MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
April 6, 2004
Turning Tide of History #15: Balancing Awareness With Enlightened Action
Hello everyone
Exceptionally I'll introduce this compilation with the following "Comment and question" I received on April 2 from Chuck Wilkerson cklwilkerson@earthlink.net>:
Jean, I just finished reading Michael Hasty's article: Paranoid Shift, (from Veracity Series #3: Shedding More Light on Current 3D Reality). I found it to be fascinating, alarming but exceedingly important. It confirms for me much of my own growing paranoia, which got initially stimulated by David Icke's works, then put away as reactionary and implausible. Yet over the last two years or so I have come to understand more and more from the various on-line sources, including in large part the Earth Rainbow Network, for which I continue to be very grateful. Hasty's piece put a cap on it all and suddenly I am aware of one of the reasons I am feeling so ill-at-ease and dissatisfied with life in general. It's not what I'm experiencing so much as what I've been told I'm experiencing and what to believe and to "trust," etc. It's all a rash of lies and so on. It's time for action and continued education.
So, a question. Michael made reference in his article to the possibility of non-violent resistance movements. I know he meant that as occurring on a spontaneous basis, where ever such might occur. What I wonder is whether there are sites which are engaging in like-minded conversations along these lines and whether Michael is accessible via e-mail. I would well understand if he isn't or chooses not to be, but his writing has been crucial in providing important insights to me and a growing impetus to get active in continuing my own education. If you have any leads I could check out I would appreciate your sharing them. Again, Jean, thank you for all that you do. Sincerely, Chuck Wilkerson
I believe this letter - which begs everyone's attention - perfectly sets the tone for this compilation. I especially recommend to Chuck and anyone similarly concerned to look carefully at the "Worthy of Your Attention" section below for suggestions as to what one may actually do (beyond mere "conversation") to help precipitate a new era on Earth, beginning with Freedom Force International.
Love in Action is the Way to go...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
Free subscription to such compilations by sending a blank email to earthrainbownetwork-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
This compilation is archived at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/TurningTide15.htm
"REFUSING ORDERS: Is the US military on the verge of mutiny? As desertion rates soar, pilots and other specialists are refusing to reenlist and American GIs are applying for conscientious objector status. Meanwhile, the reservists doing most of the heavy lifting — and dying — in Iraq are on the brink of mutiny. The big difference from my own "resignation" and desertion from the reserves during the Vietnam aggression is that this time families are supporting their sons and daughters‚ refusal to kill Iraqi people "for oil"."
- "William Thomas" rwt@telus.net> - Taken from a summary of subjects he will cover in his new Convergence e-newsletter. To subscribe ($30/year), email him directly. Other topics he will cover include trends of peace and personal transformation, climate change, chemtrails, 911, our lost human history, globalization, the terror wars, oil depletion, vitamins restrictions - and related issues.
Worthy of Your Attention
Freedom Force International
http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/
Recommended by Terri Zink terri@careercrafting.com> who wrote : "I wanted you to know about a great new organization being formed. It could create quite a powerful, organized force for freedom in the world. Check it out! You might want to start a Chapter in your area." THIS IS INDEED ABSOLUTELY WORTHY OF OUR ATTENTION. HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM THEIR SITE: "Freedom Force International, is a network of men and women from all parts of the world who are concerned over loss of personal liberty and expansion of government power. They are not mere complainers. They have a plan to do something about it. They also share a common belief in The Creed of Freedom, which is a statement of principles that guide them in their mission to build a better world.Totalitarianism is on the rise everywhere because advocates of big government have taken leadership control of the power centers within every society. Power centers are organizations and social groupings – such as political parties, labor unions, church groups, media centers, and professional societies – that hold political power based on their claim to represent their members and on their ability to lead public opinion. It has taken many years for them to achieve this dominance over society, but they have succeeded. It does no good to complain or to theorize about what should be done. As long as advocates of big government hold the power, nothing will change.The solution is simple. It is to take back control of the power centers of society, one-by-one, just the way they were captured in the first place, and put them into the hands of people who have no personal agendas except to defend freedom. This will unleash the vast human potential for prosperity and happiness that can be realized only in the absence of government oppression. However, to reach that goal, it will be necessary for those who cherish freedom to do more than complain and far more than just casting a vote every few years. They must reach for power. That is the reason for the motto of Freedom Force: Imponentes defendere libertatem non possunt, which is Latin for “Those without power cannot defend freedom.” CLIP -- MAKE SURE TO CHECK
There is also an inspiring video presentation where the founder Mr. Griffin presents this idea and some background information. If you want to order the video go to: http://www.realityzone.com/freedom.html
Freecycle - Changing the world one gift at a time.
http://www.freecycle.org/
Number of cities freecycling: 321 - Number of people freecycling: 46,001
The worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is run by a local volunteer moderator (them's good people). Membership is free. How does Freecycling work? One rule: everything posted must be free. Whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door to be given away, it can be posted on the network. Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself? Respond to the posting directly and you just might get it. After that it is up to the giver to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure. Non-profit organizations also benefit from the Freecycle Network. Post the item or items you want to give away and a local organization can help you get it to someone in need.
TimeBucks
http://www.timebucks.org/
TimeBucks is made up of people trading non-commercial services in communities all over the United States and Canada. For example, somebody might spend an hour teaching guitar lessons. Later, they could take the hour they 'earned' and spend it getting some help in their garden. You get the idea.
The Three Top Sins of the Universe (by Mark Elsis)
http://www.starvation.net/
(...) On Tuesday September 11, 2001, another one of the three top sins of the universe occurred. Our species, Homo sapiens, blatantly caused approximately 578 species of the web of life to go extinct. This extinction rate equals one species of life going extinct every 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Millions of people are at work legally day and night, quickly destroying the richest place there is for life on Earth, the Rainforests. For every legal worker there are perhaps as many as 5 illegal workers destroying the Rainforests. Our species reckless expansion into the virgin Rainforests are causing countless atrocities to all life sustaining ecosystems. The virgin Rainforests are home to 61.8% of all the biological diversity on Earth. In this, the richest environment for life, we are destroying a land area which is equivalent to the size of the city of Tokyo Japan ( 240 square miles ) every day. This equals 6417 acres per hour, 107 acres per minute or 1.78 acres per second. Someday very soon we will pay the ultimate price for this sin. CLIP
FORESTS ALERT: Demand the "Filthy Three" Act Against Climate Change
Encourage the U.S., Russia and Australia to Lead
By Forests.org, gbarry@forests.org, April 3, 2004
Over past months there have been several studies that further irrefutably show that the Earth's climate is undergoing rapid and chaotic change as a result of human activities. CO2 levels are rising to such dangerous heights that a quarter of land species are expected to go extinct, the Great Barrier Reef and other important ecosystems are dying, changing ocean currents may trigger a mini ice age in Europe, and the U.S. military expects greater armed conflict caused by climate change. As the Earth burns, leaders of major industrialized countries dither. In particular, the United States, Russia and Australia have shamefully refused to support the Kyoto Treaty - the only international effort to address the issue. Further, these countries have refused to take other measures such as introducing a carbon tax. Taxing carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions would provide substantial sums to undo the damage, compensate those most impacted, and allow for greater investments in renewable energy and ending deforestation. The Lincoln Plan at http://www.climateark.org/lincoln_plan/ is an example of such an approach. Please take a moment to encourage the "Filthy Three" - Bush, Putin and Howard - to live up to their responsibility to protect the Earth's climate.
