The Current Midterm Elections

The upcoming mid-term elections that is now dominating the airwaves is being viewed as crucial to the reform movement that is currently under the political leadership of President Barack Obama. The mythology that still persists in this country, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is the one that maintains we are a free and democratic society and that this freedom is exemplified by the right to vote. The harsh political reality is that the powerful interests in our society continue to inform public policy. Even under the aegis of a supposed reform agenda fostered by the present administration, the so-called health reform legislation recently passed does not challenge the absolute dominance of the for-profit health insurance companies in determining how health care is delivered. The recent decision by the Supreme Court that essentially allows unfettered and unmonitored corporate political donations to those candidates that will support their interests insures that vast sums of private money will determine political outcomes well into the future. If democracy is to be taken seriously, we are going in an entirely wrong-headed direction.

At the risk of attempting to swim upstream during a time when the level of political corruption has reached a new zenith, I maintain that in order for elections to gain the participation required to make them meaningful, voters must feel that they have real choices among candidates for office - candidates that do not require funding by the powerful in order to sustain their viability. Real campaign finance reform must be enacted as well as the public funding of campaigns and free access to the airways so that money is no longer the major consideration for candidacy. This would allow the interests of those other than the advantaged to be adequately represented. This idea, of course, has been made even more precarious by the participation of the national media in an inherently corrupt system. One of the more absurd arguments in defense of the present system is that any reform of the ways by which campaigns are financed would represent an infringement of the first amendment right of free speech. This suggests that wealthy contributors have a far greater right to free speech than small contributors and that, by inference, supporters of candidates who are unable to make any monetary contribution apparently have no free speech rights at all.

The simple fact of voting does not make for a democracy. Democracy should be a living and dynamic institution where the voice of the people is constantly heard, listened to and ultimately incorporated into public policy. This goal can be achieved provided there is the will to do so. Some of the necessary changes I envision are: the public financing of political campaigns, encouraging national discourse through a truly open and accessible government and supplying sufficient resources to social services so that the economically disadvantaged could have a greater opportunity to participate in the political life of the country. In other words, real change can be accelerated markedly by a commitment to an open society - a society that actually honors the diverse and imaginative voice of the people. It is the furthering of all the people’s interests that makes for true participatory democracy. What we have now radically diverges from that ideal.

Non Compliance

Sylphs and Chemtrails

http://www.educate-yourself.org/cn/sylphandchemtrailindex.shtml

Isn't she lovely?

DaliVision

The Temptation of St. Anthony

Salvador Dali - 1946

MergePoint

Telepathy (from the Greek τηλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθη, pathe meaning "affliction, experience"), is the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the "five classic senses" (See Psi). The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought-transference. A telepath is a person with the paranormal ability to read others' thoughts and mental contents. Telepathy is one kind of extrasensory perception which, along with psychokinesis, forms the main topics of parapsychological research. Many studies seeking to detect, understand, and utilize telepathy have been done within this field. This research has neither produced a replicable demonstration of telepathy, nor an accepted mechanism by which it might work. Hence the scientific community does not regard telepathy as a real phenomenon. It is hard to unambiguously distinguish telepathy from a number of other parapsychological hypotheses such as clairvoyance.

Although not a recognized scientific discipline, people who study certain types of paranormal phenomena such as telepathy refer to the field as parapsychology. Parapsychologists claim that some instances of telepathy are real. Skeptics say that instances of apparent telepathy are explained as the result of fraud, self-delusion and/or self-deception and that telepathy does not exist as a paranormal power.

Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin, president of the Parapsychological Association, argue that the statistical significance and consistency of results shown by a meta-analysis of numerous studies provides evidence for telepathy that is almost impossible to account for using any other means. (read more)

The Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of "synthetic telepathy." But unlike old-school mind-melds, this seemingly psychic communication would be computer-mediated. The University of California, Irvine explains:

The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would "think" a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target. (read more)

Ingo Swann (born Ingo Douglas Swan on 09/14/1933 in Telluride, CO) is an artist and author, best known for his work as a co-creator (according to his frequent collaborators Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff) of the discipline of remote viewing, specifically the Stargate Project. He has written several books on remote viewing or related topics.

Swann does not identify himself as a "psychic," preferring to describe himself as a "consciousness researcher" who had sometimes experienced "altered states of consciousness." Swann has stated, "I don't get tested, I only work with researchers on well-designed experiments." Swann is dissatisfied in a role as a passive subject. He feels he must contribute to the preliminary design of the research. According to Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, there have been "Swann-inspired innovations" that have led to impressive results in parapsychology. Experiments not controlled by Swann have not been very successful. These are rarely mentioned, and if so, only in passing.

