compassion

"Everything is burning.

What is burning?

The eyes are burning.

Everything seen by the eyes is burning.

The ears are burning.

What is burning?

Everything heard by the ears is burning.

The nose is burning.

Smells are ablaze.

The tongue is burning.

Tastes are ablaze.

The body is burning.

The mind is burning."

Buddha


D. Max Moerman, scholar: "We’re on fire; we may not know it but we’re on fire and we have to put that fire out. We’re burning with desire, we’re burning with craving. Everything about us is out of control."

W.S. Merwin, poet: "The Buddha goes on to talk about the three poisons: greed, and anger, and ignorance, and how the three poisons are what is making the fire, and the way out of doing this is not to deny the three poisons, but to recognize that if you turn them around, you come to their opposites."

Instead of greed, you have generosity; instead of anger, you have compassion; and instead of ignorance, you have wisdom.

(read more)

Aung San Suu Kyi

The people of the country of Burma, otherwise known as the Union of Myanmar, have been subjected to horrific oppression at the hands of a military junta under the leadership of Than Shwe . The person who has become synonymous with the struggle for peace and social justice in Burma is Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945; she was the daughter of Aung San, Burma’s national hero. Her father was assassinated in 1947 just prior to the time Burma achieved national independence. Kyi was educated in Rangoon, New Delhi, Oxford University and the University of London and worked for the United Nations. Kyi married Dr. Michael Aris from the United Kingdom and raised her family in England. Her husband died in 1999.

Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to tend to her dying mother. Her return coincided with the outbreak of a spontaneous revolt against twenty-six years of political repression and precipitous economic decline. This turn of events dramatically changed the course of her life. The fact that her father was regarded as a national hero and martyr for the cause of Burmese independence and freedom put her in a position that would ultimately lead her to become leader of the movement. She achieved electoral victory in 1990 to become Burma’s national leader. This victory was short-lived due to the intervention of the junta. Despite the fact that she has faced periodic house arrest, Kyi remains undaunted in her fight to help gain political freedom for her people.

Burma is, in fact, the largest country in Southeast Asia and is bounded by China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh and India. It is a country with a long and remarkable history. A cursory examination of its recent past is offered below.

Burma has a history that dates back over two thousand years. We will examine the colonial and post-colonial period. The British were involved in three Anglo-Burmese Wars that lasted sixty years. As a result of these conflicts, the British consolidated their colonization of Burma in 1886, and immediately added the conquered territory to India. Using their well-tested colonial policy of divide and conquer, the British favored some groups including the Karen – an ethnic people that comprise 7% of the Burmese population and who live in the South and Southeast part of the country - for key military and administrative positions.

Protests against foreign domination were launched by the Buddhist Monks and intelligentsia beginning in 1920 and by 1935 the student union at Rangoon University was involved in a movement for national independence. Among the students, Aung San, Kyi’s father, who was pursuing a law degree, became its predominant leader.

In 1941 at the beginning of World War II, Aung San and 29 of his comrades formed what was referred to as the “Thirty Comrades.” They understood that the British colonial presence was considerably weakened by the Second World War and took the opportunity to travel to Japan for military training. The Japanese promised an independent Burma if they prevailed over the British. Over time, this group recognized that the Japanese were disingenuous. As a result of this realization, they switched allegiance and pledged support to the British. Aung San successfully negotiated an agreement with the British to grant Burmese independence if the British prevailed over the Japanese. As a consequence, Burma was afforded total independence from the British in January 1947.

Aung San was able to convince the diverse and often opposing ethnic groups throughout the country to reach agreement; this was no small achievement. On July 1947, in the midst of the creation of the new constitution, Aung San was assassinated along with members of the newly formed Cabinet by an opposition group. As a consequence, U Nu was chosen to fill the leadership vacancy. Finally, Burma achieved complete independence on January 4, 1948. In just ten short years, U Nu was summarily removed from office and was replaced by a supposed caretaker government under the leadership of General Ne Win. Ne Win subsequently staged a coup and became Burma’s military dictator and formed the Revolutionary Council. Using his extraordinary authority and power, he brutally repressed the communist ethnic-minority opposition. For the next three decades, the Burmese government under Ne Win’s direction, pursued a disastrous course that ultimately left the country in social and economic ruin.

