Dogma Alert

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

2006-12-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

By Jimmy Carter
LA Times
December 8, 2006

I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.

We covered every Palestinian community in 1996, 2005 and 2006, when Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and members of parliament were chosen. The elections were almost flawless, and turnout was very high - except in East Jerusalem, where, under severe Israeli restraints, only about 2% of registered voters managed to cast ballots.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations - but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I've had one negative remark - that I should be tried for treason - and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite. My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors. I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.

By Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," published last month. He is scheduled to sign books Monday at Vroman's in Pasadena.

Pentagon Fomenting the "Civil War" in Iraq

2006-12-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

by La Voz de Aztlan

Global Research, December 7, 2006
La Voz del Aztlan

The Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" is behind many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq. The car bombings, assassinations, sabotage, kidnappings and attacks on mosques are designed to cause violence and discord between Sunnis and Shiites. P2OG in collusion with Israeli IDF and MOSSAD operatives are responsible for a series of secret covert operations whose purpose is to create an all out civil war in Iraq. The ultimate purpose is to dismember the country, achieve complete control and make it easier for the USA and Zionist Israel to profit from Iraq's vast oil resources.

As part of the Pentagon's well funded programme, the CIA and Israeli MOSSAD have been training and arming the Kurds for terror raids inside Iraq. The Israeli operatives are also helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, prominent Iraqi academics, scientists, politicians and religious leaders. .

Their first major operation was the bombing on February 22, 2006 of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, also known as the Golden Mosque. The mosque was a very well thought out target that holds the tombs of two revered 9th-century imams of the Shiite branch of Islam. The attack on the Golden Mosque began at 7 a.m., when a dozen men dressed in paramilitary uniforms entered the shrine and handcuffed four guards who were sleeping in a back room. The attackers then placed a bomb in the dome and detonated it, collapsing most of the dome and heavily damaging an adjoining wall.

The covert operation against the Golden Mosque was designed to provoke Shiite groups into committing violent acts and retaliations against the Sunnis. Sunni political leaders said retaliatory attacks hit more than 20 Sunni mosques across Iraq with bombs, gunfire or arson. Authorities reported at least 18 people killed in the aftermath, including two Sunni clerics. In one incident, in Basra in southern Iraq, police said gunmen in police uniforms broke into a jail, seized 12 Sunni men and later killed them. These attacks against the Sunnis were also carried out by operatives under the Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group".

The Pentagon blamed the bombing of the Golden Mosque on al-Qaeda but cleric Abdul Zara Saidy had another explanation. He said the mosque attack was the work of "occupiers," or Americans, "and Zionists".

Gun-Waving Sermon Lands Pastor in Pokey

2006-11-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Guns and Coke... ya gotta love that old time religion- Ed.

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — The pastor of a Mount Airy church accused of brandishing a gun as part of his sermon is free on bond after being charged with possession of a firearm by a felon.

Jerry Wayne "Dusty" Whitaker, 58, of Mount Airy, was convicted in Virginia in 1990 of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and possession of a firearm during drug trafficking.

Members of Whitaker's Victory Baptist Church say they had no knowledge of his criminal background. Whitaker told them he was a retired Virginia state police officer and a retired U.S. marshal who was injured in the line of duty, said Garry Scearce, trustee chairman at Victory Baptist.

Whitaker denies ever telling anyone he was a marshal, but said he worked as a police officer for six years in Montgomery County, Va.

In September, Whitaker reportedly brought a handgun and a shoulder holster to a service.

"He was driving home his point," Scearce said. "He said he was no longer a pistol-toting U.S. marshal.' He was a pastor."

Whitaker said the gun was a toy prop.

"I use parables," he said. "Once I pretended to be a blind man with a cane, glasses and can with coins. Why didnt they arrest me for impersonating a blind man?"

Whitaker was arrested during church services Sunday. He was released Monday after posting a $20,000 bond.

Pastor Defends Bloody Jesus Float

2006-11-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Parade Organizers Call Float Inappropriate

POSTED: 7:48 am EST November 29, 2006

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- Organizers of a holiday parade in northern Idaho are apologizing for a church-sponsored float that had an actor splashed in fake blood portraying Jesus on the cross.

The Potter's House Church of Coeur d'Alene entered the float in the annual parade that this year had the theme "A Family Holiday Tradition."

The parade had about 50 floats and was watched by an estimated 30,000 people.

Terry Cooper, executive director of the Coeur d'Alene Downtown Association, said the float was too graphic for a holiday fun-time event.

Pastor Chris Wendt defended his church's float. He told the Coeur d'Alene Press, "The greatest Christmas gift ever given was Jesus Christ and the blood he shed for forgiveness of our sins."

An actor from the church portrayed Jesus splashed with fake blood. On the sides of the float were the words "the greatest gift." On the back of the float was written "His blood."

Conservative Party linked to pro-U.S. annexation cabal

2006-11-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Activities tantamount to Treason, involving Breach of Parliamentary Oath and conspiracy to overthrow Her Majesty

by Peter Mackenzie

"Stand Up for Canada" appears to have been devised as a technique of mass deception, under the joint auspices of former ultra-right wing Alliance Party and U.S. Republican Party advisors.

In the last 2006 Federal Election, the Conservative Party kept trumpeting its slogan that it would "Stand up for Canada". Then, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper during that elected indicated that he would similarly "Stand Up" for Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. Mr. Harper portrayed his party, as a party which would govern Canada with integrity and openness in a spirit of renewed democracy, in contrast with the 'corruption' of the Martin Liberals. As it turns out, these assertions by Mr. Harper could not be further from the truth.

Mel Hurtig, the founder of the Council of Canadians, and also a variety of other reliable sources including veteran CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, now reveal that senior elected representatives and advisors to the Conservative Party, are currently planning a scheme that would hand over Canada to the Bush regime by 2007. The official name for this scheme, is called "North American Union".

Mel Hurtig, a noted Canadian author and publisher who was the elected leader of the National Party of Canada, provided researchers with the agenda and attendee list of the so-called "North American Forum" at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Sept. 12-14, 2006.

Mr. Hurtig said the "secret meeting was designed to undermine the democratic process." In addition, the reported Agenda undermines the Statutory position of Her Majesty the Queen of Canada, as the constitutional expression of a Canada independent from the U.S.

"What is sinister about this meeting is that it involved high level government officials and some of the top and most powerful business leaders of the three countries and the North American Forum in organizing the meeting intentionally did not inform the press in any of the three countries," he said. "It was clear that the intention was to keep this important meeting about integrating the three countries out of the public eye," Mr. Hurtig further indicates.

The motive for U.S. participation, according to Mr. Hurtig, was "to gain access and control Canada's extensive natural resources, including oil and water."

Documents obtained by researchers associated with the Council of Canadians were marked "Internal Document, Not for Public Release." At least three current Ministers of Stephen Harper's Conservative Party minority government are cited in the Document as "ring leaders" so-to-speak, of an unlawful and anti-constitutional effort to hand Canada to the Bush regime.

Canadian constitutional and related law is quite clear that any such effort by elected members of a government to subvert the political authority of the Government of Canada, constitutes breach of a Parliamentary Allegiance of Office, and broadly treason.

This is because the reportedly directed efforts of Ministers in the Stephen Harper government, to hand over Canada to the political authority of Mr. Bush, as the American Head of State, without the consent of the diverse Canadian public, can only be executed by the seditious overthrowing of the Crown, i.e. Canadian Head of State.

Section 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867 indicates as follows:

Every member of the Senate and the House of Commons of Canada shall before taking his Seat therein take and subscribe before the Governor General or some Person authorized by him, and every Member of a Legislative Council or Legislative Assembly of any Province shall before the Lieutenant Governor of the Province or some Person authorized by him, the Oath of Allegiance contained in the Fifth Schedule to this Act; .

The oath set out in the Fifth Schedule reads as follows:

I, A.B. do swear, That I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty... [Elizabeth II].

According to the Sixth Edition of Beauchesne's Rules & Forms of the House of Commons of Canada:

Should a member violate his oath he [or she] would be amenable to the penalty of not being allowed to sit in the House of Commons. He [or she] may be suspended from taking part in the sittings while still remaining a member of Parliament, or, in a case of extreme gravity, a Bill might be passed to annul his election...

The power of dealing with treason is inherent in the Parliament of every country.

The leaked document clearly substantiates that Ministers of the Stephen Harper Government are sharing information with representatives of the U.S. military-industrial-complex, for the purposes of "surrendering" Canada to a U.S.-based "non-democratic authority". This apparent government-sponsored effort is designed to destroy the sovereign authority of Canadians as co-owners of their society, in violation of all Canadian Constitutional Acts since 1867.

Pursuant to Section 46 (2) of the Canadian Criminal Codes "Every one commits treason in Canada, when someone (b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;

Furthermore, pursuant to Section 52 of the Criminal Code of Canada, to the extent that the apparent efforts of the Stephen Harper government to surrender Canada to a non-democratic American political arrangement is seditious to "(a) the safety, security or defence of Canada," the Stephen Harper government has executed treason. If that has indeed occurred, then the Stephen Harper government, if it has any semblance of integrity, must surrender its authority to the Governor-General acting on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen of Canada, toward new Federal Election.

Make comments about this article in The Canadian Blog.

New JFK Series

2006-11-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

I just discovered an excellent series of essays about John F. Kennedy on this blog by Laura Knight Jadczyk. There are ten entries so far, with more on the way. The author does a great job on analyzing how the world might have been different if JFK had lived to fulfill his term in office. Instead, we are stuck with a moron and pathological liar like Dubya, who seems hell-bent on starting WWIII, with his Zionist/Neocon backers paving the way. Psychopaths... all of them.

In order to familiarize the reader with these series of essays, I will be presenting the first few paragraphs or so of each chapter, with a link to it's proper source.

Enjoy!

Relic

#1 John F. Kennedy and The Debris of History

Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about John Kennedy and what our world might have been like if he had lived. These thoughts didn't just come out of the blue, they are the result of the fact that I have just finished reading one of the saddest books ever written: Farewell America by the pseudonymous author, James Hepburn.

Farewell America is pretty well accepted to have been authored by the French equivalent of our CIA, and based on hard intelligence gathered from French, Russian, and even American sources. It was originally published in French in 1968, but it was unavailable in the United States for many years. With the coming of the worldwide web, it became available and I truly wish that every American citizen would read it.

With remarkable skill and insight, the book outlines the overall situation in America at the time, and describes the players and most probable conspirators involved in the horrific and brutal public execution of probably the best president America ever had. There are many reasons to think that George H.W. Bush was involved in the plot, and today, having placed his idiot son on the throne, the world is as far away from that world we could be living in had Kennedy lived, that it is like we all died back then, and now we have awakened in Hell. [...]

#2 The Gladiator: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

In my previous post, I included a chapter from Farewell America which gave a broad overview of the "American Psyche." It is crucial to understand the forces at play here in order to understand why John Kennedy was murdered, and why, when he died, the death knell of the American Republic - as well as its people - began sounding.
As I have written before, most Americans are woefully ignorant of their true history, and by design. [...]

#3 The Bushes and The Lost King

The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a lot like the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Since that terrible day, almost 43 years ago, there have been over 2,000 books written about the JFK assassination. There have also been numerous television programs and several movies. There is endless theorizing and speculation as to why John F. Kennedy was executed by what amounts to a firing squad, in broad daylight, in the middle of Dallas Texas, on a sunny day in November. Additionally, there have been a lot of myths created and propagated seemingly to muddy the waters. The only thing that most of the proponents of various theories can agree on is that the FBI and the CIA did little to help the Warren Commission solve the crime. Well, that also sounds a lot like the official 9/11 Report. Both events were dealt with in the same way, by a "select group of bureaucrats with an agenda of lies".

Just as with the events on 9/11, there is the "official story"; in the case of Kennedy, it was the "lone gunman"; in the case of 9/11, it was 19 improbable terrorists directed by a cave-dwelling mastermind. In fact, Osama bin Laden and Lee Harvey Oswald have a lot in common: both worked for the CIA. [...]

Is the Bush family implicated in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? [...]

#4 Sim City and John F. Kennedy

When I re-read the words of John F. Kennedy, when I consider the legislation he sought to enact, when I consider the sheer depth and humanity of him, and compare him with what is lurking and lurching in the White House today, I am literally overwhelmed. How far down into the Slough of Despond we have been sucked since that November day 43 years ago. [...]

#5 John F. Kennedy and All Those "isms"

Today, I want to come back to my JFK project. Twelve days from now is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination - a virtual coup d'etat effected by Corporate America and its various connections. As I mentioned when I began this little series in commemoration of John F. Kennedy, a close and careful study of American history reveals that the American system was set up to promote the rule of the rich. It was Calvinism with a kick, and that kick was that it appealed to deviant persons without conscience for whom it seems the Capitalistic system was invented. [...]

#6 John F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Organized Crime and the Global Village

Did you know that if we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

60 Asians

14 Africans

12 Europeans

8 Latin Americans

5 North Americans AND Canadians

Of all of the above, 82 would be non-white and only 18 would be "white".

67 would be non-Christian and only 33 would be Christian.

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth, and all of them would be US citizens

80 would live in substandard housing

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76% that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

67 would be unable to read

1 (only one) would have a college education.

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation

33 would be without access to a safe water supply

7 people would have access to the Internet

If there is a meal in your refrigerator, if you are dressed and have got shoes, if you have a bed and a roof above your head, you are better off, than 75% of people in this world.

If you have a bank account, money in your purse and there is some trifle in your coin box, you belong to 8% of well-provided people in this world.

If you are able to go to church, mosque or synagogue without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are better off than 3 billion persons in this world.

I guess you notice that Americans are in the minority population wise and yet they control the majority of the world's wealth. What do you think will happen if that majority of people ever really gets it in their head that America is an intolerable bully and must no longer be tolerated? Sure, America could bomb the hell out of the planet and reduce our lives to a Stone Age existence, but then that would be rather like cutting off our noses to spite our faces, now wouldn't it?

Today I want to look at some of the words and acts of John F. Kennedy in the last year - and days - leading up to his death, extracted from Farewell America. These words and deeds give us a deep insight as to how he wished to deal with America's place in the global village; that he saw the danger and sought to avert just what is happening today: the entire world is turning against America. As you read his words, and contemplate his acts, consider them in the light of what we have experienced in America since his death. We know where the assassins have led us: a world of terror and heartbreak, of endless war and privation for multiplied millions of human beings; where would we be today if they had not succeeded? [...]

#7 John F. Kennedy and the Psychopathology of Politics

Today I want to continue with the subject of John Kennedy; there's only one week left before the anniversary of his death, so I'm going to have to really put the pedal to the metal to get to the end of the subject on time. As it happens, now that the subject weighs so heavily on my mind, I find that there are things that constantly remind me of what America lost, the terrible state of the world today as a consequence of that loss, and the ultimate reasons behind it all. [...]

#8 John F. Kennedy and the Pigs of War (JFK and the Bay of Pigs)

On November 18th, 1963, 43 years ago today, John F. Kennedy predicted that the month of April, 1964, would bring "the longest and strongest peacetime economic expansion in our Nation's entire history." And he added: "The steady conquest of the surely yielding enemies of misery and hopelessness, hunger, and injustice is the central task for the Americas in our time . . . 'Nothing is true except a man or men adhere to it -- to live for it, to spend themselves on it, to die for it . . . '"

Time was slipping through his hands . . . he had four days to live. [...]

#9 John F. Kennedy and the Titans

On November 19, 1963, 43 years ago today, at a ceremony in the White House Flower Garden, John F. Kennedy welcomed officers of state education associations of the National Education Association. he remarked: "I realize once again in a very personal way what a tremendous flood of children are coming into our schools..."

He was always concerned about children, his own as well as the children of all Americans and the world. [...]

#10 John F. Kennedy, Oil, and the War on Terror

On November 20th, 1963, between 11:30 - 11:40 a.m., President John F. Kennedy met with Lena Horne, Carol Lawrence, DNC chairman John M. Bailey, and others.

Later that day, he issued a statement on the Extraordinary Administrative Radio Conference to Allocate Frequency Bands for Space Radio Communication Purposes, held in Geneva, Switzerland from October 7 to November 8, 1963. He invited other nations to participate in setting up a global communication satellite system. He spoke of "a peace system worldwide in scope."

Following that, John Kennedy sent to the Congress the 17th annual report on U.S. participation in the United Nations, and then he signed into law bill (HR2073) to allow the conveyance of submerged and tidal lands to Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa if they are needed for economic development or other compelling reason. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Archives

At the end of the day, he had less than two days left...

It's a miracle!

2006-11-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah!

Our Lord and Saviour has yet again appeared for the devout (m)asses to prostrate themselves in front of the hole-ly altar of true believership.

Behold the face of Jesus

Talking Jesus Dolls Cast Out By Charity

2006-11-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

POSTED: 3:01 pm EST November 14, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- A charity could have had 4,000 talking Jesus dolls, just in time for the holiday season.

But Toys for Tots is taking a pass.

The 4-foot-tall dolls were being offered to the charity by the Southern California company that makes them. The battery-powered doll quotes Bible verses.

But Toys for Tots won't take them because of their religious nature.

One official with the charity said it hands out toys based on a family's financial need. He said it can't risk "sending a talking Jesus doll to a Jewish family or a Muslim family."

Where truth is the enemy – but only to government

2006-09-20T09:04:00.000-06:00

09/19/06
Ed Lewis
uruknet © info

Never in his wildest imagination did the writer ever think that America would become the leading source of evil worldwide. He was indoctrinated. He thought that evil only came from other countries headed by tyrants and those that had little or no concern for the human species.

What a shock it was to begin discovering the true nature of America – at least as reflected by the government – in 1995, as the writer studied the knowledge unfolding before him. As research went on, he screamed to himself that what he was finding couldn’t be true. There must be some group that is putting all this crap out, that America is still good and pure. The writer thus fought against what evidence was forcing him to come to believe. He wanted America to still be the home of truth, justice, and righteousness.

Finally, especially after getting on the Internet in 1997 and spending thousands of hours in study over the next eight years and up to the present, he had to accept the truth – that America is no longer good and pure, that it no more protects truth, justice, or righteousness than Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, or Israel’s Sharon does in the recent past and present.

For example, the US allegedly in the name of America and freedom bombed Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. During the attack on the people of Afghanistan, thousands were killed and/or maimed for life. Property was destroyed to the tune of millions, perhaps billions.

The attack on these people continues to the present, with many thousands more killed and/or maimed, and continued destruction of both private and public property. There is, at this time, no end in sight. At this date, it seems that few Americans care and many do not even know the killing in Afghanistan is still going on.

Why was the nearly defenseless land attacked by the might of the US Military, which might be more aptly described as mercenaries under the control of fascists – the marriage between government and corporations?

Had the Afghani people attacked America or were they in an eminent attack mode against America? NO. In fact, Afghanistan had neither the arms nor an army capable of attacking America or to hold a serious threat against America or even its neighbors in the Middle East.

You know, People, we must realize that even if a country has terrorists does not mean that the people making up the country are responsible for the actions of a few. Besides, what is a terrorist to one is a freedom fighter to another.

Again, consider that if a criminal hid out in your town or city, do law enforcers have the right to bomb your town or city back to the Stone Age, wiping out people and property in the process to find an alleged criminal? Would you not consider this as a horrible despicable act?

Furthermore, there is a process known as a Letter of Marque or Reprisal, the former on the high seas and the latter for searching for the culprit(s) hiding out within a country. The U.S. through a Letter of Reprisal could obtain permission from the government to hunt for an alleged criminal. That is the lawful way.

The truth is that the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden if the US Government could show proof that bin Laden was involved in 9-11. Of course, the government did not, as it still cannot prove or even discuss that bin Laden was involved.

What was done was therefore unlawful, an act of treason by the most of the federal government, and it was and is an abomination to mankind that it happened and continues. The US Military acted and still acts as a huge terrorist group used to change the government of another land.

Everything done to Afghanistan was based on lies and acts of treason. Truth did not matter, such as bin Laden not having anything to do with 9-11 or any other State-sponsored terrorism within the boundaries of America or that he was a Saudi not an Afghani.

What the lies and illegal acts against the Afghani accomplished was that Unocal’s pipeline was built, the pipeline refused by the governing body of Afghanistan, and three US Military bases were established in Afghanistan, all three in position to protect Unocal’s pipeline. Also, Afghanistan’s poppy fields were put back into full production for world dispersal by the US Government’s drug-dealing CIA.

Then, the US Government slime ball psycho controllers decided to carry out the attack against Iraq that had been in the planning for at least several years. Although Iraqi defenses had been reduced to nearly no defense, the US slime buckets bombed and bombed innocent people and their cities, leveled farms that had been in production for hundreds of years in some cases, and just generally acted as the thugs the US Military has become.

About a million and a half Iraqis had been killed by the US sanctions against Iraq from 1991 to 2003. Roughly 4500 children died per month during this time because of polluted waters, lack of medication, and other causes created by the most ruthless government on Earth, excepting maybe Israel’s.

Madmen that are psychopaths are guiding the actions of America. They have no concern over human kind outside their own immediate circles. They are ruthless murderers and war criminals of the highest order (or the lowest since most would need a ladder to kiss a snake’s belly), even higher than that Hitler is given credit for (mistakenly the writer is finding out from actual verifiable documentation).

The gory details of US Military actions are all over the Internet. One has only to face the gore and the truth that will never be exposed by Zionist controlled mainstream media outlets. And, trust the writer – it is gory, as one looks at videos or pictures of children blown apart, women with their heads blown apart, and all ages of men – unarmed, of course – that have suffered multiple wounds, many in execution style – hands tied behind their backs with bullet entry wounds in the backs of their heads. The anguish these people suffer is mind numbing and cause for much anguish within the writer, that Americans – and professed Christians – could treat people and allow people to be treated so ruthlessly.

But, what happens to those that attempt to show the awful mutilations and actions by the military? Many have been killed, or are hiding out, as it seems to be the standing order that any reporter exposing the truth will be bombed or shot to death. Or, they are perhaps “captured” and tortured to death. Usually, the capture and torture is by CIA assets and not by any people not controlled by the US or Israel’s government.

Falsehoods fill the airways and the printed media, as the path is cleared for the political State of Israel to control not only the Middle East but also the actions of the US Government here at home. Thinking that this is not so is only an admission of one’s reluctance to seek and accept the truth. Even Sharon has said that America controls the world but that Israel controls America – or words to that effect.

Take the holocaust, a creation of Zionist so-called Jews for the advancement of Zionist Jew supremacy. Far too many researchers have found the truth, that Hitler did not slaughter six million Jews, that in fact none were intentionally slaughtered, although many did die from malnutrition and illnesses in the latter part of the war.

This is no to debate this as the first time six million Jews were allegedly slaughtered was during WW I (reported in 1919 by a New York former Governor, Martin H. Glenn, in a piece titled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop”, published in The American Hebrew October 31, 1919, pg. 582). In the article, Glenn mentioned six million Jews slaughtered no less than six times. This was 20 years before the start of WW II and 14 before the rise of Hitler.

The fact is that the Germans treated Jews very well and actually gave them safe haven from other countries according to Benjamin Freedman, formerly a very high Jew that was an insider to all that happened. But, of course, this does not meet the agenda of holocaust pushers and therefore is wiped from history books and most other sources.

If you care about truth, search for holocaust revisionists and then wonder why Israel and its Zionist so-called Jews want every revisionist shut up and imprisoned. While studying or watching videos, ask yourself this – why hide the truth if the truth is in the favor of the holocaust, that it was factual?

Think about who would want to hide truth – those accused of falsehoods or those that instigated the search for the truth? In other words, if the holocaust were not a hoax, would not the Zionist so-called Jews want full investigation in order to support their claims? As always, also consider cui bono, or who benefits.

Just as a hint, there were less that 500,000 Jews living in Germany in the late 1930s, with only 15 million worldwide according to Jewish statistics. After the end of WW II, I think 1946 or 1948, there were 15 million Jews worldwide. Interesting but not conclusive.

The fact is that the same actions taken against Germany are quite similar to those taken against America by its own government, while it was Russian Zionists that carried out the acts of terrorism against Germans and Jews while wearing German uniforms. Some things never change and this includes what are known as “false flag” black operations.

At any rate, here we are – American men and women in lands thoroughly polluted with chemical, biological, and nuclear components used by the US Military that are expected to kill, maim, and destroy in the name of freedom when freedom has nothing whatsoever to do with it, that oppressive control of the world’s people and resources is the actual agenda.

Of course, the Iraqis and Afghanis are fighting for their freedom. They are not, therefore, the terrorists. Our people under Zionist control are the terrorists, as they obey orders that are neither lawful nor honorable. They are the product of psychopaths in and controlling the US Government, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Congress.

The ignorant and/or psychopaths amongst we people support the psychopaths in government. Moreover, many of these people that have not a clue to the truth in the two slaughters mistakenly termed “wars” started by the moron in the White House and his staff of Zionist controlled psychos. These people thinking of themselves as “Americans” in heart and mind, as false as it is, ignore the truth or look at the terrible devastation of two countries’ people and property with pride, as if their favorite football team just won a big game. What idiots indoctrination by government has spawned.

However, the slaughter of innocents is no game. It is rooted in evil and will one day bite the butts of every supporter and non-supporter alike. Zionists controlling not only our government but also many others, including England’s, want all non-Jews dead or in complete servitude. They want Christianity destroyed for all time, even if it means that Jews and so-called Jews are also slaughtered right along with Christians, Muslims, and other innocents.

The truth in this has already been revealed in countries, such as the State of Israel, Canada and some nearly 60 others in which one may not even bring up Christian values or even speak your mind or think as you will. Well, you can but you risk prison for many years for doing so. It is their “hate crimes” legislation being pushed even though Talmud so-called Judaism is the most ruthless, anti-human freedom, hate-filled “law” of all time. Fanatical followers of Islam do not hold a candle to the ruthlessness of Zionist Talmudic so-called Jews.

Of course, most readers believe nothing of this but all one has to do is check out the Israeli lobbying organization, the most influential of all those in Washington. Look specifically at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Zionist so-called Jewish organization that is essentially worldwide affecting close to six to seven dozens of countries.

Read also the nearly one-third of the Talmud that is filled with hate for Jesus, defaming both him and Mary. Study the beliefs of Zionists and so-called Jews against all non-Jews (including the 11 other tribes of the Israelites), that they are beasts and not human. Then read the Q’ran, which defends Jesus as one of the world’s great prophets, the other two according to Islam being Mohammed and Moses.

Look also at the financial, weapons, and military help given Israel by the US Government, while Israel slaughters Palestinians, whether men, women, or children, and now the Lebanese people. Recently an Israeli soldier following the Hezbollah defeat of the “mighty” Israeli army said that he was used to chasing rock throwing Palestinian children, implying he was not accustomed to fighting against armed resistors the Israelis were attacking.

Here are his words (a soldier named “Oded”). “For the last six years we were engaged in stupid policing missions in the West Bank,” he said. “Checkpoints, hunting stone-throwing Palestinian children, that kind of stuff. The result was that we were not ready to confront real fighters like Hezbollah.” (Writer’s emphasis)

For the reader’s information, kids throwing rocks – their only weapons against Israeli aggressors – are shot or captured and tortured and then killed by heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Think about that, as if it is your kids being chased down and killed or tortured by law enforcement thugs for throwing rocks at tanks or whatever.

Why are our dollars supporting the slaughter of innocents? Why are we supplying the State of Israel with weapons to be used against defenseless civilians in Palestine?

Many say that America is the most powerful nation on Earth with the most powerful military. I do not believe that any more than I believe Israel has a super army. I believe the truth is that we are the most deadly country on Earth with the deadliest military, as the US in the name of America is the government that has used weapons of mass destruction regularly and with great disdain for those it attacked, from Japanese civilians in WW II to Korea, to Vietnam, to Panama, to the present attacks on Afghanis and Iraqis.

We are also great at attacking nearly defenseless countries and supporting other countries that attack nearly defenseless countries. Witness our attacks on innocent Panamanians on Christmas Eve 1989, Afghanistan, Iraq, and, of course, Israel’s continuing slaughter of Palestinians.

Notice how America does not attack Russia or China or, to this date, other militarily strong countries, such as Iran, that are able and willing to defend themselves against aggression by other countries.

This is not to say that Iran will not be attacked by Israel via its lackey, the US Government. You see, as long as Iran is a powerful Middle East country, Israel cannot spread its hate throughout the Middle East or the balance of the Muslim and Christian world, whether it has US help or not. Sadly, neither Israel nor its satellite state, the United States, can stand NOT having Zionist control throughout the Middle East and all other countries.

Here are a few truths. Israel has attacked America. Check out the attempted sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. You might also check out Israel’s – the Zionists of the centralized world bank – part in 9-11, as it is certain Israel knew the attack was going to occur. Prior knowledge is most indicative of pre-planning.

Zionists have used terrorism against Palestine before the political creation of the State of Israel, and since. It continues to do so right up to the present. It cares not how many it slaughters, as it knows the US Government will continue supplying it with huge amounts of money and equipment, and even that the US Government will step in to defend Israel, the Middle East’s main source of ruthless terrorism against innocent people.

The US Government attacked America on 9-11 in order to place unlawful and illegal mandates on the people, and to give a basis, however false it was, to attack two countries killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

Bin Laden nor any other terrorists, excepting those controlled by the Zionist Israel, the US Government controlled by the Zionists, and England (also controlled by the head Zionists), are America’s enemies. Our enemies are from within, so to speak, from local government slugs that imagine themselves as wannabe psychopathic tyrants to federal psychopaths hell bent on changing the world to a giant plantation ruled by the God-less Zionists and their worship of the Talmud.

The people in government are not smart or geniuses; they still carry out the same methods used for centuries by tyrannical governments taking take over control of the people. Even Nero used a false flag operation that got out of hand and Rome burned.

