Breaking News
I need to give attention to some things this week - most of them, happily, good things - so unfortunately posting will need to be light. Please use this as an open thread, and I'll see you in a few days.
posted by Jeff Wells at 8/14/2006 12:00:00 AM
109 Comments:
New Zealand Times, Dec. 9, 1886 -- copying from the San Francisco Bulletin, Oct. 14:
Willie Brough, 12 years old, who had caused excitement in the town of Turlock, Madison Co., Cal., by settings things afire, "by his glance," had been expelled from the Turlock school, because of his freaks. His parents had cast him off, believing him to be possessed by a devil, but a farmer had taken him in, and had sent him to school. "On the first day, there were five fires in the school: one in the center of the ceiling, one in the teacher's desk, one in her wardrobe, and two on the wall. The boy discovered all, and cried from fright. The trustees met and expelled him, that night.
-from "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort
Dude SIMON of NECRONOMICON fame was on Ian Punnet's Coast To Coast AM show - the saturday night 6pm-10pm show.
You probably knew, heads up, etc.
Also, I didn't hear it so I don't know how it went.
if you gotta have wars
I suppose World War One was the best.
really, you know, both sides were much more enthusiastic,
they really had something to fight for,
they really thought they had something to fight for,
it was bloody and wrong but it was Romantic,
those dirty Germans with babies stuck on the ends of their
bayonets, and so forth, and
there were lots of patriotic songs, and the women loved both the
soldiers
and their money.
the Mexican war and those other wars hardly ever happened.
and the Civil War, that was just a movie.
the wars come too fast now
even the pro-war boys grow weary,
World War Two did them in,
and then Korea, that Korea,
that was dirty, nobody won
except the black marketeers,
and BAM!---then came Vietnam,
I suppose the historians will have a name and a meaning for it,
but the young wised-up first
and now the old are getting wise,
almost everybody's anti-war,
no use having a war you can't win,
right or wrong.
hell, I remember when I was a kid it
was ten or 15 years after World War One was over,
we built model planes of Spads and Fokkers,
we bought Flying Aces magazine at the newsstand
we knew about Baron Manfred von Richtofen
and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker
and we fought in dream trenches with our dream rifles
and had dream
bayonet fights with the dirty
Hun ...
and those movies, full of drama and excitement,
about good old World War One, where
we almost got the Kaiser, we almost kidnapped him
once,
and in the end
we finished off all those spike-helmeted bastards
forever.
the young kids now, they don't build model warplanes
nor do they dream fight in dream rice paddies,
they know it's all useless, ordinary,
just a job like
sweeping the streets or picking up the garbage,
they'd rather go watch a Western or hang out at the
mall or go to the zoo or a football game, they're
already thinking of college and automobiles and wives
and homes and barbecues, they're already trapped
in another kind of dream, another kind of war,
and I guess it won't kill them as fast, at least not
physically.
it was wrong but World War One was fun for us
it gave us Jean Harlow and James Cagney
and "Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-Voo?"
it gave us
long afternoons and evenings of play
(we didn't realize that many of us were soon to die in
another war)
yes, they fooled us nicely but we were young and loved it---
the lies of our elders---
and see how it has changed---
they can't bullshit
even a kid anymore,
not about all that.
-charles bukowski
I was struck by the stark contrast between the latest puff-piece on Bush's vacation agenda, and Sy Hersh's latest exposé on Lebanon being perhaps a dry run for Iran. I wish there were more serious journalists like Hersh; perhaps we wouldn't be in this jam. Then again....
I've been a regular reader here for a couple years now, and I can't think of anyone who has a more incisive grasp on parapolitics and journalistic conditioning than Jeff. Looking forward to the next post, as always.
Seymour Hersh is, of course, a shill. He has been an apologist for the privately-owned Federal Reserve since his friend Alan Greenspan took the helm.
The Shield of Achilles
W. H. Auden
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
The rigorous "worldview" Jeff brings us echoes my own life-long nature, always pissing off authority figures of every stripe with questions to motive and that ever-present "Why?"
Such an approach colors perceptions, and I'm not talking rose-tinted. What Jeff has delivered here that I find of immense value is the intersection of his investigative curiousity into "off the reservation" subjects and an intruigingly intact skepticism.