Swann helped develop the process of remote viewing at the Stanford Research Institute in experiments that cauught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is commonly credited with proposing the idea of Coordinate Remote Viewing, a process in which viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates, which was developed and tested by Puthoff and Targ with CIA funding. Due to the popularity of Uri Geller in the seventies a critical examination of Ingo Swann's paranormal claims was basically overlooked by skeptics and historians. Uri Geller comments very favorably on Ingo Swann. Geller says, "If you were blind and a man appeared who could teach you to see with mind power, you would revere him as a guru. So why is Ingo Swann ignored by publishers and forced to publish his astounding life story on the Internet?" Both Geller and Swann were tested by two experimenters, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who concluded that Geller and Swann did indeed have unique skills. However, others have strongly disputed the scientific validity of Targ and Puthoff's experiments. In a 1983 interview magician Milbourne Christopher remarked Swann is "one of the cleverest in the field." Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unobtainable. (read more)

Extraterrestrial psychology

Astrophysicist Gregory Benford says we need to consider extraterrestrial economics when looking for signals from outer space. He suggests SETI narrow down its search to what we can reasonably expect extraterrestrial to achieve at such great distances ..assuming they’re not omnipotent. I applaud him for his pragmatism, however I think we also need to consider extraterrestrial psychology if we are to expect a reasonable chance of successful contact. Otherwise, I don’t see how we hope to achieve any kind of meaningful communication. Since we have no basis from which to conceive of the extraterrestrial mind, I think we have to start with something we can observe ..and I believe that would be us.

Psychologists already know that rational thought is a spatio-temporal process. It’s powerful but limited to weighing evidence about the physical universe. Other-worldly experience is out-of-scope. I believe this would also apply to the thought processes of any aliens we encounter. First, we’d only know we’ve encountered them if they share the same spatial-temporal dimension as us. Second, those we do meet would have to have some way of processing information about this shared dimension that is similar to ours. In other words, like us .. they would also have to integrate sensory information into a coherent model of the world they inhabit. So, I believe the first step in contemplating extraterrestrial life is to better understand our own. I mean, lets face it .. at this point it’s all we got.

Science tells us that knowledge is often knowledge of differences. Given that the human brain is tuned to receive only a narrow band of information available on earth, which is further constrained by culture ..I’m not sure it’s safe to assume that the alien mind is similarly tuned. They do not share the same background. We know that human perception is based on background information as much as information from the present ..and that the brain integrates information selected by the senses with information available in memory to create a coherent whole. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect extraterrestrials, who do not share our planetary history, to perceive our surroundings the same way we do. The way I’ve heard it explained best goes something like this:

“We could try and introduce ourselves to them ..but all they might see is a sparse dusting of energy waves occurring in a vacuum ..with some probability of identity based on their backgrounds ..not ours.”

Presented at the ~> SB Institute for Consciousness Studies

"Sparky"

Cosmic Harmony

Today is

10/10/10

"International Cosmic Harmony Day"

...I just made it up

Imagine

Happy 70th birthday John Lennon

noble

This years Nobel Peace Prize winner is Liu Xiaobo,
he is currently sitting in a Chinese prison.

Freedom of Speech in China

Among the many people campaigning for human rights in China, Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has become the most visible symbol of the struggle. A long-term exponent of non-violent protest, he is currently serving an 11-year prison term. (read more)

Liu Xiaobo; born 28 December 1955, is a Chinese intellectual, writer, and human rights activist and a political prisoner in China.

He has served as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center since 2003. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained in response to his participation with Charter 08. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009, on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power." He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.

During his 4th prison term from 2009 to 2020, he won the Nobel Peace Prize on 8 October 2010, for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." (read more)

are you ready ?

(watch the footage)

Non Violent Direct Action

Many years ago in the days of the Reagan presidency in the United States. When Thatcher was the Prime Minister here in the UK. Reagan began talking about fighting a “limited nuclear war in Europe” arrangements began to be made to site cruise weapons, with nuclear warheads in the 141 US military installations in the UK. These weapons were highly mobile and could be launched from a truck.

Many of us in the UK were appalled, there could never be a limited nuclear attack, the fall out would surely pollute many areas of Europe besides which if the weapons were launched from the UK where would the Russians direct their counter attack? Was Britain really going to be used as a missile carrier for the US? Did we in the UK want weapons that we had no control over deployed here?