In July, 1988, Ne Win announced that he was prepared to step down. Recognizing the possibility of a profound change in direction, demonstrations were organized throughout the country during what has been called, “Democracy Summer.” This was short-lived, for on August 8, 1988, government troops brutally retaliated over four days killing some 10,000 demonstrators.
In response, thousands of political opponents moved to the border regions that were under ethnic control and formed alliances with sympathetic groups. These groups included the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the All Burma Student Democratic Front, the Democratic Alliance of Burma and the National Democratic Front (NDF). These groups formed an umbrella organization called the National Council of the Union of Burma.

Coincidentally, these event were unfolding while Kyi was in Burma. As daughter of the beloved national hero, she was persuaded to use her influence to bring change to her troubled country. As a result, Kyi along with sympathetic colleagues formed the National League for Democracy (NLD). Sensing that this movement would rapidly gain popular support, Ne Win took back full control of the country by staging a successful coup.

On September 18, 1988, the control of the country was placed effectively in the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) consisting of 19 members. In July 1989, Kyi was placed under house arrest and kept there for six years. The SLORC realized that the country’s image abroad was seriously impacting foreign investment and announced multi-party elections to be held on May 27, 1990. Despite severe political repression, the NLD and Kyi were victorious gaining 82% of the vote. In response, the SLORC dismissed the results and retained their grip on the country. Kyi was released from prison in May of 2002. She continues to be in the forefront of the struggle for peace and social justice.

The conditions in the country remain onerous with continued civil war especially in the border regions, economic stagnation, millions of refugees and extensive evidence of human rights abuses.

In regards to the upcoming elections in November 2010, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) - backed by the military junta and formed from a junta-backed mass organization called the Union Solidarity Association founded in 1993 and drawing its support from the country’s vast civil service - claims that it will, "practice the multiparty democracy system, market-oriented economic system and independent and active foreign policies." According to Htay Oo, agriculture minister and the party's secretary general, his party will guarantee people's "rights and liabilities ... in line with the constitution." It is interesting to note that Prime Minister Thein Sein and twenty-six of his cabinet resigned their military posts In April of 2010 to make them eligible to take part in politics.

The general elections to be held on Nov. 7 are the first in 20 years. However, since Kyi was not allowed to assume power following her decisive electoral victory in 1990, many of her countrymen have decided to boycott this year's elections, charging that the process is unfair and undemocratic.

Kyi's now disbanded National League for Democracy party was “legally” dissolved on account of its alleged failure to reregister to run in the election. Kyi has been locked away for 15 of the past 21 years. Her latest term of 18 months' house arrest is due to expire on Nov. 13, just days after the scheduled polls.

Aung San Suu Kyi comes from a strong Buddhist spiritual tradition and was profoundly influenced by her father’s example and his politically-motivated death. Despite her continued suffering, she remains profoundly dedicated to helping liberate her country and its people. As an international tribute to her struggle, she was awarded the nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The acceptance speech was delivered by her son, Aris on December 10, 1991 for she was under house arrest at the time. The following is an excerpt from that speech.

