Saturday, June 5, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Agent For Change
Coleen Rowley (born December 20, 1954) is a former FBI agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006.
Shortly after she became a Special Agent with the FBI, Rowley was assigned to the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi Divisions. Beginning in 1984, she spent six years working in the New York Office on investigations involving organized crime. She also served in the U.S. embassy in Paris, and the consulate in Montreal. In 1990, she was assigned to the FBI's Minneapolis office where she became the chief legal adviser to the office.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. This individual had been suspected of being involved in preparations for a suicide-hijacking similar to the December 1994 "Eiffel Tower" hijacking of Air France 8969. Failures identified by Rowley may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Rowley was one of many agents frustrated by the events that led up to the attacks, writing:
During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre-September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone's first question was "Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBI HQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like [Robert Hanssen], who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.)
Rowley testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mueller and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed for and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a significant expansion of FBI personnel with counterterrorism and language skills.
Rowley retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency.
Rowley jointly held the TIME "Person of the Year" award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. She also received the Sam Adams Award for 2002. (read more)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Gulf Oil Spill - An Environmental Catastrophe
According to Doctor Samantha B. Joye, from the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, involved in gathering data from the Gulf oil spill, “There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water.” She went on to say that, “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.” These plumes were discovered by scientific investigators from a number of universities working from aboard the Pelican, a research vessel.
The controversial chemical dispersants that have been used by British Petroleum (BP) to break the oil down into small droplets may have contributed to the creation of these plumes. The naturally occurring oil-eating bacteria “feeding” on this oil are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, for as they rapidly grow and divide they are consuming oxygen. Doctor Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing and, “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months. That is alarming.” In addition, the natural rate of replenishment of oxygen in deep water from the surface is a slow process.
In my estimation this oil spill will prove to be an ecological disaster of immense proportions if the flow of oil is not stopped in a timely fashion. The fowling of the gulf with oil will add an additional insult to the acidification of the oceans that is a direct result of the ever-increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In my mind, there is a powerful connection between the state of the natural environment as evidenced by the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and prospects for a peaceful planet. The seemingly constant cycle of violence and retribution throughout the world diverts humanity's focus from the real issues that require our immediate and concerted effort.
The controversial chemical dispersants that have been used by British Petroleum (BP) to break the oil down into small droplets may have contributed to the creation of these plumes. The naturally occurring oil-eating bacteria “feeding” on this oil are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, for as they rapidly grow and divide they are consuming oxygen. Doctor Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing and, “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months. That is alarming.” In addition, the natural rate of replenishment of oxygen in deep water from the surface is a slow process.
In my estimation this oil spill will prove to be an ecological disaster of immense proportions if the flow of oil is not stopped in a timely fashion. The fowling of the gulf with oil will add an additional insult to the acidification of the oceans that is a direct result of the ever-increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In my mind, there is a powerful connection between the state of the natural environment as evidenced by the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and prospects for a peaceful planet. The seemingly constant cycle of violence and retribution throughout the world diverts humanity's focus from the real issues that require our immediate and concerted effort.
AJ Muste - The Voice of Pacifism
Abraham Johannes (AJ) Muste was born in the Zierikzee province of Zealand in the Netherlands on January 8, 1885. His parents, Martin Muste and Adriana Jonker, immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1891. Their transit to the United States was not particularly pleasant; they were crowded into steerage on a two week journey in hostile seas.
As a young boy in America he was captivated by the image of Abraham Lincoln. This interest inspired him to explore the life of this illustrious American president, and was moved and influenced by what he had learned. His family was conservative in politics and orthodox in religion. Although his family was devoutly religious, Muste was never exposed to hellfire preaching growing up in the church. In spite of the fact that his father was not particularly happy with his son’s avowed political beliefs, Muste eventually persuaded his father to accept the idea of pacifism
For half of a century, Muste was a radical activist with an untiring devotion to the causes of peace and social justice. He was, in fact, one of the pioneers of non-violent resistance as a technique for social action. In fact, he was referred to as the “American Gandhi”; Gandhi was an inspiration to him. Muste was so influential and charismatic that his followers were called, “Musteites.” During his long personal history of social action, he went through a number of stages during the maturation of his personal philosophy.