My answer was Hell No! Not if I could do anything about it! I joined CND and quickly became secretary for my local group, we demonstrated, marched and sang, a group set up a peace camp at Greenham Common, which was not far from where I lived, the camp, for various reasons quickly became a women only camp and I decided that I wanted to take my protest against US cruise weapons being deployed in the UK a stage further. With the support of my local CND group I took my eighteen month old son to live at Greenham Common Peace camp.

I was here that I learned about Non Violent Direct Action, we broke into the base regularly, held picnics on the silos that were built and ready for the weapons, we held a full exorcism ceremony in the base one night, common land was once open to all, to gather firewood or to put animals to graze but was fenced off and sold in the 1820’s and is said to be cursed because of this:

They hang the man and flog the woman

That steals the goose from the common

But let the greater criminal loose

That steals the common from the goose

We held a Dragon Festival, each CND group made a section of the dragons tail and I can remember watching as the very long dragons tail, with messages of hope and peace was carried past. That day the women who lived at the camp wandered through the demonstrators and, as we chatted, invited women who we thought could be trusted to a meeting in the huge tent we had hired.

At the meeting women were asked if they wanted to come into the base, were told that they would be arrested, of the rough handling they could expect from the police if they were to come in with us. The point that we were making was that the bases were not secure and that if we as a bunch of housewives could get in, what could trained and equipped people do there? Women who decided they did want to be involved could identify the peace camp women who would take them in – we would be carrying a bucket and a pair of marigolds!

Thatcher’s government were determined not to be embarrassed by a group of women so they bought in the West Highland Regiment and posted soldiers every twenty feet on the inside of the perimeter fence, there was concern as to whether the soldiers would actually shoot at us, So it had been one of my tasks, previously, to talk to the soldiers and see which way the wind blew, I had great fun walking the perimeter fence chatting to the soldiers and was enormously relieved that the answer to my question “Will you shoot at us?” had always been that a British soldier would never shoot at a British woman on British soil.

A place had been chosen to enter the camp, it was several miles away but as the break in to the camp was to be late at night we had time to make our way there. We left the meeting with our buckets and marigolds and women followed us out and into the sunshine. A helicopter buzzed us but we were just women on latrine duty, having a clean up, as women do, the soldiers were still there but relaxed, the festival atmosphere of the day, colourful banners, singing and the sunshine had left a mellowness in the air.

We made our way around the fence to the blue gate where we were to gather and wait until dark. The camp at the blue gate was more secluded, further into the woods than the other gates and less easy for the police or soldiers to watch.

It grew dark and quiet; women around the campfire sang peace songs and blessings to Mother Earth. Finally, it was time I was to bring my group, quietly we were guided to our waiting place in the wood, very close to the fence, the aim was to take as many women in as we could that night so we waited again as other women were brought in.

Four women who each had a pair of bolt cutters were given the task of cutting a line in the fence, to make a square hole as quickly as possible. As soon as they emerged from the woods the soldier there raised the alarm.

Razor wire had been laid on the ground inside the fence so women had to clamber through the fence up through the razor wire and out into the air base. I climbed through the hole and was helped through the razor wire and turned to help other women through. Pinkie, a woman who lived at the camp was heavily pregnant, her belly filled the circle of razor wire and she froze, without thinking I turned to the soldier and said “Help her she’s pregnant” and to my amazement he lifted her out of the wire into the base. Many more women followed her through.

By this time there were helicopters, lights, shouting and the Ministry of Defence police arrived. However, in this confusion our plan was clear and we had another roll of razor wire to get through. We ran to it and threw a piece of carpet over, women helped others over as quickly as we could and we ran again, to the runway our destination. Paint and brushes were produced women painted the runway with signs and symbols as evidence of our entry.

Eighty women broke into Greenham Common air base that night, most of whom had never done anything remotely criminal in their lives before, we were rounded up by the MOD police and taken to their station where our names were taken and questions were asked, finally as it was getting light we were taken to a remote gate at the air base and released.

This incident was never reported in the press.

Times have moved on, and oh how innocent those far off days now seem, now we are more fragmented, there is so much to protest about, sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin, true we have the internet now, however people are more brainwashed, happier to close themselves off, stay at home and watch the TV.

Here in the UK the government are about to bring in all sorts of measures that will affect peoples lives, we are in huge debt because the government gave all our money to the banks. Inflation is high, food and energy prices, already high are set to rise again. Wages are frozen and redundancies threatened. Perhaps it is time for people to stand up, we are certainly being pushed and pushed again.