“ Firstly, I know that she would begin by saying that she accepts the Nobel Prize for Peace not in her own name but in the name of all the people of Burma. She would say that this prize belongs not to her but to all those men, women and children who, even as I speak, continue to sacrifice their wellbeing, their freedom and their lives in pursuit of a democratic Burma. Theirs is the prize and theirs will be the eventual victory in Burma's long struggle for peace, freedom and democracy.
Speaking as her son, however, I would add that I personally believe that by her own dedication and personal sacrifice she has come to be a worthy symbol through whom the plight of all the people of Burma may be recognised. And no one must underestimate that plight. The plight of those in the countryside and towns, living in poverty and destitution, those in prison, battered and tortured; the plight of the young people, the hope of Burma, dying of malaria in the jungles to which they have fled; that of the Buddhist monks, beaten and dishonoured. Nor should we forget the many senior and highly respected leaders besides my mother who are all incarcerated. It is on their behalf that I thank you, from my heart, for this supreme honour. The Burmese people can today hold their heads a little higher in the knowledge that in this far distant land their suffering has been heard and heeded.
We must also remember that the lonely struggle taking place in a heavily guarded compound in Rangoon is part of the much larger struggle, worldwide, for the emancipation of the human spirit from political tyranny and psychological subjection. The Prize, I feel sure, is also intended to honour all those engaged in this struggle wherever they may be. It is not without reason that today's events in Oslo fall on the International Human Rights Day, celebrated throughout the world.”

Book of the Century

Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)

Mark Twain’s Autobiography or The Autobiography of Mark Twain refers to a lengthy set of reminiscences, dictated, for the most part, in the last few years of American author Mark Twain's life and left in typescript and manuscript at his death. The Autobiography comprises a rambling collection of anecdotes and ruminations rather than a proper autobiography.

The first edition of the entire manuscript is scheduled for publication in November 2010, the 100th anniversary year of Twain’s death, edited by the The Mark Twain Papers and Project of The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley and published by University of California Press.

Twain first started to compose an autobiography in 1870, but proceeded fitfully, abandoning the work and returning to it as the mood took him. In a 1904 letter to William Dean Howells, he wrote: "I’ve struck it! And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." By 1904 Twain had embarked on what he called his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. However, after 1907 he again seems to have let the book languish; in 1908-9 he hardly added to it at all, and he declared the project concluded in 1909, after the death of his youngest daughter Jean. His innovative notion — to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment" — meant that his thoughts could range freely. Twain thought his autobiography would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-sequential order.

Twain outlined a plan in 1899 for an autobiographical work which was to be published (according to different accounts of the episode) either "100 years from now" or "100 years after his death." A manuscript note in the Mark Twain Papers (UC Berkeley) indicates a 100-year ban was what he was contemplating. Twain did produce a preface 'From the Grave' claiming that the book would not be published until after his death, which allowed him to speak with his "whole frank mind." (read more) (nytimes)

Mersey Beat

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It is about group of British schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 68 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–1999. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 and was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching #41 on the editor's list, and #25 on the reader's list. Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding’s first novel, in response to The Coral Island. Although it was not a great success at the time—selling fewer than 3000 copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print—it soon went on to become a bestseller, and by the early 1960s was required reading in many schools and colleges. It was adapted to film in 1963 by Peter Brook, and again in 1990 by Harry Hook.

The book takes place in the midst of a fictive World War III, suggested by passing references to the use of an "atom bomb", British conflict with the "Reds", and the possibility of spaceflight after the war ends. The main characters are evacuees from schools in Great Britain whose plane crash landed on a deserted island. Some are ordinary students, while others arrive as a coherent body under an established leader (a choir). Most appear never to have encountered each other before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves in a paradisaical country, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state.

At an allegorical level, the central theme is the conflicting impulses toward civilization—live by rules, peacefully and in harmony—and towards the will to power. Different subjects include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. How these play out, and how different people feel the influences of these, forms a major subtext of Lord of the Flies. (read more)

Life in space

youtube

1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident

the greatest story ever denied

the waiting

Infinite space...

infinite time...

infinite possibilities

morality

"morality"...

is the greatest evil

in the world today...

why?...

because we have forgotten

what is moral.