As a young man, Muste entered Hope College and ultimately pursued a career in the ministry, training at the Graduate Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America and the Union Theological Seminary. In 1909, he was ordained minister of the Reformed Church. During his sojourn as minister, World War I broke out in Europe. Despite intense pressure from his contemporaries, Muste stubbornly held on to his pacifist beliefs. Ultimately, his convictions led to his ejection from the ministry. He was forced to resign from his church in Newtonville, Massachusetts. The fact that the church sided with the government in this regard and abandoned what Muste believed was fundamental Christian principles left Muste considerably disheartened.
Muste ultimately drifted away from religion and began to embrace political action around the area of social justice. He became involved in the struggles of labor during the tumultuous era when workers were attempting to organize into labor unions as a way of forcing changes in the abysmal nature of labor conditions at that time. He became General Secretary of the Amalgamate Textile Workers. He held this position from 1921 through 1933.
During this period, he became the Director of the Brookwood Labor College – an institution dedicated to the training of militant and progressive labor leaders. In the course of his work he was attracted to Trotskyist-Marxist ideas in regards to the plight of workers and the need to organize labor. During this era, the communists were very much involved in the early formation of labor unions. He became involved in numerous strikes, including the Toledo Auto-Lite, GM and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber strikes.
Ultimately, Muste became disenchanted with communism; he found the tactics that the party employed were disingenuous and heavy-handed. He came to see Trotsky as yet another dictator not unlike Lenin or Stalin. In 1936, he rejected Marxist-Leninism and rejoined the non-violence movement.
In 1940, he became Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the United States. He held this position until 1953. Muste became convinced that in order to achieve a just society, major social dislocation is necessary. In 1962, he wrote, “We are now in an age when men will have to choose deliberately to exchange the values, the concepts of security, and much else which characterizes contemporary society, and seek another way of life. If that is so, the peace movement has to act on that assumption, and this means that the whole picture of our condition and the radical choice must be placed before people – not a diluted gospel, a program geared so that they are ready to “buy now.”
Seeing the inevitability of the American entrance into what would be referred to as World War II, Muste refuted the argument that governments are sometimes called upon to resort to war to oppose an “aggressor” nation. In his book entitled, Non-violence in an Aggressive World (1940), he claimed that “The line-up in the world is read in terms of “peace-loving” versus “persistently aggressive” nations. That is superficial and misleading. It is the same reading that brought us disaster twenty years ago. The real line-up is between satiated powers, determined to hang on to the 85 percent of the earth’s vital resources which they control, even if that means plunging the world into another war, and another set of powers equally determined to change the imperialist status even if that means plunging the world into another war.” He went on to caution that as soon as a nation finds itself on the path of war preparation, it strengthens the forces on the right and moves the society towards fascism.
In regards to war preparations prior to World War II, A. J. Muste further stated, “The United States is not ready for disarmament and war-renunciation. What then shall we propose? A little war-preparation, purely defensive preparation, refined economic warfare which can be safely waged at a distance against supposedly sinful nations? Surely they are no alternatives at all (such as moderate war-preparations in this day!), or they are alternatives which lead straight to disaster.” As a result of these strong convictions, he advocated total draft refusal. This was a remarkably courageous stand in terms of the strong national sentiment that slanted towards war.
Following the Great War, Muste became deeply concerned over what he saw was the drift towards a nuclear holocaust. He became the Chairman of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, a member of the executive committee on the War Resister’s League and a participant in Omaha Action, a group dedicated to nonviolent action against nuclear policy. As a member of the latter group, he was arrested in 1959 for climbing over a barbed-wire fence at the Atlas missile base near Omaha, Nebraska. He became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and editor of Liberation Magazine.
In his life, Muste underwent a number of personal transformations, but a tenacious adherence to the causes of peace and social justice resided at the core of his being.
AJ Muste died on February 11, 1967. One of Muste’s cohorts in the pursuit of peace through nonviolent action made the following comment, “A.J. is the spiritual chairman of every major pacifist demonstration in the country and often is the actual chairman. He’s the number one peacemaker in America.”