TAKE ACTION at http://forests.org/action/climate/ -- Please forward widely!
Forwarded by Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>
Suggested Meditation/Prayer format
http://rhinoed.com/Suggested%20Meditation.htm
Check also the whole http://www.rhinoed.com/ -- Interesting site created by Dana Dudley dana@rhinoed.com> a long-time ERN subscriber.
CONTENTS
1. Important Debate in U.S. Senate
2. Relating as a voyeur to 'No Honest Americans' by John Kaminski
3. World Financial System May Blow This Week
4. Various news and comments compiled by Dick Eastman
5. Wherever Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
6. Fossil-Fuel Dependency - Do Oil Reserves Foretell Bleak Future?
7. The Journey
8. A NESARA supporter
9. It's Tough Leading A Spiritual Life
See also:
Annan Unveils Blueprint to Reunify Cyprus (March 31)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=3&u=/ap/20040401/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_cyprus_2
FUERIGEN, Switzerland - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented his blueprint for the reunification of Cyprus Wednesday and set an April 24 date for islanders to vote on the plan, saying "the time for decision and action has arrived." Turkey's government quickly endorsed the proposal, but the Greek side was more cautious. Annan's plan is a last-ditch attempt to reunify the Mediterranean island before it joins the European Union on May 1. Turkey, which wants to join the European Union itself, had hoped an agreement on Cyprus would help its cause. "The hour is late but the cause is urgent," Annan told the parties, gathered within minutes of the midnight deadline for completing four-way talks at the Swiss mountaintop resort of Buergenstock. Cyprus has been split into the Greek Cypriot-controlled south and the occupied north since Turkey invaded in 1974 in the wake of a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece. The breakaway state in the north is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there. (...) Annan's most difficult task will be convincing the Greek Cypriot majority to vote for the plan. Greek Cypriots know that — whatever the outcome of the vote — they will join the European Union on May 1 and get all the benefits that entails. Their standard of living is five times that of the Turkish Cypriots, and reunification would require them to pour money into the impoverished north. Yet the Greek Cypriots have deep emotional reasons for wanting to see their island reunited. Some 180,000 people are waiting for the chance to return to their homes in the north. Annan will have to wait to see whether that will be enough to sway the referendum.
Cyprus peace plan set for vote (April 1)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3588763.stm
The divided communities in Cyprus are to decide on the country's future after their leaders failed to agree on a UN plan to end the 30-year split. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presented his revised plan after talks in Switzerland with Greek, Turkish and Cypriot representatives. The UN plan will be put to both sides in referendums on 24 April. If either side says no, EU membership will in effect apply only to the Greek part when Cyprus joins on 1 May. "Unfortunately it was not possible to reach an agreed settlement," said Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. "It is now up to the people of Cyprus to reach a decision and I hope they will do this with clear thought and vision."
Q&A: Cyprus Peace Process
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2839603.stm
All the latest developments on Cyprus
http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=World&cat=Cyprus
US Cities In Revolt Over Patriot Act
http://www.gvnr.com/83/1.htm
Israeli Reservists Refuse Service In West Bank & Gaza
http://www.gvnr.com/83/2.htm
Landmine Casualties Steadily Decreasing
http://www.gvnr.com/83/3.htm
The US is creating its own Iraqi Gaza (April 2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1184334,00.html
THE EVANGELICAL ROOTS OF AMERICAN UNILATERALISM: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT'S INFLUENCE AND HOW TO COUNTER IT
http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004evangelical.html
That the administration of George W. Bush is pursuing a unilateralist foreign policy on issues ranging from the Iraq War to global warming to the International Criminal Court is obvious to observers at home and abroad. Also clear is the fact that the Bush policy, at least in its broad outlines, is very much in keeping with the preferences of the Christian right. President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, does not hesitate to use a moralistic, implicitly religious language in defense of his policies. What, exactly, is the relationship between the Christian right and the unilateralist foreign policy of the present administration? CLIP
IMPLICATIONS OF THE SEVENTH MAJLIS ELECTIONS IN IRAN
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0403iran.html
On February 20 the Iran elected its seventh Majlis (parliament) in an election that has been widely criticized by many Iranian and international observers for the heavy-handed manner in which the regime had interfered in the electoral process. (...) Many Iranian voters felt resigned to a conservative victory. As a result, relatively few voters actually turned out to participate in the Majlis elections. This widespread voter apathy was not just an admission of an unfair election, but rather a way for the electorate to vote "no confidence" in the system. The effective non-participation of much of the electorate is in fact the only way many voters can convey to the clerical regime that things must change. Voters opted not to legitimize a contest that had little bearing on their own affairs, and quite honestly for many, it matters little who sits in the Majlis, conservative or moderate. By withholding their vote, they have sent a message to the conservatives that this is not simply business as usual. In the course of this latest parliamentary election, Iran has moved from being a semi-democracy--the envy of several of its neighbors--to being even closer identified as a regime ruled by an increasingly diminishing minority out of step with the people. CLIP
Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404A.html
Since the US led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared. According to the US media, this lucrative contraband is protected by Osama, the Taliban, not to mention, of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the "international community". The heroin business is said to be "filling the coffers of the Taliban". In the words of the US State Department: "Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups... [C]utting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism," (Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing, 1 April 2004) (...) Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests. One of the "hidden" objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes. Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000. In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing to 3400 tons in 2002 under the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai. (...) The revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade are sizeable. The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion. (...) The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics. (...) US foreign policy supports the workings of a thriving criminal economy in which the demarcation between organized capital and organized crime has become increasingly blurred. The heroin business is not "filling the coffers of the Taliban" as claimed by US government and the international community: quite the opposite! The proceeds of this illegal trade are the source of wealth formation, largely reaped by powerful business/criminal interests within the Western countries. These interests are sustained by US foreign policy. Decision-making in the US State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon is instrumental in supporting this highly profitable multibillion dollar trade, third in commodity value after oil and the arms trade. The Afghan drug economy is "protected". The heroin trade was part of the war agenda. What this war has achieved is to restore a compliant narco-State, headed by a US appointed puppet. The powerful financial interests behind narcotics are supported by the militarisation of the world's major drug triangles (and transshipment routes), including the Golden Crescent and the Andean region of South America (under the so-called Andean Initiative).
THE CHILD SCRAMBLER
http://www.themodernreligion.com/health/cell-phone.html
THESE are the first images that show the shocking effect that using a mobile phone has on a child's brain. Scientists have discovered that a call lasting just two minutes can alter the natural electrical activity of a child's brain for up to an hour afterwards. And they also found for the first time how radio waves from mobile phones penetrate deep into the brain and not just around the ear. The study by Spanish scientists has prompted leading medical experts to question whether it is safe for children to use mobile phones at all. Doctors fear that disturbed brain activity in children could lead to psychiatric and behavioural problems or impair learning ability. (...) The results of the study by the Spanish Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute in Marbella coincide with a new survey that shows 87 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds own mobile phones and 40 per cent of them spend 15 minutes or more talking each day on them. And disturbingly, 70 per cent said they would not change the use of their phone even if advised to by the Government. (MORE RELATED MATERIAL AT http://www.google.ca/search?q=THESE+are+the+first+images+that+show+the+shocking+effect+that+using+a+mobile+phone+has+on+a+child%27s+brain.&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
The original study is at http://www.acnem.org/journal/20-1_april_2001/mobile_phone_use.htm
1.