PTSD

The military is known for instilling leadership and teamwork ability ..skills that battle conditions can quickly take away. According to a Rand study, nearly one third of all returning troops suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury. Some of them show up at student services where I see them. James was part of a tank crew. On a hot day in Iraq ..they left the hatch open. That’s when a grenade blast slammed his head against an iron plate. At home, he enrolled in college using his GI benefits. However, crowded classrooms make him feel trapped and panicky. When he tries to contain these feelings, he finds he can’t make sense out of what the instructors are saying. Answering a question is like trying to find the answer to a riddle. He mumbles and strains to put together a coherent sentence ..and hopes he’s somewhere in the ballpark. I referred him to the VA for therapy. A short time later he quit school and went looking for a job. He hoped the skills they taught him in the service would help. Unfortunately, many employers told him they couldn’t accommodate time off for therapy. When I talked to him about it, he said he didn’t think that was the real reason. “They hire the disabled all the time” he says “Guys that need just as much time off as I do. No, it’s more like they’re afraid I’ll go postal or something. Head-cases make them nervous.”

blind-ness

Liu Xia, the wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, is under house arrest amid rising anger in Beijing over the dissident's prize. The wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo fears the Chinese government will prevent her from collecting the peace prize on her husband's behalf amid rising anger in Beijing at the announcement.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Liu Xia said police officers had surrounded her home and warned her that she could not leave without a minder.

"They have told me not to go out, not to visit friends. If I want to see my parents or buy food, I can only go in their car," she said. "I don't even talk to my neighbours because I don't want to get them into trouble."

During a prison visit on Sunday, Liu Xiaobo asked her to collect the prize at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on 10 December. But she was doubtful she would get as far as the airport.

"I can't even get out of my home, how could I go out of the country?"

The Nobel prize committee said they hoped one of the couple would attend the ceremony, but it would go ahead without the winner as it did for Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former Polish president Lech Walesa.

The Chinese government today maintained its attack on the Nobel decision and its supporters. "If some people try to change China's political system in this way, and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is obviously making a mistake," the foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told the Associated Press. "This is not only disrespect for China's judicial system, but also puts a big question mark on their true intentions." (guardian.co.uk)

the big lie

"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which the propaganda messages are transmitted. That work is important but it is clear that information dissemination strategies become propaganda strategies only when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these messages is a necessary prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread. To learn more about mind control and techniques for generating propaganda click here.

Camp Hope

"hip hip hooray"

Chilean rescuers moving at a rapid pace pressed ahead with the operation to free 33 men trapped half a mile below the earth's surface for more than two months.

Rescuers freed the 27th miner as family members and hundreds of international media held vigil. The pace of the rescues quickened throughout the day, with some men rising to safety within 30 minutes of each other.

The 26th miner rescued, Claudio Acuña, 34, has worked in mining about 10 years. According to CNN, he's married, has a daughter and is the youngest of eight brothers.

"We have lived a magical night, a night we will remember throughout our lives, a night in which life defeated death," declared Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, who welcomed the miners as they emerged from the rescue pod one at a time. (latimes)

The Roundtable

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and thinktank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. Founded in 1921 and headquartered at 58 East 68th Street in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C., the CFR is considered to be the nation's "most influential foreign-policy think tank."

Today it has about 5,000 members, which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures.

The Council has been the subject of debate, as shown in the 1969 film The Capitalist Conspiracy by G. Edward Griffin, the 2006 film by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism and a 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie. (read more)
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The Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.

In July 1972, Rockefeller called his first meeting, which was held at Rockefeller's Pocantico compound in New York's Hudson Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of finance and industry.

Senator Barry Goldwater wrote in his book With No Apologies: "In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future." (read more)
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Chatham House, formally known as The Royal Institute of International Affairs, is a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in London whose mission is to analyse and promote the understanding of major international issues and current affairs.

Chatham House was named the top non-US think tank by Foreign Policy magazine. Chatham House was also listed as one of the top "scholars" for being among a handful of stars of the think tank world who are regularly relied upon to set agendas and craft new initiatives.

Although it has been alleged that Chatham House reflects a pro-establishment view of the world (due to donations from large corporations, governments and other organisations), Chatham House is nevertheless membership-based and anyone may join. It has a range of different types of membership including Major Corporate, Corporate, Academic, Individual and Under 35.

