February 5, 2001
Uncovering the Truth #2: Feedbacks on "Uncovering the Truth" + MAD COW - The Cover-up + Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner + Quote from "We Are One" + 20,000 Decibels Under the Sea + SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED + The Invitation
Hello everyone
Another Cover-up shattering compilation. Pass it on!
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
"There's nothing left in the world to prove. All that's worth doing
is to love one another, using whatever means are available to serve."
From: "Ken and Mandy" <kenmandy@iol.ie>
Subject: From the hearts of the children
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001
To the world's Governments,
We are three children who are asking you to stop feeding the cows to the cows!
We are not allowed milk, butter, cheese and other dairy products, sweets, meat, and jellies.
Why are you not sorting this problem out, why are you pretending that it is all okay. Why are you lieing to all of the people of the world.
Please sort this out before many others die, because we love everyone and do not wish to see them sick.
From Stevie - anne, Aaron, and Shaun
From: "Linda Evans" <lle333@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Uncovering the Truth
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001
Bless you a thousand times, you beautiful, shining, spiritual
gladiator... how wonderful that you are in our midst...I am forwarding this
latest mail to many...it must be read. And thanks for the end note about
expanding our "container" to become a lake...it helps.
Love,
Linda Lee
From: AMuseInk@aol.com
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001
Subject: Re: Uncovering the Truth
Dear Jean:
I have been saying for five years now that I believe that Mad Cow disease and
Alzheimers are the same disease. The symptoms and incubation periods are
exactly the same, and there is is more than a little evidence pointing to a
protein as the cause. I'll wager if you investigate this further, if someone
asked the right questions, it would prove that anyone with Alzheimers has
eaten a lot of cow and dairy! I'm sure there has been a lot of covering up...
d. goodman
THE FOLLOWING IS A *MUST* READ. ABSOLUTELY MIND-BOGGLING TO LEARN THAT PROBABLY MORE THAN 18 MILLION AMERICANS - AT THE VERY LEAST - ARE ALREADY INFECTED WITH THIS APO-COW-LYPTIC DISEASE DISGUISED BY THE "AUTHORITIES" AS ALZHEIMER DISEASE!!! YOU WILL NEVER EVER EAT ANOTHER BURGER AFTER READING THIS.
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001
From: Sue <spotter@yournet.com>
Subject: MAD COW - The Cover-up
I am only sending part 4 of this really long article, because there was another article that was sent awhile back about it. This article goes into the cover-up of Mad Cow disease...
From: http://home.earthlink.net/~astrology/udder.htm
MAD COW - part 4
As so many CJD Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) deaths are masked as Alzheimer and private labs won't let CJD tissue in the door to be examined, it is certain the American public will not be informed of the disease that is in our food, our kitchens and our bodies. We are scheduled to be 'downers' and Ted Koppel doesn't want us to know it.
Dr. Richard Deandrea, a L.A. physician who has studied CJD and BSE extensively, tells of his first CJD patient. After her death, which featured frills atypical of Alzheimer's (fingers numb, blindness, slurred speech, weak knees,) Deandrea dogged the Center for Disease Control for a pathologist who'd give him an autopsy to see if it might be CJD. CDC evaded 3 weeks of his calls.
Finally, a female CDC staffer told him that off the record---she'd deny it later--"CJD is an issue no pathologist will deal with, a virtual death sentence to a lab. A well trained pathologist knows the quarantine would never be lifted. You couldn't sterilize the lab to OSHA protocols. It would have to be gutted, incinerated. Forget it. Your patient died of Alzheimer's." So, there may be CJD deaths but there sure aren't going to be CJD death certificates.
All the same, the beat goes on. On March 20th, 1996, the very day that Minister Dorrell lit the fuse on the Mad-Cow bomb in London, a Florida man died of CJD. His wife gave a TV interview describing his shaking knees, his lack of co-ordination, then quick parabola into a vegetative state, followed by death and said that her husband had never travelled abroad in his life. Why would he have to? Prions enjoy the American climate. They mutate into Natural Born killers of the speediest kind here although American reporters seem the first to manifest the dementia.
1,490 dailies in the USA, 11 big TV networks and only CNN carried the story of the man's death airing it March 28th. (Jane Fonda must be feeding Ted his tofu.) True, the Oprah Show had an ex beef rancher on, who had seen U.S. sheep and cows dying of Mad-Cow but that won't happen twice. Beef dropped 150 points on the stock market while the show was on the air and the beef industry is suing Oprah for it.