Date: 4 Apr 2004
Subject: Important Debate in U.S. Senate
From: Ariel Ky arielky@lmi.net>
Jean,
Watch what is happening in the U.S. Senate next week over the welfare/personal responsibility bill, H.R. 4, that the Republicans want to pass. Since Republicans have a majority in the Senate, making it virtually impossible for Democrats to pass any legislation, Democrats have attached several amendments to this bill, hoping to salvage some good out of legislation that will continue to make life more difficult for those struggling the most. Among these amendments are an increase in the minimum wage to $7.00 an hour and an extension of unemployment benefits.
Actually, I am heartened by this kind of impasse - it shows that Democrats are differentiated from Republicans and that they are still fighting for the interests of their constituents and are not totally corrupted or cowering before the Republican juggernaut.
Perhaps Senator Kerry will have recovered sufficiently from surgery on his shoulder to make the vote on Wednesday - his vote carries a great deal of weight, especially since the prospects of his becoming our next president have increased greatly this week with the fallout Bush is contending with as more and more voices join in the chorus about having lied about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for waging war in Iraq.
I believe the mass demonstrations for peace globally on the Spring Equinox and the stance of the newly elected president of Spain have bolstered the courage of other leaders in the world to stop cooperating with the Bush regime.
If only Democrats in our Congress were better strategists and got more creative about putting forward a vision of what we want for our country. If only Americans would realize that our car culture and the lengths we are willing to go to preserve it (at the expense of people in the rest of the world) has unbalanced our existence on earth which grows ever more tenuous.
My belief is that Americans must change directions or we will lead the world into an ecodisaster that will wipe most of humanity off the face of the planet. Unless we use our great resources to change our way of life and values to become leaders creating a paradigm shift away from materialism to a golden era of cooperation, love, harmony and balance with all beings, I believe we will face cataclysmic change.
The United States has weathered economic downturns before because of the strength of entrepeneurs, of individual enterprise and hard work, not because of large multinational corporations. In the short two hundred years or so of the life of this country, we have been the innovators. Immigrants came from all over the world to realize their dreams here. The most courageous, the sturdiest, most resourceful, resilient souls contributed to building this country.
While the unscrupled have built paper palaces of unimagined wealth, average Americans, by dint of their labor and by pursuing their dreams, have been the true bulwark of this country. And still are, even though appearances may be deceiving. When I think of the American gestalt, it isn't just about cars and homes, comfort, security and appearances -- yes, that's largely true, but it's underlaid by true grit, by a rich quilt of people from many lands and cultures, who despite their differences have in common the ability to dream, the desire to prosper and flourish, and the willingness to take action to realize their dreams.
Somehow we must come together in what we do have in common to create a larger dream than the new world order and take action to realize it.
Ariel
2.
MY GOOD FRIEND BOUDEWIJN'S CONCERN (below) ABOUT THE RISK OF COMPLACENT VOYEURISM THROUGH BEING OVEREXPOSED TO SO MANY HARD-TO-FACE 3-D REALITY CHECKS MIRRORS MINE AND DESERVE OUR COLLECTIVE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. YET IF WE APPROACH THROUGH THE EYES OF THE LOVE-LIGHT-LAUGHTER-DRIVEN SOUL THAT ANIMATES OUR BODY THE GRAND - AND OFTEN TERRIBLY TRAGIC - DRAMAS OF THIS CRITICAL TIME PERIOD IN OUR GLOBAL JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE (WHICH IS NOW!) WE MAY BE ABLE TO SEE THROUGH THE LAYERS OF EGO-INDUCED, IGNORANCE-WARPED GLOBAL EVENTS THE WORKING OF PERFECT DIVINE ORDER DESIGNED TO GIVE US ALL PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES TO WAKE UP AND LOVE AND *BE* ALL THE WE ARE. AND IF YOU FEEL LIKE ACTUALLY GETTING INVOLVED INTO SOMETHING POSITIVE, GIVE A GOOD LOOK AT THE "WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION" SECTION ABOVE... OR JUTS FOLLOW YOUR INTUITIVE DRIVE!
From: "Boudewijn Wegerif" wegerif@telia.com>
Subject: WHAT MATTERS-168: Relating as a voyeur to 'No Honest Americans' by John Kaminski
Date: 2 Apr 2004
WHAT MATTERS- #168 --April 3, 2004
Relating as a Voyeur to
- No Honest Americans, by John Kaminski
- The Barbaric Assassination of Sheik Yassin
- Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss speaks out against the Zionists
- The Hidden Agenda of Richard Clarke
---
Dear list members,
Below, I reproduce John Kaminski's powerfully written statement that there are (by title of his article), 'No Honest Americans - and, "U.S. citizens cheer their criminal nation savaging the whole world."
I take this in. "America is a criminal state, flouting international law and laughing about it. Our president makes jokes about the lies he told to enrich his crony corporate accomplices with the scam in Iraq. He makes jokes about the lies he told that cost the lives of hundreds of American service people, not to mention tens of thousands of innocent civilians abroad..."
I take it in, but superficially.
As I read, I note how the mouse in my right hand is reaching towards, and the index finger is ready to click on to the next item in the Outlook Express inbox.
This reaction is not true to the true me, which knows that Kaminski's prophetic call to conscience requires that I get up away from the laptop, to pause and reflect at the prayer table. I do not make the move. Instead, I go on to search for more words, more knowledge.
Through the internet, I have become a voyeur - an addict to knowledge for its own sake. So I hasten to relate what Kaminski has written to the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. By Google search, I look for the most meaningful write-up of the assassination, to bring home the horror of the murder.
I am drawn to 'Who Won World War II' by Ran HaCohen at http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen
My eyes go over the words. I learn again (I have read it so often before) how it is difficult to find a single article in the Geneva Convention that has not been breached by Israel as an occupying force.
The assassination of Sheik Yassin reflects a new level of barbarism. I pick out the following from Ran HaCohen's article as particularly noteworthy:
"Killing a person without a trial - not a person carrying a bomb, not an armed person in combat - is terrorism, is barbarism. When those who claim to fight off terrorism and barbarism become barbarian terrorists themselves, they lose their own claim to justice. . . Assassinations are clearly prohibited by Article 23b of the Hague Regulations, 1907 - http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE04/_edn1
"Remember that Hamas is not just a terror organisation, as the US and Israel want us to think, neither is it just a political party; Hamas runs an entire network of schools, clinics and social welfare, in a society impoverished to the point of starvation by decades of exploitation and years of strangulation."
"The message is: Israel has no moral nor legal boundaries whatsoever. Israel can target elderly and invalids, political leaders and religious clerics. If we can kill Yassin, says Jerusalem, we can kill everyone; No judge, no morality, no convention and no law can stop our missiles."
"Following the assassination, Israeli military echelons quoted in Ha'aretz (23.3.04) called it 'a constitutive event', one that would make History. Indeed. Unless a global reaction against this barbarism emerges - not an Al-Qaeda type of reaction, which shares this very barbarism, but something like the recent Spanish example; unless we renew the struggle for the legacy of the Allies who won World War II, and get rid of all those responsible for the barbarisation of the human kind, Israel's assassination of Sheik Yassin may enter history as the moment in which Hitler's concept of war for annihilation, of contempt for the basic convictions and conventions of humanity, celebrated its triumph, shared and imposed by the axis of Sharon, Bush and Bin Laden."
-- In other articles from the inbox, I learn how there are Jews speaking out in anguish against the barbarous acts of the Israeli Zionists, and publicly disassociating themselves from them.