Non Violent Direct Action is not peaceful protest; it is about taking our protest to our own individual limitations what ever they may be. Non Violent yes, but realising that the forces you may come against will not be non violent, they will be aggressive, armed this time with pepper spray, tazers and guns and we will be taking them along with ourselves to the limit where ever that may be.

It’s not time for action yet, but it is time to think about what actions we are prepared to take, what our own personal limits are. How far we will go?

For action there must be………….

the greenwood

"Rise and rise again

until lambs become lions"

Land Of The Free

HUMAN rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by theProgressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

Crime Goes Down, Jail Population Goes Up

According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the prison industry complex:

Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs. Federal law stipulates five years' imprisonment without possibility of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and 10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams - 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years' imprisonment for possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

The passage in 13 states of the "three strikes" laws (life in prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two bicycles received three 25-year sentences.

Longer sentences.

The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.

A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.

More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.

read more http://ocnorml.org/pot%20news/prison_industry.htm

Wake Up !

I Don't Have Fear Of Those Bastards, I Wanna Expose Them All

where Is The Love?

i was

For just a moment...

I forgot who I was

For just a moment...

I was one with the universe

For just a moment...

I was

1984 is now

(watch 1984)

your choice

You have two choices in your life...

you can choose to be happy...

or you can choose to be un-happy...

which will you choose?

Witch Hunt

I know you have heard that Freedom Road and the Anti-War Committee are being investigated by the FBI.

Yesterday, WAMM board co-chair and long time peace activist, Sarah Martin was also served with a subpoena. She is to appear before a grand Jury, in Chicago, on October 12, as part of the FBI investigation that is trying to tie local peace groups to terrorism.

Sarah is innocent of terrorism or connection to organizations that condone terrorism.

This is part of a nationally coordinated action, surely approved by the director of the FBI and probably at higher levels than that. There has been considerable national media attention. It appears that our Twin Cities peace community has been thrust into the middle of something much larger. The affected activists will need a lot of our support as they resist increasing repression and "terrorism" hype from the Obama Administration.

The people targeted have several things in common which give an insight to the nature of this investigation. Locally, all have been connected to the Anti-War Committee and/or WAMM. I believe all are connected to Freedom Road Socialist Organization. All were deeply involved in organizing the mass marches at the RNC in 2008. I believe all have been involved in the efforts to stop the DNC from coming to Minneapolis in 2012. All or nearly all have traveled to Colombia and/or Palestine for international solidarity work.

Please join us at the first meeting of a new solidarity and defense committee, Thursday, September 30, 7:00 p.m. at Walker Methodist Church, 3104 16th Avenue South, Minneapolis. Feel free to invite friends, neighbors, lawyers, church members and leaders so that we can organize to keep this malignant FBI investigation from spreading further through out our community.

Democracy is indeed under a terrifying assault! Sadly enough, it is coming from the hands of our own government, directed at some of the best, brightest, and most conscientious of our own citizens. For those of us who hold the constitution and the Bill of Rights near and dear to our hearts, we must stand up to this new assault on American freedom.

Kim Doss-Smith, Executive Director, WAMM. (read more)

Some Like It Hot

Tony Curtis (June 3, 1925 – September 29, 2010) was an American film actor. He played a variety of roles, from light comedy, such as the musician on the run from gangsters in Some Like It Hot, to serious dramatic roles, such as an escaped convict in The Defiant Ones, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. From 1949, he appeared in more than 100 films and made frequent television appearances.

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, New York, the son of Emanuel Schwartz and his wife Helen Klein. His parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants from Mátészalka, Hungary; Hungarian was Curtis' only language until he was five or six.

His mother had once made an appearance as a participant on the television show You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx. Curtis said, "When I was a child, Mom beat me up and was very aggressive and antagonistic." His mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental illness which also affected his brother Robert and led to his institutionalization. When Curtis was eight, he and his younger brother Julius were placed in an orphanage for a month because their parents could not afford to feed them. Four years later, Julius was struck and killed by a truck.

During World War II, Curtis joined the United States Navy due to watching Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo and Tyrone Power in Crash Dive (1943). He served aboard USS Proteus (AS-19), a submarine tender, and on September 2, 1945, he witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from about a mile away. Following his discharge, Curtis studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German stage director Erwin Piscator, along with Elaine Stritch, Walter Matthau, and Rod Steiger. He was discovered by a talent agent and casting director Joyce Selznick. Curtis claims it was because he "was the handsomest of the boys."