Small stations are more likely to reveal death toll statistics. In California, KCAL-TV News reported two recent CJD deaths, one in Stockton the other San Francisco. Dr. Deandrea knew of a death in Lancaster CA and another in Minnesota, all in the last few weeks yet the NIH claims it knows of only 11 CJD deaths since '94, ---no surprise if there isn't a lab on the country that will allow a suspected CJD death case in the door for an autopsy!
But the double whammy for the slowest of slow of this torpid group of officials goes to the US Department of Agriculture, who responded to the whole Mad-Cow issue by saying that it was going to "consider the banning of the use of sheep tissue in cattle feed." Is such a lackadaisical failure to grapple with the problem bureaucratic caution, a deliberate ruse to avoid creating panic, denial born of fear or genuine ignorance? Check all four boxes but there could be a vested 'short stroke' interest in keeping the steaming hot meat issue under a lid for a while.
If meat is history and grain no longer required as feed, Cargill, Conagra and IBP will go broke along with the 50 billion dollar a year U.S. meat industry. On the other hand, if D-day can be staved off for just a while, a few knowledgeable insiders could profit bigtime---trashing their own corporations but making it back betting the downside on beef, the upside on pigs on the stock market.
Then, when people start to die of CJD, the profiteers will switch --betting the upside on soy for humans and the downside on all other livestock and feedgrains. Fortunes will be made. If stocks are your hobby, bet against livestock futures for there is 'scrapie' in every state of the union and, as dead sheep are still being fed to every single American cow, meat is lethal whether it's in a can of Whiskers (80 Brit cats have died of Mad-Cow) or walking around mooing or under cellophane. The only safe beef is the one WE have with the USDA.
Scientists who invented the "bypass protein" method of feeding livestock, (taking the rendered corpse of dead animals, grinding it into meat meal, mixing it in with grains,) have turned an attractive planet into a potential graveyard. Scientists who turned healthy herbivores into cannibals for the first time in their billion year history may have shot themselves and humanity in the collective hoof. Of course, there are other animal husbandry practices which have made cows vulnerable to pathogens, which have given Mad-Cow a running start.
Even if there were no prions lurking, when you feed an herbivore protein, its body produces ptomaines, which causes lesions or tubercles in its body. That means tuberculosis. In 1989 the National Association of Federal Veterinarians decided to create a 'test-balloon' state. They allowed California to sell meat infected with tuberculosis, a practice illegal since 1906. TB immediately went up 36% in the sunshine state.
HOW NOW MAD COW? Bovine immune systems have been destroyed by still other, common practices: massive daily injections of synthetic growth/lactation hormones which exhaust the cow who is chemically stimulated to give 40% more milk. Then, there are the anti-biotics necessary as such a regimen paves the way for multiple infections. Then---the horrific, painful mutilation of cows with more than 4 teats. (Many have 8 teats; extras are amputated without anesthetics.) Then there's de-horning, also done without anesthetics.
Worst, imagine the hormones of grief created in Bessie when baby veal is calf-napped on its second day of life. Then 305 days of the farmer stealing the milk her child was supposed to get. Then a 2-day starvation period (no food or water) to dry up her milk to get her ready to 'calve' again. And the killer cycle starts all over again driving the poor cow literally mad. (At last someone uses the right word for a disease!) A happy cow would live 25 years on a happy farm. A dairy cow is exhausted at 3 to 5 years of age. Her reward: she is slaughtered and her poor, suffering corpse eaten by humans as burger.
In its greedy striving for more bigger and longer for less cost, science has contributed to cows having the last laugh in this Apo-Cow-lypse Now.
So these are the facts. Prions are here to stay and if this disease has worked its way up to the top of the Food Chain and the fact is known by American researchers, why do these educated men remain silent? The Pittsburgh Veterans Hospital sampling never hit the newspapers. The definitive paper on Mad-Cow, written by the foremost U.S. prion researcher, professor of neurology and biochemistry, Dr. Stanley Prusiner of the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, is curiously without mention of the danger of eating meat. For ten thousand words, Prusiner just goes on and on about prions bonding with other prions as if he were studying the mating habits of penguins. His 10,000 word magna opus never mentions the words 'meat,' once.
You'd think that if an obscure, New Guinea cannibal brain disease showed up in American war veterans, researchers would ask questions like 'why don't doctors do Alzheimer's brain autopsies in a designated-to-be-compromised lab put in every city and why don't veterinarians do cow and sheep autopsies in every slaughterhouse?' Why cling to this dainty-lab fetish? The average kitchen is already as infected as any morgue on the planet. So OK, maybe science has made a few boo-boos here but why the enormous non-confront and zip-the-lip silence from all interested parties?