The morons in the current US administration are using sometimes nearly identical statements and methods used by those that put Hitler in power, another leader and country completely manipulated by Zionists. Nothing is new, as only true intellects could come up with something new, such as the existence of true leaders of men, as there once were in this land of ours. America was great then – but psychos in government have changed this land to being one filled with hate and oppression of human rights. Thank the Zionist so-called Jews for their influence in destroying America and the dream of people to live without fear in freedom.

Government rules by arms – it is that simple. Without armed and dangerous law enforcers, the writer suspects that every official from local to federal would have faced hanging or firing squads for treason, right along with the stupid no good law enforcers that use terrorism to change our freedom to servitude.

What is truly sad – and despicable – is that the clods in enforcement do not even know they commit treason with every citation or ticket against Americans exercising their rights, regardless of any falsely obtained presumed adhesion contracts that are based on fraud (deceit). What a bunch of anti-American freedom deadheads they are.

Well, People, the writer believes in truth and he believes that truth will set us free, just as Jesus stated. He also believes that the time will come when all people demand the truth and, furthermore, if not given it, heads will roll, so to speak.

It is likely that if any people read this all the way through that many – maybe most – will accuse the writer of being an anti-American, a traitor, or use some other language indicating that when one does not support the crimes of the criminals filling our “governments”, that he is not a patriot.

Of course, it is the writer’s belief that only patriots want the truth, that those that do not seek it and instead blindly support some moron and psychopath such as Bush the Demented, are just as moronic and psychopathic as Bush, the make-believe president. In other words, they are dumber than a box of rocks and are not by any stretch of the imagination patriots and lovers or supporters of human freedom.

It is only through truth and faith that we may survive what the US Government and its Zionists controllers have in mind for our people and all people of the world. The truth must out as soon as possible so that we may head off the slaughter of perhaps billions of innocents (mostly gentiles but also Jews) and the enslavement of all surviving people for perhaps many generations.

So, call the writer what you will but while you are muttering mad insane comments towards the writer seek, find, and accept the truth no matter how painful it is or how impossible you might believe it is. It is, after all is said and done, truth that is the enemy of those in government and the Zionists, as it exposes them for what they are – anti-American, anti-human freedom psychopaths.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, U.S. slipping toward fascism

2006-08-02T21:20:00.000-06:00

August 02, 2006 09:09 am
Craig Etchison,
Center for Nonviolent Alternatives,
Fort Ashby, W.Va.

“Yes, we did produce a near-perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” As I watch what’s happening to our Republic, I find Thomas Jefferson’s words prescient. In the last 25 years, the near-perfect Republic has been all but destroyed by the forces of fascism.

Impossible? Evidence overwhelms. Scholars have identified common characteristics of fascist regimes, from Hitler to Mussolini, from Suharto to Pinochet. Looking at the major characteristics of fascism in terms of the U.S. today is illuminating — and depressing.

Nationalism and disdain for human rights characterizes fascism. In the U.S.? How about illegal wire tapping by the NSA? American citizens such as Hamdi and Padilla arrested and denied all constitutional protection. Torture OK’d by the president and his attorney general, who calls the Geneva conventions “quaint.” Thousands of prisoners held in secret detention. Nationalism? You’re either for us or you’re against us. Wave the flag and thoughtlessly worship the country’s leader. U.S.A. number one, always.

Control of the media — and especially censorship of war making — characterizes fascist regimes. U.S. corporations, who reap massive profits, own the mass media, so the media ignore news that might embarrass those in power. Remember the Downing Street Memo, where Bush admitted fixing the intelligence to scare the country into war? U.S. media ignored it. Remember Armstrong Williams, paid to shill Bush policy as real news? The GAO reports that government videos paid for by tax dollars and sent out by Bush people to television stations “constitute covert propaganda.” Lies heaped on lies, a given in fascist regimes.

Obsession with national security is also characteristic of fascism. Note how we’ve been hammered by national security fears in order to pass laws such as the Patriot Act, which deprive us of basic constitutional freedoms. Note the staggering increase of government documents now classified and the increased difficulty of freedom of information requests. Fear mongering is a given with fascists — keeps the populace in line — and the Bush fear-mongering never ceases. Remember how he didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud? Speech after speech offering security if we give up our freedom.

In fascist regimes, corporate power is protected, cronyism and corruption is rampant, and elections are fixed. Did anyone notice that Congress rejected a proposal to investigate Iraq war profiteers? Even though Halliburton — the V.P.’s company — is serving meals with expired dates and dirty drinking water. What about the new bankruptcy law written by credit card companies that hammers honest working people while leaving loopholes for the wealthy? Anyone notice Exxon’s profits after energy policy was written by energy executives behind the V.P.’s closed doors? Mussolini was right to equate fascism with corporatism.

Cronyism and corruption? Jack Abramoff. Iran-Contra felons with top Bush jobs. Billion dollar no-bid Iraq contracts to the V.P.’s company. Enron.

Fair elections are anathema to fascists. An actual hand count of Florida votes proved Gore the 2000 winner. One in every nine votes of people of color was tossed out in Florida. The irregularities in Ohio in 2004 boggle the mind. We’re now saddled with electronic voting machines that are easily manipulated and have no paper trail. The more e-machines, the more illusory fair elections.

The military reigns supreme in fascist states. The U.S. military-industrial complex holds unparalleled economic and political sway. In 2004, the U.S. spent almost half of the $1 trillion the world spent on arms. If 2006 war spending continues, we will waste $2.8 trillion in the next five years, leading to more terrorism and more people hating us. Economists J. Brauer and N. Anglewicz recently calculated that 68 cents of every tax dollar is spent on war and war-related activities. This war economy, mostly funded by massive borrowing from Japan and China, results in slashing social programs and not renewing crucial infrastructure.

Will Jefferson’s words be prophetic or will the people rise up against this fascist disease? The latter, I hope, though corporate forces and a greedy few arrayed against us and the Republic are considerable. Change will require a major change in our thinking and in our actions.

Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon

2006-08-02T21:12:00.000-06:00

By Anders Strindberg
08/01/06 "Christian Science Monitor"

NEW YORK - As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.

Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel's silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.

Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies of Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. "Israel must remain a Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that Israel's ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize Israel's right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs committed against them? That the front of the bus must remain ethnically pure? When they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid - some for reasons of power politics, others out of idealism - we are astonished that they are all such fanatics and extremists.

The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is "practical" and "realistic." Yet reality is that Israel is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies.

A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in Israel's foundational and per- sistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to "wipe out Jews," as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.

These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they fulfill the need for someone - anyone - to stand up for Arab rights. Israel cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.

Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the late 1990s, primarily for European publications.

Scientist Suspects Bush has Syphilis

2006-07-30T10:18:00.000-06:00

Commentary by Will Durst
Submitted by BuzzFlash
Sat, 07/29/2006

President Bush is a stone crazed loon suffering from a deterioration of his brain due to a tertiary case of syphilis and liable to become incapacitated at any time and accidentally start WW III according to a noted Baltimore based psychotherapist. Or he could die. Or both.

In a shocking revelation, famed Johns Hopkins scientist Dr. Robert Musckovitz has diagnosed George W Bush as suffering from stage 3 syphilis, after examining the President's increasingly erratic behavior. Dr. Musckovitz and his team of physicians, who have not seen or treated Mr. Bush, have identified telling characteristics of the dreaded sexually transmitted disease in the President by closely studying tapes of his mannerisms, speech patterns and eating habits. Candidly, the doctor cautioned "he's really starting to creep me out."

Specifically, the doctor, a graduate of the University of Michigan -- Escanaba Medical School, detailed incidents of the President's peculiar behavior such as his frozen indecision on 9/11, his inability to escape a Chinese press conference, the weird growth on his back during the first debate with John Kerry, and his trademark smirk which could be a symptomatic rictus disguising telltale muscle contractions.

Citing the STD's devious ability to hide undetected for many years, the doctor refused to speculate on where or when Dubyah, constant companion of Condoleezza Rice, may have become syphilitic. He did rule out contracting it by performing a back rub, clearing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and avoiding a potentially nasty international incident. An intern working in Dr. Musckovitz's reception room did hazard a guess the former Yale cheerleader may have carried it for years. "I bet he picked it up at Stumpy's Bar in New Haven from a waitress. Hell, that's where I got it."

Various experts selling plasma at local free clinics in the District of Colombia maintain syphilis is a disease contracted through sexual contact, although rare instances of spontaneous contraction have been reported as ascertained in the hospital logs of numerous Catholic seminaries.

A really respected medical book with pretty gold leaf on the cover says the late stages of syphilis can damage internal organs, including the brain, nerves, eyes, heart, blood vessels, liver, bones, and joints. Signs and symptoms of the late stage of syphilis include difficulty coordinating muscle movements, paralysis, numbness, blindness, dementia and pronouncing nuclear as "nukular." This damage may be serious enough to cause death and/ or trying to speak with your mouth full.

A high level White House source, requesting anonymity for fear of physical recrimination from what he considers an increasingly unstable Commander-in-Chief, also spoke of bizarre conduct, ie: the President cupping his hand under his armpit making flatulent noises during intelligence briefings and dancing on the South Lawn in triple digit heat wearing heavy winter clothing. "He was rocking out like he was listening to an Ipod, but he had ear muffs on at the time. The day glo blaze orange kind. He even tied a string around them that went into his parka pocket but wasn't connected to anything. I'm not even going to talk about the squirrel, the spatula and the candle wax."

Asked to estimate how long the country has before its President descends permanently into the depths of dementia, Dr. Musckovitz muttered "it may already be too late." Responding to a query as to whether he thinks Mr. Bush is still capable of handling the responsibility of having his finger on the nuclear button, the doctor shook his head and said: "at this point, I wouldn't trust him with a garage door opener."

Comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host, peanut eating Will Durst is barred from possession of the cable remote.

Who Said This? George Bush.. Adolf Hitler..Pat Robertson..Or Ann Coulter?

2006-07-24T11:56:00.000-06:00

ED: Thanks to the Aussie Gal at Beep! Beep! It's me for this excellent and surprising quiz.

Who Dislikes Atheists?
"We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out".

Who Is Patriotic?
"What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator"

Who Dislikes Public Education?
"Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction."

Who Hates Liberalism?
"The main plank in the program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood."

Who Is In Favour Of A Christian Nation?
"The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine."

Who Is For Family Values?
"It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life"

Who Hates Blasphemy?
"Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."

Who Hates Secularism?
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith."

Who Believes That Might Makes Right?
"Always before God and the world, the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills."

Who Protects Free Enterprise?
"We stand for the maintenance of private property. We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order."

Who Is A Fundamentalist Christian?
"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders."

Who Loves Jesus?
"I recognize more profoundly than ever before - the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."

Who Hates Sin?
"Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it."

Who Is Concerned With Morality?
"Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."

Who Hates The Left?
"For not only are we ourselves aware of the element of weakness lying in our democrats, pacifists, and centrists; it is recognized even more by foreign countries, which measure the value of a possible alliance with us according to the weight of this burden."

Who Hates Communists?
"We have been engaged in a heroic struggle against the Communist threat to our nation, against the subversion of our culture, the destruction of our art and the corruption of our public morality. We have put an end to atheism and blasphemy.

Who Hates Prostitution?
"Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, but it cannot be eliminated by moral lectures, pious intentions, etc.; its limitation and final abolition presuppose the elimination of innumerable preconditions."

Who Supports Stay At Home Moms?

"For her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. But what would become of the greater world if there were no one to tend and care for the smaller one? The great world cannot survive if the smaller world is not stable. We do not consider it correct for the women to interfere in the world of the man. We consider it natural if these two worlds remain distinct."

Who Believes Men Are More Intelligent Than Women?

"Love and devotion to a man are the highest virtues in a woman. Intelligence is not very important. My mother was certainly no genius, but she gave a great son to the people."

Click Here For The Answers ~~ Quiz Answers

Burning the Cradle of Civilization

2006-07-23T15:30:00.000-06:00

by B. J. Sabri

July 23, 2006
Online Journal

"I have evidence that the Americans were on a par with Nazi Germany with its actions in the Persian Gulf. I have documents in my possession, which support my assertions. . . . This is on the basis that on-going acts of aggression in Iraq and systematically applied war crimes provide a moral equivalent between the US and Nazi Germany."—Royal Air Force, Dr. Malcolm Kendall-Smith (sentenced to eight months in jail for refusal to go to Iraq.) [Source]

Depending on the scope of use, mythmaking in imperialism can be a powerful instrument to rewrite history and influence issues of war and peace. Take for example the U.S. (and other imperialist states including Israel) mythmaking on the extent of Nazi violence. Immediately after the demise of the Third Reich, the ideologically motivated elevation of Nazism to a “universal” symbol of atrocities has acquired an ever-inflating mythological dimension.

But as colonialist Western countries kept building up the myth of Nazism as a cosmic embodiment of evil and violence, they downgraded to irrelevance their own embodiment of violence as highlighted by a multi-century history of mass extermination of colonized peoples and ongoing imperialist wars against Arab and Muslim states.

Pointedly, as it is an immutable historical fact that Nazi Germany and Japan committed massive atrocities before and during WWII, it is also an immutable historical fact that Germany’s adversaries: Britain, USSR, and the United States committed equal, if not more heinous atrocities, before, during, and after that same war.

During the war for instance, the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the incineration of Dresden, Berlin, and Tokyo made part of premeditated atrocity patterns that went beyond military imperatives required for prevailing. After the war ended, Dwight D. Eisenhower committed atrocities similar to that of Nazism when thousands of German prisoners of war perished when he gave his tacit consent to starve them to death by reducing daily caloric intake to a dangerous level or by allowing them to perish by other means. [1]

Yet, for over 60 years since the end of WWII, U.S. imperialism and its entertainment branch (Hollywood) kept feeding and flooding the public with fictional stories about unmatchable German perfidy and innate violence, all while equally vile atrocities against countless non-white nations and peoples went unmentioned and rarely penetrated popular conscious.

To illustrate this, consider the following: how many times have we seen films depicting a convoy of German military trucks carrying prisoners of war? The following is a typical scene: the convoy stops and prisoners are ordered to get down and walk away; suddenly a stern German soldier appears on the back of a truck standing behind a machine gun and begins to mow them down. Now, compare that depiction to the American massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai; how many of us have seen this or other episodes of American violence in Vietnam depicted in films, foreign or American?

In the current analysis of the American bombardment of Iraq in 1991, I am not going to debate, refute, or uphold that Nazi violence has inherent qualities that makes it less abhorrent than the one employed by the United States in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere. What I intend to demonstrate, instead, is that American violence in Iraq has qualities that belies and contradicts American claims of civilized conduct and the possession of superior moral standards over other civilizations, and irrevocably puts the American brand of violence in a category by itself.

Once this demonstration is in place, the resulting picture would be uncompromising: by all standards of impartial comparison and considering the time we live in, the American model of supremacist violence supersedes by its magnitude, cruelty, fascism, cynicism, motives, myths, rationales, execution, details, and ideology, any other form of violence throughout history.

Moreover, just because the United States did not build crematories to burn its victims in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, it does not mean that it did not burn them by using alternative methods such as massive bombardments of defenseless cities and the burning of their inhabitants with white phosphorous, Napalm, and carpet-bombing with bunker-buster bombs.

For example, when the American Hitler of turn burned the Cradle of Civilization in 1991, he did it by dropping over 80,000 tons or 250,000 heavy weight bombs. If that did not constitute a holocaust (from the Greek: holokaustos: burned whole) what else would? Describing that bombardment, the Antiwar Committee, writes:

The war on Iraq was portrayed in the U.S. as a war without casualties. Yet, on the first day of air strikes against Iraq (Jan. 17, 1991), the U.S. dropped explosives equivalent to the explosive power of the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Throughout the duration of the bombing, explosives equivalent to seven nuclear bombs were dropped, in addition to internationally banned biological and chemical weapons. (1)

Also, the 1991 war on Iraq marked the first time the U.S. used ammunition tipped with Depleted Uranium (DU). These bullets and anti-tank shells pierce armor with the side effect of disintegrating into thousands of tiny radioactive particles on impact. Although the Iraq Health Ministry noted an increase in cancer cases of over 60% since 1991, a World Health Organization study was derailed on November 29 due to a lobbying campaign by Washington. [Source] [Italics added]

As a mechanism leading to intervention, mythmaking has a peculiar duration: it precedes and then accompanies the intervention up to a specified time. Once the physical phase of the intervention is completed, the myth, as a progenitor for the rationale to intervene, begins to vanish as it never existed thus leaving the space free for the creation of new myths that, in turn, would create a set of additional rationales to justify the next planned moves.

There were countless myths in the history of the U.S. colonialist imperialism, each of which left thousands or hundreds of thousands of people dead. Sampling: Indian (Original Peoples) savages, black inferiority to implement slavery; Spanish treachery, civilizing the Filipinos, Japan attacked the U.S. for no reason, the atomic attack against Japan to save American life, the communist domino theory in South East Asia, Palestinian “terrorism,” Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, “democratizing” the Arabs, and so on. In its aggression against Iraq in 1991, the United States of George H. W. Bush added one more item to its long list of myths: “smart” bombing.

American military planners invented that phrase to insinuate that the American bombing of Iraq was discriminate to minimize civilian deaths. The insinuation is preposterous: minimizing civilian deaths does not alter the fact that mass murder in any magnitude is still criminal. To argue this, would an Iraqi individual who lost his or her family as a “collateral damage” accept that loss because determined criminals sitting in Washington, D.C., decided it was an acceptable damage?

Nonetheless, what is “smart” bombing, and does that mean traditional bombing is “stupid”?

Briefly, the imperialist idiom, “smart” bombing, revolves around an applied concept in military technology: 1) computer-guided missiles that recognize previously downloaded profiles of targeted buildings, as in Tomahawk missiles, and 2) laser-guided bombs as dropped from jetfighters.

But was the bombing of Iraq, “smart”? No. In fact, out of the 250,000 bombs dropped on Iraq, only 244 were “smart” and if you add to that the 88 tele-guided Tomahawked missiles, the total would be 332. This means less than one percent of all bombs were “smart.” As you can see, the bombing was not “smart” at all, and the incremental, massive destruction of Iraq in 42 days of bombing proved it.

To downplay the news of Iraqi deaths, U.S. war planners, in an infantile public relations stunt, discarded the term “smart bombing” and adopted “surgical strike,” as if a name change indicting precision would transform the essence of a bombardment whereby the United States dropped bombs that exceeded all bombs dropped in WWII. This is how an imperialist CNN dealt with the notion of “smart bombing”:

But "smart weapons" -- the military calls them precision-guided munitions (PGMs) -- weren't widely used in 1991. Only 244 laser-guided bombs and 88 cruise missiles hit Iraq, out of a total of some 250,000 bombs dropped during the war. But while the venerable B-52 dropped tons of old-fashioned explosives on troop concentrations in northern and southern Iraq, the strikes on Baghdad were relatively few and tightly targeted. The rise of smart weapons led to a new military theory -- "surgical strikes."

Two raids of 300 B-17 bombers could not achieve with 3,000 bombs what two F-117s can do with only four," Gen. Buster C. Glosson, the planner of the Gulf War air strikes, wrote in 1992. "Of the 85,000 tons of bombs used in the Gulf War, only 8,000 tons (less than 10 percent) were PGMs, yet they accounted for 75 percent of the damage." More precisely targeted weapons, the argument goes, harm fewer civilians. [Italics added] Source

Notice how CNN praised the B-52s that wreaked havoc on Iraq with the flattering adjective “venerable,” thus alluding to their exterminating use against hapless Vietnamese. Also, notice how the writers of news tried to alter the perception on the scale of damage inflicted on the Iraqi capital by inserting the phrase, “the strikes on Baghdad were relatively few and tightly targeted,” implying that “surgical” bombing was working.

As I explained, the theatrical posturing to change the name of means of killing from “smart” to “surgical” is as futile as is imperialism itself: death is still the same. In addition, purporting that targeted weapons “harm few civilians,” reveals in the most startling way that the American ideology of extermination has deep roots in the American military psyche, in that, death (in any proportion) of the attacked population, has no relevance in the calculation of the American political and military establishments.

Having thus far established the American determination to 1) attack Iraq, 2) go beyond the mere “liberation” of Kuwait to destroy it as a nation, and 3) having delineated the mythmaking that surrounded the bombing, it is now mandatory to ask some questions.

Was the destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage systems a strategic American aim to create a cataclysmic health crisis among the surviving population? Did the U.S. anticipate the outcome of its deliberate bombardment? And if so, did U.S. planners intend to use the economic sanctions as a means to amplify the effects of that mayhem? The answer to all these questions is a loud, resonating yes.

Because of the critical importance of my assertion, I am introducing Thomas J. Nagy (Associate Professor of Expert Systems, George Washington University) to support it. Citing U.S. official documents, Nagy wrote an indispensable article, The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the US Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply. In it, he reported on a file declassified by the Department of Defense, IRAQ Water Treatment Vulnerabilities. Nagy writes:

Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. [Italics added]

The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens.

Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline," the document states. "With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease." [Italics added]

The document notes that the importation of chlorine "has been embargoed" by sanctions. "Recent reports indicate the chlorine supply is critically low."

Food and medicine will also be affected, the document states. "Food processing, electronic, and, particularly, pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants," it says.

The document addresses possible Iraqi countermeasures to obtain drinkable water despite sanctions. [Italics added]

Iraq conceivably could truck water from the mountain reservoirs to urban areas. But the capability to gain significant quantities is extremely limited," the document states. "The amount of pipe on hand and the lack of pumping stations would limit laying pipelines to these reservoirs. Moreover, without chlorine purification, the water still would contain biological pollutants. Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from Northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs." [Italics added]

As an alternative, "Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons," the document says. "It probably also is attempting to purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements." [Italics added]

Recently, I have come across other DIA documents that confirm the Pentagon's monitoring of the degradation of Iraq's water supply. These documents have not been publicized until now.

The first one in this batch is called "Disease Information," and is also dated January 22, 1991. At the top, it says, "Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad." The analysis is blunt: "Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems."

The second DIA document, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq," is dated February 21, 1990, but the year is clearly a typo and should be 1991. It states: "Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing." It adds: "Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased since the beginning of Desert Storm. . . . Current public health problems are attributable to the reduction of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification and distribution, electricity, and the decreased ability to control disease outbreaks." [Italics added]

This document lists the "most likely diseases during next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely)."

The third document in this series, "Medical Problems in Iraq," is dated March 15, 1991. It says: "Communicable diseases in Baghdad are more widespread than usually observed during this time of the year and are linked to the poor sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplies and improper sewage disposal) resulting from the war. According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)/World Health Organization report, the quantity of potable water is less than 5 percent of the original supply, there are no operational water and sewage treatment plants, and the reported incidence of diarrhea is four times above normal levels. Additionally, respiratory infections are on the rise. Children particularly have been affected by these diseases."

Perhaps to put a gloss on things, the document states, "There are indications that the situation is improving and that the population is coping with the degraded conditions." But it adds: "Conditions in Baghdad remain favorable for communicable disease outbreaks."

The fourth document, "Status of Disease at Refugee Camps," is dated May 1991. The summary says, "Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps. Further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation."

The reason for this outbreak is clearly stated again. "The main causes of infectious diseases, particularly diarrhea, dysentery, and upper respiratory problems, are poor sanitation and unclean water. These diseases primarily afflict the old and young children."

The fifth document, "Health Conditions in Iraq, June 1991," is still heavily censored. All I can make out is that the DIA sent a source "to assess health conditions and determine the most critical medical needs of Iraq. Source observed that Iraqi medical system was in considerable disarray, medical facilities had been extensively looted, and almost all medicines were in critically short supply."

The protein deficiency disease kwashiorkor was observed in Iraq "for the first time," the document adds. "Gastroenteritis was killing children. . . . In the south, 80 percent of the deaths were children (with the exception of Al Amarah, where 60 percent of deaths were children)."

The final document is "Iraq: Assessment of Current Health Threats and Capabilities," and it is dated November 15, 1991. This one has a distinct damage-control feel to it. Here is how it begins: "Restoration of Iraq's public health services and shortages of major medical materiel remain dominant international concerns. Both issues apparently are being exploited by Saddam Hussein in an effort to keep public opinion firmly against the U.S. and its Coalition allies and to direct blame away from the Iraqi government." [Italics added]

Having explored how the United States premeditatedly destroyed Iraq’s vital infrastructures (civilian, industrial, agricultural, and military) and killed hundred of thousands of its people, the question remains: Was the United States following any blueprint?

Can a Christian be a good American?

2006-07-23T10:24:00.000-06:00

Ed: I found this little gem on the Signs Forum yestrerday. HILARIOUS!!!

CONTENTS

1. Can a Christian be a good American?
2. Point-by-point explanation
3. The original text

Can a Christian be a good American?

Theologically, no, because his allegiance is to Yahweh, the ancient Hebrew god.

Scripturally, no, because his allegiance is to Christianity and the bible.

Geographically, no, because his allegiance is to Israel, the home of "god's chosen people".

Socially, no, because his allegiance to Christianity forbids him to make friends with Muslims or Jews.

Politically, no, because he must submit to his spiritual leaders, who teach annihilation of all who do not share their faith.

Domestically, no, because he is encouraged to take slaves and beat them if they are disobedient.

Religiously, no, because no other religion is accepted by his Yahweh except Christianity - intolerance.

Intellectually, no, because he cannot accept the separation of church and state - a founding principle of the USA.

Philosophically, no, because Christianity, Yahweh, and the bible do not allow freedom of religion and expression.

Democratically, no, because Christianity and democracy cannot coexist.

Spiritually, no, because the Christian god is neither loving nor kind.

Point by point explanation

Theologically, no, because his allegiance is to Yahweh, the ancient Hebrew god.

Explanation: the first commandment (commanding worship of Yahweh and forbidding worship of false idols) instructs Christians to hold Yahweh in the highest regard. In the event of conflict between Yahweh's commandments and local (human) law, the Christian would have no choice but to disregard local law in favour of Yahweh's orders. This means that a Christian's loyalty is to his god first, and his country second. See Exodus 20:2-6.

Scripturally, no, because his allegiance is to Christianity and the bible.

Explanation: again, the first commandment instructs Christians to hold their loyalty to Yahweh in higher regard than anything here on Earth.

Geographically, no, because his allegiance is to Israel, the home of "god's chosen people".

Explanation: a common interpretation of the book of Revelations is that world war III will take place in Israel and will herald the second coming of Christ. See Revelations. Israel is held in particularly high regard by Christianity not just because of its historical significance, but also because it is the home of the descendants of Jacob, to whom Yahweh allegedly gave the holy land. See Leviticus 20:24. Also see Numbers 24:8-9. The United States of America has no biblical significance and is never once referenced by the bible, meaning there is no particular reason for any Christian to hold the United States in higher regard than Israel.

Socially, no, because his allegiance to Christianity forbids him to make friends with Muslims or Jews.

Explanation: Christianity holds people of other religions in extremely low regard, and the bible goes so far as to advocate violence and death towards non-Christians. See Deuteronomy 13:6-18, also see 2 Chronicles 15:13, also see Mark 16:16

Politically, no, because he must submit to his spiritual leaders, who teach annihilation of all who do not share their faith.

Explanation: see previous point.

Domestically, no, because he is encouraged to take slaves and beat them if they are disobedient.

Explanation: Slavery is an example of conflict between Yahweh's laws and local (human) laws. Slavery was abolished in the USA long ago, yet the bible clearly states on numerous occasions that slavery is perfectly acceptable, and even provides guidelines for master/slave interaction. See Leviticus 25:44, also see 1 Peter 2:18. The bible also clearly states that it is acceptable for a master to beat the slave (provided the slave doesn't die as the result of the beating), even though under US law such a beating would be forbidden. See Exodus 21:20-21.

Religiously, no, because no other religion is accepted by his Yahweh except Christianity - intolerance.

Explanation: See the first commandment (Exodus 20:2-6).

Intellectually, no, because he cannot accept the separation of church and state - a founding principle of the USA.

Explanation: A commonly held misconception among Christians is that the USA was founded as a Christian nation and somehow became secular over time. These Christians wish to remove the separation between church and state, and convert the US into a theocracy. The public school system in particular is a hotly contested battleground, with Christians arguing that religion (their religion only, of course) should be taught as fact. After all, the bible warns against learning things outside of the church (see Colossians 2:8).

Philosophically, no, because Christianity, Yahweh, and the bible do not allow freedom of religion and expression.

Explanation: Actually, Christianity does allow free expression, just as long as everything you say is in perfect agreement with their teachings. If you choose to speak out against Christianity, say, by encouraging people to investigate other religions, then you have crossed the line and should be put to death (Exodus 22:20). Freedom of religion is also allowed, just as long as you choose the Christian religion. Choosing any other religion is forbidden (See the first commandment). True freedom of expression and true freedom of religion both run counter to the fundamental guiding principles of Christianity.

Democratically, no, because Christianity and democracy cannot coexist.

Explanation: Democracy only works if ALL citizens are held in equal regard. The US Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal", yet this is in direct contradiction to the bible, which states that non-believers are inferior (see Exodus 22:20 or 2 Chronicles 15:13). Therefore, why should the Christian accept non-Christians as his equal? And in a Christian-run democracy, how long would it be before a law is passed forbidding non-Christians from participating in the democratic process? That isn't democracy - it's theocracy.

Spiritually, no, because the Christian god is neither loving nor kind.

Explanation: See Numbers 11:1, Exodus 15:7, Deuteronomy 5:9, Exodus 4:11, Ezekial 4:15, Leviticus 26:27-35, and many other passages too numerous to list here.

Who is JJ Hurtak?

2006-04-12T09:31:00.000-06:00

To kick off this ambitious project, let us have a look at Don JJ Hurtak, the guy who started the whole “Keys of Enoch” deal and garnered such followers as the young Don Bernard “Drunvalo” Perona. Now a fully fledged psychic mafia Don in his own right.

Don James J "J.J." Hurtak's published bio says:

"J.J. Hurtak, Ph.D., Ph.D., M.Th. is a social scientist and futurist who studied at the University of California and the University of Minnesota."

