado tore a 65-mile path across west Tennessee. The series of tornadoes that began midday Sunday knocked hundreds of homes off their foundations, uprooted trees, downed power lines and forced travelers at Kansas City’s main airport to huddle in underground tunnels.

Paying cash triggers alert for terrorism in new world - Usually, if you hear somebody say, ``Your money's no good here, pal,'' it's a nice thing. It means the barkeep is buying you a drink, or some friend or business associate has decided to pick up the dinner tab. Journalists seldom hear that phrase, and they speak it even less. Barkeeps know that we're always broke, and if you want to see a klatch of newspaper reporters disappear into the vapor, just toss a dinner check onto their table. It's like waving a cross in front of Dracula. But a polite equivalent of ``Your money's no good here'' arrived in the mail the other day in the form of a note from the Saks department-store folks. (The only reason we have an account with them is that my wife once said she wanted to get more from Saks, and I heartily agreed -- only to learn that, as a mutant Midwesterner, I'd once again misinterpreted her soft Virginia accent.) Anyway, the note from Saks said that, henceforth, it would not accept cash as a form of payment on store accounts in any amount over $350. Checks and money orders and online payments and such are fine, it said, but no bills or change totaling more than $350 in any one-month billing cycle. New federal government regulations, Saks said, made this necessary. That aroused our curiosity, as no other company with which we do credit business had advised us of any such policy. Also, as far as we could tell, the currency that the government prints still says on it, ``This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.'' A call to the hotline number that Saks provided resulted in one of those long, oily recorded messages in which the guy pretty much repeated what Saks already had said in the note that came in the mail.

Russian woman speaks languages from 'past lives' - A Russian woman who claims to be able to speak 120 languages says many of them are from her previous lives. Linguists claim to have identified that she speaks 16th century English,Chinese, Persian, Egyptian, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Korean and Swahili, reports Komsomol'skaya Pravda. Tatti Valo, 23, from the south Russian town of Anapa said: "They're just languages I remember from my past lives. They just came to me one day ten years ago in a mathematics class at school. "In a split second I just forgot Russian. I couldn't speak a single word in Russian but I shocked the teacher and my classmates by speaking languages they didn't know."

Blank-Check Aid To Israel Costs U.S. Tax Payers $10 Billion - Congress skillfully gives Israel $10 billion a year to expand its brutal occupation of Palestinian lands in a manner that hides the amount from taxpayers. “U.S. aid to Israel has some unique aspects, such as loans with repayment waived, or a pledge to provide Israel with economic assistance equal to the amount Israel owes the United States for previous loans,” says a Library of Congress “briefing paper.” This paper, Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, was prepared by the library’s Congressional Research Service in April and is available to all congressmen. It confirms assessments made previously by American Free Press that blank-check aid to Israel costs taxpayers $10 billion a year. “Israel also receives special benefits that may not be available to other countries, such as the use of U.S. military assistance for research and development in the United States, the use of U.S. military assistance for military purchases in Israel, or receiving all of its assistance in the first 30 days of the fiscal year rather than in three or four installments as other countries do,” the report said.

Increase in dead otters worries experts - Forty-four otters have washed up on California coasts this month, twice the usual number and the unexplained increase has alarmed experts. "We've been keeping track since 1968, and we usually get only about 20 stranded animals in April," said Greg Sanders, the Sea Otter Recovery Coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "There is no clear pattern to the deaths at this point, and we're concerned." About 91 animals have washed ashore since January. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may soon declare an "unusual mortality event," releasing extra resources to determine the causes of death. The greatest concern, Sanders said, is that animals in their prime breeding years are dying as well as some pups and some older otters. "Prime age animals are important for the survival of the species," Sanders said. "If we lose one of them, it is like losing five or six animals." The otter' high mortality rate is especially serious in a time when the endangered population is failing to make a significant long-term recovery. "The numbers are high enough that it's a major concern for the population," said Dave Jessup, a senior veterinarian at The California Department of Fish and Game. "Four more came in this weekend, and it's not stopping." The otters have been showing up from San Francisco to Santa Barbara with a concentration around the Monterey Bay. The 2002 sea otter census tallied 2,139 animals in California, down from 2,377 two years ago.