As a young boy in America he was captivated by the image of Abraham Lincoln. This interest inspired him to explore the life of this illustrious American president, and was moved and influenced by what he had learned. His family was conservative in politics and orthodox in religion. Although his family was devoutly religious, Muste was never exposed to hellfire preaching growing up in the church. In spite of the fact that his father was not particularly happy with his son’s avowed political beliefs, Muste eventually persuaded his father to accept the idea of pacifism
For half of a century, Muste was a radical activist with an untiring devotion to the causes of peace and social justice. He was, in fact, one of the pioneers of non-violent resistance as a technique for social action. In fact, he was referred to as the “American Gandhi”; Gandhi was an inspiration to him. Muste was so influential and charismatic that his followers were called, “Musteites.” During his long personal history of social action, he went through a number of stages during the maturation of his personal philosophy.
As a young man, Muste entered Hope College and ultimately pursued a career in the ministry, training at the Graduate Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America and the Union Theological Seminary. In 1909, he was ordained minister of the Reformed Church. During his sojourn as minister, World War I broke out in Europe. Despite intense pressure from his contemporaries, Muste stubbornly held on to his pacifist beliefs. Ultimately, his convictions led to his ejection from the ministry. He was forced to resign from his church in Newtonville, Massachusetts. The fact that the church sided with the government in this regard and abandoned what Muste believed was fundamental Christian principles left Muste considerably disheartened.
Muste ultimately drifted away from religion and began to embrace political action around the area of social justice. He became involved in the struggles of labor during the tumultuous era when workers were attempting to organize into labor unions as a way of forcing changes in the abysmal nature of labor conditions at that time. He became General Secretary of the Amalgamate Textile Workers. He held this position from 1921 through 1933.
During this period, he became the Director of the Brookwood Labor College – an institution dedicated to the training of militant and progressive labor leaders. In the course of his work he was attracted to Trotskyist-Marxist ideas in regards to the plight of workers and the need to organize labor. During this era, the communists were very much involved in the early formation of labor unions. He became involved in numerous strikes, including the Toledo Auto-Lite, GM and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber strikes.
Ultimately, Muste became disenchanted with communism; he found the tactics that the party employed were disingenuous and heavy-handed. He came to see Trotsky as yet another dictator not unlike Lenin or Stalin. In 1936, he rejected Marxist-Leninism and rejoined the non-violence movement.
In 1940, he became Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the United States. He held this position until 1953. Muste became convinced that in order to achieve a just society, major social dislocation is necessary. In 1962, he wrote, “We are now in an age when men will have to choose deliberately to exchange the values, the concepts of security, and much else which characterizes contemporary society, and seek another way of life. If that is so, the peace movement has to act on that assumption, and this means that the whole picture of our condition and the radical choice must be placed before people – not a diluted gospel, a program geared so that they are ready to “buy now.”
Seeing the inevitability of the American entrance into what would be referred to as World War II, Muste refuted the argument that governments are sometimes called upon to resort to war to oppose an “aggressor” nation. In his book entitled, Non-violence in an Aggressive World (1940), he claimed that “The line-up in the world is read in terms of “peace-loving” versus “persistently aggressive” nations. That is superficial and misleading. It is the same reading that brought us disaster twenty years ago. The real line-up is between satiated powers, determined to hang on to the 85 percent of the earth’s vital resources which they control, even if that means plunging the world into another war, and another set of powers equally determined to change the imperialist status even if that means plunging the world into another war.” He went on to caution that as soon as a nation finds itself on the path of war preparation, it strengthens the forces on the right and moves the society towards fascism.
In regards to war preparations prior to World War II, A. J. Muste further stated, “The United States is not ready for disarmament and war-renunciation. What then shall we propose? A little war-preparation, purely defensive preparation, refined economic warfare which can be safely waged at a distance against supposedly sinful nations? Surely they are no alternatives at all (such as moderate war-preparations in this day!), or they are alternatives which lead straight to disaster.” As a result of these strong convictions, he advocated total draft refusal. This was a remarkably courageous stand in terms of the strong national sentiment that slanted towards war.