Now, certainly he does not say that his degrees came from the University of California and the University of Minnesota... he only says he has degrees, followed by the names of two universities where he "studied." However, certainly, a reader would assume from this juxtaposition that his degrees came from those universities.

The fact is that his PhD is in social science and his other PhD in History and Oriental Studies, were obtained from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico.

Regarding Hurtak's claims to have been at the Uni of California in 1973, we find the following.

The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch® (1973, 1975, 1977) makes the correlation that this Divine Name was the key behind the transcription code of chemical letters which develops the human body. In 1973 while at the University of California, Hurtak came to understand that there was a connection between the series of linguistic and genetic associations in the spelling of God’s name in the biblical Hebrew (YHVH).

http://www.keysofenoch.org/html/academy_learning_session__dna.html

Hurtak’s bio claims:

"He worked with Dr. Thich Tien-An, Vietnamese Buddhist scholar in establishing the curriculum of studies at the Graduate School of Buddhism, Los Angeles, as well as working with the microfilming of the Tibetan canon in Nepal and India."

Apparently Dr. Thich Thien-An died in 1980. Here is a link with a brief overview of his life in which you will find no reference to Hurtak.

http://www.urbandharma.org/ibmc/ibmc2/suto.html

Ven. Dr. Thich Thien-An came to Southern California in the summer of 1966 as an exchange professor at UCLA. Soon his students discovered he was not only a renowned scholar, but a Zen Buddhist monk as well. His students convinced Dr. Thien-An toteach the practice of meditation and start a study group about the other steps on the Buddhist path, in addition to the academic viewpoint….

…Dr. Thien-An died at the age of 54 of cancer which had spread rapidly throughout his body, from his liver to his brain. In his last months, one could often find him sitting peacefully on the steps of the bell tower. It was a gift to be able to sit quietly next to him and feel the energy of his understanding. He had many plans but saw the reality of what was happening. He smiled, as he smiled often, a smile of great compassion and loving-kindness for all the world.

From http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/6/metcalf991.html , a review of a book

"The faces of buddhism in America":

Cuong Nguyen and A. W. Barber, on the other hand, peremptorily dismiss the careers of Thich Nhat Hanh and Thich Tien An (p. 131) and spend their chapter discussing Vietnamese Buddhism in the Vietnamese American community only. [...] And wherever Thich Tien An got his training, his memory has certainly not faded away in Los Angeles, where he is remembered at his flourishing Dharma center, rightly or wrongly, as the first patriarch of American Vietnamese Buddhism.

Again, nowhere is there a mention of J.J. Hurtak.

Hurtak’s bio claims: He is President of the International Academy for Future Science.

What is the Academy for Future Science?

Website: http://www.affs.org/index.html

ACADEMY FOR FUTURE SCIENCE

The Academy for Future Science is an international non-profit organisation operating in more than 12 countries since its inception in 1973. Its charter covers the areas of archaeology, anthropology, environment and remote sensing, computers and physics, as well as studies in consciousness and comparative religion. Its work has been represented at the Parliament of the World's Religions (1999),The Millennium Peace Summit ofWorld Religious Leaders (2000), and at many university conferences on the dialogue of science and religion. Its members have been responsible for the updating of the medical curriculum at universities in South Africa and the monitoring of critical environmental areas in Brazil.

Dr. James J. Hurtak, PhD, PhD is President of the Academy for Future Science. He is a social scientist and futurist with two doctorates who studied at the Universities of California and Minnesota. His main concern is the interface between science, religion and the environment. He was a presenter at the recent Parliament of World Religions (1999) in Cape Town.

The Academy For Future Science http://www.affs.org/

P.O. Box FE, Los Gatos CA 95031, USA P.O. Box 35340, Menlo Park, 0102, Pretoria, South Africa

Desiree Hurtak is listed as the admin contact (WhoIs records) for the futurescience.org domain. Turns out she's James (Jim) J. Hurtak's wife. Bio here:

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guests/767.html

The wife of J.J. Hurtak, Desiree Hurtak is an international relations expert and author. Her recent work involves environmental studies and the film documentation of indigenous cultures to preserve their cultural heritage. To this end, she has also studied and written on the philosophies and literature of various ancient cultures including Egypt and Mesoamerica to understand their importance in our evolving society.

They've both been on the show twice in the past 10 months.

Photos of both are here, from the UN Summit on Sustainable Development:

http://www.un.org/events/wssd/photos/020831pressphotos.htm

At another of their websites: http://www.pistissophia.org/

We find:

The Pistis Sophia is a translation and commentary of a special collection of 2,000 year old Gnostic Coptic manuscripts, derived from ancient Egyptian-Coptic Christian Codexes. In the historic period after the early Church became established as the "official religion" of the Roman Empire (325 C.E.), the Pistis Sophia literature was withdrawn. It remains an inner teaching of the Coptic and African communities.

The words Pistis Sophia are Greek for "Faith Wisdom" and represent a teaching given to the disciples of Christ Jesus AFTER his resurrection. Significant for modern times, these are teachings revealed not only to Jesus' male disciples, but also to his female disciples including Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Salome! […]

At the same time, the Pistis Sophia texts work richly and expoundingly in concert with the Gospel Teachings of Jesus Christ, the work of the Prophets and the Saints, both the Old and the New Testaments as well as many Intertestamental works and The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch® .

At the bottom of this page, we see an address (2003) for the Academy of Future Science: PO Box 395, Ava, Mo 65608

Articles from the AFFS,

The Quest to Terraform Mars by D. M. Hurtak, M.S.Sc.
http://www.affs.org/html/the_quest_to_terraform_mars.html

Crisis of the Amazon by J.J. Hurtak, Ph.D., Ph.D.
http://www.affs.org/assets/images/autogen/Crisis_of_the_Amazon_Ns1.gif

An article on Biogmagnetism by H. Coetzee, Ph.D. [Originally published in Future History, Volume 8]
http://www.affs.org/html/biomagnetism.html

We search for info on H. Coetzee, and find a mish mash of various other people with the name, either in Washington state, or in South Africa.

When we check on the referenced journal, Future History, we find it here: http://www.keysofenoch.org/html/journal.html

The Academy for Future Science, i.e. Hurtak, publishes this journal!

Then, there is this.

Laser Remote Sensing by Dr. Edgardo Gerck
Lasertech S.A.
Campinas, SP, Brasil Dr. James J. Hurtak
Lasertech-USA
Los Gatos, California USA

Originally published in International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Vol. XXIX, 1992, ISPRS, Washington, D.C.

Which leads us to: http://www.isprs.org/isprs.html.......You can see the “officials” of this organization here

Where you also discover: “The headquarter of the Society for the period 2004-2008 is the office of the Secretary General.

“ Said “Secretary General is:
ORHAN ALTAN
Istanbul Technical University
Faculty of Civil Engineering
Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry
34469 Ayazaga-Istanbul
TURKEY

Here you can find out about their members

For example, the entry for the United States is:
United States American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 210
Bethesda, Maryland 20814-2160, USA
Tel: +1-301-493 0290
Fax: +1-301-493 0208
E-mail: asprs@asprs.org

Number of Individual Members: 6,000

If you have a look at their website, you will read this:

What is ASPRS? Founded in 1934, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) is a scientific association serving over 7,000 professional members around the world. Our mission is to advance knowledge and improve understanding of mapping sciences to promote the responsible applications of photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and supporting technologies. […]

"We are extremely proud of our historical roots in imaging science and technology in the form of photogrammetry and remote sensing, and we intend to maintain and build upon our emphasis in this area. However, our membership is focused on imaging not only in the sense of primary data acquisition, but also with respect to the extraction of information from image data in a decision support context," said Lillesand.

"We want to make clear that ASPRS represents a scientific and professional home for a broad array of individuals whose interests span the entire spectrum of geospatial information sciences, technologies, and applications."

In short, it is more or less a spying organization that is also a “vacuum cleaner” operation. Shades of the CIA!

Here you will find some of the “sustaining members” of ISPRS:
http://www.isprs.org/members/sustaining.html

Again, as you scan the names of the corporations, you realize that this is nothing more than an organization of “psychic spies.”

Back to Hurtak: Supposely he was the second in command in the Council of Nine...
See: www.tribwatch.com/aquarian.htm

A Fortean Times article reveals that Hurtak was second in command in the Council of Nine. Note how the mind-control projects of this Council mirror those of Tavistock-Stanford:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the history of The Nine is its relationship to the career of Andrija Puharich. Recent research has revealed Puharich to have a distinctly sinister side. As an Army doctor in the 1950s, he was deeply involved with the CIA’s notorious MKULTRA mind control project.

He - together with the infamous Dr Sidney Gottlieb - experimented with a variety of techniques to change or induce actual thought processes...even to creating the impression of voices in the head. These techniques included the use of drugs, hypnosis and beaming radio signals directly into the subject’s brain. And, significantly, he was engaged in this work at exactly the same time that The Nine made their first appearance at the Round Table Foundation. The Foundation itself is now known to have been largely funded by the Pentagon as a front for its medical and parapsychological research. Puharich was still working for the CIA in the early 1970s, when he brought Uri Geller out of Israel."

Hurtak’s bio claims: He has been Director of LASERTECH in Brazil, which developed lasers for industrial and environmental studies in the Amazon.

Here is lasertech’s website: http://www.lasertech.com/s_amer.html

No mention of Hurtak there anywhere. But, we have a researcher in Brazil checking on this and may have more details later.

From Hurtak’s bio:

"With broad scientific interests in ecology, remote sensing, technology, and alternative energy, as well as belief systems of indigenous cultures, Dr. Hurtak has published eight books and more than 100 articles in eight languages."

It’s rather difficult to find these articles: A list of published issues of antigravity news, but the links of Hurtak's publications doesn't work:
http://www.padrak.com/agn/AGPAPER99.html

Bailey, P., Grotz, T., and Hurtak, J., "Survey And Critical Review Of Recent Innovative Energy Conversion Technologies," October 1997. [http://www.padrak.com/ine/BGH97_1.html]

Bailey, P., Grotz, T., and Hurtak, J., "Review And Status of Reported Innovative Energy Conversion Technologies, Contrasted Using A Consistent R&D Ranking Scale," October 1997. [http://www.padrak.com/ine/BGH97_2.html]

A search on the electronic uni library system returns a series of FIVE publications on various journals, examples:

Authors Hurtak JJ.

Institution Academy for Future Science, Los Gatos, CA 95031, USA. jjh@affs.or

G Hurtak JJ. Acupuncture and the cycle of birth as viewed in an historic Japanese medical text. [Historical Article. Journal Article] Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. 10(2):231-3, 2004 Apr. UI: 15165402

Curtis BD. Hurtak JJ. Consciousness and quantum information processing: uncovering the foundation for a medicine of light. [Review] [77 refs] [Journal Article. Review. Review, Tutorial] Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. 10(1):27-39, 2004 Feb. UI: 15025876

Hurtak JJ. An overview of acupuncture medicine.[see comment][erratum appears in J Altern Complement Med. 2003 Feb;9(1):179]. [Historical Article. Journal Article] Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. 8(5):535-8, 2002 Oct. UI: 12470432

Energy technologies for the 21st century: Substitutes for fossil fuel Fuel and Energy Abstracts Volume: 37, Issue: 3, May, 1996, pp. 202 Hurtak, J. J.

One suspects that the “hundreds of articles”(?) must be in his own publications. Also note that the publications listed above are considered “fringe”.

From Hurtak’s bio: He produced The Voice of Africa, a Study on African Shamanism (1987) and Merkabah: Voyage of a Star Seed (1998), a winner of four international awards with its computer-animated symbols of spiritual unity.

From http://www.souloflife.com/musvideo.html :

JJ Hurtak - MERKABAH - Voyage of a Star Seed - Prepare yourself for the Merkabah journey that carries you into the higher worlds. Amid sacred sounds and colors you experience its transport powers as a super-luminal light, traveling beyond the limitations of physical form. Become a time and space traveler as you experience the many heavens! Encountering angelic beings and whole Light forms of ultraterrestrial Light from higher dimensional realms the dimensional gateways will open to you. In this masterpiece of video animation the Merkabah transports you from our immediate planetary system into other realms of awareness, connecting past, present, and future worlds of balance and beauty.

At OneLoveOneSpirit.com: We find the following statement:

"VIDEO MERKABAH: Voyage Of A Star Seed We regret to say that we are no longer allowed to retail this video. OneLoveOneSpirit.com apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused you ."

We were unable to find any “international awards” for this video as claimed.

We were unable to find any verification for “The Voice of Africa” in any context.

From Hurtak’s bio:

"Over the past 20 years, he has been involved with the dialog on issues concerning the environment, religion, and science. He was a presenter at the Parliament of the World’s Religions (1999) in Cape Town".

From: http://www.cpwr.org/

"The mission of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions is to cultivate harmony between the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its other guiding institutions in order to achieve a peaceful, just, and sustainable world. "

The "Council for a Parliament of the World'd Religions"'s site seems to be Cesnur-like: studying the world religion's scenario and defend the principle of religious liberty.

http://www.cesnur.org/about.htm (scroll down for the english version)

Parliament's who's who:

http://www.cpwr.org/who/who.htm

Mission: The mission of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions is to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its other guiding institutions in order to achieve a peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

http://www.cpwr.org/who/staff.htm

1999 Cape Town's meeting attendees

http://www.cpwr.net/120499.htm

This looks like a benevolent and legitimate organization that Hurtak has managed to “gate crash” with no real credentials.

It’s sister organization, CESNUR, has an article on Hurtak here: http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_matthews.htm

Entitled: "The Master Race and the Family of Light: Conflict, Spiritual Purification and Bio-Political Agendas in JJ Hurtak's "Book of Knowledge"

Which says, in part:

Earlier in 1973, maverick linguist, alleged CIA consultant, occultist and nouveau Egyptologist, J.J. Hurtak, according to his account, had been “lifted up” in a body of light into a region of stars called Merak and Muscida by the Master Ophanim Enoch. Enoch, answering a prayerful plea from Hurtak, had come to deliver a revelatory message outlining the purpose of life on the Earth plane, and to reveal the contours of a coming confrontation between the Children of Light and the Fallen Masters of Darkness.2 Over a period of two days (Jan 2-3) Enoch “downloaded” into Hurtak a total of 64 keys or revelations and these became The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch. The Book of Knowledge details a premillennial, post-Christian account that calls on the Children of Light to be genetically recoded for the energy transformations to come that they may be the vanguard of an ascended “Christ Race,” which will complete the evolution of the original Pre-Adamic races. Key 109, a central revelation in this regard, reads as follows: The Anti-Universe is composed of Star Field Energies revealed on the Black Cube of Mecca which shows the function and destruction of three dimensional universes. 3

Hurtak’s commentary on this Key reveals that the events of October 1973 galvanized him. Hurtak saw the October war as evidence that most Muslims, particularly those in power, are in league with, or in thrall to, dark extraterrestrial forces that originate in the constellations of Ursa Minor and Draco (with the principle star alpha Draconis as a focus).

Hurtak constructs an elaborate narrative linking ancient astronomy and geometry, genetic/molecular and computer theory with geo-political events, and in revisiting the old competitions between Muslim, Christian and Jew, recasts the historic dimensions of this occasional conflict in extraterrestrial, genetic terms.

In elaborating on Hurtak’s prophetic project I will first briefly describe Hurtak’s process of “prophetic regenesis,” in which revelation and prophetic commentary are said to “reveal” the contours of a cosmic conflict between two ancient extraterrestrial genetic bloodlines that is said to manifest itself in geo-political events on earth. Then, I will discuss how Hurtak’s process of revelation subsumes and elides the actual sequence of events as recorded by news agencies. Lastly, I will briefly describe how this narrative of Muslim/Christian conflict, recast in extraterrestrial and genetic terms, has impacted the writings and ideations of New Age and Ascensionist thinkers and practitioners. […]

For example, an examination of the commentary explicating Key 109 demonstrates how, according the Hurtak, the Kaaba at Mecca acts as a concentration of anti-Universe, anti-Christ energy, a kind of spiritual black hole as it were. […]

For Hurtak, this “clinging to the cube” that the Kaaba represents is, in fact, evidence of a dangerous tendency toward retrogression, rigidity, entropy and a need to tyrannically control. As Muslims circumambulate around their most sacred shrine in Mecca, they are exhibiting the “black hole function” of refusing to evolve up to the next level of organic organization. […]

The implication is that Muslims do not “allow” the light of program of God to penetrate them, therefore, they re-enact and reinscribe, in their revering of the cube at Mecca, a focus on physical destruction of the 3-D world, in the way that the black hole is postulated to trap light itself.7 […]

The Book of Knowledge constitutes Hurtak’s attempt to construct what occultist Rene Schwaller de Lubicz referred to as la Symbolique, a purported system of knowledge transmission de Lubicz considered to be primarily visual and pre-linguistic, and is secretly encoded in the shapes of various written languages, mystical buildings, such as the Great Pyramid and for Hurtak, in human DNA. […]

The Children of Darkness “cling to the cube” in Mecca in order to keep the Children of Light from discovering the symbolique of redemption hidden in the Kaaba. They are not entirely at fault, since they are operating at the behest of extraterrestrials from alpha Draconis/Ursa Minor. They can be saved by bringing them to the Torah Or (Light of the Torah)—which Hurtak prophetically retranslates as the Program of Israel with Gematria designation 8033-45. […]

Now lets look at the "Council for a Parliament of the World'd Religions" Mission again and see how it fits in with the above........... Mission: The mission of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions is to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its other guiding institutions in order to achieve a peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

It appears that the CPWR hasn't done it's homework!

Continuing with the Censur article

There is no way to determine for sure whether Hurtak’s apparent conflation of events is purposeful, the result of a faulty news source, or a common American tendency to disregard the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. Whatever the case, Hurtak declares that Enoch transported him to the location of the Kaaba, in much the same way that Jabriel was said to have transported Muhammad to the Temple Mount during his Night Journey. From his exalted standpoint, Enoch revealed to Hurtak how the cubic structure of the Kaaba acts like a black hole, sucking in and trapping the Light of the Father and feeding the Children of Darkness. 13 The stone inside the Kaaba, it is said holds and traps the accumulated and unredeemed sins of humanity inside the cube as Muslims, guided by extraterrestrial forces from alpha Draconis, are vampirically infected by the resulting energies of degeneration, vengeance and anti-evolution. […]

So, how has this premillennial scenario played to Hurtak’s New Age and Ascensionist audience? […]

Perhaps one of the most interesting responses can be found in an early ascension channeling session conducted by trance channel Barbara Marciniak in 1990.

When asked specifically about Hurtak and The Book of Knowledge, Marciniak’s guides replied that, although in the past they may have spoken highly of the Book, they also had “always maintained that [we] do not agree with what is being said there.” While the book is said to “resonate with its own form of integrity,” it is also limited by Hurtak’s belief systems, and he will eventually be surprised when he finds out what and who the conflict really involves. Her guides go on to recommend The Gods of Eden by William Bramley as a more accurate account of humanity’s extraterrestrial background.16

Some ascensionists have reported to me that something about the book “creeps them out,” and still others were quite surprised when I pointed out passages in the text that seemed to vilify Muslims or contained a ‘master race’ narrative.

Most ascensionists seem not to be very interested in pursuing Hurtak’s premillennial charges of anti-Christ Muslim behavior, even while they generally accept his overall narrative regarding the existence of an extraterrestrial conspiracy on the Earth that is designed to keep humans from evolving and the importance of DNA as the locus of personal incarnation.

On the other hand, while perusing Internet archives of ascensionist/New Age chat rooms, I ran across several conversations, all post 9/11, in which Key 109 was brought up for discussion. In one instance, a respondent simply replied by posting a verse from Surah 9 of the Koran, which, when taken out of context, seems to provide justification for Muslims to kill their enemies at any opportunity. It was as if the respondent was saying: “Yes, see, look at their scriptures, they are just like that.” […]

Robert Fuller (no relation to Buckminster), in his book Naming the Anti-Christ: The History of an American Obsession, notes that a great deal of the apocalyptic imagery that is increasingly found in much New Age/Ascensionist literature derives from fundamentalist/right wing sources/pre-millennial, ranging from Hal Lindsey to Orson Scott Card.18 […]

For all of its sophisticated patter, and it’s potential as a vision that seeks to intimately link the twin infinities of the cosmos and the human soul through the mediating mechanism of DNA, Hurtak’s revelation seems to follow this trajectory with remarkable fidelity, only now the millennial conflict is cast in mathematical, extraterrestrial, genetic and even racial terms.

Later in The Book of Knowledge, Hurtak reveals that there are two other groups who operate with the Fallen Masters, obscuring the possibility of the Christ race evolving on Earth. These individuals are the orthodox ‘believers’ in the Jewish and Christian communities, and the secular scholars and intellectuals who annoyingly insist on the importance of history, context, analysis and fact-finding.

For Hurtak, such critical analysis is idolatry constituting the Abomination of Desolation as described in the Book of Daniel.

Well, I guess the shoe fits. A close look at the Book of Knowledge reveals what one might call the circular edge of closure, when right and left wing interests are joined in the fervor of premillennial promises of perfected genetic evolution, the end of history and the conquering of ones stated enemies. It’s the same story being told now in more dangerous times.

Christian convert could be executed

2006-03-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Mar. 20, 2006. 01:00 AM
DANIEL COONEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS

KABUL—An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.

The trial, believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan, highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The defendant, 41-year-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said in an interview. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.

During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.

"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam."
He said he would rule on the case within two months.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on sharia law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman converted back to Islam, but he refused.

Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country. Some 99 per cent of its 28 million people are Muslim, and the remainder are mainly Hindu. A Christian aid worker in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no reliable figure for the number of Christians, though it was believed to be only in the dozens or low hundreds.

Hakim said that if Rahman was acquitted, it would be a propaganda win for the Taliban rebels. In the months before U.S.-led troops ousted the Taliban in 2001, the regime claimed Western aid groups were trying to convert Afghan Muslims. Eight foreign aid workers were arrested for allegedly preaching Christianity but later released.

Is Another 9/11 in the Works?

2006-03-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

By Paul Craig Roberts
15 Mar 06

If you were President George W. Bush with all available US troops tied down by the Iraqi resistance, and you were unable to control Iraq or political developments in the country, would you also start a war with Iran?

Yes, you would.

Bush’s determination to spread Middle East conflict by striking at Iran does not make sense.

First of all, Bush lacks the troops to do the job. If the US military cannot successfully occupy Iraq, there is no way that the US can occupy Iran, a country approximately three times the size in area and population.

Second, Iran can respond to a conventional air attack with missiles targeted on American ships and bases, and on oil facilities located throughout the Middle East.

Third, Iran has human assets, including the Shia majority population in Iraq, that it can activate to cause chaos throughout the Middle East.

Fourth, polls of US troops in Iraq indicate that a vast majority do not believe in their mission and wish to be withdrawn. Unlike the yellow ribbon folks at home, the troops are unlikely to be enthusiastic about being trapped in an Iranian quagmire in addition to the Iraqi quagmire.

Fifth, Bush’s polls are down to 34 percent, with a majority of Americans believing that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

If you were being whipped in one fight, would you start a second fight with a bigger and stronger person?

That’s what Bush is doing.

Opinion polls indicate that the Bush regime has succeeded in its plan to make Americans fear Iran as the greatest threat America faces.

The Bush regime has created a major dispute with Iran over that country’s nuclear energy program and then blocked every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end.

In order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran, the Bush regime is using bribery and coercion in its effort to have Iran referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions.

In recent statements President Bush and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld blamed Iran for the Iraqi resistance, claiming that the roadside bombs used by the resistance are being supplied by Iran.

It is obvious that Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about.

Yet, Bush has no conventional means of waging war with Iran. His bloodthirsty neoconservatives have prepared plans for nuking Iran. However, an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran would leave the US, already regarded as a pariah nation, totally isolated.

Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel’s highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some “black ops” group will orchestrate the attack.

One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush’s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world’s doubts of the explanation.

Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn’t it?

Fantasy? Let’s hope so.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts [ paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com ] is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Religion - The Tie That Binds

2006-03-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson calls radical Muslims 'satanic'

Associated Press
14 Mar 06

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Monday on his live "700 Club" television program that Islam wants to take over the world and is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic."

After watching a news segment about radical Islam in Europe, Robertson remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoon drawings of the Prophet Mohammed "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."

Robertson also said that "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen whether you like it or not, is world domination."

Robertson's Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network expunged the comments from the version of the program posted on its Web site out of concerns they could be misinterpreted if viewed out of context, said Angell Watts, a Robertson spokeswoman.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which monitors "The 700 Club" daily, released a written transcript of Robertson's remarks. CBN confirmed the remarks with its own transcript.

Robertson said in a statement later Monday that he was referring specifically to terrorists as being motivated by Satan when he made his comments in an editorial following a CBN News story on the widening Muslim protests in Europe over the cartoons. In the story, he noted, radical Muslims were shown screaming "May Allah bomb you! May Osama Bin Laden bomb you!"

"My statement in the commentary, 'These people are crazed fanatics,' refers specifically to the radicals and terrorists who want to bomb innocent people," Robertson said. "I believe that they are motivated by demonic power and are satanic."

Robertson has come under intense criticism in recent months for comments suggesting that American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip.

Robertson recently told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he makes his comments off the cuff after watching news segments. He later told the Christian magazine World that he's being more careful and reviewing news stories before going on the air.

On Monday, Robertson also said of Islam: "These people are saying it over there in Europe - world domination. 'We're going to take over Europe, we're going to take over England, we're going to take over Denmark, we're going to take over France.' That's their goal. And why don't we wake up to the fact of who we're dealing with? And by the way, Islam is not a religion of peace."

Asked why Robertson said Islam is not a peaceful religion, Watts said, "At its core, he does not believe it is (peaceful). He's talking about fundamentalists, not moderates."

The comments were similar to remarks he made on his program in 2002, when he said Islam "is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Robertson's new comments "grossly irresponsible."
"At a time when inter-religious tensions around the world are at an all-time high, Robertson seems determined to throw gasoline on the fire," Lynn said in a statement.

Cultural Warmongers - Picking a fight with a faith 1.3 billion strong

By Patrick J. Buchanan
American Conservative
14 Mar 06

If you wish to get along with a man, you do not insult his faith. And if you seek to persuade devout Muslims that al-Qaeda is our enemy, not Islam, you do not condone with silence insults to the faith of a billion people.

Understanding this, President Bush ceased to call the war on terror a "crusade." Visiting a mosque, he removed his shoes. He has hosted White House gatherings for the breaking of the fast at the end of Ramadan. He sent Karen Hughes to the State Department to improve our dismal image in the Islamic world. He has declared more times than many of us care to recall, "Islam is a religion of peace."

President Bush knows we are in a struggle for the hearts and minds of Islamic peoples, and if we are to win this struggle we must separate the Muslim monsters from the masses. For as that great American military mind Col. John Boyd defined it, strategy is the appending to oneself of as many centers of power as possible and isolating your enemy from as many centers of power as possible.

This is what makes the Mohammed cartoons so stupid and self-destructive. They have given Islamic extremists visible proof to show pious Muslims that the West relishes mocking what they hold most sacred: the prophet. They have united Muslim moderates with militants in common rage against us. They have added to the hatred of the West in the Islamic world as friends like King Abdullah of Jordan, Presidents Mubarak of Egypt and Karzai of Afghanistan, and Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey warned us they would.

One wonders. Did the cynical Europeans learn nothing from the Salman Rushdie episode? Did they learn nothing from the firestorm that erupted in the Islamic world when Christian ministers in the United States, post-9/11, called Mohammed a "terrorist"?

Why then did they do this? Why did the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten publish cartoons it knew to be so blasphemous to Muslims? Why did Le Monde, France Soir, Die Welt, El Pais, Il Stampa republish them-on their front pages? If a European newsman was oblivious to the probable effect among Muslims of plastering a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban on page one, he is too stupid to be an editor. But if he did know the near-certain effect of such an in-your-face provocation, why would he do it? Is this the reflexive secularist hostility of the Europress to all religious faiths on display here or something else?

And so we come to the heart of the matter. Why? What was the motive here? What is the game that is afoot? The rationale of the imams who ensured that all Muslims knew of the cartoons and their contents and called for demonstrations and assaults on Western consulates and embassies is evident. They hate us, and they wish to drive us out of the Middle East. But what propelled our own ideologues to prod U.S. editors to republish the cartoons in "solidarity" with the Europeans? Who pushed George W. Bush and Condi Rice not to condemn the cartoons but to "stand up" for the freedom to publish and defy any "intimidation" by the Islamic world?

Answer: our cultural warmongers, who seek the same goal as their cultural warmongers-to ignite a war of civilizations. Both want the "long war" of which the Pentagon speaks, the "World War IV" against "Islamofascism" that is the dream of neoconservatives and the nightmare of their countrymen.

As has been evident for some time, bin Laden and the neocons both seek the same thing: a fight to the finish, no matter how long, no matter how many invasions it takes, no matter how many lives are lost. For if peace were reached between the Islamic world and the West, even a cold peace with Iran and Syria, what would they do then?

As the provocations of Ahmadinejad are music to the ears of neocons, for they rule out dialogue and diplomacy, the escalation of the cartoon wars into an all-out culture war between Islam and the West has made their day. But it has also wiped out much of the goodwill that George W. Bush has sought to rebuild in the region.

As one explores the arguments of the provocateurs in the West for what they are doing, on inspection all appear hollow. "We believe in the First Amendment!" comes the blustery reply of journalists when asked why they published the cartoons. The First Amendment protected the right of Trent Lott to toast Strom Thurmond. But that did not save Lott from the savagery of the neocons who demanded and got his ouster as Senate majority leader. Yet which is the more egregious offense? To pay a birthday tribute to a century-old man who was once a segregationist or to insult deliberately the most revered figure in the faith of a billion people?

Daily, U.S. editors decline to publish ethnic slurs and obscene remarks and cartoons that might offend a race or religion. This is not censorship. It is editorial judgment. The motto of the New York Times, which declined to publish the offending cartoons, is "All the News That's Fit to Print."