How a Bid to Save a Species Came to Grief - Eight years ago, Mobil Oil gave the Nature Conservancy what was one of the group's largest corporate donations, a patch of prairie that encompassed the last native breeding ground of a highly endangered bird. Related Web site. Mobil officials said that the donation offered "the last best hope" of saving the Attwater's prairie chicken, a speckled grouse whose high-stepping mating dance attracts avid bird watchers to the Texas plains each spring. Then an unusual role reversal took place. The Conservancy, whose core mission is preserving land to protect species such as the prairie chicken, started acting like an oil company. The Conservancy sank a well under the bird's nesting ground. Drilling in sensitive areas is opposed as destructive by most environmentalists. But the Conservancy subscribes to an aggressive form of "compatible development," a pragmatic approach that seeks to accommodate the needs of business as well as environmentalism. The Conservancy wanted the Texas City Prairie Preserve to be a national model to show that drilling can be accomplished without harming the environment. It would use the drilling profits to buy more habitat for the birds. That's not the way things worked out.

Neoconservatives - They emerged from behind the scenes politically to change American foreign policy. But they've always been there, and Iraq is only one of their goals. For seven long years, Bill Kristol agitated for a U.S. coup against Saddam Hussein, and argued that America should remake the world to serve its own interests. Few bothered to listen at the time. So how does he feel now? In his office the other day, he grinned without smirking. That's how most of the hawkish defense intellectuals - better known as neoconservatives - are behaving these days. Although they're sitting pretty in wartime Washington, they're trying not to preen. Kristol refuses to strut his stuff, because he knows how fast the high and mighty can be brought low in this town; after all, he was once Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff. Still, he can't resist contending that Sept. 11 made all the "neocons" look like prophets. "We saw, earlier than most people, that the world was very dangerous, that America's drift during the '90s was very dangerous," he said Wednesday at the Weekly Standard, the Rupert Murdoch-financed magazine he edits that promotes the neocon credo. "We were alarmed; we tried to call attention to all that. So I don't want to say we feel vindicated, but we do feel our analysis was right."

Aziz not telling truth: Bush - Apparently frustrated by the inability of the US to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President George W Bush has lashed out at former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz for not "telling the truth" to his American captors. "We are learning that Tariq Aziz still does not know how to tell the truth. He did not know how to tell the truth when he was in office. He does not know to tell the truth as a captive," Bush said at a joint appearance at his ranch in Texas with Australian Prime Minister John Howard yesterday.

Seymour Hersh: SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE - Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable? They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question.

May 4, 2003 Today's edition of Brought to You by The Bush Junta, Produced and Directed by the CIA, based on an original script by Henry Kissinger, with a cast of billions....The "Greatest Shew on Earth," no doubt, and if you don't have a good sense of humor, don't read this page! It is designed to reveal the "unseen." If you can't stand the heat of Objective Reality, get out of the kitchen!

Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted - A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing. The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control. In all, seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials -- if any -- had been removed. Comment : Well wouldn't ya just know it! Those pesky looters - we all know those WMD's would have been there if it weren't for those darned looters. HEY DO THEY THINK WE ARE ALL STUPID??

Iraqis tried to bribe Scott Ritter with gold - Iraq's intelligence services bought gold jewellery that they planned to give to the wife and daughter of Scott Ritter, the controversial former weapons inspector, as part of a clandestine project to encourage him to work closely with Saddam Hussein's regime, according to documents discovered by The Telegraph in Baghdad. According to the documents, which were found in the bombed headquarters of Iraq's intelligence services, the cost of the presents was approved at the highest level in an attempt to develop "strong relations with them [Mr Ritter's family] that affect positively on our relations with him". Comment : From the 'Torygraph' a media whore of the UK government. OOOOH, LOOK AT WHAT ELSE WE FOUND IN THOSE FILES THAT APPEARED IN THE BOMBED OUT BUILDING IN IRAQ!!!!!!!!!!! HEY DO THEY THINK WE ARE ALL STUPID??

Why look in the crystal ball? - "I can see the future."

"How were you blessed with this mystic ability, O Prophetic One?"

"I received my gift through watching George W. Bush on NBC News."

"What does this gift tell you of the future, O Prophetic One?"

"I see US Weapons Inspectors touring Iraq and discovering chemical or biological Weapons of Mass Destruction in convincing quantities."

"How come the US Weapons Inspectors find them when the UN Inspectors failed?"