Is it that lab restrictions are too tough or that scientists are ostriches, or that governments and world banks fear bankruptcy? Or is there some kind of oligarchic 'Life-boat' theory at work? (i.e. that the upper classes have decided to toss us peons out of the lifeboat.) All of that is possible but in reality, there probably is simply some kind of myopic stupidity that goes with specificity. Scientists are Johnny One-Notes. They wander around in their specialty, in Prusiner's case, stunned by a maze of bonding prion molecules and can't see the forest for the trees.
Let's give these eminent men the benefit of the doubt. Maybe---until last week, scientists never connected CJD to an obscure British disease that was related to an even more obscure sheep problem related to a positively arcane cannibal disease of the 40's. Nobody could connect the dots. The puzzle pieces stayed in the box because for the last 25 years, CJD has been able to hide behind the skirts of Alzheimer's. The Alzheimer's Foundation itself seems to be clueless, saying that if current trends continue, 14 million people will have Alzheimer's by the turn of the century. No mention of CJD from them.
If (as Pittsburgh concludes) 6% of Alzheimer's cases are really CJD, in the next 4 years, 840,000 US humans will die of CJD and if they were of childbearing age when they caught it, 2 million children and 4 million grandchildren carry it in their genes and these 4 million people walking the USA today do not know that they will go into spasms, then idiocy, then comas, costing the families and the health system $120,000 per patient and so will all their descendents, forever.
Today we see the obvious feature of Alzheimer's; this genetic disease was doing something genetic disease don't do, doubling and tripling its toll. There was certainly reason for scientists to suspect another culprit but, except for Crazy Lacey of Leeds, nobody did. After Lacey was excommunicated, of course, maybe nobody wanted to be a whistleblower.
It remains to be seen if, now, in the light of England's admission, US researchers will inculpate meat, develop tests, do brain autopsies, and convey true CJD death tolls to the press and public. Or, will Stepfather Bank and the government prevail and prod scientists to keep quiet to avoid creating mass panic, a stock market drop, World Bank rollover, the whole enchilada.
Admittedly, if there's even a whisper of prions in America, huge losses would result to the U.S. 50 billion dollar a year meat industry. They have in Britain. Five days after Dorrell's admission that CJD was BSE, and prime rib could kill, the entire European Union ordered its second ban on British beef exports. (The first had expired.) A 6 billion dollar a year beef export market collapsed in a single day. Loose lips sink world economies but silences go before apocalypses.
It's been a month since the truth came out of its burrow and, except for Oprah, the media hasn't touched this hot potato. Does somebody in some penthouse somewhere up there not care if the lumpen proletariat dies raving? Would it really be easier to get a taxi in Manhattan and get tickets to a hit play if, say, 3 billion of us just shuffled off this mortal coil?
-----
If you want the beginning of this article, go to: http://home.earthlink.net/~astrology/udder.htm
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ...
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001
From: Mark Graffis <ab758@virgin.vip.vi>
Subject: Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner
FROM: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/0,2763,430306,00.html
Martin Kettle in Washington Guardian
Monday January 29, 2001
Al Gore, not George Bush, should be sitting in the White House today as the newly elected president of the United States, two new independent probes of the disputed Florida election contest have confirmed.
The first survey, conducted on behalf of the Washington Post, shows that Mr Gore had a nearly three-to-one majority among 56,000 Florida voters whose November 7 ballot papers were discounted because they contained more than one punched hole.
The second and separate survey, conducted on behalf of the Palm Beach Post, shows that Mr Gore had a majority of 682 votes among the discounted "dimpled" ballots in Palm Beach county.
In each case, if the newly examined votes had been allowed to count in the November election, Mr Gore would have won Florida's 21 electoral college votes by a narrow majority and he, not Mr Bush, would be the president. Instead, Mr Bush officially carried Florida by 537 votes after recounts were stopped.
In spite of the findings, no legal challenge to the Florida result is possible in the light of the US supreme court's 5-4 ruling in December to hand the state to Mr Bush. But the revelations will continue to cast a cloud, to put it mildly, over the democratic legitimacy of Mr Bush's election.