Conservatives contend that Islamic nations tolerate cartoons and TV shows far more viciously anti-Semitic than these cartoons were anti-Islamic. They are right. But Western newspapers never publish such cartoons, first, because they are outrageous, second, because publication would cost them advertisers, readers, and maybe their jobs. Insulting Muslims and Mohammed is a less risky and less expensive hobby than insulting Judaism or Jews. Indeed, if you insult Islam, you can make out credentials as a moral hero.

Though State initially condemned the cartoons-"Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is unacceptable"-the neocons rapidly re-seized control of the message. In hours, State was in retreat: "While we share the offense that Muslims have taken at these images, we at the same time vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view." Of course we do. But do we believe freedom of the press was responsibly exercised when these idiot editors used it to incite a religious war?

And when it comes to press freedom, Europeans are world-class hypocrites. British historian David Irving has spent months in a prison in Vienna awaiting trial for two speeches he made 15 years ago. In Europe, skeptics and deniers of the Holocaust are fined and imprisoned with the enthusiastic endorsement of the press.

Unfortunately, Bush let slip an opportunity to show respect for the Islamic world and faith and, instead, let himself be intimidated into silently condoning an insult to both. Standing beside the King of Jordan, Bush denounced the violence the cartoons had ignited but declined to condemn the cartoons. Condi Rice denounced Iran and Syria for exploiting the rage over the cartoons but did not condemn the cause of that rage. If there is a double standard here, Bush is the guilty party. He rightly denounced Iran's president for mocking the Holocaust but would not denounce the European press for mocking the prophet.

If Bush and Rice cannot muster the moral courage to condemn the insulting content of the cartoons, as well as the violence being promoted by anti-Western agitators and demagogues, our wars for democracy in the Middle East are in vain. For we can never win the friendship of these people if they believe our words of respect for their religion cover up a sneering contempt.

Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative

Senator fires back at U.S. family upset with seal hunt

2006-03-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Last Updated Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:16:34 EST
CBC News

A Liberal senator has replied to a family in Minnesota upset about Canada's seal hunt with a letter denouncing the United States for executing prisoners at home and killing people in Iraq.

The McLellan family had written to Canadian senators to say they cancelled a vacation in Canada because of the hunt, which they called "horrible" and "inhumane," Montreal's La Presse reports.

In her response, Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said that what she finds horrible is "the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, the destabilization of the entire world by the American government's aggressive foreign policy, etc."

She said Americans are not in a position to criticize others. "They must start to look at their own behaviour, the permanent heightening of the planet's insecurity since the election of Bush," she told La Presse.

"All senators received the letter from the McLellans and I was the only one to respond," she said.

The family "did not choose a good cause," she added. [...]

Iraqis say US raid on home killed 11 family members

2006-03-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

If there remains any doubt that the US military are nothing but a bunch of cold blooded murderers, let the following story put the matter to rest...

Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:40 PM GMT
By Amer Amery

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.

Television pictures showed 11 bodies in the Tikrit morgue -- five children, two men and four women. A freelance photographer later saw the bodies being buried in Ishaqi, the town 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad where the raid took place.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi early on Wednesday to capture a "foreign fighter facilitator for the al Qaeda in Iraq network".

"Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," U.S. spokesman Major Tim Keefe said. "Coalition Forces returned fire utilising both air and ground assets.

"There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building ... (was) destroyed."

Keefe said the al Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

RUBBLE

Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children.

"After they left the house they blew it up," he said.

Another policeman, Major Farouq Hussein, said all the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head.

Pictures of the house targeted in the raid showed it had been reduced to rubble, while next to it lay the burnt-out wreckage of a truck.

Iraqi police said the U.S. military had asked for a meeting with local tribal leaders.

Photographs of the funeral showed men weeping as five children were wrapped in blankets and then lined up in a row next to freshly dug graves.

Police in Salahaddin province, a heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency and the home region of Saddam Hussein, have frequently criticised U.S. military tactics in the area.

In January a U.S. air strike on a house in Baiji, further north, killed several members of a family. In December U.S. fighter jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on a village, also in the region, killing 10 people. The U.S. military said the people targeted had been suspected of planting roadside bombs.

(Additional reporting by Ghazwan al-Jibouri in Tikrit and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)

Spiritual healer steals $1 million, police say

2006-02-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

Allegedly promised lottery winnings via numbers pulled from boiled eggs

Updated: 7:42 p.m. ET Feb. 10, 2006

UNION CITY, Calif. - A self-proclaimed spiritual healer bilked at least $1 million from 20 San Francisco Bay area residents then fled without fulfilling his promises to give out winning lottery numbers and heal their ailments, police said.

The man, who called himself Iqbal, ran radio ads targeting South Asian clients on Radio Humsafar. He was described by police as an Indian man in his mid-30s who limped and recited passages from the Quran during healing sessions. He also claimed to practice black magic.

Victims were told they would win $1 million in the California lottery for every $10,000 they gave him, said Lt. Jim Bizieff.

The scam involved a magic trick in which Iqbal said he would pull winning lottery numbers from boiled eggs. At least 20 people gave him between $10,000 and $200,000 each, but the scam artist never delivered any winning numbers and left his rented Union City house in January.

C.O.M.B.A.T. for Christ

2006-02-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

WARNING!!! - Read the following missive with airline sickness bag close at hand

I would like to take a moment of your time to introduce you to a ministry that the Lord has laid upon our heart. Seasoned in prayer and coupled with many hours of preparation, there has evolved a training course for Christian Youth and Young Adults.

I'm sure you have dealt with the anguish of preparing your youth to conform to the image of Christ. You have fought with Hollywood and the Music Industry to gain the minds and hearts of America's youth. Many today within the Church are ready to surrender our most valuable resource (our children) to the enemy's camp. I AM NOT! God has a work for the young men and women of today. A work that depends on us to train and lead them to "fight the good fight of faith."

Our Lord has developed within my heart a burden to train these young men and women. With this in mind, I began to draw upon my training as a Pathfinder in the U.S. Army. I reasoned that the methods employed in the Armed Forces of this nation had led to many victories and freedom to all. Why could we as Christians not glean the benefits of the same?

Laid within five sections of the C.O.M.B.A.T. course: COMMITMENT... OBEDIENCE... MIND... BODY... ATTITUDE... TESTIMONY..... We have constructed hands on object lessons that will educate, enlighten, and even entertain the young men and women who complete this course.

Within this Site you will find a brief description of the course. I truly feel this course will be a highlight of the youth program at your church. The course offers intense training, affordable pricing, and Truth that will be taken home and passed on to others.

In Christ Jesus our Lord,

Bryan Mowery

"The battle is in the field"

Secularist Stupidity & Religious Wars

2006-02-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

Signs Editorial:
By Patrick J. Buchanan
9 Feb 06

That demagogues and agitators are exploiting those cartoons of Mohammed to advance a war of civilizations and expel Europeans from the Middle East seems undeniable.

But that does not excuse the paralyzing stupidity of that Danish paper in running those cartoons or the arrogant irresponsibility of European newspapers in plastering those cartoons all over their front pages.

The storm first broke last September, when Jyllands-Posten published 12 caricatures of Mohammed, including a lampoon of the Prophet with a terrorist bomb as a turban. In the Islamic faith, any depiction of the face of Mohammed is forbidden.

The Danish paper knew this. It published the cartoons to protest "the rejection of modern, secular society" by Muslims. The cartoons were thus a defiant provocation. And they succeeded.

The Middle East responded with a boycott of Danish foods and goods. But when, in the name of press solidarity, Le Soir and Le Monde in Paris, El Pais in Madrid and Die Welt in Berlin republished the cartoons on page one, Islam exploded. For this was an in-your-face declaration by the secularist media of the European Union that it will exercise its right to insult any God, any Prophet, any faith, whenever it so chooses.

"Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots," said Serge Faubert, editor of Le Soir. "Just because the Quran bans images of Mohammed doesn't mean non-Muslims have to submit to this."

Faubert, however, is not a Danish soldier in the Shi'ite sector of Iraq. Innocents will pay the price of his heroism.

The U.S. State Department seemed to empathize with Muslim rage, stating that "inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is unacceptable." But, within hours, State had retreated to neutral ground: "While we share the offense that Muslims have taken at these images, we at the same time vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view."

As of today the Danish consulate in Beirut has been burned, Danish embassies have been stormed, and Danes are fleeing the Middle East. Europeans are getting out of the West Bank, Gaza and Beirut, where mobs are attacking embassies and Christian churches.

Islamic countries have recalled ambassadors from Copenhagen. People have been injured and property destroyed in mob assaults as far away as Indonesia. Relations between the West and the Islamic world have been dealt another rupturing blow.

And for what? What was the purpose of this juvenile idiocy by the Europress? Is this what freedom of the press is all about the freedom to insult the faith of a billion people and start a religious war?

Can Europeans be that ignorant of the power of the press to inflame when Bismarck's editing of just a few words in the Ems telegram ignited the Franco-Prussian war? Did Europeans learn nothing from the Salman Rushdie episode? Or the firestorm that gripped the Islamic world when Christian ministers in the United States called Mohammed a "terrorist"?

European governments are wringing their hands over the rage and violence unleashed, but they seem paralyzed. What is the matter? Why cannot they denounce press irresponsibility while defending press freedom? Even friends of the West like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have denounced these cartoons as insults to Islamic values and deeply damaging to Western interests.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw deplored republication of the cartoons as "insensitive ... disrespectful ... wrong." But German Interior Minister Wolfgang Shauble haughtily dissented, "Here, in Europe, governments have nothing to say about which publisher publishes what."

What hypocrisy. When it comes to what Germans are most sensitive about, Hitler and the Holocaust, they are ruthless censors. British historian David Irving has spent three months in a Viennese prison awaiting trial on Feb. 20 for speeches he made 15 years ago in Austria. Skeptics and deniers of the Holocaust are prosecuted, fined and imprisoned in Europe with the enthusiastic endorsement of the European press.

Nor are we all that different. Sen. Trent Lott was ousted as majority leader for a birthday-party compliment to 100-year-old Strom Thurmond. Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was almost lynched for saying he considers New York a social pigsty. There were demands that Rocker undergo psychiatric counseling.

We have "speech codes" in colleges and "hate crimes" laws to protect minorities from abusive remarks. But newspapers that hail these codes throw a blanket of "artistic freedom" over scatological art that degrades religious symbols from putting a figure of Christ in a jar of urine to a "painting" of the Virgin Mary surrounded by female genitalia and elephant dung that hung in a Brooklyn museum.

What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.

Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire.

Commentary on the Cointelpro War

2006-02-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

Signs Editorial:
Magus

Greetings from the Swamps of Eugnosia, Forum Friends and Passengers,

The old Magus, being of a more formal time than this era we now traverse, simply cannot countenance warping the standards of his tastes so as to pronounce upon the Good Lady's journal such an unkind name as is "blog" (which resonates upon the tongue as though 'twere describing some misbegotten amphibious creature born in a bog on a log); to describe the Signs writ large and the one who writes them there, when both be filled with Graces and Fair indeed for the readers' eyes to behold, indulge me as I quote her sage advice.

Taken from Maestra Laura's Missive, "How To Spot COINTELPRO Agents":

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"How To Spot a Spy"

One way to neutralize a potential activist is to get them to be in a group that does all the wrong things. Why?

1) The message doesn't get out. 2) A lot of time is wasted 3) The activist is frustrated and discouraged 4) Nothing good is accomplished.

FBI and Police Informers and Infiltrators will infest any group and they have phony activist organizations established."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And So, Gentle Reader Friends and Forumites,

Look you back but a few Forum pages, and there will you espy the Magus did address himself a letter to another, the Good Lady Cindy of Sheehan, she who fights the BushLiars in her slain cub's name and does Noble Battle to save the cubs of all the other Mama Bears whose soldiering kinder do yet live.

'Twas in that epistle to Cindy Sheehan that the Magus described to you, and told you truly True, of the most likely theft, misdirection and futility of participation by all the millions of poor, humble, honest American citizen-prisoners in the phoniest of phony groups of a false opposition, those many well known dotted and undotted orgs. Poor, hoodwinked and desperate to be heard and seen, to have effect one at all as yet, they've invested everything they had, as yet, into what could only be a False front collection of "opposition" and "progressive" groups.

If the valuing of its sum total be rightfully placed upon the Proof of its Works, then this movement is most useful for GWB and his PTB Masters. They are benefiting enormously from the utter lack of any real and effective, organized opposition, a worldwide deficit, not just domestic.

Said covert, more than highly likely COINTELPRO operations were most timely established, in the years immediately pre-junta, by the notorious, but, so we are told to believe, oh so very repentant Mr. George of Soros, Bilderberg mogul extraordinaire.

Now, read again, what is quoted above, reposted at last for these perilous times. 'Tis from a document, a True Work, that I'd thought was long lost forever, and now, good but most painful to see, it has been returned to warn all Humanity. 'Twas written first by those of us, way back then, way back when, way back there while and after we'd first learned the hard Truths that it tells.

No, we never "quit" or "sold out" as they've sworn in all these years since. A covert, domestic COINTELPRO war took us out. At terrible costs for all of us, we fought with all we had back then. Helplessly we watched as, one by one, like pins in the bowling alley, our compañeros y compañeras began to fall. And never was there anyone or anything visible to whom we could assign even suspicion, let alone any blame.

In every community, in every human rights, civil rights, democracy advocacy, labor rights, voting rights, womens rights, gay rights and anti-war group or organization, no matter how small, peripheral or fringe, all of our Leaders, our Doers, our Thinkers, our Organizers, our Musicians and Artists and Poets, all of our greatest Lovers of Humanity, and our Trying-To-Be-Liberators of all started getting killed in random murders, suicides and fatal accidents, along about 1968 and onward. It was as though some plague were sweeping through our ranks, despite that we were young, strong and filled with determination and the highest of ideals and goals.

They began arresting us by the thousands, from 1968 onward, and especially after the launching of the "War on Drugs" against us in 1972. Any counterculture figure, from any walk of life, no matter how noble and saintly, no matter how unknown or insignificant in the overall, nationwide picture, every local "star" that shown began being suddenly arrested, charged with offenses beyond the scope of his or her imagining let alone commission, then summarily convicted for crimes done when and where they hadn't even been there. No amounts of exculpatory evidence or eyewitnesses, no airtight alibis well documented proved an obstacle to convictions and harsh sentences.

Right after the Manson and Einhorn cases had turned judges and juries against us all, from mid 1970 onward, the minimum sentence for a radical anywhere in this country seemed to have suddenly become 10 years, in maximum security, for spitting on the sidewalk, and the cops carried the vials of "spit" in their own pockets to provide all the necessary "evidence." That's what Jeff St. Clair got, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 10 years hard time for having two joints in his shirt pocket in late 1970, a charge that should have been a misdemeanor, and would have been, just a couple of short years before.

The rest of the local "stars" and the less visible but oh so key people with real dedication and the ablility to produce, by way of hard, long hours of work and more work, those who got results moving anyone or anything in a pro-human rights direction of any kind, or pro-equality, pro-organization, or anti-war, began simply, suddenly vanishing. The most common way was by "moving," to another city or another country, just leaving in the middle of the night, or over a weekend, or going home to visit the folks and never coming back.

They were suddenly gone, to places far away that had never been mentioned before, for the flimsiest excuses, leaving no forwarding addresses for friends and movement associates who'd been like family for several years. Many of them left all of their worldly belongings behind to be "forwarded." But, the three compañeros I lost that way never did contact anyone to send them their stuff. The Magus, being ever faithful, still has quite a few treasured things he'd love to give back to his long gone, lost best friends of 1970.

Many others were found dead or with their fine brains permanently burned out by overdoses of drugs they'd never been near to at all, or else by suddenly lethal potencies of drugs that they'd taken safely, off and on, or recreationally, for years before without either hard addiction or other ill effects. Janis Joplin and Jimmi Hendricks are the two best known examples, but such happened in every community of activists, especially to the "local stars" and hardest workers. By the time the final SLA group was slaughtered, burned to cinders down to the last woman and child in 1977, in the crawlspace beneath their Philadelphia safe house, the movement was gone.

Those of us left alive had been stricken by a mysterious malady of our minds. Thanks to the Good Lady Laura, to whom he is forever indebted for finally making it all make sense, the Magus now understands that we were bombarded with brain wave manipulations galore, our thoughts disrupted frequently by mind control technologies and EM bursts. Those of us who have made it back to full clarity and intellect have paid an enormous cost in damages to our bodies and health. No one I know who was in the movement then is truly healthy even now, and many are, despite their outer appearances of normality and full function of intellect, incapable of focusing their attention on topics more threatening or disturbing than whether the dog needs to go for a walk, not to this day.

There is something precious and deep that has literally been burned out of them. While they still oppose the totalitarians, they cannot organize the actions of their own lives well enough to do anything concrete, like blogging or writing to politicians, and, for some reason, they are forever meaning to do these things then failing to follow through. The only term that fits them is the walking shattered. The new diagnosis that has been created, mostly just to describe them, is "Adult Onset Attention Deficit Disorder". But, gentle reader firends, they had no such deficits when they worked tirelessly to free us all, way back then, way back when, when we fought tyranny as one tribe of young lions together.

To this day, the Magus has yet to have encountered other former 60s-70s activists who can, and do, clearly, sequentially and with full integration, remember precisely when and why did the action, the movement stop, as to their own active participation in it. To nearly all of us, memories of the years 1972 to 1975 through 1977 to 1980 are patchy, disjointed, "foggy." Everything is sharp before that and after that, but those 5 years are "blurry." Funny thing, even for the next 10 years after that, taking any active step to organize, speak out, campaign and oppose anything just did not, would not could not come to mind and stay there long enough to actually do anything. Not even for himself, the Magus is sad to say, was any active Work, such as resuming his lifelong esoteric studies, possible until sometime around 1990 or so.

It was as though it was simply impossible to focus on anything farther from one's self than the immediate family and a job. That was ALL we could do. Notice that even Joan Baez has just now been able to make it out of her seclusion and get semi-active again, despite her having tried to do so with the Farm Aid concerts, twice, at their very start, in the 80s, she just couldn't; she managed to do one concert and that was it, until the past couple of years. And FOR JUST HOW MANY OTHERS IS THIS TRUE? Write the list yourselves of the many musicians, artists and poets who've gone into long obscurity and decline to barely begin to now arise again.

Consider, oh please do, younger reader friends: People who were so active, so dedicated, focused and sincere as we do NOT just fade into the woodwork, from a certain year onward, never to go out and Work again. Yet, for the most part, that is exactly what has happened to all the 60s activists. When historical documentaries are on, even Woodstock, I cannot watch them. It literally plays hell with my brain to do so. It hurts like the worst kind of migraine but deeper, broader than that. Another big piece of the puzzle is that, from 1972 onward, the MSM and press coverage of ALL activism came in only 1 format: NO MENTION AT ALL unless negative. And, not coincidentally, between 1972 and 1975, first cocaine and then its evil sister, Disco, arrived. Mass mind control? Oh yeah, brain, mind, body and heart rot supreme to a relentless beat.

Then, from 1977 to 1980, the AIDS epidemic struck and was ignored completely. It was deliberately left to ravish the last remnants of the intellectual brilliance, organizational skills, drive and creative talents of a generation that had launched a powerful, nearly successful rebellion against tyranny in any form, building gratefully upon the works and with the help of the Depression era populists, the union folks and the civil rights workers who marched and worked in solidarity with us.

By 1990, almost no one was left from the radical 60s who might have been able to step up into any leadership role, or to guide and encourage the youth of the next generation. Robbed of older peers by all of this, and being told the Lies that the "irresponsible and selfish Baby Boomers all just sold out," they sadly became and called themselves "Generation X". They still do not know the Truth of what had really happened to those "Boomers" who should have been there to mentor and nurture and welcome and work with them. Anyone who might once have filled that role was gone, at least in mind, or in jail, or mental institutions, or graves.

The Lies proclaiming "the Boomers sold out" have reigned for 35 years. But Woodstock is not all that we were and did, nor does it tell the tale truly, my friends, nor fairly, nor do ought than painting the lot of us clowns. But, we were Truth's fighters, and they took us down. The Magus tells Truly because he was there, and right to this minute, old wounds bring him tears. Yet, obviously, he never quit: He IS here.

A Posteritous Admonition

"How To Spot A Spy" you must learn truly for yourselves.
I bid you do, please, now, my Friends, Mark these Facts I tell.
Police accounts and "histories" may have recorded else,
But we were naive victims of fell Liars and foul Stealth.

Be wiser. Be forewarned, then Be less gullible than we.
Be smarter and Be bolder, and then, most of all, Be Free.
Be all that you can Be, and you'll Become all that you must,
And do not put your trust in those the easiest to trust.

Bidding You Fondest Delighting in Truths and Things Real,

Magus

Conspiracy!; Conspiracy - Tales From at Home and Abroad

2006-02-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

2006-02-12
Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand
By PHILP, Matt

In the internet age, conspiracy theories seem to be an accelerating phenomenon. MATT PHILP looks at the best-known, both at home and abroad.

On the afternoon of Saturday, November 23, 1963, United States Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was passing through Christchurch on his way home from assignment in Antarctica when he picked up the Christchurch Star's "extra" edition devoted to the breaking story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The coverage was electric, comprehensive -- way too comprehensive, in Prouty's mind, to be anything other than a CIA put- up job.

How, he asked, could a newspaper that hit the streets even before the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arraigned carry so much background about the gunman unless the bio was written up in readiness before the shooting?

Prouty kept asking, even after his "impossible" timeline was explained away. That's Prouty you see immortalised as the twitchy military deepthroat "Mr X" in Oliver Stone's film, JFK, picking up his Star at Christchurch airport, and later exhaling frosty riddles on a park bench in Washington. And thus, this good city was assured of a place for ever in a dark corner of America's murkiest conspiracy theory.

Good for Prouty. As the authors of the newly published Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories observe: "Entering the world of conspiracy theories can be as disorienting as underwater diving. But this is not the only danger: it's just as easy to be lured by their seductive intricacy."

The Rough Guide is a recitation of some of the most seductive intrigues of the past 3000 years, from the tomb of Tutankhamun to the alleged Roswell UFO crash and film footage to the idea that the Apollo Moon landing was faked.

The authors posit that in the internet age, conspiracy theories have become an accelerating global phenomenon. [...]

see link to read full article

Would Jesus with an Uzi be amusing?

2006-02-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 11, 2006
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST

They're just Muslim cartoons, for chrissakes.

Yet the images depicting the Prophet Muhammad in satirical light have touched off a violent war of words and deeds across the world.

The conflict pits Muslims, who consider the cartoons to be sacrilegious, against Western publishers, who point to freedom of speech.

The complex issue comes into sharper focus when seen through the eyes of one who has a foot in both worlds, someone like Lena Tuffaha of Seattle.

Tuffaha, 30, is a writer who comes from a family of Middle East writers. As a former board member of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, she champions free expression.

She also is Muslim. Her curiosity prompted her to surf the Web and look at the controversial depictions. It was as if someone had punched her.

"I feel like I'm being torn apart," she says.

Tuffaha's feelings are amplified when she sees how people are screaming at each other, talking over one another and obscuring any chance of mutual understanding in the ongoing debate.

A non-conversation of noise is taking place when a constructive dialogue is needed.

Muslims feel as if their religion is under attack.

A lot of Christians don't get the fuss because they see images of Jesus and priests and angels everywhere and few think twice about it -- so long as the images don't dis. (How many cartoons have you seen showing Jesus as a Level 3 sex offender? Or toting an Uzi?)

In the Muslim world, however, just printing an image of Muhammad -- no matter how witty or artsy -- is being interpreted as heresy.

"I had no idea that some Americans did not even know this," Tuffaha says. "One guy called in a local radio show. He didn't have a clue."

Ignorance may be to blame for why some people don't get why Muslims are mad about a cartoon attack that strikes at the spiritual core of their religion.

It doesn't help matters when the Danish paper that ignited the controversy by publishing the cartoons is guilty of what seems like a double standard.

A recent article in The Guardian in London points out that three years ago the Danish paper had turned down cartoons lampooning Christ on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

"I think that they will provoke an outcry," one of the Danish newspaper's editors was quoted as saying. "Therefore, I will not use them."

So, Christ is off limits.

But Muhammad? Open season for insults, folks.

Tuffaha sees the media justifying anti-Muslim cartoons as freedom of the press. It sets her off.

"Freedom of the press is the defense when you want to do something inflammatory against Muslims," she believes.

The willful ignorance of the Danish paper has sparked a flood of reactions, some of them ironic.

The free expression some in the Muslim world now lambaste is a freedom many of them don't enjoy in the countries where journalists are muzzled.

I feel too many folks across the spectrum of debate keep forgetting something simple: basic respect for other people, their faith, their centuries-long traditions.

In 2002 an American syndicated cartoonist, Doug Marlette, drew an image that showed a man in Middle Eastern dress driving a nuclear bomb-laden truck. The cartoon, headlined "What Would Mohammed Drive?" touched off vehement protests, and justifiably so.

This picture was every bit in bad taste as another cartoon: Pat Oliphant's celebration of spring at St. Paedophilia's Catholic Church depicting the Running of the Altar Boys. It showed priests with grins rushing down church steps to chase horrified boys in robes.

Beyond being distasteful and disrespectful, the current anti-Muslim cartoons are also guilty of another cardinal sin -- being patently unfunny.

For these reasons, Tuffaha and I are on the same page.

"I, Lena, a Muslim do not want the cartoons," Tuffaha explains. "I do think the issue is something worth having a conversation about."

Freedom of the press is not just what you publish. It's also what you choose not to publish.

Kill these cartoons.

Don't kill the necessary dialogue, based on mutual respect, about religions in the world.

Man Says Jesus Appeared In His Pancake

2006-02-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

Man Selling Flapjack On eBay

UPDATED: 3:11 pm EST February 9, 2006

BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- A Beachwood man has found religion in his pancakes, Cleveland television station WEWS reported.

Mike Thompson was making pancakes last weekend for his family when the pattern on one of the flapjacks caught his eye.

Upon closer inspection, he saw what he thought was the face of Jesus. He showed his wife, and she agreed.

That's when the couple decided to do what anyone who discovers such an edible artifact does these days -- they put it up for sale on eBay.

"I think the grilled cheese sandwich sold for $28,000, and the pierogi sold for a couple of thousand, so I figured start it off on eBay for $500. It's a pretty good deal," Thompson said.

He is hoping it sells like hotcakes, but so far there have been no opening bids.

We creep closer to a police state

2006-02-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

Feb. 5, 2006 12:00 AM

With Samuel Alito confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, the "Police States of America" will continue to evolve unabated. The war with Iran will proceed, too.

President Bush will be given even broader powers by supporters who spread fear, not freedom. And now the Supreme Court is guaranteed to justify destructive actions should anyone complain.

It's like some giant is whittling a piece of wood, fashioning something new out of our country. Well, I've seen that shape before . . . in Berlin.

- Michael House, Phoenix

The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us

2006-02-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

(Hardcover)
by James Rudin

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

You have to hand it to Rabbi James Rudin, author of "The Baptizing of America." For a man of the cloth, he has a way with sound bites. How can you not read a book that labels the fundamentalists "Christocrats"?

Rudin gets right to the heart of why the extremist religious right is so dangerous to democracy. He's direct, lacerating, and convincing.

"A specter is haunting America," Rudin writes, "and it is not socialism and certainly not communism. It is the specter of Americans kneeling in submission to a particular interpretation of a religion that has become an ideology, and all encompassing way of life. It is the specter of our nation ruled by the extreme Christian right, who would make of the United States a 'Christian Nation' where their version of God's law supersedes all human law -- including the Constitution."

"That more than any other force," Rudin concludes, "in the world today, is the immediate and profound threat to our republic."

Rudin cogently documents how the "Christocrats" want to limit our rights and freedoms, imposing a "Baptized" federal government into every aspect of our lives. Indeed, he has chapters on how the fundamentalist one-party government in America wants to impose their beliefs on us in our bedrooms, newsrooms, board rooms, work places, hospitals, libraries, courtrooms and wherever else they can become the morality police.

The confirmation of Samuel Alito is a testament to how successful the "Christocrats" have become, because they have plotted to control the umpires of the game -- and have basically succeeded. Alito is the triumphant zenith of their growing intrusive, UnConstitutional fundamentalist silent coup.

BuzzFlash has long opined on the theory that we are in a war between those who would foster the development of the United States as an evolving, embracing Constitutional democracy vs. those who would [while using propaganda to mislead the public about their intentions] restore America into a pre-Revolutionary monarchy, based on a fixed view. This fixed view is based on an extreme interpretation of Christianity and is exclusionary to other religions and individual freedoms and liberties, those which are at odds with the "frozen" static religious worldview of the "Christocrats."

Scalia, Thomas or Alito are called "Strict Constructionists" as far as the Constitution is concerned. Actually, they are activist judges who seek to remake the Constitution to reflect a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The basic conflict of the pro-democracy, pro-Constitution movement vs. the Bushevik Taliban is whether or not we are a nation based on a Constitutional guarantee of individual liberties and freedoms vs. a nation based on a pre-Revolutionary view of a fixed world order channeled through a perceived God that actually gives instructions to George W. Bush and the far right Christian mullahs, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell -- toss in James Dobson, too -- among others.

Rudin's book provides great insight into what we are up against in fighting the Stepford religious extremists who believe that the Constitution runs a distant second to the Bible.

These radicals are unpatriotic to the core because they reject the fundamental premise of freedom, individualism, and pluralism that gave birth to the Constitution.

Their goal -- represented by Sam Alito -- is not to uphold the Constitution, but to bury it through strategic and deceptive maneuvering. And once we have crossed the Rubicon, they won't spare a dissenting soul.

Because in their worldview, if you are not saved, you are doing the work of Satan.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

2006-01-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

I was spending some leisure time cruising the internet. I came across this very poignant and beautifully written post that not only sums up the horrors of living on the planet earth at this point in history, but also offers realizable solutions for those of us, like myself, who sometimes feel helpless faced with a world of seeming unending cruelty and despair.