Following the Great War, Muste became deeply concerned over what he saw was the drift towards a nuclear holocaust. He became the Chairman of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, a member of the executive committee on the War Resister’s League and a participant in Omaha Action, a group dedicated to nonviolent action against nuclear policy. As a member of the latter group, he was arrested in 1959 for climbing over a barbed-wire fence at the Atlas missile base near Omaha, Nebraska. He became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and editor of Liberation Magazine.
In his life, Muste underwent a number of personal transformations, but a tenacious adherence to the causes of peace and social justice resided at the core of his being.
AJ Muste died on February 11, 1967. One of Muste’s cohorts in the pursuit of peace through nonviolent action made the following comment, “A.J. is the spiritual chairman of every major pacifist demonstration in the country and often is the actual chairman. He’s the number one peacemaker in America.”
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The Power of a Poem
Miroslav Holub, whose name always caught my ear because it was so exotic, has long been a favourite poet of mine. He was not only a poet and a writer but also a practising scientist in the field of immunology. Consequently, his poetry tends to be intellectual, hard-hitting and precise. M.H. was born in Plzen, in Western Bohemia (later called Czechoslovakia.)
His dates are 1923 - 1998, so he lived a moderately long life. An aspect of literature that has always captivated me is the war-time experiences of the authors and how those experiences have shaped the works that they have written. So, having completed his secondary school studies, Miroslav Holub could not go on to university study (during the Nazi occupation, the Germans closed down Czech universities) and he worked as a labourer at a warehouse and at a railway station. After the Second World War, Holub studied at Charles University in Prague, first at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, then from 1946 at the Faculty of Medicine. After this he became a notable immunologist and an international poet.
In the Irish language revival we had a return to "caint na ndaoine" ("the talk of the people") with the likes of An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire, Pádraig Mac Piarais and Pádraig Ó Conaire. Wordsworth sought to do the same with the language of English poetry - using the language of ordinary people. Together with S.T. Coleridge he wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), in which they sought to use the language of ordinary people in poetry. Likewise Holub maintained that "only by capturing life around us we may be able to express its dynamicism, the immense developments, rolling on around us and within us." This also meant that it was necessary to give up regular, rhymed and melodious poetry and to adopt irregular and free verse. This was the poetics of Holub's first collections, especially Denní sluzba (Day duty, 1958) and Achilees a zelva (Achilles and the tortoise, 1960), His later collections developed it further.
The poem I would like to share with my readers is called The Door. My father used always quote the old saying, "God never closes one door unless he opens another." Opening a door is a very positive image or metaphor, letting the air of liberty and imagination in.
His dates are 1923 - 1998, so he lived a moderately long life. An aspect of literature that has always captivated me is the war-time experiences of the authors and how those experiences have shaped the works that they have written. So, having completed his secondary school studies, Miroslav Holub could not go on to university study (during the Nazi occupation, the Germans closed down Czech universities) and he worked as a labourer at a warehouse and at a railway station. After the Second World War, Holub studied at Charles University in Prague, first at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, then from 1946 at the Faculty of Medicine. After this he became a notable immunologist and an international poet.
In the Irish language revival we had a return to "caint na ndaoine" ("the talk of the people") with the likes of An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire, Pádraig Mac Piarais and Pádraig Ó Conaire. Wordsworth sought to do the same with the language of English poetry - using the language of ordinary people. Together with S.T. Coleridge he wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), in which they sought to use the language of ordinary people in poetry. Likewise Holub maintained that "only by capturing life around us we may be able to express its dynamicism, the immense developments, rolling on around us and within us." This also meant that it was necessary to give up regular, rhymed and melodious poetry and to adopt irregular and free verse. This was the poetics of Holub's first collections, especially Denní sluzba (Day duty, 1958) and Achilees a zelva (Achilles and the tortoise, 1960), His later collections developed it further.
The poem I would like to share with my readers is called The Door. My father used always quote the old saying, "God never closes one door unless he opens another." Opening a door is a very positive image or metaphor, letting the air of liberty and imagination in.