"Zionism and the State of Israel have no right to represent Judaism and/or the Jewish people," said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta at the memorial service in commemoration of Sheikh Yassin, hosted by the Arab Muslim American Federation in New York.
"Zionism and the State of Israel have no right to speak in the name of the Jewish people. The name Israel in reference to Zionism and their State is false, it has been usurped from the Jewish people. To subjugate and oppress a people, in this case the Palestinian people, to steal their land, their homes, olive orchards etc, is totally against G-d and the laws of His Torah. These crimes can only bring dire results.
"True Jewry is deeply anguished by the existence of Zionism and the State of Israel and are constantly pained and humiliated by their actions."
Read more at http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/NYC032304.cfm
-- One looks for other signs of hope.
From all sides, there is praise for Richard Clarke's best-selling book, 'Against All Enemies'. I am encouraged by how Clarke's story of Bush's abuse of the presidency is being kept alive before the public. Then I learn that there is a hidden agenda.
Clarke's effort is part of "the collectivist's strategy of leading their own opposition," writes Edward Griffin (the author of 'The Creature From Jekyll Island') in a review at http://www.freemarketnews.com
By way of background, Griffin points out how the 'money trust' that introduced the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, "created an institution that was offered to the public as a government agency to break the grip of the money trust but which actually consolidated the power of the money trust and expanded it." This, writes Griffin, was a classic example of offering false leadership and leading one's own opposition.
A similar strategy is being followed by Richard Clarke, and was followed by the authors of two other books from the same publisher as 'Against All Enemies" - Simon and Schuster.
In 1987, William Greider's book, "Secrets of the Temple," was offered to the public as a scathing exposé of the Federal Reserve System. "His history was excellent, but his conclusion was fatally flawed," writes Griffin. "After having proven that the Fed was conceived as a weapon of the banking elite against the common man and having shown throughout his book that this is exactly the function it has always served, his conclusion was, not to abolish the Fed or even to make serious changes to it. His 'call to action' was simply to stop worrying about it."
Then, in 2000, the giant publishing house Simon and Schuster published another book in this same category, 'Day of Deceit; The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor', by Robert Stinnett. Here we learn how the Roosevelt Administration secretly plotted to cause Japan to Attack Pearl Harbor as an excuse to bring the United States into World War II. However, what conclusion is drawn? In Griffin's words, "It was that this act was justified because it helped put a stop to Hitler in Europe. In other words, to halt totalitarianism in Europe, it was necessary to adopt totalitarianism in America, and to do so was an act of great statesmanship! Once again, Simon and Schuster provided the American people with a false opinion leader."
And now we have Richard Clarke verifying, as an insider, in 'Against All Enemies', that Bush "disregarded warnings of pending terrorist attacks and, after 9-11, launched an unnecessary invasion of Iraq."
Think about it: there are no surprises here. "The book's true agenda is revealed by the author's solutions," writes Griffin. Clarke "reluctantly accepts totalitarian measures in the United States as necessary for homeland security and indirectly supports the expansion of U.N. power as a desirable goal on the path to world order."
Note, Clarke's book didn't go to press until after Kerry had become the clear frontrunner of the Democratic Party. Kerry is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and, although he might make minor alterations in Iraq, "we can be sure that he would continue to follow the CFR blueprint for world government based on the model of collectivism," writes Griffin.
-- How deeply do the deceptions and lies by which we live/are ruled effect us?
How much does what John Kaminski writes about Americans (and by implication, all those allied to America, like myself) matter to you/me?
If you identify with my voyeurism and are dissatisfied with it, there is hope for you, I believe, and me. It shows that you expect more of yourself/me. Like me perhaps, you have been asking yourself at what point you break off your love affair with your PC/laptop and take more seriously to consciousness-raising silence and prayer, on the one hand, and non-violent activism, on the other - even take more seriously the possibility (indeed likelihood soon) of being imprisoned and disappeared as a dissident against corporate capitalism. You ask yourself about your addiction to internet knowledge, and how it is holding you back from love and truth in action.
Meanwhile, the money masters continue their rule through a 'money trust' that has its beginnings in ancient Babylon, and in the wish in most people to save money as a store of value.
In the last weeks into months I have begun several articles about this. I have promised you a review of The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen Zarlenga, for example, in which Zarlenga presents an outstanding record of the struggle between public and private control of money through history. For some reason that I do not understand, the review has been held on hold. As have other articles: a) about there being a lot more gold stashed in banks around the world than we have been led to believe, and b) about Cecil John Rhodes, who was principally responsible for 'developing' the diamond and gold fields of southern Africa, as part of his imperial vision of a British Empire that would unite the entire Anglo-Saxon race, including America. .
I am also working on a development of the two-tier, post-capitalist economic model (of negative interest credit currencies linked to non-negotiable social merits) that I introduce in the article, For An Ubuntu Economy in South Africa - at http://www.whatmmatters.nu/ubunteco.html
Perhaps this E-letter, and the accompanying article by John Kaminski, has had to be shared with you first.
In friendship,
Boudewijn Wegerif
What Matters Programme
Mossvägen 8, 699 31 Deje, Sweden
Tel:+46-552.689100
http://www.whatmatters.nu
PS - With regard to my health, the effective pain management continues against the cancer wracking my bones. I take 80 mg of morphine, 8 cortisone tablets, 8 paracetamols, and anti-inflationary voltarin daily. I am not sure how much my losing my physical mobility bit by bit is due to the medication and how much to the cancer. I also take a lot of vitamins and anti-oxidants. The mental agility is still there, and so long as this is so, I will continue with what matters.
_________________________
NO HONEST AMERICANS
U.S. citizens cheer their criminal nation savaging the whole world
By John Kaminski - skylax@comcast.net
The presidential election, Bush vs. Kerry, what a joke! Two privileged plutocrats, two psychotic perverts from the same demonic college fraternity, neither ever had to hold a job, each advocating continuing crimes against humanity, even against their own people. And to make matters worse, they no longer count the votes honestly. The computer spits out a predetermined total, and the TV whores tell you to believe it. And just like in the election itself, you have no real choice.
Two spoiled children of privilege, born into incomprehensible wealth, constantly gathering more as they go on their immoral ways, devising ever more evil strategies by which to fleece the slaves of the world, preparing to divide America into armed camps, all the while taking their lead from the evil Israelis, who build walls against humanity and murder whomever they please. The few people who try to point out the injustice are either prohibited from speaking or thrown into jail without trial, or outright murdered. The new American way is the old Israeli way. But Americans embrace it, as they continue their sleepwalking march toward slavery and oblivion. Cheering with empty eyes as they go.
Does it not strike you as odd - assuming you are a thinking, feeling human being not yet too retarded by fluoride, chemtrails, food additives, antidepressants and demonically engineered food that will eventually poison you to death - that there is not a single principled public figure in America who has pointed out that America's rape of Iraq violates every international law and moral precept that has ever been written by the great minds of the past? That the dispersal of uranium all over Central Asia will kill millions? That the clumsy coverup of the inside job of mass murder on 9/11 was the ultimate betrayal of all Americans?
What ARE Americans doing? Cowering in their undefendable homes and waiting for the end?
Does it not strike you as odd that no one speaks out about America's crimes against the world? Against poor people everywhere? Against its own citizens?