Read on if you dare...

Relic

Smoking Mirrors: And Down Will Come Baby, Cradle and All.

By Laura Knight Jadczyk

Reading the above linked blog nearly made me cry. Why? Well, because I have heard the same frustration and despair expressed by other sincere activists for World Peace in the past couple of weeks. The despair of the front line is setting in. Yes, it looks like COINTELPRO is winning. The depression is spreading among those who have been keeping up the good fight for so long; we are succumbing to the disease. But is that really true?

Perhaps with understanding we can find a remedy, a Bridge Over Troubled Water.

When you're weary, feeling small,
when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.
I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough
and friends just can't be found,
like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.

When you're down and out, when you're on the street,
when evening falls so hard, I’ll comfort you.
I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes and pain is all around,
like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.

Sail on silver girl, sail on by.
Your time has come to shine, All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine, oh and when you need a friend,
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind.
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind.
[© 1969 Paul Simon]

First of all, I think that Lobaczewski has produced about the most valuable document for our times (or any times) that I have ever encountered. Every activist needs to read this material and read it carefully. You can't go into battle without studying the opposition, knowing their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and so on. Lobaczewski and those other activists and resistance fighters have already been through this. They studied it and mapped it. And the fact is, if you don't study what you are up against, you will make stupid mistakes, you will think you are winning when you are losing, and conversely, you will think you are losing when the opponent is just bluffing.

This information is crucial. A good activist can NOT ignore it. He or she does so only at his or her own peril. Yeah, sure, it seems like a huge burden to have to deal with accusations and counter-accusations in the COINTELPRO world, but if we don't, we are toast. As Lobaczewski tells us:

"If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. left in the shadow of their personal experience of relatively un-esthetic disease phenomena because they were primarily interested in studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shadows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all. They risked their own health and suffered sacrifices in order to discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and, afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of these illnesses. A comprehension of the nature of a disease, and the course it runs, after all, enables the proper curative means to be elaborated. "[Political Ponerology]

Just now, activists are the physicians of society. We can't do a thing if we don't know the nature of the disease and that is what Lobaczewski lays out for us in all its horrible detail. We don't want to give up in despair thinking we have incurable cancer when it is just the measles or something that must run its course and can lead to full recovery if proper nursing is applied.

The questions about COINTELPRO backed groups and individuals MUST be asked, but it must be asked in the proper context. The question is: Are such groups and individuals just "victims" of the social disease, or are they a vectors? Are they innocently manipulated by the special psychological knowledge of those with serious psychological pathologies, or are they carriers?

Either way, COINTELPRO is deliberate and planned at some level, whether the individual or group is privy to that planning or merely it's dupe. The REAL "enemies" are those individuals pulling his strings. The bottom line is, if the individual cannot be cured, if their egos are so big they cannot admit that they have been or are being manipulated, then those who seek "health" need to contain them like Typhoid Mary.

Modern COINTELPRO has been developed to an all new level of complexity and sophistication even if they still use many of the old tried and true methods of defamation and slander. After all, they have had access to some excellent talent to figure out how the human mind works and to know how to get to people and even to "trigger" them at a distance. I'm not talking about mysterious "mind control" experiments here, but simple psychological knowledge, though I won't discount the direct experimentation. After all, if you have some control over what kind of psychological "diet" is being fed to a society, you can pretty well set them up to do what you want right there in front of God and everybody. Education, religion, television, video games, control of the media for "ideological vectoring," etc. It's a pretty formidable array.

But again, most of it is "terror tactics." We need to study it and find the curative means and employ them.

For example, John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo have come under COINTELPRO fire quite a bit lately. They are accused of being on the CIA payroll, of being "ex-Navy intell" and so on. How do you tell the difference? If they say they are not, that's what everybody expects them to say if they ARE. It's also what they would say if they aren't. People tend to forget that. It's like Bush pointing the finger at Iraq saying "You have WMD and because you say you don't, you are obviously lying." Then, of course, the truth came out that Iraq was telling the truth. But for a considerable period of time, lots of people bought into the "plausible lie" argument. You might want to reread all the COINTELPRO posts here, especially the one about the above mentioned "Plausible lies," and try to remember that when two people are each saying something completely opposite, it is NOT usually a case of the truth being somewhere in the middle: one of them may very well be lying and the other telling the truth and nothing but the truth. I wrote there:

The truth - when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad - especially if he is honest and admits that he has faults. If someone is telling the simple truth, and the other side is lying through their teeth, the basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in the hands of liars.

Also, when you read the post about Plausible lies, you will read something else: how to evaluate the two sides:

Proof is a familiar concept to those used to conventional logical thinking. However what passes for proof in cultural, social, and even legal terms often bears only a superficial resemblance to what would be considered proof by those who really use their minds to think.

For example: in formal mathematics, proof rules are established - postulates are set out and a structure is built based on the postulates and the theorem. Mathematical proof is pretty much inarguable: once a proof is accepted as true it is added to the pool of known truths.

In legal proof there is a set of rules and a theory which the prosecution presents, and attempts to prove the theory by clever argumentation rather than facts. Truth is not the objective. Getting other people to believe the theory IS the objective. However, the prosecution's theory is whatever the prosecutor believes that he can get away with based on what is known about the case, or what he can PREVENT from being known. What legal 'proof' does is serve as a structure for convincing a group of people of the guilt of a person, about whom they know nothing.

There is another significant difference: Mathematical proofs are judged by experts in the particular case who are free to study any and all information about the case. Legal 'proof' is judged by people who are guaranteed to be ignorant of the case, who are only allowed to study the information presented during the formal trial, and who are not even allowed to consult the texts for what the rules say.

Our culture is so permeated with this “legal argument” system that it extends into our daily experience: the one who is the slickest at using the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who is believed. Very few people take the time to obtain hard facts by carefully studying any and all information about a situation.

How do I know John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo are NOT disinformation artists or in the pay of the CIA or Navy intelligence? I have done due diligence. Not only do they use their real names, they also have a real history of their public life and deeds that is written in an open book for anyone who cares to read it. I also know from personal information that if the CIA has them on their payroll, they haven't ever sent any checks and both of them struggle to survive every day just like the rest of us. They need help and they aren't getting it.

Speaking of which: We (Ark and I and our research group) are portrayed as either beneficiaries of funds from George Soros, French Intell, CIA, or we are thieves who take people in, fleece them by scaring them to death, and then cast them aside like used kleenex. Here is one of the latest posted to a public BB:

Anonymous Coward
User ID: 67366
1/28/2006 6:01 AMRe: Ok, enough about Nancy and the Zetas. What do you all know about Laura and the Cassiopaeans?

Is LKJ the same as Il_Bagattel on STA?

'ill bagman' is not laura

he is a retired used car salesman and health food drink peddler from
newport beach CA, in his early sixties he means well but is a total C
dupe, fanatical, obsessed

he sold his property in CA for over half a mil and followed the cult to
france he read some C crapola about CA falling into the ocean, and he was
genuinely afraid! laura reinforced the conviction and invited him intor her
spider's web

he moved in to the castleopia dungeons but was within days, due to his
rather cloying used car salesman personality, made unwelcome by the cult -
some of the cultists said he was making unwelcome sexual advances and
remarks to younger female C dupes he was banished to a local village
nearby, where he still remains the village idiot

what happened to his money?

LOL, take a guess

but even though he was ostracised he still is so mind controlled that he
suffers from stockholm syndrome and thus constantly writes (at STA mainly)
about apoclayptic and other paranoid crapola but always referencing the
larks and Cs and always in a good 'light'

he is a very sad man and he has no idea how his life has been ruined by
these archons - no idea

that story can be repeated in many other cases, and i hesitate to guess
quite how many, and quite how much money and property has been stolen by
these 2 hucksterfrauds, not to mention minds and lives and shattered
relationships and marriages

i wonder if the larks understand the concept of karma?

roll on interpol
please DO YOUR JOB

webmaster@maar.us

How to deal with nonsense like that? And believe me, this is a mild example. You ain't been COINTELPROd professionally until there are websites set up for the express purpose of destroying your reputation and thusly your ability to do anything positive for others in this battle against Fascism we face today! I reckon we are about the most attacked people on the net, and we were being attacked when it wasn't fashionable. Maybe we're onto something?

Now, you want the truth? Can't you handle the earth-shaking revelation?

First of all, the individual referred to above is not a "used car salesman" or "health food drink peddler" except in the mind of the writer who denigrates him, and seeks to dirty everything he touches, especially us. The man's father was a Car dealer in the American Midwest. The individual in question owned several nightclubs in large cities there; he also was a musician and played drums in a couple of well-known 60s and 70s rock bands. Later, he joined a large vitamin manufacturer as marketing director. Normal life story. But somehow his life was cheapened and vulgarized in a few, short, sentences constructed by a psychopath.

This individual has been a long time reader of our website, a discussion group member, an activist, (he led a movement to stop the building of an airport in CA that would have destroyed an ecologically sensitive environment), and supporter. When he reached retirement age, he saw what was coming in the US - POLITICALLY and economically - and decided he wanted to retire to Europe. Yes, he was scared - nobody in their right mind wouldn't be - , and yes, he thought earthquakes in California were likely at some point in the future (as do many experts), but that isn't what was driving him: his main fear was Bush and the Neocons. Rightly so.

So, he wanted to get out. Since we were the only people he knew in Europe, and since we could sponsor him to come here, it was only natural that we do so. Yes, he sold his house before moving; that's natural. Yes, he stayed with us for 6 months while looking for his "ideal house," and then moved in there. I have no idea how much money he has or how much he made on the sale of his house. He helped out with groceries while he was here, made a loan to us when we needed additional funds to try to get a mortgage to buy a house (that fell through - loans get repaid) but that was it. We helped him, he helped us and that is pretty simple and ordinary stuff in anyone's life. But see what has been made of it? See the filthy allusions and insinuations? See how it has been twisted to contribute "proof" to the claim that we are just con-artists and run a doomsday cult?

Well, obviously, anyone who reads the work on our website knows better. That is why we take note of the sites that do and do not link to us. That is why it was so interesting to observe the reactions to the Pentagon Strike video which I have written about earlier. After the Washington Post made the mistake of publishing a link to our website, all of the damage control machine went to work and the ONE thing they wanted to avoid at ALL costs was publishing a link to our website.

We must scare them to death.

And I should note that the writer of the above nastiness is very likely Vincent Bridges, best buddy and co-author with Jay Weidner, who is best buddy of Jeff Rense. You know, you can follow these links around and with a little digging, figure out who is who... (hint)

Meanwhile, of course, Jeff Rense got listed on a government website as a major source of disinformation. As Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster, writes in February's issue of Fortean Times:

Recently, the US State Department has begun trying to rebut some of the current conspiracy theories about America. Their first targets were a couple of websites - www.rense.com and Conspiracy Planet - and the late Joe Vialls, an Australian. What a boost for the named sites! Attacked by the State Department![...]

[Y]ou don't have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn't do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking. [Fortean Times 206, February 2006, p. 19]

Even though, as I noted in an earlier post here, Carol Morello of the Washington Post asserted that our Pentagon Strike video was single-handedly responsible for re-awakening the public interest in the "No-Boeing at the Pentagon" theory first put forward by Thierry Meyssan, never, EVER, have we been frontally attacked by any government agency. Nor will we be. As Ramsay notes above: "[Y]ou don't have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn't do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking."

So certainly, we would expect real COINTELPRO operations to be attacked "officially" in order to legitimize them, (and that's what they did for Jeff Rense), but those who have figured out the real answers will not be martyred - at least not by the official government. It's way too dangerous. Rather, they will be crucified by "Third Party Agents" of COINTELPRO such as Vincent Bridges and his gang of cyber-psychos. And certainly, it is effective.

The problem is, because so few people really think, and most people are really programmed by the "Cult of the Plausible Lie," when folks like Vinnie and his buddy Storm Bear repeat this nonsense over and over again (and it started back in 2001), the average person tends to think "where there's smoke, there's fire." They don't know that it's ALL smoke and somebody else is blowing it!

The word "cult" has been deliberately made so pejorative that people actually cringe when they hear it. It was used with effective results in relation to the Jonestown people, the Branch Davidians at Waco, the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, etc. I certainly thought that those situations were as they were presented by the media myself at the time they happened. It was only later when WE were painted with the same brush that I started to wonder if there wasn't some psy-ops going on there: a deliberate manipulation of people's minds. I started looking into it and it sure looks that way. Do your own research, don't take my word for it.

What matters now is that 90 % or more of the US population still believe the lies about those people. (And I'm not defending their beliefs, whatever they might have been, just their right to have them and live peacefully which they were NOT permitted to do. They were hounded and flamed and infiltrated and lied about until they became so paranoid that they began to act erratically which then led to their destruction. Pure psychological manipulation.) I should mention here that the chief ranter of "cult, cult, cult!" in the case of the Waco tragedy, was Rick Ross, good buddy of Vinnie Bridges and Jay Weidner and probably, by extension, though it is hidden, Jeff Rense. (It is known that Rense has some decided Zionist connections so it strikes me that he could be a tar baby to collect all the anti-Zionist folks together, get info on them, and then subject them to later attacks by seemingly disconnected sources. There are also Zionist connections to Weidner and Bridges, by the way, and most definitely to Rick Ross.) By the way, has anybody but me noticed Jeff's ostensible "Christian Cult" bias?

Are we a cult? Hell no. If anything, we are anti-religion and anti-belief in anything. We prefer to collect data and assign probabilities based on scientific analysis. The REAL cults are protected by the so-called "anti-cult" people. They pretend to be "anti-cult" all the while they are subtly promoting a quite different agenda. Take a look at the maar.us website, the ostensible source of the libelous post I quoted above. This is supposed to stand for "Malevolent Alien Abduction Research." Now, get this: Colleen Johnston is saying that aliens are malevolent. WE are saying that, if aliens really exist as a great deal of evidence suggests they do, then they are malevolent because that is what the evidence points to. So what's Colleen's problem? Why does she have a beef with me?

Easy. And I'll tell you how I know. There are two people on her private discussion group who got curious about me because she wrote so vicious an article about me. (I don't think she wrote it, I think that Vinnie Bridges wrote it in her name - part of the COINTELPRO Greek Chorus strategy). So, these people came to our site to examine the evidence by reading the material we publish. Apparently, they were so disgusted with Colleen's obvious agenda, that they decided to forward to me all the exchanges she has with her group, her "teachings," so to say. It's quite a collection.

Reading this material was truly saddening:the blind leading the blind, but more than that, it was worrisome. You see, Colleen Johnston tells her followers that faith in Jesus is what is going to save them from Malevolent aliens.

Yup. Not a joke. And if they keep getting raped and abused (and how they glory in their descriptions of the "disgusting" sexual encounters with their reptoid tormenters!), then it is obviously because they haven't gotten the exact shade of feeling of faith to ward them off. Either that or it's "god's will" that they suffer.

Now, how can you be angry at something that ignorant and pathetic? (And by the way, if you want to listen in on a real exorcism where I never ONCE mention the name "Jesus," and do the job quite effectively anyway, go to our podcasts and listen to the one on "Channeling and Exorcism")

In any event, the "anti-cult" ranters have done a pretty effective job of making people afraid of the word to the point that it's like the Kitty Genovese case... a person can be being murdered - psychically, psychologically, and even literally - by these thugs and nobody will help because they are afraid of getting tarred with the same brush.

And THAT is the point. That's what COINTELPRO is set up to do. To divide and conquer the TRUE patriots and activists by slime propagated by the Third Party Attack Protocol.

Those who are really working for truth and peace will be attacked and marginalized. And then, if somebody starts to notice anything strange about this, they will set up "fake" attacks on each other to allay suspicion. No sooner had I made a public comment about the fact that Jeff Rense seemed to be curiously untouched by all of this than, lo and behold, within a few days he started publishing articles about how nasty letters were written to him from Zionists and his guests were being "threatened." However, he has never published an article about how *I*, as his guest, was certainly flamed and threatened by his pals Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges and HE published it himself.

And then along comes Daryl Bradford Smith with his "diet coke COINTELRPO" attack on Rense - you know, the flame with just one calorie?

The other day I saw another piece on Rense.com about how the nasty Zionists were making anonymous phone calls to one of his guests and how upset that guest was. Well, gee whiz, I wish I ONLY got nasty anonymous phone calls! After many, MANY death threats, our names and address were published on the internet with invitations for some right thinking Neocon Zionists in our area to "take care" of us. Not long after, two of my children were nearly killed, (the car was totaled when an anonymous vehicle attacker deliberately ran my daughter off the road and if it hadn't been a Volvo, she would have been killed), our dog was poisoned, and we had enough. And then, of course, the "Greek Chorus" starts chanting: "oh, they are pretending to be activists but they really ran away because they are a cult and fleece people."

Yeah, right.

The problem is, the other side has no limits on what they can and WILL do. Every unethical option is open to them. It is NOT open to those who seek truth. For them, the end justifies the means. For us, the end IS the means: truth, as much as we can figure out, shouted as loudly as we can shout it. (Within safe limits, of course.)

But that doesn't mean that we can't take pages from their playbook.

We notice that their main weapon is something like a combination of a Greek Chorus and "clappers" planted in the audience, while the spellbinding actor weaves his illusion "onstage." It is a kind of psychological "herding" and "corraling."

I don't see anything wrong at all with utilizing a similar tactic.

But to do something like that, you have to have a network and that has to be created very carefully in order to weed out the "agents." That's where studying the phenomenon and doing due diligence comes in.

IF such a thing could be done, if such a group would come out in force whenever they see the stalker attacking a "Kitty Genovese", (i.e. any one of the members of said network), the network would come out in force and make it clear that they are NOT going to tolerate attacks on people who have proved themselves by their bona fides, and by their work.

The problem with forming such a unified network is Ego. So many people are invested in their beliefs and they have to hang on to them and if somebody over there doesn't believe the same way they do, they don't feel that they ought to support them. What we have to understand from the start is that most of these beliefs are PART OF THE PROGRAM. One has to be completely ruthless in examining the self and what one believes in order to get free of this stuff. Effectively that means that anyone who is attached to a "savior" scenarios is probably part of the program whether he or she is conscious of it or not. There aren't any saviors! No Jesus, no Avatar, no Aliens are gonna help haul our buns out of the fire. It's all up to us! That's it. And we can only do it with knowledge and awareness! But the kind of knowledge and awareness we need cannot be gotten alone!

Our Quantum Future Group has made a huge difference. Yeah, Vinnie and gang like to rant "cult" about the fact that we have a private, members-only group, and it's hard as hell to get in, but I can guaran-damn-tee that this is only because the PTB are afraid of people actually learning how to work together without egos. It's all about relationships and networking to do real research with all biases removed.

QFG is a blessing to me for a lot of reasons and one of these is that it is the members of this group that keep me fighting. Because many of them are there, in the U.S., even though I am here in France and COULD just relax and retire and let the world go to hell or let somebody else do the work,. Heck, I'm 54 this year, I don't have a lot of years left so why am I wearing myself out? I could shuck the whole nonsense, free myself of the grief that I suffer when I am unjustly attacked, the suffering my family has gone through because of those psychopaths, quit working 16 hour days, and just read and watch movies and prune roses. But I can't do that. There are too many people that I love. I will fight for them until I am cut down and I believe that they will do the same for me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so - they are very special people, every one of them!

Yes, there has been a period of "weeding out" COINTELPRO - that's a necessary stage for any group that hopes to remain cohesive and work toward a common goal. Those who have the seeds of selfishness have fallen away under various trials. In this sense, people like Vinnie and Jay are useful. Those who have the instinct for truth can see through them and their lies, and those who prefer lies because it makes things simple and keeps people from being mad at them for bucking the PTB, get taken in. Lobaczewski calls it "transpersonification." It's really that simple. We interact with people daily, monthly, year after year, and because of this they know us on a consistent, personal basis. Most of our group members have been to visit us and have visited each other. This group works together, researches together, and that means that each of them give of themselves daily just like in a family.

When you get to know people personally in such an exchange, you begin to care about them in a deep way. Our group is our real family and families help each other. The neighbors would not have ignored Kitty Genovese's cries for help if they had known her and interacted with her daily, or if they had been family, even "extended" family.

That's what is missing in the Anti-war and 9-11 truth movement. People working together, knowing each other well and personally, leaving their egos and prejudices at the door, doing good research with protocols, sharing and supporting each other for the sake of the goal and not personal fame and glory. The network needs to grow.

The members of the Quantum Future Group are our "Bridge Over Troubled Water." They work tirelessly alongside us on the "frontline," even if we do try to shield them from the flak and take the direct hits from the COINTELPRO gangs ourselves. We are able to stand up and do that because they are behind us, passing the ammunition, food and water, necessary intell, providing distractions and cover fire, and all kinds of things that can be expressed in battle metaphors. The cavalry may make the charge and attract the fire, but it cannot be successful without a kitchen, without an infirmary, without covering artillery fire, and without reconnaissance and foot soldiers.

So, the bottom line is, as long as the Quantum Future Group exists, as long as children who need a future exist, I'm not ready to give up yet. There is way too much at stake. Maybe I am clinging to hope because I am a mother and I want a future for my children and my extended family and their children. Maybe that hope is self-deception, just as a mother might cling to hope that her child will survive some terminal illness. I'll admit that up front. But even so, if my "child" dies, it won't be because I didn't do everything I could, right up to the last instant. And believe me, a desperate mother can be pretty creative when her child's life is at stake. There are all kinds of stories about mothers who did NOT take the diagnosis as the last word, who did their own research, who found new remedies, and who, in the end, healed their children by virtue of stubbornness, refusal to give up, and just plain cussedness. They can call me crazy, they can laugh at me, accuse me of whatever slime their filthy brains can come up with, gossip about me, flame and abuse me; it has nothing to do with me, and I ain't quittin'. I'll be your Bridge Over Troubled Water.

The life and suicide of an Iraq veteran who could take no more

2006-01-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Oliver Duff
25 January 2006

By his own admission Douglas Barber, a former army reservist, was struggling. For two years since returning from the chaos and violence of Iraq, the 35-year-old had battled with his memories and his demons, the things he had seen and the fear he had experienced. Recently, it seemed he had turned a corner, securing medical help and counselling.

But last week, at his home in south-eastern Alabama, the National Guardsman e-mailed some friends and then changed the message on his answering machine. His new message told callers: "If you're looking for Doug, I'm checking out of this world. I'll see you on the other side." Mr Barber dialled the police, stepped on to the porch with his shotgun and - after a brief stand-off with officers - shot himself in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. [...]

Comment from Signs of the Times: While we can certainly understand why this young man felt that he had no option but to take his own life, we do not support suicide. We know that there are exceptional cases of terminal illness and individuals who suffer chronic and intractable pain. In those cases, we bow our heads and acknowledge that the individual has the right to make their own decision without judgment from others.

What we see in this case, of course, is a case of chronic and intractable emotional pain. This is a common malady of our world, due primarily to the patologizing of our society. Again we must point out the work of Andrew Lobaczewski who has so thorougly described this process and its effects on normal human beings. The most tragic thing about all of it is that a very small segment of the population is responsible for the sufferings of the majority.

One of the reasons for the existence of this website is so that those who do begin to see, or who have struggled all their lives trying to make sense of a society that has been shaped by The Cult of the Plausible Lie. The primary problem that I see humanity struggling with today is precisely delineated by Lobaczewski: it is an almost total lack of adequate psychological knowledge on the part of the masses of humanity - the population of ordinary, normal people.

Plausible lies are monstrous things propagated by evil people for the express purpose of deceiving good people into doing the will of those who do not have their best interests at heart. It's that simple. The most powerful of these lies are so plausible that nobody even dreams about questioning their validity.

Learning about evil in our society, how it operates on the macro-social scale, is considered by many to be "unpleasant." They don't want to go there. It is too disturbing and even frightening. More than that, talking about these things as we do here at SOTT is not familiar. To talk about evil as though it were a REAL concept is something we have been programmed to NOT do!

We clearly need to study this problem of macro-social evil in our world in a systematic and scientific way. And we need to get over the idea that thinking only good thoughts, thinking about happy and "nice" things is the way to good psychological health.

It's clear that trying to think "happy thoughts" did no good for Douglas Barber; his observations and experience were in conflict with this plausible lie. But it is so plausible that millions upon millions of people are taken in by it.

Who knows? If Douglas Barber had known about SOTT, if he had known about our work with the Quantum Future Group, if he had known about our studies in psychopathy and Ponerology, perhaps he would have been able to come to a resolution about the fact that Evil does exist, that it rules this world and has done for millennia, and then he would have been able to convert his suffering into positive work for the promotion of that which is good, decent, and normal.

But of course, there is no possibility of a world that is ruled by normal people to come into being until they begin to wake up from the spell of the Evil Magician, the Ponerological union of pathological elements in our society. And it is for this purpose, waking people up, that SOTT exists.

The Poisoning of the Well

2006-01-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Of Paradoxes and Manna from Heaven

The rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States is a profound paradox, a reality that in the natural evolution of human endeavor should not exist, an anathema to the inevitable progression of humanity and civilization, a manifestation that is at odds with what we would expect to exist in the wealthiest, most open and some would say the most learned nation the world has ever seen. Yet, not only does this variant of extremist religion exist in the land of plenty, it thrives, becoming a growing threat to the continued vitality of the nation.

Indeed, a movement already clandestinely growing and attracting more souls before 9/11 was given a gift from the heavens, quite literally, on that fateful day, creating images and emotions that transformed the way millions of Americans saw the world. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, terror fell from the sky like the vengeance-filled thunderbolts of Zeus, spawning a fear and insecurity never before seen inside a nation that had never been attacked on its continental soil. The world was transformed, along with the psyches of millions of people whose beliefs ratified in their minds that the destruction of the World Trade Center was a religious manifestation conjured up by God himself. Paranoid, afraid, uncertain and insecure, thinking themselves living in a troubled world on the verge of its last throes, millions traumatized by the events of 9/11 turned to fundamentalist religion for the salvation reserved for the end of days, answers to most troubling questions and the false comfort that religion offers in times of cataclysm and need.

The profound psychological shift in the minds of tens of millions in the aftermath of 9/11 cannot be underestimated, and must be seen as a monumental trigger that has unleashed the myriad of problems now afflicting America. The trauma, stress, fear and hatred engendered transformed America and its people in ways that have yet to be fully understood.

Comment from Signs of the Times: Much of Valenzeula's critique is spot on. Yes, religion is a control system for keeping the flock in step, cowed with fear over God's potential wrath, or spaced out on wishful thinking in hopes that the Savior will return and save the true believers before things get too bad for the heathen and the heretic. Jesus as the original space brother. We think, however, that Valenzeula has his own ideological blind spots, for he preaches the very same materialism that he is denouncing, he has accepted the materialist notion of progress, he does not mention the in-fighting among scientific circles over the anthropological and genetic squabbles over man's evolution, dismisses the Middle Ages as a backwater of Church-dominated thought when in fact there were very progressive societies that were crushed by this same Church, among other shortcomings. Indeed, the situation of fundamentalist religion in the US is dire for those who wish to bring reason and fact to the debate on our future as opposed to belief and fairy tales masquerading as science. But there is no understanding in this piece of the nature of psychopathy and pathocracy, so he falls back onto the common sense notion of human nature, as if we were all nothing more than animals with a grain of rational thought struggling to keep our beastial depths in check. Furthermore, his analysis of just how bad the situation really is stops short. He appears to still accept the idea that it was a small gang of Islamic fundamentalists, guided by Osama Underthebed, who pulled off 9/11. Is this a case of his own rational side being stifled by his beliefs and preconceptions? Freeing oneself from the programming of society is no easy task. Reason alone will not do it for we are more than reason. The entire personality must be brought into play. But that, too, is not enough because we are blind to ourselves in countless ways. It takes the viewpoint of an objective observer to help us see ourselves. That objective observer can be a network of like-minded people. By that, we mean people who have made the commitment to do the work, not that they think and believe the same things. It is our BEing that must be transformed. True progress is the progress of the soul, not in the terms dictated by the milk doctrine of religion designed to keep us beholden to our psychopathic leaders, but in our work to become that which we have today only in potential, masters of ourselves.

Teaching anti-terrorism

2006-01-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

IIT class is among growing field of homeland security study

By Patrice M. Jones
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 25, 2006

The assignment was daunting -- to protect Chicagoans in the wake of a terrorist attack on the infamous downtown Block 37 project with its proposed office tower, retail space and subterranean subway station.

One by one, the Illinois Institute of Technology graduate students came to the front of the classroom, pointing out the site's vulnerabilities.

What was presented as a final class project was a chilling laundry list of dangers but also possible solutions: from designing barriers to protect the completed complex from potential explosives-laden vehicles, to providing human and electronic surveillance, to even using special glass in construction that would prove less deadly if buildings were attacked. [...]

Freedom - The Cold, Hard Facts

2006-01-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

By Nancy Levant
January 24, 2006

There are a thousand critically important issues to deal with in todayís world, but American citizens need to be very careful. The creation of social chaos is the fundamental tool used by Constitutional destroyers to divide and conquer the ability to focus on the big prize, which is freedom. Our focus should not be upon partisan details, but upon Constitutional dismantling. Our political opinions and leanings will be non-issues if there is no Constitutional Republic.

As each day passes, and we continue to see our ìrepresentativesî refusing to represent American freedom, and as we continue to see our voting powers eliminated by the non-elected partnership-stakeholding system of global leadership, one wonders if there will ever be another election. Specifically, one wonders if Martial Law will be implemented before another election date rolls around. Due to the fact that our nation has been totally and very skillfully bankrupted by highly educated economic experts, one wonders if we have been set up to purposefully crash, whereby giving Martial Law its jurisdiction.