The Door
Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there's
a tree, or a wood,
a garden,
or a magic city.
Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog's rummaging.
Maybe you'll see a face,
or an eye
or the picture
of a picture.
Go and open the door.
If there's fog
it will clear.
Go and open the door.
Even if there's only
the darkness singing,
even if there's only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing is there,
go and open the door.
At least
there'll be
a draught.
(translated by Ian Milner)
USA and Morality
|
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-AFGHANISTAN
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Pakistan-Army-Journal-The-Citadel
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21952758/1971-India-Pakistan-War
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25171703/BOOK-REVIEWS-BY-AGHA-H-AMIN
Monday, May 31, 2010
The Puzzle Palace
James Bamford (born September 24, 1946) is an American bestselling author and journalist who writes about United States intelligence agencies. He was raised in Natick, Massachusetts, spent three years in the United States Navy as an intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War, and used the GI Bill to earn his law degree from Suffolk University Law School in Boston.His first book, The Puzzle Palace (1982), was the first book published about the National Security Agency (NSA). The book was researched through extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). As a super-secret agency, NSA was quite concerned about their unveiling to the world and accordingly, the government reclassified certain documents in an effort to stop publication.
(read more)
Double Edged Sword
They go to fight for freedom,
but they are dying for conquest !!!
(War Is a Racket)
(the arms industry)
(permanent war economy)
(list of arms manufacturers)
(military industrial complex)
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Pompous Oil
Nationalize responsibility for resources. Seize all assets that have raped Mother Nature & give her a Bill of Rights!
Every country that has nationalized oil has something to teach us. Obama had practice with Auto and Bank bail-outs, NOW it is time to TAKE-OVER the OIL CONS-Piracy! Our national resource demands that govern-mental regulation seize the assets with the troops being trained to monitor every stage of waging peace with the earth. Power over energy is the only job market that can save us now and it must be part of a social assurance policy. Corporations have made the public foreign to their own resources. We, the people, were given rights to be equally enabled to participate with credit for our local efforts. The Gulf is an example of suffering for its endowments.
When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, there was an understanding developing (FreeMasons knew) that Monarchy was a pompous standard of government since the king thought he owned everything. Kings created the Gold Standard (that just may need to lose all its value) since we can't eat it. The oil standard has become the most pompous hoarder of money since it fueled The Industrial Revolution's demise. The profit motive seems to be imposing a toxic idiocy. The distraction of making money has allowed us to ignore the state of balance needed to sustain life.
The whole value of BP isn't enough penalty for the environmental damage and reminding us what Exxon is getting away with as court manipulation proves that the military should be educated to be the power protection reflex for a nationalized foundation of energy management or next we'll deserve to be outraged by water!!!! Isn't the Bush family already developing their monopoly on aquifers in land investment? Could that be why they are so invested in developing the power of BlackWater?
Every country that has nationalized oil has something to teach us. Obama had practice with Auto and Bank bail-outs, NOW it is time to TAKE-OVER the OIL CONS-Piracy! Our national resource demands that govern-mental regulation seize the assets with the troops being trained to monitor every stage of waging peace with the earth. Power over energy is the only job market that can save us now and it must be part of a social assurance policy. Corporations have made the public foreign to their own resources. We, the people, were given rights to be equally enabled to participate with credit for our local efforts. The Gulf is an example of suffering for its endowments.
When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, there was an understanding developing (FreeMasons knew) that Monarchy was a pompous standard of government since the king thought he owned everything. Kings created the Gold Standard (that just may need to lose all its value) since we can't eat it. The oil standard has become the most pompous hoarder of money since it fueled The Industrial Revolution's demise. The profit motive seems to be imposing a toxic idiocy. The distraction of making money has allowed us to ignore the state of balance needed to sustain life.
The whole value of BP isn't enough penalty for the environmental damage and reminding us what Exxon is getting away with as court manipulation proves that the military should be educated to be the power protection reflex for a nationalized foundation of energy management or next we'll deserve to be outraged by water!!!! Isn't the Bush family already developing their monopoly on aquifers in land investment? Could that be why they are so invested in developing the power of BlackWater?