Now the real deal is on the table. A New Orleans judge has ruled that the cops can invade your own home without a warrant. That's the end of the Fourth Amendment, a citizen's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the very basis of freedom in America. This is merely the expected verification of the Patriot Act, that Soviet-style law that allows the government to control every aspect of your life. Now, no one is safe from American tyranny. 1984 has finally arrived.
And no one speaks out against it. How dumbed down we have become. Nobody even paid attention to the recent 9/11 conference in San Francisco, which was sparsely attended. Same with the recent peace marches marking the first anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. But that may be because participants were afraid to ask the hard questions, intimidated as they were by a choking climate of mindless flag-waving that refuses to consider the real evidence or challenge the lies that are being told every day by our bought-off media.
The 9/11 critics and those who marched with signs merely nibbled around the edges of the problem, pointing out inconsistencies here and anomalies there. They didn't come out screaming for blood, for retribution, for justice, that America's governmental system is a criminal enterprise that kills innocent people on a daily basis. And as a result, the thugs in power just ignored them and kept telling their same old lies.
There is no evidence Arab hijackers did the dirty deed on 9/11. If there was, don't you think they would have released it, would have trumpeted it to the skies, and said, "Look, here is the proof we were telling the truth." If they had that evidence, you can be sure they would release it. But they haven't released it, which means they don't have it. Forget about all this barking about Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice and what Bush knew and when he might have known it. These are all side issues meant to distract you from the real issue.
The real issue is that Arab hijackers DIDN'T do it, or we would have heard the evidence by now, two and a half years later.
So the real question is not about the 9/11 panel, or who said what to whom. The real question is who did it. And it wasn't Arab hijackers. So who does that leave?
America is a criminal state, flouting international law and laughing about it. Our president makes jokes about the lies he told to enrich his crony corporate accomplices with the scam in Iraq. He makes jokes about the lies he told that cost the lives of hundreds of American service people, not to mention tens of thousands of innocent civilians abroad. He makes jokes about it. And most Americans laugh with him. And wave their flags. And laugh as they break the law.
There is no law in America now. Only tyranny. Only bought-off judges who allow the rich to steal from the poor, and imprison the poor who break no law at all. At the same time they open the borders so hungry immigrants from Third World disaster countries (disasters engineered by oppression from the United States) can stream into the country and lower the standard of living for everyone else. Except the rich patricians who can get away with anything. They are allowed to commit crimes because it's profitable, and they pay off the judges and politicians who allow them to keep doing it.
You should no longer be nursing the delusion that Americans are suddenly going to awaken and rectify the injustices, and America is going to suddenly return to the bastion of peace and freedom it always insisted it was. It's not going to happen. Too much blood, too many toxic substances and greasy lies have passed over the dam, have been vomited all over the floor of public discussion by those who don't tell the truth about anything.
Nobody in the government is telling the truth about anything, and it has been going on for a long time.
Two recent examples have really stuck in my craw. The first was Michel Chossudovsky's story about the three British prisoners released from Guantanamo. Chossudovsky revealed that while we were bombing Afghanistan, the Taliban we were trying to kill were flown out on an American plane with the Pakistani army while gung-ho U.S. gunners continued to kill innocent civilians with their high-tech toys from high in the sky. Rumsfeld, realizing he needed to fill up Guantanamo, had the Pakistanis conduct a roundup of innocent civilians from refugee camps and shipped them to Cuba, where he has supervised the torture and interrogations of people he knew were innocent, like those unlucky British boys, for more than two years.
That makes me want to vomit. What America has become - poisoned and psychotic - simply makes me want to vomit. And there is not a single soul with any power in Washington who will face these issues. That also makes me want to vomit, and makes me very ashamed of my country.
The other story that threw me over the edge happened yesterday when I was researching various chemtrail material and I happened across Mary Sparrowdancer's magnum opus on fluoride, called "The Battle of Darkness and Light" (everyone should read this at http://www.rense.com/general45/bll.htm ). Before she ever got to the really bad part of how the poisonous nuclear waste product called fluoride was put in America's drinking water (can you imagine such a bonehead, suicidal stunt?), she described an episode from the 1980s in which a panel of health experts was commissioned to devise a food chart that would enable Americans to have healthier diets. After they finished their studies and concluded that a healthy diet should be based on plenty of fruits and vegetables, the government bureaucrats shifted all the data and published a document that said healthy diets should be based on heavy consumption of cereals and starches.
The medical results of this prostituted campaign, 20 years later, has resulted in a variety of epidemics: thyroid problems, dental disasters, obesity, and many other maladies that have all reaped trillions in profits for the pharmaceutical industry, which of course is the incestuous first cousin to the petroleum industry. To top it all off, after a long run where gastrointestinal medicine was the leading moneymaker for the establishment drug pushers, a new product has leaped to the top - antidepressants. And it's all traceable back to that cynical decision by the government to change America's eating habits by changing the data that had been produced by health experts.
That's the kind of integrity we get from Washington. Forget about depleted uranium, funky vaccinations, and needless wars that take our sons and daughters from us for no good reason. The government has been poisoning us with its basic medical information for years, so I guess bombing another country for illegitimate reasons should not exactly come as a surprise to us at this late date, I mean, after all the decades of lies that have been told to us about everything.
I mean, if we accept the poisoning of ourselves without much complaint, how could I be getting upset that we're killing people all over the world for reasons that are proven lies? As I said before in a previous essay, we are much farther down the road to hell than I thought.
And I wonder why I write these words, since there is not a single person, either in the Congress or on television, who is currently pointing out that America is doing anything wrong in any area. Only that one rich person is not being very patriotic by criticizing the way another rich person has chosen to kill tens of thousands of people, and that that first rich person would have done the same thing, but he would have done it differently.
Many people get upset when I talk about these things. Yet in the public sphere, I see no one talking honestly. Not a single American public figure talking honestly. About anything.
-- John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays posted on hundreds of websites around the world. More recently he has written a booklet titled "The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001." More information about both of these books can be found at http://www.johnkaminski.com/
_________________________
This E-letter will be posted at http://www.whatmatters.nu/wmeletters/wmeletters41.html
WM-168
* The What Matters Programme is an initiative by Boudewijn Wegerif, to spread information about what is happening in the world today, and how things could be, given a schooling at all levels to free the self and the world from debt/guilt oppression and money madness - a schooling for Satyagraha, truth and love force. The trustees of the What Matters Programme are the collegiate of Folkhögskola Vårdinge By, an adult education residential college at 150 21 Mölnby, south of Stockholm. Contact - Johanna Heckscher, heckscher.jarna@telia.com Tel: +46.158.23058
You can read WHAT MATTERS E-letters 1 to 105 at http://www.whatmatters.nu/wmemails/wmemailsindex.html, and from WM-106 at http://www.whatmatters.nu/wmeletters/wmelettersindex.html . See also to What Matters Love in Action Series index at http://www.whatmatters.nu/LoveinActionE-letters/WM-LoveinActionIndex.html
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the WHAT MATTERS E-letters: http://www.whatmatters.nu/contacts.html or write direct to me at boudewijn@whatmatters.nu or wegerif@telia.com
3.
Date: 05 Apr 2004
From: Trevor Osborne wharmony@westnet.com.au>
Subject: World Financial System May Blow This Week
Citizens Electoral Council of Australia
Craig Isherwood - National Secretary
PO Box 376, COBURG, VIC, 3058
Phone: 03-9354-0544 Fax: 03-9354-0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au/
World Financial System May Blow This Week
On April 3, U.S. Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. released a statement that opened as follows:
"On Friday, April 2nd, the pack of ghouls and goniffs otherwise known as President George W. Bush, Jr.'s campaign strategists, pulled one of the dumbest publicity stunts in modern history, with the way in which they, and Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan, orchestrated the fraudulent reports intended to convince the world's dumbest suckers that there is an ongoing uptick in the already stumbling, bumbling, broken-down U.S. economy."