It should be very clear to every American citizen that 1) something is terribly wrong with our ìrepresentative government,î and 2) our representatives and their corporate partners are recreating public law. Our rights as American citizens are being systematically, purposefully eliminated. Therefore, our opinions about this social condition and that cultural trend are pointless. In the very near future, changes could occur in America that will make all partisanship null and void. Martial Law knows no partisanship and cares not for opinion. It knows only military-style dictatorship.

At this point in time, I strongly suggest that American people prepare for the worst. All indicators lead to renegade politicians who are overthrowing the American government and its Constitution. No one can deny this fact. Equally, a Martial Law system is totally, completely in place thanks to three or more decades of powers amassed through presidential Executive Orders and many, many Acts.

Consider the following:

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders in to effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen-year period.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit, and the flow of money in U.S. financial institutions in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when the President declares a state of emergency, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

Add to these Executive Orders the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, which would give state governors and public health officials the power to:

∑ Force individuals suspected of harboring an "infectious disease" to undergo medical examinations.

∑ Track and share an individual's personal health information, including genetic information.

∑ Force persons to be vaccinated, treated, or quarantined for infectious diseases.

∑ Mandate that all health care providers report all cases of persons who harbor any illness or health condition that may be caused by an epidemic or an infectious agent and might pose a "substantial risk" to a "significant number of people or cause a long-term disability." (Note: Neither "substantial risk" nor "significant number" are defined in the draft.)

∑ Force pharmacists to report any unusual or any increased prescription rates that may be caused by epidemic diseases.

∑ Preempt existing state laws, rules and regulations, including those relating to privacy, medical licensure, and--this is key--property rights.

∑ Control public and private property during a public health emergency, including pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, nursing homes, other health care facilities, and communications devices.

∑ Mobilize all or any part of the "organized militia into service to the state to help enforce the state's orders."

∑ Ration firearms, explosives, food, fuel and alcoholic beverages, among other commodities.

∑ Impose fines and penalties to enforce their orders.

Then, consider the following:

∑ Super viruses are manufactured.

∑ Borders are open to illegals of all shapes and kinds.

∑ NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA enforces internationalized economics.

∑ Imported nuclear devices are known to be in the United States.

∑ Our nation was bureaucratically bankrupted by the Federal Reserve Corporation.

∑ The Partnership-stakeholding bureaucracy eliminates voting.

∑ The elected representatives of the American people are rapidly eliminating constitutional rights.

∑ The American military is completely dedicated to foreign theaters, while a secondary military system has been established on the homeland with new and unimaginable powers over the citizenry.

Let us consider the powers of the Patriot Act II:

SECTION 501 (Expatriation of Terrorists) expands the definition of "enemy combatant" to all American citizens who "may" have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act. (Section 802 is the new definition of domestic terrorism, and the definition is "any action that endangers human life that is a violation of any Federal or State law.") Section 501 of the second Patriot Act directly connects to Section 125 of the same act. The Justice Department boldly claims that the incredibly broad Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act isn't broad enough and that a new, unlimited definition of terrorism is needed.

Under Section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activities can be grabbed off the street and thrown into a van never to be seen again. The Justice Department states that they can do this because the person "had inferred from conduct" that they were not US citizens. Remember Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act states that any violation of Federal or State law can result in the "enemy combatant" terrorist designation.

SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a criminal act for any member of the government or any citizen to release any information concerning the incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also states that law enforcement does not have to tell the press who they have arrested, and they never have to release the names.

SECTION 301 and 306 (Terrorist Identification Database) set up a national database of "suspected terrorists" and radically expand the database to include anyone associated with suspected terrorist groups and anyone involved in crimes or having supported any group designated as "terrorist." These sections also set up a national DNA database for anyone on probation or who has been on probation for any crime, and orders State governments to collect the DNA for the Federal government.

SECTION 312 gives immunity to law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people and would place substantial restrictions on court injunctions against Federal violations of civil rights across the board.

SECTION 101 will designate individual terrorists as foreign powers and again strip them of all rights under the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 102 states clearly that any information gathering, regardless of whether or not those activities are illegal, can be considered to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power. This makes newsgathering illegal.

SECTION 103 allows the Federal government to use wartime martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring that a state of war exists.

SECTION 106 is bone chilling in its straightforwardness. It states that broad general warrants by the secret FSIA court (a panel of secret judges set up in a star chamber system that convenes in an undisclosed location) granted under the first Patriot Act are not good enough. It states that government agents must be given immunity for carrying out searches with no prior court approval. This section throws out the entire Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.

SECTION 109 allows secret star-chamber courts to issue contempt charges against any individual or corporation who refuses to incriminate themselves or others. This section annihilates the last vestiges of the Fifth Amendment.

SECTION 110 restates that key police state clauses in the first Patriot Act were not sunsetted and removes the five-year sunset clause from other subsections of the first Patriot Act. After all, the media has told us: "This is the New America. Get used to it. This is forever."

SECTION 111 expands the definition of the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 122 restates the government's newly announced power of "surveillance without a court order."

SECTION 123 restates that the government no longer needs warrants and that the investigations can be a giant dragnet-style sweep described in press reports about the Total Information Awareness Network. One passage reads, "thus the focus of domestic surveillance may be less precise than that directed against more conventional types of crime."

*Note: Over and over again, in subsection after subsection, the second Patriot Act states that its new Soviet-type powers will be used to fight international terrorism, domestic terrorism and other types of crimes. Of course the government has already announced in Section 802 of the first USA Patriot act that any crime is considered domestic terrorism.

SECTION 126 grants the government the right to mine the entire spectrum of public and private sector information from bank records to educational and medical records. This is the enacting law to allow ECHELON and the Total Information Awareness Network to break down any and all walls of privacy. The government states that they must look at everything to "determine" if individuals or groups might have a connection to terrorist groups. As you can now see, you are guilty until proven innocent.

SECTION 127 allows the government to takeover coroners' and medical examiners' operations whenever they see fit.

SECTION 128 allows the Federal government to place gag orders on Federal and State Grand Juries and to take over the proceedings. It also disallows individuals or organizations to even try to quash a Federal subpoena. So now defending yourself will be a terrorist action.

SECTION 129 destroys any remaining whistle blower protection for Federal agents.

SECTION 202 allows corporations to keep secret their activities with toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials.

SECTION 205 allows top Federal officials to keep all financial dealings secret, and anyone investigating them can be considered a terrorist.

SECTION 303 sets up national DNA database of suspected terrorists. The database will also be used to "stop other unlawful activities." It will share the information with state, local and foreign agencies for the same purposes.

SECTION 311 federalizes your local police department in the area of information sharing.

SECTION 313 provides liability protection for businesses, especially big businesses, that spy on their customers for Homeland Security, violating their privacy agreements. It goes on to say that these are all preventative measures - has anyone seen Minority Report? This is the access hub for the Total Information Awareness Network.

SECTION 321 authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people and to share information with foreign governments.

SECTION 322 removes Congress from the extradition process and allows officers of the Homeland Security complex to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish. It also allows Homeland Security to secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.

SECTION 402 is titled "Providing Material Support to Terrorism." The section reads that there is no requirement to show that the individual even had the intent to aid terrorists.

SECTION 403 expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.

SECTION 404 makes it a crime for a terrorist or "other criminals" to use encryption in the commission of a crime.

SECTION 408 creates "lifetime parole" (basically, slavery) for a whole host of crimes.

SECTION 410 creates no statute of limitations for anyone that engages in terrorist actions or supports terrorists. Remember: any crime is now considered terrorism under the first Patriot Act.

SECTION 411 expands crimes that are punishable by death. Again, they point to Section 802 of the first Patriot Act and state that any terrorist act or support of terrorist act can result in the death penalty.

SECTION 421 increases penalties for terrorist financing. This section states that any type of financial activity connected to terrorism will result to time in prison and $10-50,000 fines per violation.

SECTIONS 427 sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in terrorist activities. There are many other sections that I did not cover in the interest of time. The American people were shocked by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation in modern world history. (Many thanks to Alex Jones for this important list and research).

The only remaining question for American people is whether Executive Orders, and acts such as the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and the Patriot Act II are imposed ìin case of crisis,î or whether they are created as part of a pre-determined decision to dismantle Constitutional America. And either way, is this how we want to live?

Carefully consider all the above. Carefully consider the fact that the American military has been out of the country for nearly 100 years, fighting foreign battles. And carefully consider that most of the Executive Orders were written prior to 9-11, and that the first Patriot Act was immediately passed following 9-11 without Congress having access to the contents of the Act. Something is terribly wrong, and my greatest fear is that American people will never have another opportunity for a national vote. It would appear that other plans are in the making.

Websites for Wisdoms:

www.infowars.com

www.amerikanexpose.com

www.eco.freedom.com

www.newswithviews.com

www.klamathbucketbrigade.org

http://www.acl.us.tt

www.sierratimes.com

The Gospel According to Jimmy Carter

2006-01-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Wil S. Hylton
Gentelmen's Quarterly

Twenty-five years after leaving the White House, Jimmy Carter breaks it down on faith, UFOs, greedy Republicans, and that pain in the ass known as Ted Kennedy

You call yourself a born-again evangelical Christian, but you draw the line at the word fundamentalist. Can you define those terms?

I define fundamentalism as a group of invariably male leaders who consider themselves superior to other believers. The fundamentalists believe they have a special relationship with God. Therefore their beliefs are inherently correct, being those of God, and anyone who disagrees with them are first of all wrong, and second inferior, and in extreme cases even subhuman. Also, fundamentalists don’t relish any challenge to their positions. They believe any deviation from their own God-ordained truth is a derogation of their own responsibility. So compromise or negotiating with others, or considering the opinion of others that might be different, is a violation of their faith. It makes a great exhibition of rigidity and superiority and exclusion.

It seems that the more devout a person becomes in their faith and their Bible and their church, the more difficult it would be not to feel that way.

Paul established three little churches in Galatia on a supple but profound belief that we are saved by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ. That was his basic message, and Peter and other disciples did the same thing. What Paul condemned in the strongest letters is that believers in the little churches began to embellish that fundamental with other requirements, saying that you had to become a Jew first, you had to be circumcised to be a Christian, you can’t eat the meat that’s been sacrificed to idols and be a Christian, you have to worship on a particular holy day to be a Christian, you have to accept a certain apostle as the best representative of Christ to be a Christian. So they began to embellish the basic foundation of Christian faith by human-created additional requirements. And that was the origin of fundamentalism.

So you would define fundamentalists as embellishers.

Absolutely—and creating definitions of Christianity: If you don’t agree with my embellishment, then you can’t be one of us.

What about things that do seem to be in the fundamentals? For example, I know you’ve grappled with abortion.

I’ve never believed that if Jesus was confronted with the question, that he would approve abortion. There are millions of people who disagree with me on both sides. They believe that abortion begins when the male sperm is ejaculated. Others believe that abortion is okay up until the end of the first three months of the pregnancy. Others believe that a woman should have full rights to control her own body. I presume that those who believe in the different nuances concerning abortion can all be faithful and devout Christians. I don’t have any objection to that. But my own belief is that Christ would not approve abortion unless the woman’s life was in danger.

If the problem with fundamentalists is that they impose their rules on others, you might also ask yourself, What rules do I impose? For example, you opposed federal funding of abortion.

I did everything I possibly could to minimize abortion and to discourage abortion while still complying with the law as ordained by the Supreme Court.

But it seems like this is one of those areas where it’s difficult to draw the line. You believe you know the will of God.

If I were a purist in my faith, I couldn’t hold public office and preside over a nation that honored abortion. But when I went into politics and I ran for office, I was willing as a state senator and as a governor and as a president to take an oath before God that I would uphold the laws of the districts that I served. There were times when I was able to change the laws. But until they were changed, I had to comply with them. So when people have asked me about this, I always tell them that this was the most difficult issue I had to face, because I was inherently against abortion, but I was required to impose the law.

If you had the power to change that law, would you?

I can live with Roe v. Wade. Late-term abortion is something I would have vetoed. I don’t believe that late-term abortion is appropriate. That’s obnoxious to me.

If abortion is against the will of God as you understand it, shouldn’t you oppose it at the most the elementary stage of development?

Well, I have my personal beliefs, and in fact my own personal belief is to do away with the death penalty as well. But our Constitution so far permits the states to be autonomous in imposing the death penalty, and the Supreme Court has gone back and forward on it. My wife and I interceded through the court as strong as we could a year ago, with public statements and letters to human rights organizations, to do away with the ruling that permitted the execution of juveniles. So we have tried to intervene that way.

But not on abortion.

That’s correct.

You’ve also been able to blend your scientific background with your spiritual beliefs. Has it ever been difficult to reconcile the training of science, which demands evidence, with faith, which is in many ways the opposite?

No. Faith is believing in something that cannot be proven. You can’t prove the existence of God. You can’t prove that Jesus Christ is the son of God. You can’t prove many things in the Bible, so for someone to have confidence in that, you have to have faith.

Do you think that if you had been raised in an Islamic culture, you would been comfortable in that faith?

I would surmise that I would.

But based on what you believe now, you would have been wrong.

That may be true. But Jesus said, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” It’s not for me to say that an ignorant Ethiopian who lives around a lake at the origin of the Blue Nile, where I was four days ago, and has never heard of Christ is condemned. I can’t believe that. And I can’t say that a child as you just described, that grew up with Islamic teachings and that believes in Mohammed and Allah, would be condemned. It’s not my role to condemn people. That’s a role to be played by God almighty.

But this would be about a sense of loss on your own part.

There would be. To know what I know now, I would be aggrieved if I had never known about Jesus Christ, because I have tried to apply, in a faltering way, the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s been an inspiration to me, it’s been a guide to me, it’s been a stabilizing factor in my life. It has permeated my consciousness.

This will sound like the same question, but if you had been raised by atheists, do you think you would have had an inner feeling of faith?

I think so.

Wouldn’t it be hard without the guidance of others?

I believe that when I approached adulthood, I would have been exploring the authenticity or the veracity or the applicability of the Christian faith. If I had been raised as an atheist and I had gone into the outside world and all of a sudden I realized that I was living in a nation where the majority of people profess faith in Christ, I would have wanted to explore the beliefs of others to see if it was applicable to me.

It seems difficult to imagine someone coming into the vast realm of religious offerings and having any idea where to begin. With so many options, they could very well all be wrong.

I accept the fact that some of my beliefs could be wrong. There may be some fallibilities in my own personal beliefs, sure. I can’t change my mind just because I think I might be wrong. My present beliefs have been evolved over seventy-five years of thought and study, analysis, teaching.

One of the other aspects of your life that struck me as a conflict between your experience and your scientific training was that you saw a UFO.

I saw an unidentified flying object. I’ve never believed that it came from Mars. I know enough physics to know that you can’t have vehicles that are tangible in nature flying from Mars, looking around, and then flying back. But I saw an object one night when I was preparing to give a speech to a Lions Club. There were about twenty-five of us men standing around. It was almost time for the Lions Club supper to start, which I would eat and then I would give a speech. I was in charge of fifty-six Lions Clubs in southwest Georgia back in the late ’60s. And all of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, “Look, over in the west!” And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance. I had a tape recorder—because as I met with members of Lions Clubs, I would dictate their names on the tapes so I could remember them—and I dictated my observations. And when I got home, I wrote them down. So that’s an accurate description of what I saw. It was a flying object that was unidentified. But I have never thought that it was from outer space.

One of the promises you made in 1976 was that if you were elected, you would look into the reports from Roswell and see if there had been any cover-ups. Did you look into that?

Well, in a way. I became more aware of what our intelligence services were doing. There was only one instance that I’ll talk about now. We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic—a twin-engine plane, small plane. And we couldn’t find it. And so we oriented satellites that were going around the earth every ninety minutes to fly over that spot where we thought it might be and take photographs. We couldn’t find it. So the director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California that claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went in a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.

That must have been surreal for you. You’re the president of the United States, and you’re getting intelligence information from a woman in a trance in California.

That’s exactly right.

How did your scientific mind process that?

With skepticism. Whether it was just a gross coincidence or…I don’t know. But that’s one thing that I couldn’t explain. As far as covering up possible flights from distant satellites or distant heavenly bodies, I don’t believe in that, and there’s no evidence that it was ever covered up. Or extraterrestrial people coming to earth, I don’t think that’s ever happened.

In a way, just the fact that you promised the American people you would look into it is reflective of how much of an outsider you were to Washington.

That’s true.

Looking back, do you think that you could have been elected if not for the hunger for honesty after Watergate?

No, I don’t think so. I didn’t have any money, and I was almost completely unknown outside of Georgia, and I had never served in Washington. I had only spent a few days there in my entire life. But it was a propitious time for me. Fortune smiled on me. People were looking for some breath of fresh air, some outsider. I told the first ten people who I could get to come and hear me that if I ever made a misleading statement, they shouldn’t vote for me. I said, “I’ll never lie to you.” And that resonated.

Once you got to Washington, even though you had a Democratic Congress, it wasn’t easy.

My main problem was with the liberal Democrats. I was conservative on defense. I had spent eleven years of my life in the navy, and I wanted a strong defense. And I believed in a balanced budget. They thought that was anathema to the basic Democratic faith. After a few months, Ted Kennedy challenged me and told everybody to oppose what I was doing.

It sounds like there was a social component, too, with all the glad-handing that goes on in Washington and the drinks after tennis and things like that. You didn’t like the politicking.

That’s true, and that was a mistake I made. I would have been better off if I had entwined myself into the social life of Washington with the Washington Post leaders and the evening-cocktail-party circuit. I would have made some alliances there that could have been quite valuable to me, but it was anathema to me. It was not my way of life. It was a political mistake.

It must have been a real slap in the face when Kennedy ran against you.

Well, we’ve gotten over it now. He and I are basically compatible on overall political philosophy. So I don’t have any hard feelings. But when I got the nomination at the convention, Kennedy came on the stand and ostentatiously refused to shake hands with me. I went up and stuck out my hand, he stood there for a while and turned around. Wouldn’t shake my hand. In front of 6,000 or whatever it was Democratic delegates. And he never gave me any support.

Have you ever discussed that with Kennedy?

We had one discussion in the White House as we were approaching the general election, but it was not a successful discussion. I tried to get Ted Kennedy to make a public endorsement of me and to urge his supporters to support me, but he was very, very cool. And never did do it. But that’s beside the point. Of course, I hated to be defeated in 1980, but the way it’s turned out, this has been by far the best time of my life.

Someone said that you were the only person in history who used the presidency as a stepping-stone to greatness.

I’ve heard that.

I wanted to talk briefly about the prospects in the Middle East. What are your feelings about the prospects for this Gaza pullout?

Well, at the moment, I’m not hopeful. I have been recently, but I think now the prospects are not good, because Sharon has announced that if any representatives of Hamas run for parliament, he is not going to permit the Palestinians to cross the checkpoints. There are hundreds of checkpoints, in some places every few hundred yards.

This has been one of the big issues with the Bush administration’s policy in the Middle East, too: who to deal with and who not to deal with. I wonder if you could comment on the decision not to deal with Arafat.

I think that was a mistake. They — Sharon and Bush together — castrated Arafat as far as any sort of political effectiveness. And then they condemned Arafat because he couldn’t control the Palestinians. He was confined, as you know, to two or three rooms.

But the Bush administration points to that and says, “We may have lost four years, but we got Abu Mazen.”

Well, at this moment, I don’t see any prospects for progress.

Probably your most famous speech was the “crisis of confidence” speech in 1979, and a critical element was the idea that we have to make sacrifices. Today we have a very different policy espoused, with Dick Cheney saying that conservation is a personal virtue and not a basis for policy. I wonder how you react.

America is not at war. We’re not really at war with terrorists. There is no commitment of the American people to make a sacrifice to deal with the threat of terrorism. We’re not sacrificing our beliefs to accommodate those of France or Russia or others who might have participated in the Iraqi war. And you can’t find an American, except for a half of 1 percent who are in Iraq or who have loved ones in Iraq, who’ve made any sacrifice in the last three or four years. You haven’t. I haven’t. In fact, I make a lot of money, and my taxes have gone down. So there’s been a policy here that is incredible, of enriching people in a time of war and putting the burden on poor people and future generations in order to make sure we don’t make sacrifices in order to meet the exigencies of threats to our country.

And whose failure is that?

The leaders in Washington, from the White House to the majority in the House and Senate.

It’s got to be hard for you as an ex-President, with the customary code of conduct that you’re not supposed to be too critical. Is that a tough balancing act for you?

Yes. Yes. There are some seminal changes that are being made in the basic policy of my country with which I disagree. There are some people that really believe that to remove taxation from the rich is the right way for this country to go. There are people who really believe that preemptive war is the right way for America to exert its foreign-policy influence. There are people who really believe that endangered species ought not to be protected because it might inhibit economic development. There are people who really believe that a minimum wage of half as much as it is in most developed countries is the right way for our country to be. But the American people have not yet decided which direction the country should go.

You feel like you can’t afford, at this point, to be —

Silent. Yes.

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF RELIGIOUS FERVOR

2006-01-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

by Sam Harris

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion--to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources--is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

The Nature of Belief

According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22% believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a “negative” or “highly negative” view of people who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be “strongly religious.” Unreason is now ascendant in the United States--in our schools, in our courts and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called “religious moderation” still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than “moderates” do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, they at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.” When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God’s wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display--not God’s--when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers’ arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it is--the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.

It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.

Here we can see why Pascal’s wager, Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderates--almost by definition--do not.

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke “faith.” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. “the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,” “I saw the face of Jesus in a window,” “We prayed, and our daughter’s cancer went into remission"). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.

Faith and the Good Society

People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusion--delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.)

Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished it. Any account of a “god gene” that causes the majority of Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality--belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society’s health.

Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.

Religion as a Source of Violence

One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.--and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

In a world riven by ignorance, only the atheist refuses to deny the obvious: Religious faith promotes human violence to an astonishing degree. Religion inspires violence in at least two senses: (1) People often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it (the inevitable psychopathic corollary being that the act will ensure them an eternity of happiness after death). Examples of this sort of behavior are practically innumerable, jihadist suicide bombing being the most prominent. (2) Larger numbers of people are inclined toward religious conflict simply because their religion constitutes the core of their moral identities. One of the enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religion. Many religious conflicts that seem driven by terrestrial concerns, therefore, are religious in origin. (Just ask the Irish.)

These facts notwithstanding, religious moderates tend to imagine that human conflict is always reducible to a lack of education, to poverty or to political grievances. This is one of the many delusions of liberal piety. To dispel it, we need only reflect on the fact that the Sept. 11 hijackers were college educated and middle class and had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

Why is religion such a potent source of human violence?

* Our religions are intrinsically incompatible with one another. Either Jesus rose from the dead and will be returning to Earth like a superhero or not; either the Koran is the infallible word of God or it isn’t. Every religion makes explicit claims about the way the world is, and the sheer profusion of these incompatible claims creates an enduring basis for conflict.

* There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us-them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If a person really believes that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. It may even be reasonable to kill them. If a person thinks there is something that another person can say to his children that could put their souls in jeopardy for all eternity, then the heretic next door is actually far more dangerous than the child molester. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism or politics.

* Religious faith is a conversation-stopper. Religion is only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and--all too often--what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. Only a fundamental willingness to be reasonable--to have our beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments--can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.

It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the opportunities for interfaith dialogue. The endgame for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality. While all parties to liberal religious discourse have agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would otherwise collide, these very points remain perpetual sources of conflict for their coreligionists. Political correctness, therefore, does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.

Comment: While we agree with much of what Sam Harris has written above regarding "belief" and religion in general, we take a slightly different view of what to do with these rather astute observations. Because, if we are going to be totally open-minded, we cannot exclude other observations: those events and anomalies that suggest to us strongly that there is something behind our reality, that there is more than what we can perceive with our human senses or analyze with our human brains.

Again and again as the Quantum Future Group has pursued its research into "anomalies" and alleged psychic phenomena, we find evidence of the existence of a hyperdimensional reality in which our own world is “embedded,” and from which our reality takes its form as a shadow cast upon the cave wall described by Plato. We find compelling evidence - both "hard" and circumstantial - that there is a valid reason for "mystical" tendencies.

But mysticism alone is not enough. Without the ability to analyse, criticise, and subject the mystical experience to the tests and verifications of scientific investigation, the mystical experience remains subjective and open to obfuscation. That is how religions are born. The Mystical must be wedded to Reason. This can be done through networking, through the sharing of these experiences, comparing and studying them rationally, and seeing where they lead us with an open-mind. Are we learning to SEE that which is veiled, or are we being waylaid down the Path of psychedelic phenomenon and feel-good chemical excitation of the brain? These are questions that must be asked if we are to avoid the traps of religions: blind belief.

There is another kind of belief, a hypothesis that is tested and proves itself. In this sense, we believe with William Kingdon Clifford, as he spoke in the closing remarks of a public lecture given in 1874:

I dare say, now, that you are rather indignant at being kept so long hearing perfectly obvious remarks that are true of everything. You may think that it is beneath the dignity of human nature to spend all this time in contemplating the size and shape of a piece of wood. Very well; it is written in the fifteenth chapter of the Koran that when Adam was created all the angels were commanded to worship him. But Eblis, the chief of them, refused, saying, "Far be it from me that am a pure spirit, to worship a creature of clay." And for this refusal he was shut out forever from Paradise.

Now the doom of Eblis awaits you if you fail to give due reverence to these little obvious everyday things - things that are true of every stone that lies on the pavement, of every drop of rain that falls from heaven, of every breath of air that fans you. Like him, you will find with astonishment, that the creature of clay that you despise is the Lord of Nature and the Measure of all things, for in every speck of dust that falls lies hid the laws of the universe; and there is not an hour that passes in which you do not hold the Infinite in your hand.

Open mindedness, curiosity, and awe of the fact of existence is fundamental to Ark and Laura and the Quantum Future Group.

Does that make QFG Athiest? In a certain sense, yes. Notice that the Cassiopaean Transmissions are not from any kind of "spirit" or "godlike" source. They are, as they have explicated repeatedly to Laura: "You in the future."

The closest analogy to the view of reality presented by the Cassiopaeans is graphically explicated in the movie, The Matrix, wherein our reality is presented as a computer program/dream that “stores” human beings in “pods” so that they are batteries producing energy for some vast machine dominating the world. Certain programmed life-scenarios of great emotional content were designed in order to produce the most “energy” for this machine. And it seems that pain and suffering are the “richest” in terms of “juice.”

Another major concept presented in The Matrix was that the “real now” was the reality of the control system that produced the “programmed dream of reality” that was being experienced by those “trapped in the Matrix.” The Matrix Dream Reality was based on the way things were in the past, before a terrible thing had occurred to destroy the world-that-was, after which it came under the control of computers which had become sentient and needed to utilize human beings as “power sources,” or “food.”

The difference between the metaphor of The Matrix and the view of the Cassiopaeans is that they propose a para-physical realm as another layer in the structure of space-time from which our own reality is projected, looping over and over again in endless variations. You could say that the hyperdimensional realms are the “future” in a very real sense.

This para-physical reality of hyperdimensional space - the realm of the Matrix programmers - is inhabited, according to the Cassiopaeans, by beings of both positive and negative polarity who have “graduated” from our reality, but not necessarily in the sense of “dying” and going to a strictly ethereal realm. It is, effectively, a world of the future that creates our present by projecting itself into the past. What is important to realize is that if we think about the future in terms of probable futures, or branching universes - ideas that are quite scientific - then what we do now, whether we wake up from the Matrix or not, determines what kind of future we experience, individually and collectively.

While these ideas might seem more suited to science fiction than science proper, in fact, some of the most well-known physicists have proposed models and research programs that in no way contradict this hypothesis. They may one day demonstrate the mathematical proof of such a perspective.

Finally, as to religion itself, the Cassiopaeans have made clear that NO religion or belief is necessary:

Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with "God". Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the "past." People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the "Future."

As for God, the Cassiopaeans say that God is Consciousness. Period. You can't get more scientific than that.

Lone Spruce Moon

2006-01-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Above Top Secret = COINTELPRO

2006-01-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks,

Although this next piece has little to do with organized religions per se, it is important information that needs to be disseminated far and wide.

It seems that the people behind the "Above Top Secret" website, while claiming to be independant 9/11 researchers, are in fact tools of the Illuminati/PTB, and are exposed as such by an new article by Joe Quinn.

His article... Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 and Neither Did a Boeing 757, has ruffled a few feathers over at Above Top Secret, and the Cointelpro boys are pulling out all the stops to debunk, ridicule and otherwise censor this informative and highly engaging analysis.

Please see the following exchange between the owners of Above Top Secret and Laura Knight Jadczyk, who has been blogging about the entire affair...

How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents

COINTELPRO Updates: Above Top Secret Forum

And without further ado, here is a snippet from Joe's original artcle...

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11
and Neither Did a Boeing 757

by Joe Quinn

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 researchers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...

The claim that promoters of the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the "implications". According to Ruppert, the "implications" are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that's the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.

Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn't explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let's be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't hit the Pentagon is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That's pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them "in person," as it were.

Since Ruppert's declaration about the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory, many other "9/11 researchers", such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman, have seized upon Ruppert's idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the "no planers" are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the 'kooky' "no plane" theory.

In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let's look at the "evidence" as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.

First, however, I would like to make a few observations about 9/11 research in general.

Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.

Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be approached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?

The fact is that researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact, and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened - they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Start with a beginner's mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.

Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from "ground zero" (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good "best guess". For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the "private" evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don't expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.

The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the "official government cover-up." After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.

Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.

Portal

2006-01-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

A second go round...

2005-10-17T18:56:00.000-06:00

Governments, Conspiracies and You

Pope Warns of Increase in Anti-Semitism

Comment: While the Arabs are being portrayed in the West as blood-thirsty, sub-human killers, certainly a racist portrayal, the Western media is still selling the idea that "anti-Semitism" is the real danger. While most of the so-called "terrorist" attacks around the world are the work of Mossad, we are being told over and over again that it is the Arabs who are the terrorists.