By example, an interpretation of this favorite old D.H. Lawrence saw through Jeff-colored lenses becomes an exercise in literary research. Was Lawrence a Mason?
This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.
- D.H. Lawrence
Would that the lust for war would fade, but as with sex, the only release from its grip, and it's temporary, is ... war.
But, as the poster above noted, maybe the 20th century was successful in decreasing the chauvinistic urge. And that's partly why our dear elites are in such a panic mode. What if they gave a war and no one showed to fight it? Best keep it limited to bomber crews, highly-trained and compliant. Heck, even the IDF didn't seem to have much stomach for a down-and-dirty fight, this time around.
Who wants to die taking Hill 103 when you know full well that Hill 103 will be given back next month, or that in 20 years Hill 103 will be a Pizza Hut? Who wants to die for thin crust?
The fellow above, a good lad, wrote about kids today: "they'd rather go watch a Western or hang out at the mall or go to the zoo or a football game." Watch a Western! If only. I think it safe to say that the vast majority of boys age 10 through ? spend the majority of free time, when able, to play violent video games. It may be atavistic, but it seems somewhat imprinted. And a schoolroom gloss about "tolerance" and "communtiy" doesn't dampen the enthusiasm for digital depictions of destruction.
But better the virtual than the real, in this case. Unless you're a foam-at-the-mouth War Pig, always snuffling for the next kill. What's a War Pig to do, when peace breaks out? Stamp their feet, pen whining op-eds, rend their garments...and plot, plot, plot for the next war.
Because war brings the profit. Lacking the ability on their own to innovate, the War Pigs know only one thing: profit from destruction, and from the attendant chaos, both civic and psychic. Halliburton for the civic, the narcocracy for the psychic.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious."
--Marine Corp General Smedley Butler
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence."
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn
And this, most beautiful:
"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot."
--Tom Paine
PS: Mom, I saw 'V for Vendetta' the other night. Not quite enough character development to make V into anything other than a maniac (I mean, torturing Evey to give her "freedom?" Huh?)
Some nice quotes to be culled, no argument there, but why is the business of Liberty set in the hands of a disfigured loon, who doesn't even possess the moral clarity to see his quest through? I know the Wachowski brothers like to indulge in cinematic calvary, immolating their heroes without surcease, but still: what is the appeal? That 'V' is the spark waiting to ignite the tinderbox, brimming to the full due to State depredations? Ecch.
I still maintain that movies lack the power to transform society. Only books (and, mebbe, blogs--although don't discount Ned Lamont's vast fortune in his defeat of JoeL) can effectively deliver the ideas necessary to a defense of Liberty.
What movie has changed the world? Citizen Kane?
Apocalypse Now? You Have Mail?
Start a local movement to make the reading of Tom Paine mandatory in your local schools. It's a Gramsciaan stratagem.
Or, better yet, start your own schools, and teach the children to think critically at an early age.
Let's open a Rigorous Intuition Academy and sow the seeds of paradigmatic change in a new generation.
As if this administration couldn't get any freakier:
From Deconsumption:
"So does anyone else find the possibility that Camus might be one of Bush's favorite writers deeply, deeply alarming?"
Personally, it is irrelevant what he reads, and he is not "the decider" as the author erroneously puts it.
The fact that he can read at all is an amusing parlor trick, however.
No, no, no, Camus & Bukowski & Auden aren't going to get you anywhere...
...what you need is Saint Audrey:
WORCESTER— Jon Pescheta said he was always a skeptic when it came to miracles and the like.
But that changed three years ago when he was hired to help clean up the Tatnuck Square area home where Audrey Santo lives.
The Millbury man spent some time scrubbing a wall in the ranch home’s breezeway that had been soiled by an oily substance that had supposedly seeped from a religious statue.
Shortly after he had finished, the wall began seeping again.
“It was really creepy,” said Mr. Pescheta.
“I used to be a person who had little belief. If I couldn’t touch it or poke it, it didn’t exist. I have a different take on things today.”
Mr. Pescheta said he was so shaken by what had transpired that day in Audrey’s house on South Flagg Street that he had to call his mother for a ride home.