Dennis Hopper
"You want to hear about insanity?
I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico"
...Dennis Hopper...
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1955, and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Over the next ten years, Hopper appeared frequently on television in guest roles, and by the end of the 1960s had played supporting roles in several films. He directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969), winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer. Film critic Matthew Hays notes that "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper." (read more)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Little Did He Know
(photograph by Oberon)
Stranger than fiction
that's what the truth is
she remembered me
she found me
she healed me
she loved me
i'm a lucky, lucky man
stranger than fiction
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The World's Oldest Profession
One of the most serious problems associated with prostitution is the fact that the sex trade is surrounded by illegal, abusive and dangerous activities. One view insists that such situations occur because prostitution is kept illegal and the industry operates on the black market. Another, however, believes that legalizing and regulating prostitution does not improve the situation, but instead makes it worse.
Today, human trafficking is primarily for prostituting women and children. It is described as "the largest slave trade in history" and is the fastest growing criminal industry, set to outgrow drug trafficking.
Establishments engaged in sexual slavery are the highest priority targets of law enforcement actions against prostitution. It has been suggested that human trafficking is the fastest growing form of contemporary slavery and is the third largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world.
"Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors," reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study. Due to the illegal and underground nature of sex trafficking, the exact extent of women and children forced into prostitution is unknown. (read more)
Legalize it !
Protect minors.
Fight organized crime.
You can't legislate morality.
Is God A Mathematician?
Albert Einstein once wondered: "How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?" Indeed, Newton formulated a mathematical law of gravity which he himself could verify (given the observational results of his day) to an accuracy of no better than four percent. Yet, the law proved to be precise to better than one part in a million! How is that possible? Or take the example of knot theory – the mathematical theory of knots. It evolved as an obscure branch of pure mathematics. Amazingly, this abstract endeavor suddenly found extensive modern applications in topics ranging from the structure of the DNA to "string theory" – the candidate for an ultimate theory of the subatomic world.
And this is not all. The famous logician Bertrand Russell argued that logic and mathematics are really the same thing. "They differ as boy and man", he said, "logic is the youth of mathematics and mathematics is the manhood of logic." So how can we explain these incredible powers of mathematics? How come that stock option pricing and the agitated motion of pollen suspended in water can be described by the same mathematical equation?
At an even more fundamental level, are we merely discovering mathematics, just as astronomers discover previously unknown galaxies? Or, is mathematics simply a human invention? These (and many more) are the questions that Mario Livio is attempting to answer in "Is God A Mathematician?" The book reviews the ideas of great thinkers from Plato and Archimedes to Galileo and Descartes, and on to Russell and Gödel. It offers a lively and original discussion of topics ranging from cosmology to the cognitive sciences, and from mathematics to religion. The focus on the scientific and practical applications of the fascinating insights of great minds will appeal to a wide audience. (read more)
Monday, May 24, 2010
Endings and Beginnings
Endings and Beginnings
At any point in time, I suppose, we could say that we are both finishing and beginning. This moment is the end of the moment immediately preceding it and the beginning of the one following it. This year 2010 is for me the end of thirtieth academic year since I qualified as a teacher - and I have gone through 30 of those endings. Each one of those endings saw the beginning of the Summer months and of freedom. I often find myself returning to that great poem by T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets which rates as one of the greatest modernist poems bar none. Therein you hear the voice of the emptiness of the modern age speak to you. It is a treasure trove for anyone on a spiritual quest in the desert of the modern age. In the first section, called Burnt Norton, we read, and these words are replete with meaning and bear a fruit that is nothing less than the observation of a Buddhist mind before that fruit's fall to the ground:
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with precision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
In section four of that same poem, called Little Gidding we read, in stanza five of that section:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right...
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning...