LaRouche was referring to the release of the clearly fraudulent announcement by the U.S. Labor Department that day, that the U.S. economy had created 308,000 new jobs during March. The announcement backfired with a sonic boom: it triggered a huge sell-off in the bond market, on the expectation, with this great "recovery" underway, that the U.S. Federal Reserve may raise interest rates before long. As bonds are dumped, their prices fall, and their yields rise. Since long-term bond yields are the basis for defining mortgage interest rates, mortgage rates started climbing sharply late Friday, just as stock prices of mortgage lenders, home builders and home improvement retailers fell sharply. The full impact of the bond market sell-off on the extremely precarious mortgage markets will only show up beginning today, Monday, April 5. Experts have estimated that even as little as a 1% rise in mortgage rates would be enough to pop the mortgage bubble, and the world financial system along with it.
Ever since the collapse of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund in September-October 1998, which almost brought down the world monetary system, the policy of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and associated international financiers has been to throw "a wall of money" at LTCM and related liquidity problems. They have thus created the greatest speculative bubble in human history, as seen by the astronomical house prices in the U.K., U.S., and Australia for instance. This giant bubble is overdue for a collapse; the only question now is, what pin-prick will cause it to pop?
Whether Bush "pinned the tail on the donkey" on Friday or not, the present IMF-dominated "globalist" free trade system of usury and speculation is doomed in the immediate weeks or perhaps a handful of months ahead. The issue now, as LaRouche has repeatedly stated, is to put the bankrupt international financial system through bankruptcy procedures, and return to national banking and national sovereignty. We must return to the policies that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to pull the U.S.—and the world—out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, with the emphasis on creating masses of new credit for physical production in infrastructure and other urgently-needed aspects of the physical economy. This is exactly the opposite of what Australia did at the time, under the threat of coups from the mass fascist militias of the Old Guard, the New Guard, and the League for National Security.
Today, we must make one of two choices: either return to national-banking centered sovereign nation-states, or suffer the greatest financial collapse since the 14th Century which would usher in global chaos, police states and wars far worse than those of the 1930s.
4.
From: "Dick Eastman" de1949@nwinfo.net>
Subject: Various news : Shiites fight back -- Venezuela again -- Bush administration has final say on 9-11 Commission report -- Fisk etc.
Date: 5 Apr 2004
Shiite Clashes in with Coalition in Najaf Baghdad: Phase II of the Anti-Occupation Struggle Begins Nine Coalition Troops Killed, Dozens wounded in Confronting Uprising
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5993.htm
Shias storm governor's office in Basra
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-1063661,00.html
Speaking after riots in four cities that left 50 Iraqis and nine coalition troops dead, Paul Bremer accused the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr of trying to illegitimately usurp power. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1186047,00.html
THE OTHER WAR: Why Bush's Afghanistan problem won't go away. Seymour M. Hersh http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/
More than two-thirds of Israelis are in favour of the continuation of "targeted killing operations" after the assassination of Hamas spiritual chief Shaikh Ahmad Yasin, a poll has found.
http://tinyurl.com/359q6
Bush Loyalists Pack Iraq Press Office
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040404/ap_on_go_pr_wh/running_on_iraq&cid=544&ncid=1480
Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq. One-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern. Dan Senor and others inside the coalition say they follow strict guidelines that steer clear of politics. Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham , the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers. One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications - known as stratcom - is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives. (...) "Iraq is in danger of costing George W. Bush his presidency and the CPA's media staff are determined to see that does not happen," Robison said. "I had the impression in dealing with the civilians in the Green Room that they viewed their job as essentially political, promoting what the Coalition Provisional Authority is doing in Iraq as a political arm of the Bush administration," he added. CLIP
Poisoned? (April 3, 2004)
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html
Shocking report reveals local troops may be victims of america's high-tech weapons - Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found. They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah
Oil Monopolists try for Venezuela yet Again!!!! Okay, so what's the deal? Why won't the corporate media tell us what's going on? Why do I have scrabble around the Internet looking for answers? Why won't my local print, tv and radio tell me why, yet again, the US is orchestrating a coup d'etat against Venezuela?
---
Dumb questions I know, but over the past week, the number of stories on Venezuela available locally - of any kind - is zero. And over the past few weeks, it's not much more, a handful to be exact. And no doubt, just as with the appalling press coverage of the US-backed coup d'etat in Haiti, we won't read anything until it's all but over (barring the killing), then of course, the vampires are all over the place. So far today (01/04/04) my sweep of the 'net for Venezuelan news netted 15 stories (five of which are about the Venezuelan national soccer team trashing Uruguay 3-0 and a real upset). On average, I retrieve about 15 stories daily. Quite a few come from a single source, vcrisis (http://www.vcrisis.com/), a virulently anti-Chavez Website based in London. Of the remainder, some are oil-related news (obviously) with perhaps 2 or 3 digging a little deeper into events and none from the corporate press doing anything other than reinforce the state line. And for the record, I collected 438 news stories on Venezuela just for the month of March 2004.
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0218.html
---
How can one go to war against "terror," which is a state of mind? Even if the president were to take more care with his language and to speak instead of a "war on terrorism," the phrase still could not be anything more than a metaphor, because terrorism is a form of action available to virtually any determined adult anywhere anytime.
http://www.iviews.com/Articles/articles.asp?ref=IV0403-2263
---
The focus on Jews and Israel reflects a wider belief among Arab Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite alike, that the US and Israeli occupations are twin Golems of a globalization that they can not resist or control, one that is causing the disintegration of the very fabric of their cultures and economies even as it offers prosperity and freedom to a fortunate few.
It may be hard for Americans to understand the occupation of Iraq in the context of globalization. But Iraq today is clearly the epicenter of that trend. Here, military force was used to seize control of the world's most important commodity - oil. And corporations allied with the occupying power literally scrounge the country for profits, privatizing everything from health care to prisons, while Iraqi engineers, contractors, doctors, and educators are shunted aside.
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0405/p09s02-coop.html
---
US forces seal off Fallujah ahead of major operation (April 5)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=508545
US forces sealed off the turbulent city of Fallujah today ahead of a major operation against insurgents after the grisly slayings last week of four American security contractors. Commanders have been vowing a massive response to pacify Fallujah, one of the most violent cities in the Sunni Triangle, the heartland of the anti-US insurgency north and west of Baghdad. (...) A witness reported that a US helicopter struck a residential area in the city today, killing five people. The bombing damaged five houses, said the witness, Mohammed Shawkat. There was no immediate US comment on the report. A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US forces had a list of targets for raids. He would not give details. CLIP
White House has final say on 9/11 report
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-04-terror-report_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The White House will review the text of a report examining whether the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented and could determine when the report will be released. Thomas Kean, chairman of the bipartisan commission investigating 9/11, said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that the Bush administration would check the report "line by line to find out if there's anything in there which could harm American interests in the area of intelligence." This sort of vetting is standard for documents that could reveal sources and methods of collecting intelligence. But it raises the prospect of White House censorship and the possibility that the report's release could be delayed beyond the presidential election in November. CLIP
Families Rage The murder of a journalist in Iraq by Robert Fisk (April 03, 2004) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5263
Yesterday morning, I sat down in a Baghdad home with a poor old man and his daughter who were mourning their adored son and brother who was killed by American soldiers. Now, you may ask why I do not write about Fallujah and the atrocities which occurred there three days ago: the cruel and atrocious murder of four Americans who were hauled, begging for their lives, from their two sports utility vehicles, burned, mutilated, dragged through the streets and then hanged naked - what was left of their bodies - from a decaying British railway bridge over the Euphrates river. The answer is simple. US proconsul Paul Bremer called their deaths "barbaric and inexcusable". Paul Bremer was right. But their deaths were not inexplicable.