The past week, the media has been full of close-ups of grieving Israeli settlers mourning the loss of their government-built illegal homes. The coverage is almost exclusively from the point of view of the settlers, even though they have stolen the land their houses were built upon, even though the settlements are illegal under international law, even though their Palestinian neighbours live in shacks that can be bulldozed at a moment's notice by the IDF, even though they are being well-paid to "give up" the houses, even though they will be resettled in new illegal homes on the West Bank, and even though the whole thing is being orchestrated to portray Ariel Sharon as a man of peace.

Which has to make you wonder why the Israelis are always being favoured in the press and why the Israelis are always being supported by the US.

Foundations are in place for martial law in the US

Violent or erotic images cause momentary periods of "emotion-induced blindness"

Cheney's 'Spoon-Benders' Pushing Nuclear Armageddon

U of O professor accused of hosting anti-Semitic website
Group files complaint over 'wild theories' that blame Jews for 9/11

Wild Theories...? I don't think so. Criticism against the Zionst Israeli government is just that, simple criticism, legitimate protest against the policies of a ruling body. It has nothing to do with Jewish people as human beings. There is an overwhleming amount of evidence that that Zionist Israeli government (or a faction within) was directly responsible for the planning an execution of the September 11th attacks.

Now onto other news...

Televangelist Calls for Chavez' Death

My Response to George - By Cindy Sheehan, AlterNet. Posted August 24, 2005.

An August Leader

SOTT

August must be a troubled time for Mr. Bush. He's got that madwoman Cindy Sheehan on his doorstep, and his approval ratings for the war on Iraq have tanked. The last time he was in the soup like this, the first summer he took August off, he needed September 11 to transform him from a bumbling frat prankster into "the Commander-in-Chief". He must be hoping that Karl Rove and the backroom boys can do it again.

Yet after four years of increasing paranoia and talk of Homeland Security, not to forget last year's campaign based upon "you're safer with George 'cause if John Kerry's elected, al Qaeda will be attacking us at home", it seems he can't stage another attack on "America" without demonstrating that all the security measures in the world aren't going to stop an attack if the culprits are also the guards.

But before going too far in this reverie, a thought arises, an old joke that goes back to the sixties: "LBJ told us that if we voted for Goldwater, we'd have a war in Vietnam. I voted for Goldwater anyway, and, sure enough, we got into a war in Vietnam."

We know the president is so busy keeping the USA safe from terrorism that he doesn't have the time to meet with Cindy Sheehan. The corollary of this certifiable fact is that if those darned terrorists do manage to strike inside of Fortress USA, that'll be proof positive that the president was stymied in his desire to make the USA a terrorist free zone by those traitorous liberal scum who refused to take the threat seriously, in spite of Bush's spending of his hard-stolen, post-election, political capital in a magnanimous effort to convince the extreme-leftist liberals that Bush was right all along and that they should adopt his neo-Christian, theocratic view of the benefits of unleashing the Apocalypse.

And enough Americans may buy it to look the other way when the 5 am visitors come calling with offers of long-term vacations for those who haven't understood that the Commander-in-Chief is divinely inspired.

Which makes Pat Robertson's labeling of Hugo Chavez a "dictator" something of a joke, although a very serious one, because for all of Robertson's "I've been misunderstood" and "I apologise", he never said he was sorry for painting the duly-elected, and reconfirmed by referendum, president of Venezuela, who was still abiding by his country's constitution as of this afternoon, as a tyrant. But in the topsy-turvy world of Bush-speak, democracy means ignoring the constitution and rigging the elections and tyranny means allowing the great unwashed some say in their governance. Bush has long since thrown out the US Constitution as the basis of the rule of government in the US, and the US is in the process of writing another bogus constitution for their splintered fiefdom that was once Iraq.

For many years we have been pointing to the crimes of the neo-cons, both American and Israeli, in organising the attacks of 9/11 in order to justify their agenda of death and destruction and depopulation -- for that is what it really is, and all this talk about going into Iraq for oil doesn't get to the heart of the issue. "Peak Oil" is the politically acceptable way to broach the idea of culling the herd, of killing off 2/3rds of the world's population so that the elite can have some leg room to stomp on the few serfs they permit to continue living on their land.

The madmen in power in the US and Israel were counting on both the credulity and the incredulity of the American people in the face of such an emormous crime: credulous in believing the official story that such a massive attack could be organised by a guy in a cave and brought off with only box cutters, including taking out the entire North American Air Defense system for the day; incredulous towards all the evidence that points to the real culprits being in the halls of power in Washington and Tel Aviv.

And four years later look at the mess we're in. We, and others, have been predicting it for a long time, and if our research is correct, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

Finally, the other "F" word is being whispered aloud, even if softly and probably too late to do anything about it. As we live in a non-linear world, we don't completely discount the possibility that the situation could improve, but in the words of Bob Dylan, it's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Which gives us the opportunity to leave you with this joke we found at Guillemette:

How many members of the Bush government does it take to change a lightbulb?

"Ten.

"1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;

"2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;

"3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;

"4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for eternal darkness;

"5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb;

"6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner 'Bulb Accomplished';

"7. One administration insider to resign and in detail reveal how Bush was literally 'in the dark' the whole time;

"8. One to viciously smear No. 7;

"9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along;

"10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country."

Who Would Jesus Assassinate?
Hugo Chavez and the Men Who Claim to Speak for Jesus?

Is Pat Robertson Out of His Mind or in the Loop?

What boneheaded design guides Dubya's moves?

Anti-gay church protests at soldiers' funerals

BUSH UNBALANCED AS POLLS PLUMMET

The Crucifixion of Christ, American Style

Another Embarrassment for Bush

What if... the Nazis had won

Emporer Augustine

2005-10-11T21:13:00.000-06:00

Apologies for the misleading title. Nothing about history here. Just a short compilation of relevant news stories dealing with the horrors of "that old time religion" in the month of August.

Relic

Detoxifying self-deception
Acharya S can prove Jesus Christ never existed, and your preacher can’t prove ‘He’ did

The Most Dangerous Cult in The World

Ohio In The Dark

The Radical Middle

Dissent in the United States
“If you don’t love this country, get the f--- out!”

An Honor To Stand Up Against War

An Essay on President Bush and Death

The Most Dangerous Idea in the World

Making up for lost time

2005-09-18T20:49:00.000-06:00

It's been over 2 months since my last blog post, and try as might to keep up with the numerous stories concerning our beleaguered planet that cross my inbox each day, certain personal issues have taken precedence over my internet time.

So, seeing that I may not be as consistent on this forum as I'd like, I thought it would be a good idea to do a monthly compilation of relevant news stories on how the mainstream religions use hypnotic mind control to further the designs of their totalitarian masters in enslaving humankind.

So, without further ado, starting with the month of July, here are a few of what I consider to be some of the more important stories compiled mostly from my favourite alternative news service; the Signs of the Times.

God Help God If He Needs Spokesmen Like These
The War of the Colors in Israel

Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels - Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online

Cop 'tries to convert' pagans during arrest

Women get new trial against church for fraud

Prayer appears to have no effect on patients in study

Thousands Gather to Celebrate Megachurch

Catholic dissent over mystery of the pregnant Madonnas

Are you prepared for World War Three?

World Religions Collapse as Atheist Documentary Shatters Box-Office Records

2005-07-22T10:58:00.000-06:00

Fri, Jul 22, 2005

Tew York, New York
Special to The Raving Atheist

Predicted to rake in more than $17 billion in receipts by the end of its New York run tomorrow night at the 59E59 St. Theatre, the atheist documentary The God Who Wasn’t There has forced religious leaders and believers worldwide to renounce their faith and immediately dissolve their churches, synagogues, Mosques and Covens.

Propelled by a recent review in Newsweek, the film by ex-fundamentalist Brian Flemming had by its opening day already eclipsed the estimated $611 million take of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Unlike The Passion, TGWWT does not celebrate Jesus but compares him to psychopath Charles Manson and exposes him as simply as another in a long series of mythical, sacrificed savior-Gods that most early pagans quickly rejected as frauds. Modern Christians are not portrayed as spiritually and intellectually-deep seekers of eternal truth, but as gullible, brainwashed, unreflective dupes woefully ignorant of the history, context and precepts of their dimwitted, incoherent superstition. Even liberal and moderate Christianity is dismissed as nonsensical double-talk lacking the courage of its half-hearted convictions.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson and other religious figureheads are scheduled to hold a press conference to concede that adherence to their alternatively comforting/terror-inducing God-fictions has been rendered futile by the onslaught of TGWWT’s atheistic truth. “It violates human dignity for me to continue to insist that I am the Vicar on Earth of some non-existent Dionysis-clone,” said the Pope. Mel Gibson has announced plans to withdraw The Passion from circulation, offering complete refunds and admitting that he was insane to release a film glorifying suffering, vengeance and undeserved collective guilt. Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Wiccan leaders who have screened the film have reported “surprise” at how closely their own beliefs mirror the clumsy fairy tales of Christianity and vowed to encourage their followers to study science instead.

The success of Flemming’s godless blockbluster is widely attributed to its special effects. They include digitally-recorded video interviews with intelligent, knowledgeable experts talking sensibly about the idiocy and perils of religion -- as well as confrontations with believers which abandon the assumption that people should respect every utterance anyone spouts about God. The technology is considered superior to that used in prior depictions of religion, which attempted to portray faith as something “deep” and “mysterious” by piping in organ music over dimly-lit scenes of cud-chewing worshippers babbling piously in pews as sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows.

BTK killer blames 'demon' for murders

2005-07-17T16:30:00.000-06:00

USAToday.com
7/8/2005 3:51 AM

WICHITA (AP) - Confessed BTK serial killer Dennis Rader made his first public apology for the murders that horrified a community for a quarter-century, blaming a ''demon'' that got inside him at a young age.

"I have a lot of remorse. I'm very sorry for them. It is something I wouldn't want to happen to my family," he told KAKE-TV. The interview was conducted Saturday; some of it was aired Wednesday night with additional portions to air Thursday.

Rader, who pleaded guilty last week to 10 first-degree murders in the Wichita area from 1974 to 1991, nicknamed himself BTK, for "Bind, Torture, Kill," as he taunted media and police with cryptic messages about the crimes. He faces sentencing Aug. 17.

"I just know it's a dark side of me. It kind of controls me. I personally think it's a - and I know it is not very Christian - but I actually think it's a demon that's within me. ... At some point and time it entered me when I was very young," said Rader, who was once president of his Lutheran church.

Rader, 60, said his problems began in grade school, with his sexual fantasies that were "just a little bit weirder" than other people's.

"Somewhere along the line, someone had to pick something up from me somewhere that there was a problem," he said. "They should have identified it."

Rader said he felt for Dale Fox when he saw him cry on television while talking about the 1977 strangulation of Fox's daughter Nancy - a crime Rader has admitted - and said his own relatives also suffer.

"I am going to pay for it with a life sentence. The final victims are my ... family," he said.

Rader told the court last week that sexual fantasies drove him to kill. He told KAKE he was "totally unprepared" for the court's request for details of the crimes.

"I just wanted to get the facts out as quick as I could, try to not get too emotionally involved," he said.

On Thursday, the family of Vicki Wegerle, who was killed in 1986, filed a civil lawsuit seeking unspecified damages against Rader - the second such action. A wrongful death suit was filed last week by the family of Marine Hedge, who was slain in 1985; that lawsuit is seeking more than $150,000 in damages.

Zionists finally strike London

2005-07-17T16:28:00.000-06:00

Colin Deane – July 7, 2005

The near simultaneous explosions that rocked London today look more like the handiwork of the Zionist, British intelligence services rather than the phantom terrorist network, Al-Qaeda.

Just like the attacks on the world trade centre, such a well planned and executed operation could not have been the work of a highly decentralised terrorist network. Such an attack would have taken considerable technical expertise and large scale planning and communications.

Even the slightest mistake by the alleged perpetrators would have alerted the security services and every means at their considerable disposal would have been employed to foil the operation (Successfully). E-mails and phone calls would have been intercepted. Secret service agents in conjunction with London's four and a half million CCTV cameras would have followed the suspects and tracked their every move.

The average member of the British public appears on CCTV three hundred times a day. Radical Islamic groups in particular are subject to near constant surveillance by the intelligence services and the planning of such an event would have been discovered long before its planned execution.

Even the IRA never managed to execute such a complex terrorist attack on British soil. Not to mention the fact that MI5 later admitted that it was members of the intelligence services that planned and executed the majority of terrorist attacks on British soil that were blamed on the IRA at the time.

Coming at a time when world leaders are meeting at Gleneagles for a G8 meeting, less than twenty four hours after the 2012 Olympics was awarded to London and on the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the timing couldn't have been better. What a perfect opportunity for the globalists to launch their latest assault against an unsuspecting public.

It was only a matter of time until London such as New York, Madrid and Bali was attacked. The only question was 'when'? It had seemed as though America's main ally in the Iraq war was long overdue for a staged terrorist attack. The globalists simply had to wait for the right time to strike.

In typical 'false flag terror attack' style, the mainstream media claimed that a group calling itself the 'Al-Qaeda Organization in Europe' had accepted responsibility for the attacks; an organization that no one has heard of before! No doubt fox news, the BBC and all the other Zionist controlled media establishments will be churning out the same recorded feed of carnage for the next few days, occasionally interspersed with images of Osama Bin Laden firing an AK-47.

Despite the level of control exercised over the media by elite, it is the mainstream media that provides the biggest clues to governmental prior knowledge and the resulting cover-up.

Original press reports claimed that the Israeli minister, Binyamin Netanyahu had been warned an hour before the first explosion and as a result remained in his hotel room.

Here's an excerpt from the Israel national news:

"The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit."

The slip-up was realized and since then several media establishments, including sky news and the associated press, hurriedly edited the articles.

The attacks came at a time when the British government is trying to foist a biometric ID card on the general public. What better excuse is needed to further this agenda than a shocking 'terrorist' attack directly on British soil.

"Order Out Of Chaos"

It now looks as though the government will have little resistance to the latest step in pushing the public towards a high tech police state. The popular backbench revolt that so worried Blair now looks as though it will lose its momentum in the face of such a tragedy.

Tony Blair will use the fateful day of the 7th of July 2005 as swift and expedient political capital to push through a whole range of draconian measures, possibly to bolster the case to invade Iran and Syria and all at the expense of the dead and the maimed.

Don't listen to claims by the Zionist controlled mainstream media that this was the work of organizations linked to Al-Qaeda. Don't listen to any such organizations that are quick to claim responsibility. There is no doubt that this was the work of the minions employed by the dark and subversive secret-government, often referred to as the illuminati.

The ultimate aim of this outrage, just like WTC attacks, is to scare the public into submission; to scare the public into parting with basic civil liberties and to bring us all into one world government.

Little can explain the true nature of the London bombings more accurately than the words of Britain's most senior police officer, Sir Ian Blair, given in a press conference later in the day:

"While it is a confused situation - it must be a confused situation with multiple sites like this - coordinated effort is slowly bringing order out of the chaos."

Dark days indeed.

‘I acted in God’s name’

2005-07-17T15:55:00.000-06:00

By Tal Rosner
YnetNews

Ultra-Orthodox man charged with three counts of attempted murder over Jerusalem gay parade stabbing

JERUSALEM – An ultra-Orthodox man suspected of stabbing three people during Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade last week says he acted in God’s name.

“I came to murder on behalf of God. We can’t have such abomination in the country,” Yishai Shlisel said during his interrogation.

On Tuesday, Shlisel was indicted on three counts of attempted murder at the Jerusalem District Court.

According to the indictment, Shlisel purchased an 18-centimeter (approximately 7 inches) knife in preparation for the attack. During the parade, he stabbed three people, two 18-year-olds and one 50-year-old man. [...]

Comment: (from Signs of the Times) - While we would all like to think that such acts are the domain of extreme right wing orthodox Jews, the truth is that many members of Sharon's Likud party, not to mention the extremem right-wing Pro_Israeli Washington NeoCons, are possessed by the belief that they too are doing the work of some sort of "god". While they many be aware that the Old and New Testaments are mostly ficticious, that does not rule out the possibility that they too worship a "god," in their own way, perhaps even the "god" that was the inspiration for most of the world's religious texts.

Not in my Bible

2005-07-17T13:30:00.000-06:00

Hi all,

I've been away from ther blogosphere for a while for various reasons, but I'm finding a bit more time these days to devote to my computer. So, let's start by introducing you am interesting blog I discovered this afternoon. The name peaked my interest right off the bat...

Not in my Bible

That begins with an excellent quote from Sinclair Lewis:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."

Boy, ain't that the truth! America's slide into fascism, bolstered in large part by the willingness of the rabid Christian right to play obediant flock to shepherd Bush, seems to becoming more apparant each and every day.

Then the blog has this to say...

This must be how decent Germans felt during the 1930s as they watched a cancer devour their country.

Indeed! But how many ordinary citizens in Hitler's Germany were unable to see the doors of fascism close until it was way too late? In a way, it was the regular German people who were unable at the time to SEE THE SIGNS, who allowed Hitler to take and maintain power, who must share some responsibility for his horrific crimes. Thus, the same thing can now be said of ordinary American citizens, who prefering creature comfort over learning the truth, who ignore or dismiss the reality of their government's crimes, also must share some responsibility for the carnage in Iraq and elsewhere.

This blogger who goes by the name of ChristianLibrul from Nashville, Tennessee, posts some interesting commentary from time to time, however, not being a fan of guns myself, I don't share many of his views in that regard.

However, it is refreshing to see that there are still some Christians out there who are beginning to see what the Bush Reich is planning, and blogs like Not in my Bible are testament to that.

Relic

Jehovah's Witnesses - Who are they and what do they believe?

2005-06-21T21:16:00.000-06:00

Unlike in the case of Christians who are persecuted in other lands for talking about Jesus Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses are largely persecuted for following the teachings of their corporate headquarters.

The deadbeat Watchtower corporation pays no municipal taxes on their buildings, without even one charity to compensate the community.

Jehovah's Witnesses at your door -- who are they?

The Watchtower is Big money, being one of the top 40 New York City Corporations making nearly one billion dollars a year. That's just from one of their many corporations.

Jehovah's Witnesses follow the teachings begun during the second presidency of the Watchtower, when Joseph F. Rutherford took over in a corporate flap and began changing doctrines quickly in the Watchtower belief system. He claimed that angels directly conveyed "truth" to some of those in leadership. He coined the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" to make them stand out from being witnesses of Jesus, a typical evangelical expression (and a Biblical one).

Rutherford dumped holidays, birthdays and the 1874 date for the invisible return on Christ, and invented an "earthly class" of Witnesses, since only 144,000 can go to heaven according to their teaching. The rest, meaning all 99.9% of Witnesses still alive, will live forever on a cleansed earth, under the rule of the Watchtower corporate headquarter leaders in heaven, who will keep them in line by local elders known as "princes."

If you have been "witnessed to" by Jehovah's Witnesses and you reject their message, you will likely die "shortly" at Armageddon with all the other non-Witnesses, since theirs is the only true religion, and (if they can live up to all the rules) they are the only ones to inhabit this "new earth." If you believe Witnesses seem rigid now, any non-conformist during the future "cleansed earth" will be directly destroyed by their god. Even now a Witness will be disfellowshipped (excommunicated) for any one of many gaffs, such as smoking, taking a blood transfusion, or even voting.

To even vocally question the teachings of the Jehovah's Witness organization will result in complete cutting off, with family and friends usually being forbidden to talk to them. The Watchtower is a truly Orwellian world, in a time when Orwellian societies are nearly obsolete.

In his "Adams Versus God," Melbourne broadcaster Phillip Adams said in 1985 that, according to US studies, "Jehovah's Witnesses are more likely to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals than the general population".

"According to an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry," he said, "they are three times more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia and four times more likely to be paranoid schizophrenics.

"As a writer in the American journal Free Inquiry puts it: 'Either the Jehovah's Witness sect tends to attract an excess of pre-psychotic individuals who may then break down, or else being a Jehovah's Witness is itself a stress that may precipitate psychosis. "'Possibly both of these factors operate together ...'"

Televangelist breached guidelines: TV standards council

2005-06-16T11:11:00.000-06:00

Last Updated Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:00:44 EDT
CBC Arts

When televangelist Jimmy Swaggart said he would kill a homosexual who looked at him romantically, he violated the ethics code of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, an industry panel has ruled.

Swaggart made the remarks during a discussion of same-sex marriage on a Sept. 12 broadcast that was carried by the Toronto station Omni 1.

"I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart said.

Swaggart also said that politicians who are undecided on the issue of same-sex marriage "all oughta have to marry a pig and live with him forever."

The comments prompted a complaint that was filed with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, the arm of the CAB that deals with viewer feedback.

A few days later, Swaggart backtracked, saying the expression was a figurative one. He said he has used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" in jest thousands of times.

"If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology," he told the Associated Press.

The council ruled that Omni 1 was entitled to broadcast Swaggart's views opposing same-sex marriage, as well as his criticism of politicians who take no stand.

But it added that the station breached the CAB's human rights and religious programming clauses "on the basis of Swaggart's suggestion that killing someone would be the proper way for one to respond to homosexuality."

The panel said the debate over same-sex marriage is "more than legitimate" and "democratically essential" but said Swaggart's "negativity" was "visceral."

"The problem of Swaggart's language is, in a sense, exacerbated by the fact that he, as a religious figure, can be presumed to set an example for his community. It would, therefore, be easy for someone to infer that this might be the proper way for a Christian of this sect (or possibly of any sect) to respond to homosexuality," the ruling added.

Omni 1 issued an on-air apology shortly after the broadcast, so it is not required to broadcast the council's decision.

Both the CAB and CBSC are non-governmental organizations.

The Christian conspiracy of the north!

2005-06-05T21:32:00.000-06:00

Ah, you gotta love Ted Byfield! This fanatical right-wing intolerant X-tian fundamentalist zealot used to publish a ridiculously biased rag called the "Alberta Report", which masquesraded for a while as "real news for the west" in Canada. It's no wonder that Alberta, with it's preponderance of cattle and oil wells, regularly pilfered by American multinational corporations, is known as "little Texas".

There's not much one can say about "poor Ted" with a straight face, as he hasn't changed his rigid and narrow views at all since his magazine died. However, he does still show up once in a while in the mainstream press, this time unsurprisingly on WorldNetDaily, whereby he proudly complains of an anti-Christian conspiracy at the Globe and Mail, to which I say, "Thank God for That!" ;-)

The rest pretty much speaks for itself.

Caution, take what follows with a humongous grain of salt!

Relic

Posted: June 4, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Ted Byfield

The anti-Christian bias of the Globe and Mail, Canada's self-proclaimed "national" newspaper, grows ever less subtle, and last week it broke all bounds when its lead story on the front page implied a Christian conspiracy to take over the Conservative Party.

"Christian activists capturing Tory races," shouted the headline. (The "races" were Conservative nomination contests.) A sub-headline elaborated: "Some in party worry new riding nominees will reinforce notion of 'hidden agenda.'"

This "hidden" Christian "agenda," the chief authority for which is the Globe and Mail itself, is the ostensible conspiracy of a coterie of religious "zealots" to first gain office, then work to repeal all the "advances" made under the Liberals – such as abortion on demand, or the prohibition under the human-rights code of any public criticism of homosexual practice on medical, moral or biblical grounds.

What particularly alarmed the Globe was the emergence of this "Christian activism" outside Canada's three prairie provinces. In the past, the Globe has portrayed it as the residual survival of an old and withering culture in the rustic region of the West. The Globe's writers customarily assigned to it the most contemptuous descriptive term they knew. It was "rural."

The Globe's concept of "rural" is, of course, as ill-informed as its concept of "Christian." The fact that a prairie farm now represents at a minimum a $2 million to $3 million investment, a working knowledge of biochemistry, crop genetics, computer-controlled mechanics, meteorology and cost accounting, plus a constant watch on the Internet for grain and livestock prices, and agricultural supply and demand all over the world, has not yet reached the Globe's editorial office. "Rural" to the Globe still suggests people in straw hats carrying pitchforks and standing in cow manure.

Similarly, its concept of Christian implies ignorance, superstition, gullibility, illiteracy, intolerance and sexual repression. It assumes that faith (as somebody once said) consists in resolutely shutting your eyes to scientific fact. So that was the story. Ignorant bigots are trying to take over Canada.

But they are no longer "rural." These Christians are turning up all over the place, cried the Globe. Four Conservative nominations in metro Vancouver went to avowed Christian activists last month. So did one in Halifax, and another in metro Toronto. Alarmingly, these people did not look at all rustic. So the conspiracy is no longer absurd. It has been raised to the status of sinister.

Which, unhappily for the Globe editors, could soon require them to confront the implications of their anti-Christian campaign. Retiring Conservative MP John Reynolds, who runs the party's nomination process, raised one implication. Suppose, he told reporters, that they had written such a story with the word "Jew" in the place of the word "Christian." Would the Globe have run it? He thought not.

There were further problems. About five years ago, a British Columbia judge, thinking like the Globe's editors, ruled that a Vancouver suburban school board had violated the provincial School Act by hearing Christian, Jewish and Muslim arguments against some gay textbooks being proposed for the public schools. Because the board had allowed itself to be influenced by "religious" arguments, said the judge, it had violated the act, which forbad the teaching of religion in a public school.

This of course raises an interesting question. The business of elected legislative bodies is to legislate, i.e., to pass laws, and every law at some level represents the imposition of a moral principle or value. The criminal law is an anthology of "Thou shalt not's Ö" The income-tax laws impose the moral principle that the rich should pay proportionately more. The building codes impose a moral duty on builders to assure public safety.

Now for Christians, Muslims and religious Jews, the source of all morality is religious. God is the only moral authority they know. Therefore, if they are prohibited from allowing their religion to influence their view of the laws they are called upon to pass, then they are – according to this judge and the Globe – unfit to hold public office. And since some 90 percent of Canadians avow belief in God, this would restrict public office to about 10 percent of the population.

In the meantime, how exactly the Globe would have the Conservative Party meet this ominous "Christian" peril, it did not say. Will candidates for nomination be formally questioned under oath: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Christian?" Canada is not there yet, of course. But we're progressing.

Evangelicals Joining Gaza Pullout Protest

2005-05-27T09:30:00.000-06:00

(05/27/2005)
Adam Dickter - Staff Writer

In what is likely the largest turnout against Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan to date in the U.S., thousands jammed the streets around Baruch College Sunday blasting the prime minister’s pullout plan.

In an effort to reach beyond the Jewish community to gain traction in the fight against Israel’s Gaza disengagement, a major pullout opponent has signed up a group of Bible Belt Baptist ministers who see the plan as an affront to God’s will to join some 100 American Jews on a sojourn to Israel next week.

The ministers hope to spend three days with the soon-to-be-vacated Jewish settlers in Gaza on a mission organized by Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind to depart on June 5.

“The Bible says that land belongs to the Jews,” the Rev. James Vineyard of the Windsor Hill Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, said in an interview. “The Lord, God of Israel, is not going to look favorably on the giving-away of one grain of sand.”

Rev. Vineyard last month organized a demonstration in Crawford, Texas, against disengagement when President George W. Bush hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He belongs to a coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists, Yedidim for Israel — or dear friends of Israel — that opposes all concessions to the Palestinians. Rev. Vineyard said he recently raised more than $50,000 to create a DVD for churches and synagogues explaining opposition to the Gaza plan.

After Hikind invited him to participate in the mission, Rev. Vineyard said he consulted with his friend, Benny Elon, a Knesset member who recently resigned as minister of tourism, and Elon encouraged him to go.

Also participating in the mission are Rev. Vineyard’s son, the Rev. Merle Vineyard, a missionary stationed on Africa’s Ivory Coast, as well as the Rev. Danny Dodson of Center, Texas; Pastor Cecil Ballard of Marion, Iowa; the Rev. Bryan Sharp of Pacific, Mo.; and the Rev. Joseph Buckly Consford.

The ministers’ move comes as thousands of Gaza pullout protesters jammed the streets Sunday around Baruch College on 23rd Street, where Sharon was addressing 1,500 Jewish leaders supporting the disengagement. It was the largest show of force to date by the anti-pullout movement in the United States, much of which is centered here.

Hikind said he was undaunted by the proselytizing activities of the Evangelical ministers, a source of concern to some Jewish organizations that are skeptical about fundamentalist Christian support for Israel.

“As far as I know they are not directly involved in [proselytizing],” Hikind said. “They are coming on this trip to show their support for Gush Katif [the settlers’ bloc in Gaza], and that’s the beginning or the end of the conversations I have had with him.”

Rev. Vineyard said that in 28 years at his 3,000-member congregation, he has “never had a Sunday when we haven’t had someone saved and somebody baptized.” But he said he had never baptized a Jewish proselyte.

“I don’t go to Israel to win souls,” he said. “I go to keep America from going down the tubes.

“If America causes Israel to give away Gush Katif, Israel goes down the tubes, and as goes Israel, so goes America.”

Rev. Vineyard said he believed that Sharon, about whom he had once spoken enthusiastically, has agreed to give up Gaza as part of a deal with left-wing politicians and judges in order to end an investigation into his campaign finances and business dealings that was aborted last year.

Speaking at Sunday’s protest rally, Hikind expressed frustration that more Jewish leaders had not signed on to his trip.

“It is easier for me to find Baptist ministers than rabbis,” he said in a booming voice. [...]

In addition to Hikind’s trip, Americans for a Safe Israel is planning a 10-day trip to Israel beginning Sunday to protest the disengagement. But it is not clear whether the Israeli army will allow the groups into Gaza after announcing that the area would be closed to non-residents after Passover.

I Want My God-TV

2005-05-18T23:49:00.000-06:00

"The medium is the message" ~ Marshall McLuhan

"Prayer is the last refuge of the scoundrel" ~ Lisa Simpson

"Television... the barbiturate of the masses" ~ Relic

Leave it to the producers at NBC to turn to the loyal boob-tube-watching fundamentalist bloc in a last ditch attempt to boost ratings of their otherwise dismal and pathetic network. It surely seems like a sad Sign of the Times when the rabid far-right bible thumpers dictate what is programmed on the mainstream networks.