"I see a White House spokesman saying: the US Inspectors have been told where to look by captured "human Iraqis" - to use George W. Bush's telling phrase. I see Donald Rumsfeld assuring us that anything the US does will be much more efficient than anything the UN does."

"What does 'efficient' mean, O Prophetic One?"

"It means 'helpful to the plans of Donald Rumsfeld'. What else could 'efficient' mean, O Tiny-Brained Picker Of Other People's Noses?"

"What else does the future hold?"

"I see Jack Straw with a dreadful smirk on his face. I see Anthony Blair with a dreadful smirk on his face. I see them both holding endless press conferences in which they repeat: "We told you so!" over and over again. On the other hand, I see many people thinking that the US Weapons Inspectors did not learn anything from the captured "human Iraqis" and that the US Inspectors themselves have planted the Weapons Of Mass Destruction specifically so that Jack Straw and Anthony Blair can hold press conferences and say "We told you so.""

"But surely no one can really believe that where the UN Inspectors failed to find Weapons of Mass Destruction the US Inspectors really have found some?"

"I see Jack Straw and Anthony Blair repeating "We told you so" so often that it doesn't matter. The finding of the Weapons of Mass Destruction becomes a 'fact' that is endlessly repeated in the press until everyone forgets that the people who found the Weapons of Mass Destruction had a vested interest in finding them - in fact if they hadn't found them they would be liable to prosecution as war criminals."

"But if Iraq had these weapons why didn't they use them?"

"I see a White House spokesman telling journalists that Iraq didn't use its WMD because it was too scared and that shows that it was right to bomb them. No! Wait there is another press conference! In this one the White House spokesman is saying that the US military strike was so fast and effective that the Iraqis simply didn't get the chance to use their WMD."

"And do the people believe such rubbish, O Prognosticator Of Political Poppycock?"

"What people really believe doesn't matter. It's how you get them to conform that matters. That's what worked for Saddam Hussein and there's no reason why it shouldn't work for George W. Bush."

"What does you gift of prophecy tell you about the UN's role in the rebirth of Iraq, O Gifted Seer?"

"I see a "For Sale" sign hanging outside the UN building on the East River. I see another sign on the same building. It says: "Trump Casino Resort". I see an office somewhere in Boston, outside a sign reads: "Oxfam America - now incorporating the United Nations."

"But surely George W, Bush promised Anthony Blair that the UN would play a 'central role' in the future Iraq."

"That was in Belfast, O Brain Of A Christmas Turkey Without The Stuffing. No promises made in Belfast mean anything."

"What else do you..."

"I see US spending on the military rising to 3.5 and 3.9% of the GNP. I see the US waging 'multiple simultaneous large-scale wars'. I see US planes making pre-emptive strikes on any nation that might threaten American superiority. I see the US destroying any ballistic missiles and WMD that might 'allow lesser states to deter US military action by threatening US allies and the American homeland itself.'"

"O Far Seeing One! You could tell all this simply from seeing George W. Bush interviewed on NBC News?"

"No, I was quoting from Rebuilding America's Defenses the blueprint for the present US Government's foreign policy. And, blessed as I am with the gift of foresight, it scares the shit out of me."

FINALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT BUSH'S MILITARY SERVICE RECORD - Nearly two hundred manila-wrapped pages of George Walker Bush's service records came to me like some sort of giant banana stuffed into my mailbox. I had been seeking more information about his military record to find out what he did during what I think of as his "missing year," when he failed to show up for duty as a member of the Air National Guard, as the Boston Globe first reported.

Do We Really Have Free Speech? - The following is a transcript of a speech given by 13-year-old Charlotte Aldebron in Augusta, Maine on April 19, 2003.

The invasion of Afghanistan, and now Iraq, has given me a big lesson in freedom of speech -- or, should I say, the difference between the idea of free speech and the reality of free speech. Yes, I can speak. But what does it matter if I have no place to speak? Or if I am ostracized? Or no one listens? In early March, my social studies teacher switched the class topic to Iraq. He said Saddam Hussein's time to disarm was up. We had to get rid of him -- he was a brutal dictator who gassed his own people. I raised my hand. I said that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons, and the CIA helped him find the targets to use them on. My teacher snapped back, "Actually, Charlotte, you're wrong." Then he turned away and refused to call on me again.

