Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Stephen Downing began his twenty-year police career in a squad car and finished as a deputy chief of police. As Commander of the Bureau of Special Investigations at one point, the Administrative Narcotics Division was one of the divisions within his scope of authority. His vast experience in law enforcement has led him to the conclusion that the War on Drugs can never be worth the human and fiscal costs.

Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies. Those policies have failed, and continue to fail, to effectively address the problems of drug abuse, especially the problems of juvenile drug use, the problems of addiction, and the problems of crime caused by the existence of a criminal black market in drugs.

Although those who speak publicly for LEAP are people from the law enforcement and criminal justice communities, a large number of our supporting members do not have such experience. You don't have to have law enforcement experience to join us.

By continuing to fight the so-called "War on Drugs", the US government has worsened these problems of society instead of alleviating them. A system of regulation and control of these substances (by the government, replacing the current system of control by the black market) would be a less harmful, less costly, more ethical and more effective public policy.

Please consider joining us and helping us to achieve our goals: 1) to educate the public, the media and policy makers about the failure of current policies, and 2) to restore the public's respect for police, which respect has been greatly diminished by law enforcement's involvement in enforcing drug prohibition. (read more)

Gregory Isaacs - Hush Darling

A Red Rose, with my love, for Gregory

The Art Of Healing

The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole

Mother Seacole was a healer at the time of the Crimean war, she has little in the way of modern medicine, what she had were:

An understanding and insistence upon Hygiene and cleanliness.

A desire to give comfort, warmth and feelings of home

Empathy and an open loving heart

Energies for all, equally, freely given

A basic understanding of herbs and natural medicines

His Arms Wide

"Darmok on the ocean.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

The beast at Tanagra.

Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

Kiteo, his eyes closed.

Temba, his arms wide/open.

Temba, at rest.

Mirab, with sails unfurled.

Shaka, when the walls fell.

Sokath, his eyes uncovered/opened.

The river Temarc in winter.

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.

Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani.

Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya.

Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha.

Lungha, her sky gray.

Uzani, his army with fists open.

Uzani, his army with fists closed."

Public Campaign

Public Campaign is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics. Public Campaign is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system. Together we are building a network of national and state-based efforts to create a powerful national force for federal and state campaign reform. (read more)

Church Of All Worlds

The Church of All Worlds (CAW) is a neopagan religious group whose stated mission is to evolve a network of information, mythology, and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaia and reuniting her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and evolving consciousness.

The key founder of CAW is Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, who serves the Church as "Primate", later along with his wife, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, designated High Priestess. CAW was formed in 1962, evolving from a group of friends and lovers who were in part inspired by a fictional religion of the same name in the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; the church's mythology includes science fiction to this day. The headquarters are presently in Cotati, California.

CAW's members, called Waterkin, espouse pantheism, but the Church is not a belief-based religion. Members experience Divinity and honor these experiences while also respecting the views of others. They recognize "Gaea," the Earth Mother Goddess and the Father God, as well as the realm of Faeries and the deities of many other pantheons. Many of their ritual celebrations are centered on the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. (read more)

The known universe

Benoît B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American citizenship.

Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public.

Mandelbrot spent most of his career at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and was appointed as an IBM Fellow. He later became Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University. Mandelbrot also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

No Mind

A Samurai’s Creed
Anonymous, Circa 1300


I have no parents;

I make the heaven and earth my mother and father.

I have no home;

I make awareness my dwelling.

I have no life and death;

I make the tides of breathing my life and death.

I have no divine power;

I make honesty my divine power.

I have no means;

I make understanding my means.

I have no magic secrets;

I make character my magic secret.

I have no body;

I make endurance my body.

I have no eyes;

I make the flash of lightning my eyes.

I have no ears;

I make sensibility my ears.

I have no limbs;

I make promptness my limbs.

I have no strategy;

I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy

I have no designs;

I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design.

I have no miracles;

I make right action my miracle.

I have no principles;

I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.

I have no tactics;

I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.

I have no talents;

I make ready wit my talent.

I have no friends;

I make my mind my friend.

I have no enemy;

I make carelessness my enemy.

I have no armor;

I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.

I have no castle;

I make immovable mind my castle.

I have no sword;

I make absence of self my sword.

.....

Refusal

Beloved,

In what other lands or lives

Have I known your lips

Your hands

Your laughter brave

Irreverent.

Those sweet excesses 

That I do adore.

What surety is there

That we will meet again, 

On other worlds some

Future time undated.

I defy my body's haste.

Without the promise

Of one more sweet encounter

I will not deign to die.

Maya Angelou

A Rose By Any Other Name

There is much talk of Aliens, UFO’s and we hear of Governments about to disclose the truth about Aliens. As if Governments ever disclose the truth about anything. Stories that there are more and more alien sightings and that we can expect more contact in the future.

I decided to look into this for myself, certainly I had seen pictures of “Greys” heard the abduction stories, but, somehow I had never found these stories credible, however an in depth search was what I decided upon, I followed the trail, Greys, Reptilians stories of the human race being waylaid, subverted and prayed upon by turns frightened, angered me or left me feeling despondent and chilled to the bone.

I could see for myself that much of the “evidence” was just man made craft, wishful thinking or perhaps even a deliberate smoke screen, I could see fraud, could smell a rat and knew things were far from how they appeared on the surface. It was then that a beloved and trusted friend gently caught my fall, he told me to wait, just a little while, and meanwhile take a look at some links.