Chatham House is the origin of the confidentiality rule known as the Chatham House Rule, which provides that members attending a seminar may discuss the results of the seminar in the outside world, but may not discuss who attended or identify what a specific individual said. The Chatham House Rule evolved to facilitate frank and honest discussion on controversial or unpopular issues by speakers who may not have otherwise had the appropriate forum to speak freely. However, most Chatham House meetings are held 'on the record', and not under the Chatham House Rule.

Chatham House research is structured around three areas: Energy, Environment and Resource Governance; International Economics; and Regional and Security Studies. The full range of Programmes includes: Africa; the Americas; Asia; Energy, Environment and Development; Europe; Global Health Security; International Economics; International Law; International Security; Middle East and North Africa; and Russia and Eurasia. (read more)
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The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It was founded in April 1968 and raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. The club states that its mission is "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public." Since 1 July 2008, the organization has its headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland.

The Club of Rome was founded in April 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist. It was formed when a small international group of people from the fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy, and industry, met at a villa in Rome, Italy, hence the name.

Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch and Alexander Christakis were responsible for conceptualizing the original prospectus of the Club of Rome titled "The Predicament of Mankind." This prospectus was founded on a humanistic architecture and the participation of stakeholders in democratic dialogue. When the Club of Rome Executive Committee in the Summer of 1970 opted for a mechanistic and elitist methodology for an extrapolated future, they resigned from their positions.

The Club of Rome raised considerable public attention with its report Limits to Growth, which has sold 12 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best-selling environmental book in world history. Published in 1972 and presented for the first time at the International Students' Committee (ISC) annual Management Symposium in St. Gallen, Switzerland, it predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil. The 1973 oil crisis increased public concern about this problem. However, even before Limits to Growth was published, Eduard Pestel and Mihajlo Mesarovic of Case Western Reserve University had begun work on a far more elaborate model (it distinguished ten world regions and involved 200,000 equations compared with 1000 in the Meadows model). The research had the full support of the Club and the final publication, Mankind at the Turning Point was accepted as the official Second Report to the Club of Rome in 1974. In addition to providing a more refined regional breakdown, Pestel and Mesarovic had succeeded in integrating social as well as technical data. The Second Report revised the predictions of the original Limits to Growth and gave a more optimistic prognosis for the future of the environment, noting that many of the factors were within human control and therefore that environmental and economic catastrophe were preventable or avoidable, hence the title.

In 1993, the Club published The First Global Revolution. According to this book, divided nations require common enemies to unite them, "either a real one or else one invented for the purpose." Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified." "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself." (read more)
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The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are people of influence in the fields of politics, banking, business, the military and media. Each conference is closed to the public.

Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the Bilderberg group is frequently accused of political conspiracies. This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the ideological spectrum, even if they disagree on what the group wants to do. Left-wingers accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose capitalist domination, while right-wingers accuse the group of conspiring to impose a "New World Order" in the form of a socialist one-world government.

Proponents of these conspiracy theories in the United States include individuals and groups such as the John Birch Society, political activist Phyllis Schlafly, writer Jim Tucker, political activist Lyndon LaRouche, radio host Alex Jones, and politician Jesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009 episode of his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. Other proponents include Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, British writer David Icke, and former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Denis Healey, a Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, has said:

To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing. (read more)
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The United Nations Organization (UNO) or simply United Nations (UN)is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.

The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.

Since its creation, there has been controversy and criticism of the UN organization. In the United States, an early opponent of the UN was the John Birch Society, which began a "get US out of the UN" campaign in 1959, charging that the UN's aim was to establish a One World Government.

The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the United Nations can only make 'recommendations' to member governments, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member governments have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25. The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The Security Council is made up of 15 member states, consisting of 5 permanent members–China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States–and 10 non-permanent members, currently Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, and Uganda. The five permanent members hold veto power over substantive but not procedural resolutions allowing a permanent member to block adoption but not to block the debate of a resolution unacceptable to it. (read more)

sketchbook

The Sketchbook Project

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