After the invasion, our class focused on combat. It was like a game: we got a hand-out on the Persian Gulf countries, called "The Players," we were given photos with short bios of top Iraqis, the team we had to beat. We got a map of the Gulf region with the size and location of all the armies, and the weapons each possessed; we read an article about the threat of Iraq using chemical weapons against our troops. My mother complained to the principal and the Commissioner of Education that we were being taught to glorify war, admire military strategy, and objectify the killing and maiming of human beings. The Commissioner responded that each school's curriculum was its own business. The principal answered that he thought the social studies lesson plan was "balanced and comprehensive." Yes, my mom was free to speak -- in fact, she could scream her head off for all they cared. It wouldn't change a thing.

Meanwhile, in science, we had to answer questions like, "what are the advantages of biological weapons?" I said there weren't any advantages because biological weapons kill people. How can death be an advantage? I was asked to give two examples of biological weapons. I said one was the smallpox on blankets we gave to Native Americans to kill them. The other was E coli bacteria that have been found in McDonald's hamburgers. I said we could close the gap between the threat and the capability of biological weapons by signing the U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, and by hiring more meat inspectors. Somehow, our assignments never got corrected. I should tell you that I am famous in some countries. My anti-war speeches have been translated into French, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Urdu, Bengali, and who knows what else. I have been featured in newspapers and on television and radio. A popular singer in Bombay read my speech at his sold-out concert. I've received over 3,000 emails.

But in my own community, I am invisible. The principal won't let me read my speeches in school. The local papers won't print them. When a Japanese TV crew came to do a story on me, the principal barred them from the school. When they interviewed my classmates on the street after school, the principal came running and angrily demanded that they not use the footage. Of course, they were filming when he did this and, of course, they used the footage. The Japanese know what a bad idea war is because they have suffered the horrible consequences of our nuclear bombs.

I get encouraging emails from around the world telling me not to despair even if my own town and teachers and friends ignore me. Many say that I am very brave to speak out "in a country like the United States!" One such email was from a Japanese man who, at age 9, saw the two friends he was walking with in Honshu, on July 20, 1945, buried beneath the rubble of a building bombed by a P-51 Mustang fighter. He and his mother were miraculously spared. And there was the email from the Jordanian mother duct taping her windows with plastic sheeting to protect her children from possible chemical attack. And the Greek man whose parents were scarred for life by the Nazi occupation. And the Canadian who cannot understand calling human beings "collateral damage." And the man from Calcutta who hopes the warriors will come to their senses and put away their weapons. And the South Korean student who thinks it is wrong to sit at his desk and study when there are terrible crimes taking place. And the Iranian who cannot sanction the harming of innocents, even if they are the people of an "enemy" nation.

Because I am free to speak, these people have heard my voice and we have been able to share our desire for peace. Some of them live in countries where protesting is against the law. In the U.S., we are more subtle, we are more sophisticated. In the U.S., we can allow people to talk freely. We don't need to stifle speech to stifle dissent. We just have to block our ears.

Dixie Chicks get last laugh - The Dixie Chicks as the "there's-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity" rule plays out once again. Rest assured that a girl group singer's off-the-cuff remarks and ensuing success will fuel plenty of jingoistic rants to keep group-thinkers' proverbial prayers and guns aimed at anyone who dares utter dissent. Let's see. Tonight's concert at Orlando's T.D. Waterhouse is sold out. Chicks' 6 million-selling CD "Home" only temporarily fell out of the No. 1 position on the country charts, reclaiming the top spot two weeks after Chick Natalie Maines' anti-Bush, anti-war remarks. This week, the CD nestles at No. 2 -- uncomfortably sandwiched between the opportunistic sentiments of Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" and Toby Keith's call-to-arms "Unleashed," at No. 1 and No. 3 respectively. The Chicks also got on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Naked, even. So does it really matter that, on Wednesday, Cumulus Broadcasting -- which owns Brevard's country station WHKR (102.7) -- officially lifted the ban that prevented any of its stations in more than 40 markets from playing Dixie Chicks tunes? As far as the Chicks' pocketbooks go, the ban had about the same effect as did country fans who stomped on Dixie Chicks CDs they had already bought. Do country fans know that if you destroy your own property it doesn't hurt anyone, no matter how mad or patriotic you feel?