I followed the links and found the link above, I sat back in amazement, I knew these creatures, not as Aliens, I called them Sprites, and there they were, doing exactly what I see them doing, doing exactly what they do when they help me, I am familiar with these wonderful floating sprites, nymphs or aliens. I KNOW them and work with them!

I first became really aware of them when I moved to London, they make me smile, I went out shopping one day and they were all around, I wondered if other people could see them but carried on with my business, In Sainsbury’s . At the check out a beautiful Asian couple, clearly in love and happy qued behind me, the elderly English lady in front of me was being served and the Asian lady at the till spoke to her in an Asian language, the English lady replied in English, then the check out lady spoke again, in English, this time the English lady spoke in an Asian tongue, I was amazed and turned to the Asian couple to see if they had heard, they nodded and laughed. I laughed too!

Speaking in tongues! Very impressive, I paid for my goods and as I left the beautiful Asian couple called out to me “See you later!” It was a promise. That’s how it felt, a certainty, of seeing them again.

Since then these sprites help me to clear chem.trails to keep the skies over London clear, some how they almost seem to eat energy, they love it, they generally have a happy, bubbly energy, tho’ yesterday when I was playing with the clouds, trying to write S.O.S. they seemed sad, and it rained shortly after.

I can only speak as I find, whatever these are, they exist, they are helpful, do not have a spaceship but do understand energy, and, I believe help to enhance psychic awareness and communications. I know them as Sprites, Fairies or Nymphs, a rose by any other name……………..

What the Elites Fear the Most

Claim back your own Divinity

The Language of Love

We welcome with utmost humility 

Mashal Sahir

a brilliant and inspiring Pakistani poet.


Her principal asset is knowledge combined with compassion , something extremely rare in Pakistan.


The real word to describe her does not exist in Urdu but a Farsi word "Dilsoz" describes her.


She possesses both a mind which can analyse and a heart that  feels so she sees both the tragedy and the comedy that Albert Camus described life as .

Her subject matter are the weak , the oppressed , the nameless ! Not Pakistans shameless elite both civil and military that only deserves to be shot without a trial !


Her book is available in market :--


Love The Un Spoken Language A Poetic Love Story
By: Mashal Sahir
ISBN: 9698238166
Publisher: Pak Book Empire
Price: PAK. Rs 250 = PAK Rs. 250
You Save : PAK Rs. 0 .
Special Price: PAK Rs. 250


SAEED BOOK BANK
F-7 MARKAZ, JINNAH SUPER, ISLAMABAD. PAKISTAN.
PH # 92-51-2651656-8(3Lines), FAX # 92-51-2651660
Email: info@saeedbookbank.com, sales@saeedbookbank.com
Website: http://www.saeedbookbank.com








Reproduced below is a book review about her book of poems written by Mr Intizar Hussain in Daily DAWN:--

Agha H Amin-


books-and-authors Column: The language of love By Intizar Husain
Sunday, 10 Jan, 2010 | 09:48 AM PST |

This book of love poetry ends with the realisation that:

Love can never be expressed in words
It can only be felt, for love truly is an unspoken
language

But this truth only dawns on the poet or the lover after a long discussion about love. In fact from time immemorial poets and lovers have been talking much about love as they experienced it. And each time they realise in the end that the experience has remained unspoken.

But let me first say a few words about the writer of these poems. She is a 17-year-old girl named Mashal Sahir whose collection of poems has been published under the title Love, the Unspoken Language. But as we go through these poems we are wonderstruck. These love poems give the impression that the author of these lines is a seasoned person, who has seen much of life and is now in a position to probe the depth of the emotion of love which holds a central place in the scheme of human emotions.

But this is nothing to be wondered at. The factors of age and experience of life are not very relevant in this respect. You may wonder who else but a lover is competent enough to talk wisely about this phenomenon of love. But lovers have rarely been seen to gain the status of poets competent enough to produce genuine love poetry. Poets are the ones who have taken upon themselves to unravel this mysterious phenomenon of human life.

As is evident from these poems, Mashal is really a poet; emotionally capable for delving deep in the phenomenon of man-woman relationships and feeling intensely. She is possessed with a poetic imagination which helps her to identify with the souls entangled in the maze of such emotions.

The poems have been conceived in a way that the soul in love undergoes a number of emotional stages, which taken together go to make a coherent love story. The first is the stage when the two souls coming nearer to one another feel intensely and develop a love relationship. But soon comes the stage when the girl develops a fear, the fear of losing him:

The reality that I will have to let go of you someday is my greatest fear Soon comes the day when she feels:

Distances are growing
between us
I don’t know what to do.


Also comes the moment she was apprehensive of:


I wish it didn’t have to end this way
I wish breaking the heart was a crime
Let’s not waste these precious moments we are left with;
after all this is the last time

It is transference from the bliss of intimacy to the pangs of separation. It is now she realises that ‘love knows not its depth till the hour of separation.’

What has been defined as hijr in Persian and Urdu poetry and birha in Hindi songs is the most painful period in the process of love. But at the same time it is the most fruitful season in the ever-changing seasons of love. It is during this season that the birhan finds herself in an acutely pathetic situation. But at the same time, while under the sway of the ebb and flow of emotions, she discovers in herself the depths and intricacies of the mysterious emotion called love.

In the present collection too this emotion finds a more effective expression in poems devoted to the depiction of separation. The poor soul suffering from the pangs of separation is being tossed among the cross-currents of emotions. While in a fit of anger she feels ‘I wish I did not love you.’

Lost Generation

The Empathic Civilisation

The Story of Your Enslavement

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.