Dust off the flak jacket. Lay low. And stay off the streets... At the end of his latest tour, our correspondent reflects on a horrific week in the nation and looks ahead to 30 June
By Robert Fisk 04 April 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/fisk15.html
What would happen if the Americans left tomorrow? This has become the latest buzz-question in the US media. Civil war. Chaos. Anarchy. So we cannot leave. We have to protect the Iraqi people. Ergo, the Iraqi people don't want us to leave. We are protecting them from civil war. We are saving them from themselves. The problem is that many Iraqis would prefer to have the responsibility to look after themselves without our presence. Simple. On 30 June, "we" are handing over sovereignty - a delicate and illusionary commodity - to the Iraqi "people" who will, no doubt, be profoundly grateful for our generosity. The Baghdad palace of the occupying power will then become the largest American embassy in the world and our appointed and unelected "Iraqi government" will become the beacon of freedom, liberty, equality and everything else we profoundly wish it to be. But now, let's take a look at the facts. CLIP
5.
Forwarded by Ken NCEpanacea@aol.com>
From: http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo04022004.html
April 2, 2004
Wherever Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Reading al-Qaeda into Madrid
By KURT NIMMO
It's almost laughable the way our corporate media reads the shadowy presence of al-Qaeda into nearly every terrorist incident around the world.
I said almost.
Fact is, the often absurd claims made by Fox News, CNN, and other alphabet corporate news organizations effectively demonstrate how eagerly a supposedly free press has bought into the preposterous idea of an international Islamic terrorist network symbolized by Osama bin Laden and his intrepid cave dwellers with satellite phones.
For instance, before the smoke had a chance to clear in Madrid, the corporate media was all over blaming al-Qaeda, even though the evidence of this was at best tenuous. Fingers pointed at Abu Dujan al Afghani, a previously unknown person appearing on videotape claiming responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda. And yet it was not generally reported that the name Abu Dujan is attributed to a mythical "Red-Banded Warrior" who fought for the Prophet Mohammed, according to Muslim scholars.
In other words, it appears jellybean journalists laboring for the Bush Ministry of Disinformation had a fast one pulled on them.
CNN was so athirst for "evidence" connecting al-Qaeda to the Madrid bombings they impulsively waved around an unsigned document harvested from Global Islamic Media, a radical Islamic website, on March 16. According to CNN, the document proves al-Qaeda "planned to separate Spain from its allies by carrying out terror attacks," even though, as closer examination of the partially translated document reveals, there is no mention of the terrorist bombings in Spain. In fact, the document mentions attacking Spanish troops in Iraq, not killing innocents in Madrid.
"The document was discovered, not by CNN, but by Thomas Hegghammer and his colleagues at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment north of Oslo, during a routine trawling of radical Islamist websites for interesting documents or statements," notes Brendan O'Neill in an article appearing on the Spiked and Global Research websites.
After releasing the questionable document to CNN, Hegghammer had second thoughts. "This document is not a blueprint for action," Hegghammer admitted. "I would say it is more like a contribution to a debate. If there is a connection between the document and Madrid, it is probably not organizational. In my view it is more likely that the document has been circulating on websites and the Madrid attackers may have read it, rather than going from top to bottom like an instruction."
O'Neill, however, is far less reticent than Hegghammer. "For all the news reports about this 'al-Qaeda document' that proposed and designed 'attacks against Spain', in fact there is no clear evidence that this is an al-Qaeda document and nowhere does the document suggest launching terror attacks in Spain. The claim that the document is a writ from al-Qaeda is pure guesswork and speculation on the part of the media; and the claim that the document threatened 'blows' inside Spain, which then came to fruition in Madrid on 11 March, is the result of severely selective reporting, of taking certain paragraphs out of context and reproducing them in isolation. The document proposes no such terrorist attacks."
But then "selective reporting" -- to say nothing of passing along cynical Bushite lies as gospel truth -- is the stock and trade of the corporate media, especially Fox and CNN, the most sycophantic and obsequious of the clan.
Adam Dolnik of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore believes al-Qaeda is big on myth and small on substance.
"In my view, if you subscribe to the ideology and decide to take action on its behalf, you can call yourself al-Qaeda," Dolnik told O'Neill. "It seems to me that al-Qaeda is currently best understood as a type of leaderless resistance of members as well as new sympathizers who want to become involved. So when we talk about al-Qaeda documents, we need to look at two dimensions: in the first are the writings of high-up al-Qaeda leaders such as Zawahiri, and these are the documents of al-Qaeda the group. In the second dimension you have grey area documents written by unknown authors, inspired by al-Qaeda as an ideology, whether they are actual sworn members of the group or not. So I think we cannot use such documents as clear-cut evidence of involvement of al-Qaeda the group, but they do provide an insight into the dynamically evolving strategic thinking of al-Qaeda the ideology."
In fact, the so-called al-Qaeda organization has never used that name, although you will never hear the hacks over at Fox admit as much. "Bin Laden never used the term al-Qaeda prior to 9/11," Dolnik told O'Neill last November. "Nor am I aware of the name being used by operatives on trial. The closest they came were in statements such as, 'Yes, I am a member of what you call al-Qaeda'. The only name used by al-Qaeda themselves was the World Islamic Front for the Struggle Against Jews and Crusaders," a name apparently too unwieldy for the likes of the New York Times.
The scheming Bushites, according to Dolnik, made the al-Qaeda mole hill into a gruesome mountain by "the automatic attribution of credit to the group for disparate attacks; by making unintelligent and unqualified statements about the group's very basic 'weapons of mass destruction' programme; by treating al-Qaeda as a superorganism; by creating the impression that al-Qaeda can do just about anything," when in fact it cannot be demonstrated they did anything at all.
Furthermore, Bush and crew have yet to make the case bin Laden and his gang of medieval cave dwellers pulled off the 9/11 terrorist attacks, even though they claimed to have evidence of such in the days immediately following the event. But then amnesia runs rampant in America where Osama is Saddam and all crucial distinctions blur on cue.
It no longer matters if there is absolutely no evidence linking al-Qaeda to the train station bombings in Spain. Innuendo and preposterous exaggeration suffice. "In a world where one email sent to a news agency translates into a headline stating that al-Qaeda was behind even the blackouts in Italy and the USA, anyone can claim to be al-Qaeda -- not only groups but also individuals," explains Dolnik.
In the meantime, a phantasmal al-Qaeda will continue to be faithfully employed to explain rumblings and uprising in the third world.
Latest example: violence in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Those responsible for the violence "are Wahhabis who belong to one of the branches of the international al-Qaeda terror group," Ilya Pyagay, Interior Ministry deputy anti-terrorism chief, told the Washington Post. "These are bandits who planned these attacks long in advance."