Some 56,000 so-called "overvotes" were examined in the Washington Post survey. All of these ballot papers were ruled to be invalid votes on November 7 because they contained two or more punched holes in the presidential section of the ballot. Twelve Florida counties used voting machines where voting was by punch cards in this way, and eight of them participated in the survey: Broward, Highlands, Hillsborough, Marion, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Pasco and Pinellas. None of the ballot papers in the survey formed part of any official count or recount.
The research shows that 45,608 of the 56,000 ballot papers (87% of the total) contained votes for Mr Gore, compared with 17,098 containing votes for Mr Bush (33%). In 1,367 cases, voters punched every hole except that for Mr Bush.
In cases where the voters cast invalid "overvotes" in the presidential election, but then cast valid votes in the US senate contest lower down on the same ballot, 70% voted Democrat, Mr Gore's party, and only 24% voted Republican.
The disproportion was especially dramatic in Palm Beach, whose butterfly ballot paper interleaved two lists of candidates in such a way as to show Mr Gore's name second on the ballot paper, but to require the voter to punch the third hole to record a vote for him.
Though no absolute conclusions can be drawn from the overvotes, the implication that many thousands more invalidated Floridians intended to vote for Mr Gore than for Mr Bush seems hard to resist. The survey also clearly implies that some of Florida's voting machines were inadequate and that many voters were confused by the procedure.
In the second survey, the Palm Beach Post examined 4,513 dimpled "undervotes" - so named because no hole was punched in the ballot paper - and which were excluded from the November and December manual recount process. In each case, the Palm Beach county canvassing board ruled that no vote had been cast on these ballots but Democratic or Republican observers disputed the ruling. The ballots in the survey had been set aside for a possible court-ordered review that never took place.
Of the disputed ballots, some 2,500 had dimples for Mr Gore, while 1,818 had similar marks for Mr Bush. If they had been counted, Mr Gore would have had a net gain of 682 votes. This would have been in addition to a separate net gain of 174 votes from Palm Beach which was disallowed by Florida's secretary of state.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
On Tue, 30 Jan 2001 I wrote to Matthew Webb <visionquest@eoni.com>
Subject: Re: We Are One (an update for the last GGM Meditation)
Dear Matthew
Thanks as usual for sending me a copy of your meditation updates.
I found particularly enlightening your use of the body as a metaphoric
example of the cooperation humanity as a whole is learning to demonstrate
as part of our evolutionary process leading to the global emergence of a
One Mind globally-sensed consciousness and I'd like your permission to
quote the 2 following paragraphs sometime soon in one of my regular
compilations.
Would it be agreeable to you?
Warm brotherly regards
Jean
"The human body is composed of billions of "separate" cells, and each of
those is made up of billions of molecules and atoms. In a sense, our bodies
are the cooperation of trillions of atoms, which would be nothing more than
a simple collection of chemicals and water, without that essential
cooperation taking place. At the cellular level this is also true. Each of
our cells lives a life of it's own, just as singled-celled creatures do. It
possesses its own energy, life processes, assimilation of food and
elimination of waste. Each cell conducts its own intelligent self-repair,
replication, (mitosis) and internal maintenance. Even more interestingly,
each of our cells has its own individual awareness, both of itself and its
"neighbors". Each has an individual level of Intention, which coordinates
its activities. The term "body-mind" has become popular through such a
recognition.that in fact the entire body is "mind" and not just mechanism.
It is conscious, intelligent and aware! Most importantly, the billions of
individual lives within our own physical form have but one first priority,
above and beyond their own welfare.and that is the good of the body as a
whole. If our cells were to ever be selfish and not consider the good of
the body, (as is arguably the case with cancer) then our health would
dwindle proportionally. Our very lives depend on the group mind unity, of
all the cellular individuals within.
Individual cells comprise tissues, which are in fact miniature group minds.
These share a common "local" focus and intent, within a given region of the
body. Many tissues form organs, whose collective intent, (as an even larger
group mind) may be the pumping of blood, digestion of food, seeing,
hearing, the coordination of the body, and so forth. The body as a whole,
functions as an overseeing group mind. It is comprised of the minor group
minds known as organs. At each level of life then, we see evidences of the
group mind principle in action, on a microcosmic level. On a macrocosmic
level, we see the same principle of natural law bringing individual people
together, in common cause and focus. Any time two or more people meet with
similar intention, a psychic connection is formed. This connection is
basically the same as that which occurs among the members of our own
bodies, even without physical proximity. Small groups of people form
(organ)izations, towns, cities, states, nations and ultimately the World
Mind, as a sum total of human consciousness."