The closer our world moves towards all-out entropy in these final days of the American empire, the chasm between the myopic and ideologically rigid true-believers and everyone else grows larger by the minute. If the networks want to squeeze every last penny out of their advertisers by appealing top the lowest common denominator of human thought, then I say let 'em.

Outside of CBC News, the Simpsons, and the Daily Show, I hardly watch the idiot box anymore. And that suits me just fine.

Stay tuned....

May 18, 2005
latimes

It's a story as old as St. Augustine: You revel in sexual depravity and wine, finding pleasure and profit in all kinds of heresies frowned on by the Parents Television Council, until one day you discover everything has spiraled out of control and your ratings among the 18-to-49 demographic have plummeted. So you get religion.

If it worked for Saul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo and George W. of Texas, then NBC must figure it'll work for a struggling TV network. Hence "Revelations," a biblically themed drama the network began airing in April. On Monday, when NBC previewed its fall slate for advertisers, it announced a new reality show called "Three Wishes," an inspirational hour to be hosted by Christian music superstar Amy Grant. Also coming this fall is a sitcom called "My Name Is Earl," which isn't overtly religious (its main character sees the light after winning the lottery, not finding Jesus) but has a theme any born-again Christian could embrace: An ex-con is determined to turn his life around and make amends to all the people he has wronged.

It's a bit of a switch for a network that soared to the top of the ratings with such racy fare as "Friends" and "Will & Grace." But NBC, like all the other broadcast networks, is struggling to find its way in an era of fierce competition from cable and the Internet, not to mention regulatory pressure from a Congress and Federal Communications Commission that seem to be taking their orders directly from Jerry Falwell. After years of dominance, NBC finds itself in fourth place in a four-way race for young adult viewers. As lost souls often do, it's putting its trust in God.

The strategy could work. The recent flexing of Christian political muscle shows there are a lot more believers out there than the mainstream media used to recognize. This audience is grossly underserved. Aside from "Joan of Arcadia" on CBS, in which the main character talks to God, it's tough to find Christian content on mainstream television. But then, there's probably a good reason for that; TV viewers, even devout Christian ones, want to be titillated when they turn on the tube. Sermons are for Sunday mornings, not prime time.

The most popular shows on TV tend to be the raciest. Most of last season's new sitcoms have tanked, with one notable exception: CBS' "Two and a Half Men," which spent much of the season as the top-rated comedy among young adults. The show is about a boozing womanizer (played with admirable realism by Charlie Sheen) forced to live with his uptight brother, who split with his wife after she began to suspect she was a lesbian. "Revelations," meanwhile, is struggling and may not return this fall.

The NBC slate hasn't attracted much good buzz at this week's "upfront" presentations to advertisers. But the New York Times' TV critic is slavering over "Beauty and the Geek," a coming reality show on the WB in which sexy airheads are matched with brilliant, hopeless nerds. Now that's television.

Bribing the Alterboy

2005-05-14T22:39:00.000-06:00

Reflections of a Pragmatic Gnostic - part two

This a continuation of a series of my own personal experiences with spirituality, religion and the Church that I began in March. My next recollection of time spent in St. Joseph's Catholic Church was the time I was conned into signing up as an alterboy to help out the priests during Sunday services.

Before we were "allowed" to perform during an actual mass, we were forced to meet at the church several times after school to practice the appropriate rituals and movements. There were about half a dozen of us impressionable twelve year olds, 5 boys and 1 girl, and although my memory of these meetings are for the most part hazy, there are a couple incidents that stick out vivdly in my mind.

One is the "ringing of the bell" during certain points during the service whenever the Priest would hold up the communion host over his head and echoing Jesus's (supposedly) famous words... "do this in memory of me". Thinking back now, the only reason I volunteered to become an alterboy was to be the one who rang the bell, because for some reason I thought it would be cool to do so. So, when faced with weeks of practicing all these ridiculous stagnant rituals that seemed so nonsensical and devoid of life and passion, my entusiasm for the job quickly waned.

The kicker came one afternoon when the priest, giving us a pop quiz about some arcane fact or motion we were supposed to remember, said the person who got the answer right would be given a dollar bill as a reward. I had no idea what he was asking for, even though we'd been told probably a hundred times and I obviously wasn't paying attention. So, when the lone female of our group came up with the right answer and was given a dollar for her efforts, my alterboy experience became completely soured and I never went back.

The thought of this creepy priest dishing out money as a bribe to a 12 year old girl for remembering some inconsequential fact just turned me off to the whole experience even though at the time I couldn't really explain why. Needless to say, after that incident when we were finally allowed to go home, I walked out of the church into the bright sunlight and never regreted not finishing my training, nor ever having participated in a Catholic mass.

Hallelujah and praise Beezus for that!

The shadow people

2005-05-14T22:13:00.000-06:00

John Kaminski has written yet another interesting essay that adds to his already voluminous and important body of work. Rather than taking his essay directly from his website, I've copied it from one of my favourite alternative news sources; the Signs of the Times, because I feel their comments are a necessary addition and clarification of his argument. It seems that John, as well meaning and insightful as he can be, still does not go far enough in recognizing the true terror of the situation in regards to the conditions of this planet as wrought by the soulless, hyperdimensional control system. So, without going into unnecessary detail, I will let the following essay and corresponding comments speak for themselves.

This mad fetish for war is really a case of blaming others for our own guilt, of our own unprocessed fear of death being projected outward into the world

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?
- T.S. Eliot, "What the Thunder Said"

I resist the notion, now so popular among segments of our desperately flailing human intelligentsia, that beings from other worlds seeded our planet with life, or that these ETs abduct people for demonic Freudian experiments, or that mysterious dark forces, be they angels or aliens, control human destiny for their own petulant purposes.

It's all just too complicated, and it smacks of copping a plea, grasping for some lame excuse, or refusing to take responsibility for one's own actions. I mean, why ascribe evil to some esoteric mystical force when mindless savagery has always been a hallmark of typical human behavior? We need no additional motivation for depravity beyond the inner pit of our own personal darkness.

All these fantastic mythologies are clearly a case of trying to blame others for guilt that is our own.

Yet humanity continues to be imprisoned in the thrall of these supernatural shibboleths, whether the principal objects of our groveling fear reside in the cathedral or the cosmos.

The more conscious among us have always downgraded these sensationalized spirits - whether inspirational or injurious - into mere metaphors for life's natural processes.

But beyond trying to classify imaginary creations that are exclusively based on the unanswered questions about our own mortality looms an even more dangerous question: Why is it so popular to conclude that there appear to be two types of humans on this planet? I'm talking about the basic good and evil split: those who live by lies and relish war versus those who speak forthrightly and covet peace.

I was recently reminded of this dangerous classification trend during a small waterfall of hundred dollar bills that filled my mailbox with many unsigned letters (by readers who strive to keep me afloat for a few more months), by one reader who noted that my willingness to consider the possibility that there were people without souls, called by some "organic portals," was really no different from other discriminatory schemes concocted by the world's worst despots, whether it was - to cite two well known examples - the way Adolf Hitler regarded Jews or Ariel Sharon regards Arabs. (Two peas in a pod, you might say.)

Assigning fundamental differences to various perceived groups was really no different, he asserted. And no less toxic. After all, most of the world's wars have been waged on the claims of one group being somehow less human than another. And most of these slanderous campaigns have been staged as a cynical excuse to steal something valuable from the supposedly evil group. (As is so obvious today in what we call the Middle East.)

So I had to admit the validity of his point. It's simply damaging and potentially tragic to arbitrarily classify any group as somehow morally inferior or intrinisically more sinister than another, even though that's what every religion in the world does to every other group all the time.

But the big problem for me in accepting his routinely moral assertion was that decades of evidence - hey, just read the newspapers! - clearly shows that some hard-to-identify group was provoking all these conflicts throughout history for the express purpose of making large amounts of money from instigating wars.

When you really read the real history of the 20th century, you come to understand that one small group of very rich men has controlled both sides in all the major wars. And controls them still, always counting the cash, but never the bodies.

I don't know about you, but this is not the way my parents taught me to be. Hence, the temptation to contemplate theories that explain heartless avarice and mass murder without a second thought. I tell myself that this is something that I and my friends would not do. So, is there actually a different breed of cat, a darker pigmentation in some human hearts, that rules people differently from those I know and love? Are some people missing some essential biological ingredient of humanity?

The question is .... are there really shadow people? Judging by the behavior of American troops in Iraq, who murder innocent families as if they are only electronic silhouettes in some video game, or of Israeli soldiers, who make sport out of shooting Palestinian children for no reason other than their own Talmud-induced pathology of superiority, it appears that there really are.

I mean, what part of "Thou shalt not kill" - the central thesis of all religious thought - don't they understand? Everyone agrees there are no caveats to this. But in the space between agreement and practice lies the shadow. And tragedy. And very possibly the end of all life on this planet.

Let me take great care to define what I mean by shadow people.

I'm not talking about Art Bell's shadow people, which apparently are visual apparitions that appear when your eyes are focused in another direction, and are never there in the spot you thought you saw them when you actually fix your gaze on that spot. Nor am I talking about Carlos Castaneda's brujos, who apparently are people you talk to who later are proven not to really exist, which may actually have been a private joke about don Juan Matus himself.

I'm not talking about ghosts, spirits, time travelers, ectoplasmic wraiths, interdimensional beings, or people who reside in other physical realities like supposedly Nick Herbert.

I'm talking about people who say one thing and do another, people like George Bush and Dick Cheney (and Bill Clinton and Al Gore), people who mouth pleasant platitudes and then thoughtlessly commit atrocities, which they then spin as heroic deeds essential to your well-being (which presumably is why they always cost so much money).

Could it be true, as many people believe, that these belligerent cads were born without souls? Not likely, I suspect.

And I'm talking about Mr. Ordinary American, too, who, when you tell him that 9/11 was an inside job, his face goes slack and his mind goes blank. And when you present him with the mountains of evidence indicating the undeniability of your statement, he just quivers and turns away, muttering "our government would never do something like that" without daring to contemplate the reality that our leaders "do something like that" every day.

Yes, the fabled Mr. Ordinary American, who, when you tell him the 2004 election was fixed and that Kerry actually won it with a large margin of electoral votes except for the computer shenanigans that reversed the decision, accuses you being some kind of liberal delusionary, even when you explain you have utter contempt for both major candidates, and don't believe a thing either of them ever said.

Mr. Ordinary American, who can't hear a word when you say he threw away the lives of his own children on a war that was lie because he actually believed what he heard on television.

And beyond that, Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Human Being, residing anywhere on the planet, who believe that some venerated superbeing, usually named God, controls their every movement, and that the God of their neighborhood is most definitely better than and superior to any other God that has ever been invented anywhere else.

What is wrong with all these people? And why are they in such a preponderant majority, so that the wars never cease, and lying for profit has always been the dominant way of life?

Well, I'm going to tell you now. I'm going to make it perfectly clear. I'm going to lay it all out in excruciating detail for you. And if you turn away and say, "That guy's wacked!", that means you're one of the shadow people, still controlled by a demon you dare not confront. But if you understand what I'm saying, well, that means there's still a faint ray of hope for this planet, dim though it may be.

We all carry with us the shadow of death. It is, as the natural scientists have said for a long time, what distinguishes humans from all of our fellow animal species. Foreknowledge of death. It rules every move we make.

To deny that we die, and invent some strategy that when our mortal bodies expire we either go to some cool place - to go bowling with the angels, just as an example - or get sucked into some ephemeral process that some people call the bardo (which is like some dark carnival funhouse where all these scary faces pop out at you, reminding you of every nasty thing you've done in your entire life) and therein choose the time and place (and parents) of your next incarnation - all these mental machinations are constructed to deny the obvious. That when our hearts stop and our brains cease all functions a few minutes later, that's the end of us as individuals. After that, we're mulch. Our contributions to the universe end there, and what we have done is all we will ever possess for all of eternity.

I know that this will come as a shock to many of you, and you will squirm and wriggle and deny with every fiber of your being that this is the case. Why? Simple. Our brains absolutely refuse to contemplate our own nonexistence. They fight with every fact at their disposal to create a scenario where this is not the case, because they are wired to survive, not to cease functioning. And yet they do.

Numerous philosophers have reflected that the human curse is having an infinite imagination trapped in a finite body. Based on the primary instinct to survive, the body's mind rejects the notion of a limited amount of life in time and finds a way to transcend it by any means possible. Logic, reality and reason become nonfactors and spirit is born. And the entire populace commits to the conspiracy, because it gives them the answer they sought. Spirit is born, and the soul is its offspring. And along with them form parasitic religions, which trade on and profit from the desire of people to avoid death by providing concocted formulas to do just that. None of these formulas actually work, but no one in the conspiracy will admit it, because that result is not desired. This is a clear case of reality is not desired. The illusion is more comfortable. Insecurity is eliminated by eternal life.

But because it is not real, the fear remains. The purpose of religion cannot be proven, it can only be believed. And since it is such an obvious lie, the honest mind eventually comes to know it is a lie, and begins to hate itself for lying, for being afraid of the ultimate truth, which is that we don't live forever, and have but a little time to make the most of what we have been given.

Given by whom? We can only guess. We call it God. But even the lamest cleric will admit we cannot know God in its entirety. God is only a word, after all. Some unfathomable process that we call God invented man, but man invented the word and concept of God in a feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable.

And what have we been given? Well, if you're lucky like me (and who knows why?), we have been given a slice of paradise, a sensual experience so astonishingly beautiful that we can make no other sense of it that to eventually believe that a seemingly omnipotent force has created the very conditions of heaven right on this little blue and green spheroid. That's why I always say, heaven is not something somewhere else to be sought, it is right here, and we're put here to make it what it is supposed to be - heaven!

But we - each of us - only get a little time to do it. And none of us every really succeeds, except in small ways, for the benefit of only a few people. But that in itself is exquisite proof that this really is heaven, if only we make it so.

For sure, thinking heaven is somewhere else and yearning for it is the surest way to make this place hell, which is exactly what we've done for the last 5,000 years, thanks in large part to believing that God is somewhere else and we want to go there rather than realizing God is right here, helping us all the time to make the Earth heaven. This has happened in large part BECAUSE religions have told us that heaven was somewhere else, instead of right here.

The only real fruits of religions can be seen flashing from the barrel of a gun, and heard in the moans of the innocent wailing for their unjustly murdered loved ones. This is what religions seek to accomplish, and they succeed, because people have decided not to understand what life is really about, or the true nature of the gift we have been given.

In being greedy and expecting to find a magic formula that will insulate us from the inevitability of death (can't you see it's the way the system works?), we trash the very things that give us life in the first place. And thanks to psychotic marching orders like the Book of Revelation, we are very likely to destroy the conditions that allow us this great gift of life simply because we refuse to accept the condition of our gift, that it does not last forever, that nothing lasts forever, not even our great and wild universe.

That's why I always say, without death, the possibility of goodness would not exist. When you have to sacrifice everything to achieve the right thing, that is love. If we lived forever, none of these things would matter, since we would have everything we wanted, and nothing would mean anything to us.

Therefore, believing that we have everything in the security of an eternal life is precisely what is causing us to trash our planet and murder innocent people with impunity, because the lies our minds know are lies but our mouths nevertheless say in order to vainly attempt to convince ourselves that we don't die are lashing out in unexpected ways.

We are blinded by this false light of our own creation, an inauthentic abomination that deep in our hearts and minds we know is a lie. Yet we are transfixed by this artificial light, because it keeps us from realizing our clock is ever ticking and our lease will be soon be up. (Any resemblance of this light to a TV screen is not purely coincidental.)

To really see, and to really know why we are here, we may not keep insisting that we will live forever by the power of magic incantations and formulas, but we must screw up our courage and wander into the darkness of our own shadows, and begin to understand how the seepage from this gigantic ontological lie is causing all this unnecessary death and destruction. We delude ourselves into thinking that killing enemies prolongs our own life, but that is only a fearful illusion.

Once upon a time I said, true warmth is found in the coldest dream. Now I would suggest that the brightest light is found confronting the deepest darkness.

It is not an exaggeration to say that everything depends on you understanding this. It will not take many more days of ignoring this problem for all of us to perish permanently in the abyss of our own self-deception, with no one left to say this was the epitaph of the shadow people, destroyed by their own fearful religions.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives near the eternal ocean in a fading paradise called Florida. His numerous Internet essays are for sale in anthologies at http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Comment (from Signs of the Times): Another thoughtful piece from John Kaminski. While there are many points with which we agree, our own experience has shown us that one must not throw out that ineffable something that becomes twisted and distorted when looked at through the lens of religion just because a corrupted mirror image of it has been used to justify war and the extermination of "non-believers". We agree completely with Kaminski's discussion of the use and consequences of religion in our world. We think, however, that there is a more sophisticated way of understanding the issues he is raising. He is getting rid of that element which makes the distinction between organic portals and others fundamental, understandable, and something more than the justification for criminal activity raised in the objection by one of his readers.

Kaminski, while accepting that there are two types of people in the world, is arguing that any and all belief in an afterlife or something greater than ourselves is a manipulation put in place by the "Shadow People" to keep us enslaved. He sums this up early in his piece when he writes:

All these fantastic mythologies are clearly a case of trying to blame others for guilt that is our own.

Rather than "guilt", we would use the word "responsibility", and while we put a higher probability on the existence of these other beings than Kaminski does, we are entirely in agreement with his analysis that many people use "fantastic mythologies" as a cop-out. "The Devil made me do it". "The Space Brothers will save us." "I killed for God."

Yet a belief in beings from other dimensions or even in some indescribable something that we unfortunately label God for lack of a better word or better understanding in no way lessens our responsibility for ourselves, our acts, and for our lives. Whether or not there is something greater than ourselves, this responsibility is our own, and we clearly live in a world where people do not accept that responsibility, sometimes because we fob it off on God and sometimes because we say there is no God. Both excuses work. In both cases, we justify the slaughter of others in the name of a higher good, be it religious or political or merely selfish.

The more conscious among us have always downgraded these sensationalized spirits - whether inspirational or injurious - into mere metaphors for life's natural processes.

Here we have more of a disagreement, especially with the use of the value judgment "the more conscious among us". Perhaps they are only "metaphors", but they may well not be. To ignore the potential of their reality, if they are in fact real, would be to fall into a dangerous trap. Perhaps Kaminski's problem is that he feels forced to choose only between the gods of organised religions, in whose names countless wars have been fought, and the anti-religion atheist stance which posits that there is nothing more than this life. Faced with choosing between such a limited pair of options, we can understand that Kaminski has opted for the atheist view. After all, no one ever fought a war over there being no god at all.

There is, however, a major assumption behind the belief that there is nothing more to life than physical reality: that mankind is the crown of creation.

When we look out onto the world, we see a vast array of life, from the smallest one-celled creatures up to Man. There it stops. Is it logical to assume that we are the top of the heap or is it simply a convenient belief because our telescopes have never revealed the existence of more highly evolved beings gazing back down upon us from the stars? [And here we exclude sightings of UFOs or the claims of remains from other civilisations on Mars for the case of this argument.] Many forms of life have only become known to us as our mechanical means of magnifying the very small have developed. It was the microscope that permitted us to see forms of life that we had never before imagined. Before that, we had no idea that one-celled creatures could exist.

Is it not reasonable to leave open the possibility that other forms of life might exist that are higher up on the evolutionary scale, or even the food chain, and that it is the means of perceiving them that are missing? Science would have us limit our tools for viewing such creatures to apparati with needles, gauges, read-outs, computer screens, and the like, tools that have been successful in identifying the extremely small.

But is that a reasonable limit to set?

In fact, many people claim they have seen other types of beings. There are stories that come down through history as myth and legend that describe interactions with them. Accounts from widely separated parts of the globe and widely removed periods of time have a remarkable similarity of detail and description of how these beings interact with humans. Often, as with Kaminski's argument, these accounts are dismissed. These encounters have been subsumed into different religions, and, having already dismissed these religions, the encounters are left by the wayside as well. They are reduced to the level of metaphor.

We think this is a mechanical reaction to the problem.

We think that a more productive approach does not throw out all the evidence but carefully and painstakingly sorts through the data, attempting to make sense of myth and legend by broadening the scope of science. Many physicists think that we must find a way to incorporate consciousness into the mathematical equations that describe both quantum and classical physics. The field has stagnated for many, many decades, and such a plan of research may be the way out. Of course, scientists who dismiss the idea of the ineffable out of hand, before the final Grand Unified Theory of physics is found, have already closed off what may well be the one fruitful path left open to us. Before we "know", they have already decided upon the limit of that which is, and is not, possible.

We think that John Kaminski makes the same mistake.

As our science progresses, perhaps we will discover that what we call "fantastic mythologies" is in fact a "natural process".

Discriminatory Schemes

Kaminski refers to a message he received from a reader who reduces the idea of the two types of humanity to the same argument used by the Nazis, or Sharon, or anyone who wishes to subjugate or eliminate an enemy. We see the pattern playing out in Iraq where many American troops consider the Iraqis or any Arab to be less than human. Kaminski's reader rejects the argument for 'organic portals' because it can be used as a way to draw differences than can justify repression.

Although Kaminski admits the validity of the argument, he goes on to say that the facts strongly suggest that there is indeed a group that is somehow different.

It is an argument that we have also heard against our analysis of the existence of 'organic portals'. At first glance, it may appear to have some foundation. However, when one looks at the details, we see that the theories and classifications that have in the past provided justification for the worst crimes against humanity are very different from the idea of 'organic portals'.

First, in our world, any theory that divides people into groups can be used by some sicko as a justification for oppression. That is the problem of life in a world where some people are driven by an overwhelming need to exert power over others. It doesn't matter what the specifics of difference may be; difference will always be used in a judgmental way to imply a relationship of superiority/inferiority. Differences exist. Should we, because of the danger that someone will use such divisionary tactics to oppress others, cease attempting to group similar things together? Comparing and contrasting are two powerful ways our reason works. To jettison them means we must rid ourselves of our capacity to reason.

But just as modern science and modern society often takes our reasoning abilities too far, that is, yanks them out of context and places them above our capacity to feel and intuit, our comparing and contrasting of individuals must remain in context.

What is that context?

Most schemes used to divide are based upon race, nationality, religion, colour, wealth, birth status, and so on. In other words, they are tied to elements that are part and parcel of the material world and its systems of power and control. In this way, leaders, and those above the leaders, can constantly set people against people in battles over those elements of life that are important in this world, those elements they need in order to maintain their control, their manipulations, their power.

The distinction that we raise between the 'organic portal' and the human has nothing to do with power in this world; it has to do with one's ability to perceive influences that come from that 'ineffable something'. Those who really see and understand the difference of which we speak, will have no interest in lording it over anyone in the here and now, while not acting upon the knowledge could have disastrous consequences for the evolution of their souls.

What is the nature of this action, this application of the knowledge? The finding of ways to conserve one's energy for doing the work necessary to growing the soul, to fusing the many 'Is' of the Personality into our one 'Real 'I'. We learn to stop 'dancing' with the 'organic portals' around us, to stop allowing them to set our agendas. In so doing, we become masters of ourselves, not of others.

Of course, this hypothesis can be used in deleterious ways, but this only shows that, those who do so, do not really understand of what we speak. Nor do they understand the far-reaching implications: that this world is as it is and cannot be changed because half of the people living here are incapable of the changes necessary to make it "heaven on earth". This is their world.

We get the impression that Kaminski has not really understood the implications of the existence of two types of humanity and has not followed through the argument to its logical consequences. The organic portal and the psychopath do what they do, not because they are "bad" but because that is who they are, the way a cat stalks a mouse because it is part of its "catness". These people could no more give up their need for ever greater power or material wealth and success than the cat could stop chasing after the mouse. It doesn't matter whether or not there is a hereafter or beings of a different consciousness than ours. You can factor out all the aspects Kaminski excludes in his argument, and the organic portal is still different, still has a different ontological reality than the person who, as Kaminski describes, would never commit mass murder or be driven by heartless avarice. It is not simply a different version of "cat", as Kaminski uses in his argument above; we are talking about a fundamental difference in nature or essence. Note that we said "difference", not "bad" or "lesser", just different.

Certainly, the question of death hangs heavily over us all. The idea of an afterlife where we are judged and condemned according to our sins is a very useful tool for managing society. It can drive people to sacrifice themselves and live in misery all of their lives for the hope of an eternal reward. It can also inspire people to be the best they can, to be giving, to care for others. Our work suggests an explanation for why some people go in one direction while others go in the opposite.

But again, we think that dismissing the possibility that life doesn't end at death because of the way this threat is held over us by the powers that control our world is too easy, too crude. It is a mechanical reaction, not a well-thought out and considered response. More than that, it may be the response that our controllers hope and plan for, counting on our mechanical nature to be reactive and not creative.

The Other Side

What if our idea is close to reality? What if there is some relationship between soul and genetics, between our genetic make-up and our ability to perceive what are called the 'B' influences? If so, then we must consider the possibility that those who do not have our interests, our real interests, at heart may also be aware of the importance of genetics and may well be doing research into understanding what those genes may be. They certainly have the money, the power, and the scientists to carry out such work. If they were ever to identify these genes, they could then produce weapons genetically targeted precisely at those individuals who had the potential for understanding the deepest truths about our world. In fact, you could almost bet that they would be doing such work.

The mechanical reaction to this knowledge would then drive us more deeply into the cords that bind us to a mechanical fate. We would remain a part of the machine rather than rising above it through the application of our creative potential. We would become its victims.

Our reading of this article suggests to us that John Kaminski has not yet come to grips with the true horror facing us. He still believes that there is some hope in this world, that this world can be changed, can be fixed. Perhaps he had a glimpse and has momentarily taken a step backwards. He would not be the first person to whom that has happened. It may even be worse. Having come to the threshold of understanding what may be the fundamental esoteric truth of our life here on this planet, Kaminski may be been bombarded with attention from the Masters he does not believe exist, or even from the "Shadow People" whose existence he does see. In the face of this ultimate horror, the mechanical force can set in and seek explanations that rid the knowledge of its core, turning it from its higher meaning to a strictly material meaning.

Without understanding the esoteric truth of the hypothesis of the organic portal, one will continue to fight the windmills and never come to see they are an illusion.

Sharon meets 'Jews for Jesus' follower

2005-05-13T09:25:00.000-06:00

The Jerusalem Post

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, interested in shoring up his standing in the influential US Evangelical Christian community, met eight leading Evangelical figures Tuesday, including Jay Sekulow, a high profile Messianic Jew.

Sekulow, who runs a conservative civil liberties group called the American Center for Law & Justice that was set up by evangelist Pat Robertson, is considered close to US President George W. Bush and was one of three strategists charged by the White House with the task of getting Bush's controversial court nominees through the Senate.

An official in the Prime Minister's Office said Sharon was unaware of Sekulow's Jewish background.

"These are hard-core Republicans very supportive of Israel," the official said. "When they come here, we don't ask what their religion is. The man is willing to do a lot for the state of Israel."

Sekulow is also the host of a daily radio show aired on some 550 stations.

Among the others in the delegation were Paul Crouch, the founder and President of the world's largest Christian television network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Michael Little, the President and Chief Operating Officer of The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The meeting was very friendly, the officials said, with the delegation coming to "show solidarity for Sharon."

"We want you to know that we stand behind you in efforts to bring peace," an official in Sharon's office quoted Haggard as telling Sharon.

Haggard told Sharon that the official policy of the organization he represents is "to support the state of Israel come hell or high water. We are staunch supporters. We believe that you were chosen by God to lead the people of Israel in this difficult period. We fully support you, because we believe it is God's will."

He said that Bush used those exact words – support for Israel 'come hell or high water' – during a meeting the President had with Evangelical leaders prior to November's elections.

The main purpose of the delegation's visit, according to officials in the Prime Minister's Office, was to help market Israel to the enormous Evangelical community abroad. These officials noted Evangelical tourists continued to visit Israel through the recent violence, just as they did even when scud missiles wee falling during the first Gulf war.

Sharon, according to a spokesman, told the delegation to "keep praying, it seems to help."

Comment (from Signs of the Times): So how does one reconcile standing behind a known war criminal like Sharon in his efforts to bring peace (supposedly with the Palestinians) with supporting said war criminal "come hell or high water" and the belief that the war criminal was appointed by God? Clearly, these all-too-powerful American Christian fundies are desirous of only one thing: the return of "Jesus", which, according to their insane beliefs in a text (the bible) that is of wholly human origin, can only come about after the wars of "Armageddon" that will, we are told, take place in the Middle East when the forces of "the Lord" (Christian fundies) will defeat the forces of "darkness" (Muslims).

Jesus Christ denied W. Va. driver's licence

2005-05-11T21:45:00.000-06:00

May 10, 2005. 07:04 AM

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Even Jesus Christ can't circumvent the rules for getting a driver's licence in West Virginia.

Attempts to prove his name really is Christ have led the man born as Peter Robert Phillips Jr. through a lengthy legal battle and a recent victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

"This all started with him expressing his faith and his respect and love for Jesus Christ," attorney A.P. Pishevar told The Associated Press. "Now he needs to document it for legal reasons."

Described by his attorney as a white-haired businessman in his mid-50s, Christ is moving to West Virginia to enjoy a slower lifestyle. He bought property and has a U.S. passport, Social Security card and Washington driver's licence bearing the name Jesus Christ.

But he still falls short of West Virginia title and licence transfer requirements because his Florida birth certificate has his original name on it and he has been unable to obtain an official name change in Washington.

"We just need official documentation that that's his name," said Doug Stump, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles. "He will be treated no different than anybody else."

Christ applied for the legal name change in May 2003, but it was denied by District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tim Murphy because "taking the name of Jesus Christ may provoke a violent reaction or may significantly offend people."

In his appeal, Christ's attorney argued that Phillips had changed his name to Jesus Christ 15 years earlier, and "has been using the name since then without incident."

The appeals court last month sent the name-change proposal back to the lower court, saying some required hearings in the case had not been held.

Any comment from the man in the middle of this legal tussle?

"Christ is not speaking to the press at this time," Pishevar said.