It only makes sense, of course, that al-Qaeda would surface in Uzbekistan: Islam Abduganievich Karimov, the brutal dictator of Uzbekistan, is on excellent terms with Bush, who deployed the US military to the Kandabad air base at Karshi soon after 9/11.
At least it can be said the specter of ex-CIA asset Osama bin Laden's organization is consistent, for wherever Dubya takes the fraudulent war on terror, al-Qaeda is certain to follow.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
6.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/02/EDGGG5UJMG1.DTL
April 2, 2004 - San Francisco Chronicle
Fossil-Fuel Dependency - Do Oil Reserves Foretell Bleak Future?
by Alejandro Eggers Moreno
Gasoline prices have reached their highest mark ever in the United States -- just as oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell has slashed its petroleum reserve estimates by 20 percent, after a monumental accounting scandal. While soaring prices at the pump have the public worried about another 1970s-style oil crisis, waiting in line might ultimately be the least of our concerns. An increasing number of prominent petroleum geologists -- including many former oil company employees -- have warned that official estimates of available global oil reserves are dangerously exaggerated.
They may well be right. For energy companies such as Shell, proven oil and gas reserves are their primary indicator of economic health. They have every incentive to boost reserve estimates; the more oil they can claim, the more competitive and attractive to shareholders they appear. But private companies are not the only ones with an incentive to inflate estimates. In the mid 1980s, OPEC decided to factor in member states' reserves when determining their market share. Global oil reserves jumped overnight. Today, the more oil a country can claim -- the methods each uses to determine this are a closely guarded secret -- the more influence it has on the global energy scene.
As a result, say the geologists, there may be considerably less oil in the world than the oil-producing countries and energy companies claim, and global oil production could peak far sooner than expected -- some predict as early as 2010. Once that happens, getting at the remaining oil becomes increasingly difficult and expensive. For an economy still reliant on fossil fuels, the effects would be catastrophic. As the oil supply shrinks, essential petroleum-dependent products (that is, nearly everything in modern society, from transportation to electricity to basic foodstuffs) are rendered either unavailable or unaffordable. Eventually, as companies such as Shell employ even more complex and invasive drilling techniques, the energy required to extract a barrel of oil exceeds the amount it can generate, and oil ceases altogether to be an energy source.
Of course, all major players in the oil business -- private and public -- insist that there will be enough oil to last well through the 21st century. But given their incentive to inflate reserve totals, it would be irresponsible not to question their estimates. The official figures -- that is, those cited by oil companies to prove their product is secure -- are notoriously unreliable. For example, in 2002 the U.S. Geological Survey claimed that total U.S. oil production would eventually reach 362 billion barrels. This calculation far surpasses most independent estimates, which place the figure closer to 200 billion; furthermore, it would require new American discoveries to equal the total reserves of Kuwait. The USGS itself admits its figures are "based on nontechnical considerations that support domestic supply growth to the levels necessary to meet domestic demand levels. " In other words, it determines supply estimates not by how much oil is left, but by guessing how much people will ultimately want.
Compounding the problem, most governments and all major energy companies insist that an oil shortage -- and thus the point at which the world needs to find an alternative energy source -- will occur only when the final drop is pumped from the ground. It does not take a petroleum geologist to surmise that demand will outpace supply (resulting in a global energy crisis) long before the last bit of oil is gone.
The optimistic oil-reserve estimates also fail to consider the rising global energy demand, particularly among developing nations. China itself could render the figures obsolete: Chinese oil imports rose by 30 percent last year, according to China's Ministry of Commerce, and the country's energy demand is expected to grow significantly in the next 25 years. Despite the extra oil -- as well as millions of tons in increased domestic coal production -- China already has begun to suffer from an energy shortage, which the government expects to worsen in many east coast provinces. To put the size of China's energy problem in scale, in the last two years its electricity use has increased by an amount equal to the total power consumption of Brazil, according to Scott Roberts, chief representative in the Beijing office of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm based in Massachusetts.
The consequences of overestimating the global oil supply would be devastating. In the best-case scenario, industry would recover by turning to less efficient and more polluting fuels, accelerating the already noticeable effects of global warming. Worst case would be a total economic collapse, with today's rising gas prices in the United States and sporadic blackouts across China merely the mildest previews of what is to come.
Granted, it is quite possible that there will never be an oil shortage, that global reserves are healthy enough to last until well after a replacement energy source is discovered. But given that those responsible for measuring the supply have a vested interest in making it appear high, the accuracy of their estimates cannot be taken for granted. The future of oil may not be as bright as it seems, both to the energy industry at large and to anyone who relies on their computer, their car or their planet.
Alejandro Eggers Moreno is vice president of Strategic Assessments Institute, a consulting firm in Los Angeles.
7.
Date: 3 Apr 2004
From: George Douvris gsrain@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Journey
Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Greek poet from Alexandria.
For more info on the poet or more of his poems. go at http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/
8.
Forwarded by "Jean-Pierre Caron" galacteus@sympatico.ca>
A NESARA supporter
An old man approached the White House from the park across Pennsylvania Ave. where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U. S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer President and no longer resides here."
The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine again told the man, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer President and no longer resides here."
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"
The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow!"
9.
From: http://www.gvnr.com/83/lighter_side.htm
It's Tough Leading A Spiritual Life
I was having an out of body experience one day so I grounded myself and got centered with the help of my spirit guides and almost astral traveled anyway, but the phone rang. I sensed the negative vibrations so I threw the I-Ching and checked my numerology chart and nearly had a primal, but my energy was too blocked, so I did some bioenergetics and self parenting, took some flower essence and ate an organic oat bran ginseng muffin, but my inner child wasn't feeling nurtured yet so I had a Rice Dream Frozen Pie too, but that made me hyper so I did the relaxation response while listening to my subliminal tapes, but I was feeling depersonalized so I did some polarity work, foot reflexology and past life regression, then rebirthed myself and called Moon Beam, the bodyworker, to make an appointment for a Shiatsu, Reike, Rolfing, Feldenkreis, Swedish, Japanese deep tissue massage, but she flaked out and never returned my call, so I decided to energize my crystals and do some positive imagery because all my visualization techniques and affirmations made my space feel invaded, so to get empowered, I got a psychic reading from Mother HeartLove around the issue of my assertiveness so I could feel my radiance and have some energy for my psycho-calisthenics and inversion swing before my harmonic brain-wave synergy session, which made me more focused for my actualization seminar, holistic healing class and dreamworkshop, so I'd be more clear for my Gestalt behavioral cognitive transpersonal Rechian Jungian Freudian Ericksonian session at the hot springs but my aura was weak for my trance- channeling group so I fasted until noon to recharge my chakras and I sensed my intuition was high and my cycle was focused, so I turned on my ion generator to open up for my neural-linguistic programming session, but I needed to have my pyramid recharged before my guided synchronicity meditation, so I got some cranio-sacral therapy, which aligned me for the fire walk, which was between my tarot card reading and my sensory depivation tank appointment, but after all that I felt what I truly needed was a meaningful relationship to mirror myself so I went t my personal shaman, and then to my guru, but they were no help, so instead I went to the Intensive Whole Life Earth Rebirth Cosmic Expo Symposium Workshop to find someone who really knew what was going on, but that didn't work either, so I locked myself in a calcium coated Orgone Box and went to sleep so I could "get it" in the dream state.
Author Unknown
Taken from Global Village News and Resources - Issue 83 - April 5, 2004
More on this at http://www.GVNR.com
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