P.S. As usual I would give also your email address and invite interested
people to communicate with you directly to get a copy of the original post
from which this is taken from and/or more information on your bi-monthly
meditations.
AND MATTHEW REPLIED:
Brother Jean,
It is good to hear from you, my friend. I constantly follow your newsletters, and very often post them on the United Communities of Spirit. Hopefully this is creating a greater awareness of your publication, and of the goals we both support.
Needless to say, I am honored as always, that you would wish to reprint any of my material. You always can do so without asking or even telling me, I'm sure you realize. But I honor your strong sense of right action and diplomacy in asking. Yes, please do re-print those paragraphs.
As for the short description of the GGM meditations and WMS, here goes;
Our Global Group Mind Meditations are now in progress, for the benefit of all beings on Earth. They represent a growing effort by people around the world, to focus their prayers and meditations together, for the mutual expansion of consciousness. By employing the principles of natural law, we seek to elevate the human condition at the most fundamental level of being. Our Intent is to uplift the World Mind, (collective consciousness of humanity) and to heal the Earth Mind, (Gaia) of stresses and imbalances. The group mind principle of Nature states that: "the resulting force generated from the combining of like minds, is geometrically greater than the sum of its parts". Through group focus we are shifting world consciousness, toward a critical mass of social change and planetary evolution.
The Global Group Mind Meditations are held on every second and fourth Sunday of each month, at 3PM Pacific Time, (Seattle/Los Angeles). By applying the group mind principle, we are resonantly combining our love, clarity and a passion for spiritual progress, in all ways. We are in effect, intending into place ever higher states of consciousness for each other, the Earth, and all of humanity. The GGM Meditations are being coordinated by the World Mind Society at http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest
Inquiries regarding this transmission of group Intent, may be directed to Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com
Please let me know how I may be of service to your worthy endeavors.
Love and Clarity,
Matthew Webb
AS A FOLLOW UP TO MY LAST COMPILATION THIS MOST EXCELLENT ARTICLE SENT BY
Larry Morningstar <mana7@aloha.net>
From: http://www.utne.com/bTechnologyPr.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=20%2C000%20Decibels%20Under%20the%20Sea
20,000 Decibels Under the Sea
A new Navy underwater sonar system threatens whales and dolphins
By Leora Broydo, Utne Reader
Jacques Cousteau took us to the bottom of the ocean and back in his acclaimed 1953 book, Le Monde du Silence (The Silent World). His documentary film bearing the same title won an Oscar in 1957. Today, Cousteau might have chosen a different name for his works, perhaps 20,000 Decibels Under the Sea.
Cousteau's undersea world is getting to be a noisy place. You may not have heard the sounds of supertankers, cargo ships, military testing, or oil drilling on your Songs of the Humpback Whales CD, but they're out there in force. Environmentalists say the ever-increasing racket poses a serious threat to marine animals and that steps should be taken to protect them. At least one perpetrator of underwater noise, the U.S. Navy, is hearing the message loud and clear.
The Navy is drawing fire over its use of a new low-frequency active (LFA) sonar system, which their experts say is essential for detecting superquiet enemy submarines developed for the post–Cold War seascape. It works by generating blasts of sound at upwards of 230 decibels (a jet engine is about 120 decibels at the source) from massive transmitters that ships drag through the water; technicians then interpret the echoes. The Navy wants to use this technology in 80 percent of the world's oceans.
Herein lies the rub: Some marine mammals also use low-frequency sound to communicate, feed, and navigate. "Bottlenose dolphins can distinguish between a cube and a sphere of similar size just by listening to their echoes," writes Chris Clarke in Earth Island Journal (Summer 2000).
The question is, will the new sonar system harm these sound-sensitive creatures? The Navy claims its research shows LFA poses no significant threat to marine life. But an unusual coalition of animal activists, environmentalists, scientists, and politicians say the Navy doesn't have enough proof.
"We believe the research program on LFA sonar conducted by the Navy has been inadequate," states a letter signed by 26 members of the U.S. House of Representatives to Secretary of Defense William Cohen. "Because sound produced by the LFA sonar system is designed to travel over vast distances, and because the sound produced by the system is so powerful, there is a growing scientific concern that the use of LFA sonar will interfere with the natural behavior of many marine species, especially marine mammals."