Later, as "Tony Curtis", he cemented his reputation with breakthrough performances such as in the role of the scheming press agent Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with Burt Lancaster and an Oscar-nominated performance as a bigoted escaped convict chained to Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. He did both screen comedy and drama together and became the most sought after star in Hollywood: Curtis' comedies include Some Like It Hot and Sex and the Single Girl, and his dramas include The Outsider, the true story of WW II veteran Ira Hayes, and The Boston Strangler, in which he played the self-confessed murderer of the film's title, Albert DeSalvo. The latter film was praised for Curtis' performance.

Throughout his life, Curtis enjoyed painting, and since the early 1980s, painted as a second career. His work commands more than $25,000 a canvas now. In the last years of his life, he concentrated on painting rather than movies. A surrealist, Curtis claimed "Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Magritte" as influences. "I still make movies but I'm not that interested in them any more. But I paint all the time." In 2007, his painting The Red Table was on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His paintings can also be seen at the Tony Vanderploeg Gallery in Carmel, California.

Curtis spoke of his disappointment at never being awarded an Oscar. But in March 2006, Curtis did receive the Sony Ericsson Empire Lifetime Achievement Award. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) from France in 1995.

Curtis was married six times. His first wife was actress Janet Leigh, to whom he was married from 1951 – 1962, and with whom he fathered actresses Jamie Lee and Kelly Curtis.

Curtis stated on the television series Shrink Rap that he had a brief relationship with Marilyn Monroe in 1949 which had to end due to their different work commitments. He also details their brief relationship in his memoir, American Prince.

Tony Curtis died in bed at his Las Vegas home, on September 29, 2010 at 9:25 PM of cardiac arrest.
(read more) (watch trailer)

Anunnaki

(fastwalkers)

the persistence of memory

The Persistence of Memory
by Salvador Dali
1931

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), commonly known as Salvador Dali , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres.

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork. (read more)

Yogesh Goel: I've seen...

Yogesh Goel: I've seen...: "I've seen castles made out of sand, Met people who believe destiny is engraved on the palm of their hands,I've seen people change their fa..."

war on drugs ?

What's Wrong With the Drug War?

Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America "drug-free." Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called "drug-related" crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

Few public policies have compromised public health and undermined our fundamental civil liberties for so long and to such a degree as the war on drugs. The United States is now the world's largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million people for drug offenses alone. That's more people than Western Europe, with a bigger population, incarcerates for all offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug law violations - 40% of them just for marijuana possession. People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other debilitating illnesses are regularly denied access to their medicine or even arrested and prosecuted for using medical marijuana. We can do better. (read more)
.................................................................................

War on drugs?

Shouldn't that be...

war on drug "abuse and addiction"?

You see...

prohibition produced only one thing...

a profitable criminal underground.

Legal or illegal...

we will continue to have...

an available supply and ever present demand.

In the end...

you can't legislate morality.

Only Love

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

I have only love in my heart

love one another

Autumn Equinox already ?

free the "blogfather"

Hossein Derakhshan, 35, who has both Iranian and Canadian nationality, won his nickname after developing a blog platform for Persian characters that was widely copied by online activists and commentators.

While living in Canada and Britain he became known as a defender of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, against attacks from his many critics in the West. But he also went on a one-man peace mission to Israel, trying to show an Israeli perspective on conflicts in the Middle East to Iranians and also to "humanise" Iranians for his hosts.

He was arrested within weeks of his voluntary return to Iran in 2008. His alleged offences include working with "hostile" governments, propaganda against the Islamic establishment, propaganda in favour of anti-revolutionary groups, and insulting religious sanctities.

An anonymous source told Radio Free Europe that the trial had taken place behind closed doors and that although no sentence had yet been handed down, the prosecutor had sought the death penalty.

His mother, Ozra Kiarashpour, has confirmed that he has been convicted. "The prosecutor has asked for the severest sentence possible to punish Hossein and make an example of him," she said in an interview with a dissident website. "We can't do anything about the judge's ruling except to pray."

A death penalty would be unusual although writers and dissidents have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms. In the last week, two dissident journalists have been sentenced to six years' jail on similar charges, one for an interview he conducted for the BBC Persian service. Exile groups say that capital punishment is increasingly being sought against those accused of "mohareb", or offending God and his prophet. (read more) (facebook)