In the above quotations the italicization is mine alone. This is a noble poem, a poem which does not yield up its fruits, its insights very easily at all. It is a poem which must be pondered like a scriptural text, and, indeed, it does not matter what religion that scriptural text is from. Indeed, it could also be from an agnostic or even an atheistic text for that matter. However, it would be a spiritual text in the broadest sense of that term. To my mind, at least, this is a poem that rattles around in my mind, in my heart and in my soul and quite often I find myself remembering snatches of lines. It works on one's mind rather like a brilliant piece of music, one that has incantations and the rhythms of great prayers in its very musical strains.
And so we bid farewell to this years sixth years, who, in that bidding of farewell, become by a strange benediction last year's sixth years. And now the present fifth years are ready to replace their predecessors in the chain of life or in the chain of being. Often, I think the ancients got it more correct than we people of the line. Let me explain. For the ancients their world was circular - night preceded day and day preceded night, the sun came up in the East and set in the West, day after inevitable day. The seasons came and went in their turn, and so onwards the circle turned. Life, like nature, sometimes erringly called inanimate nature, was always cyclic. There was birth and death and then birth and death all over again. Then these pre-moderns swallowed the myth of linearity, by this I mean the myth of inevitable progress, that life could only get better and better and better, that humankind could only improve and improve and improve. However, Nietzsche and his likes sounded a warning for that ridiculously naive belief. Then, the First World War sounded the death-knell for the myth of indefinite progress. Naive humankind had come of age in the bloodbath that was No Man's Land. Humankind was very much a flawed entity which had written its nature too large, which had overestimated by far its importance in the scheme of things, which inevitably thought it had the answer to life's mysteries...
Indeed, it would seem to this writer at least that all of life can be boiled down to observing it, to observing the very breath that enlivens the body wherein the psyche dwells, let us call this phenomenon the Body-Mind or the Mind-Body. It would seem that things come and go and that we can add this or that bit to it, give the world this or that little push, alter it a little, compose this or that, build this or that, sing this or that, play this or that, even invent this or that, but yet the world goes on as it must and we will all eventually be dust, for we are only a small part in the overall chaos, significant only in our insignificance.
Above the famous alchemical symbol, the ouroborus!
When did we forget ?
Rags make paper
Paper makes money
Money makes banks
Banks make loans
Loans make beggars
Beggars make rags
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Miracle of the Sun
The Miracle of the Sun (Portuguese: O Milagre do Sol) is an alleged miraculous event witnessed by 30,000 to 100,000 people on 13 October 1917 in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal. Those in attendance had assembled to observe what the Portuguese secular newspapers had been ridiculing for months as the absurd claim of three shepherd children that a miracle was going to occur at high-noon in the Cova da Iria on 13 October 1917.
According to many witness statements, after a downfall of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It was said to be significantly duller than normal, and to cast multicolored lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world. Anecdotally, some witnesses reported that their previously wet clothes became "suddenly and completely dry."
(read more)
(It was noted that the "object" was not at the correct elevation to be the sun and some have speculated the object witnessed was a UFO)
Shadowland
Tiburcio Vasquez
Tiburcio Vasquez was allegedly the inspiration for Johnston McCulley's fictonal character "Zorro".
Tiburcio Vásquez (August 11, 1835–March 19, 1875) was a Californio bandit who was active in California from 1857 to 1874. The Vasquez Rocks, 40 miles north of Los Angeles, were one of his many hideouts and are named for him. He was probably the most notorious bandit California ever saw.
In January 1875 Vásquez was sentenced to hang for murder. His trial had taken four days and the jury deliberated for two hours before finally finding him guilty of two counts of murder in the Tres Pinos robbery.
Visitors flocked to Vásquez's jail cell, many of them women. He signed autographs and posed for photographs. Vásquez sold the photos from the window of his cell and used the money to pay for his legal defense. After his conviction, he appealed for clemency. It was denied by Governor Romualdo Pacheco. Vásquez calmly met his fate in San Jose on March 17, 1875. He was 39 years old.
He stated..."A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed we were unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us." (Dictated by Vásquez to explain his actions)
Vásquez was asked just before his execution, "Do you believe in an afterlife?" He replied, "I hope so... for then soon I shall see all my old sweethearts again". The only word he spoke on the gallows was..."pronto"...soon. (read more)
Saturday, May 22, 2010
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