In 1999 the Navy released a study of the effects of LFA sonar exposure on whales off the coasts of California and the Hawaiian Islands. Independent scientists working in conjunction with the Navy found the sound blasts did have an impact: Vocalizations of fin and blue whales decreased, gray whales deviated from their migration paths (the louder the sound, the greater the deviation), and about one-third of the humpback whales stopped singing.
The Navy's conclusion, that these changes have "no lasting biological significance," raised the ire of critics. "These experiments only tested immediate observable changes in behavior to an exposure level of around 150 decibels, a sound well below the 240 decibel level at which the technology will be deployed," writes marine researcher Leigh Calvez in The Ecologist (June 2000).
Indeed, it's what the report doesn't say that opponents find so compelling. During the tests off Hawaii, notes Earth Island Journal, members of the Hawai'i Ocean Mammal Institute found two abandoned whale calves and a baby dolphin in the test area. "We have never heard of anyone observing an abandoned calf in our nine years of research off the Hawaiian Islands," OMI's Marsha Green told Earth Island Journal. "The sonar tests may cause disorientation so the mother and calf become separated and then cannot find each other."
In May 1996, 12 Cuvier's beaked whales beached themselves and died on the Kyparissiakos Gulf coastline in Greece. The whales, a breed that rarely gets beached, were healthy and young and had no external signs of injury or disease. Writing in the journal Nature, A. Frantzis of the Department of Biology at the University of Athens, Greece, noted that a NATO vessel was conducting low-frequency sonar tests in the gulf at the same time as the whale deaths.
"We know that LFAS was used in the Kyparissiakos Gulf. We also know that no other LFAS tests or mass strandings have occurred in the Greek Ionian Sea since 1981. Taking the past 16.5 years into account, the probability of a mass stranding occurring for other reasons during the period of the LFAS tests is less than 0.07 percent," wrote Frantzis.
Most recently, in March 2000, 17 marine mammals of various species stranded at several locations in the Northern Bahamas islands; seven died, while others were pushed back into the sea. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency, concludes that "injuries to the six beaked whale heads were all consistent with an intense acoustic or pressure event . . . in particular all had some hemorrhages in or around the ears." The strandings occurred the same day five Navy ships were in the area using mid-frequency active sonar, which is far less powerful than their LFA sonar system.
"The lesson to be taken is be precautionary," says Michael Jasny, a policy consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are too many uncertainties and risks to deploy a system of such wide geographic reach." Nonetheless, the Navy is sticking to its guns and plans to move forward with deployment.
Where's Jacques Cousteau when you need him?
DAILY GRIST
31 Jan 2001
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
http://www.gristmagazine.com
CLIP
2.
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Causing anti-globalization activists to cry foul, the World Trade
Organization decided yesterday that it will hold its first top-level
meetings since the infamous 1999 Battle in Seattle in Qatar, a
Persian Gulf nation with a questionable human rights record and
little history of public protest. In the past, the U.S. State
Department has said that the Qatar government as a matter of practice
"severely limits freedom of assembly." Qatar officials say they will
permit demonstrations during the WTO meeting, but activists are
dubious. The Qatari capital, Doha, where the meeting will occur,
currently doesn't have enough hotel beds to accommodate the thousands
of delegates, journalists, and WTO officials expected to attend, let
alone protesters.
BBC News, 30 Jan 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1144000/1144362.stm
Washington Post, Paul Blustein, 30 Jan 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64674-2001Jan29.html
Grist Magazine: Making sense of the Battle in Seattle -- by Bill McKibben
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/mckibben120199.stm
From: Health9Net@aol.com
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001
Subject: A beautiful piece
The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn't interest me what you do for a
living. I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your
heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dreams,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are
squaring your moon.I want to know if
you have touched the center of your own
sorrow, if you have been opened by life's
betrayals or have become shrivelled and
closed from fear of further pain.I want
to know if you can sit with pain, mine or
your own, without moving to hide or fade
it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy,
mine your own:if you can dance with
wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to
the tips of your fingers and toes without
cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are
telling me is true.I want to know if you
can disappoint another to be true to yourself:
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul; if you can be
faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see the beauty,
even when it's not pretty, every day, and
if you can source your life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours and mine, and still stand on the edge
of the lake and shout to the silver of the
full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where you
live or how much money you have. I want
to know if you can get up, after the night
of grief and despair, weary and bruised to
the bone, and do what needs to be done to
feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you are
or how you came to be here, I want to know
if you will stand in the center of the fire
with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or
with whom you have studied. I want to know
what sustains you, from the inside, when
all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with
yourself and if you truly like the company
you keep in the empty moments.