Yesterday, Mr. Pescheta, accompanied by his fiancée, joined about 200 others in helping the Santo family celebrate young Audrey’s mysterious life.
On Aug. 9, 1987, Audrey, then 3, nearly drowned in the pool at her family’s former home on Rockwood Avenue.
The unconscious tot was resuscitated by a brother and neighbors but has been in a comatose-like state since.
Shortly after Audrey’s discharge from the hospital, strange phenomena were reported at her home, and many claimed they were healed of illnesses through the girl’s intercession.
*************************************************
During the Mass homily, the Rev. Daniel J. Becker, president of Apostolate of a Silent Soul Inc., the nonprofit organization that administers the ministry needs associated with Audrey, said nobody understands the mystical phenomena attributed to the young woman.
However, he said Audrey’s suffering is worthwhile and can be offered up as penance to others.
He said Audrey teaches others the value of human life.
“We are called to suffer for one another ... to deny ourselves,” said Rev. Becker, the pastor of St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Warren.
“Audrey’s now living on the cross with the Lord.”
Mrs. Santo said that the nation is facing “quality of life issues.”
“What’s wrong with the church? Us. What’s wrong with the country? Us,” she said. “How do we change the world? Pray.”
Mrs. Santo said that God is all about love and that he blesses people through Audrey.
She said everybody has a journey to take and that God offers direction.
“Just go with it,” she said. “Most people come here looking for something and they usually find it.”
**************************************************
See, it's simple, the suffering in the world is worthwhile because it can be offered up as penance for everyone who isn't suffering.
So , in effect, every bomb we drop or encourage to be drop is only our way of aiding the world's penance.
Since everyone is called by God to suffer for everyone else, we are only aiding the Iraqis & Lebonese, etc. to answer God's call.
See, I told you, simple.
Now, in the spirit of a God who loves us deeply yet desires our suffering, I think it's time to break out that tack studded razor strop & show my kids how deep my love is for them.
BTW, Christians aren't sado-masochistic loons, are they?
Nah!
Has to be another one of those wordly illusions that Satan uses to tempt us away from the God's true path of pain.
Sing it with me...Thank You Lord May I Have Another....Thank You Lord May I Have Another...Thank You Lord May I Have Another...
Praise the Lord & pass the bondage gear.
"I think it's time to break out that tack studded razor strop & show my kids how deep my love is for them."
What a righteous example of tuff love, hard yes, but they will thank you in the end.
Richard, did the nuns beat you near death in School? Were they nice about it? Did you deserve it?
Richard:
No one makes me laugh out loud as much as you do.
That was too freakin funny......especially for those of us who were raised Catholic.
Great stuff.
Shrubageddon
PS: The Power Of Christ Compels You!!......The Power Of Christ Compels You!!.....The Power Of Christ Compels You!!.....splashes Holy Water.....you've gotta love the Holy Water.....and Mother Angelica.....and Arch Bishop Fulton Sheen.....and Father Corapi.....what a name....Father Corapi.....the grief he must have endured because of that name....it's as bad as Jim Class......Phys Ed......I'll stop now....
Richard, did the nuns beat you near death in School? Were they nice about it? Did you deserve it?
I don't know about Richard, but the Nuns in my school would force me to perform Kahn A. Linghas on them.
It was awful, I tell you.
They failed to mention what Bush read after he finished Camus. He polished off the remainder of the My Pet Goat Trilogy as Iraq and Lebanon burned.
Any moment now I expect Anony to say Richard, me and AJ are one and the same.
I watched RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman on Meet the Liars Sunday morning.
He waxed rhapsodic about those cowardly Democrats who want to "cut & run" out of Iraq.
Silly Democrats.
Silly silly Democrats.
Mr. Mehlman pointed out that both bin Laden & al-Zawqari have pointed out to the silly Democrats that Iraq is "central to their war."
Further pointing out that" Iraq will then degenerate into chaos & become another training ground for terrorists."
Of course, Mr. Mehlman had the good grace to ignore the 7000 pound elephant sitting next to him whose name, I believe, was 'USA's Iraq Invasion' that created this potential terrorist training ground where none existed before.
Oh well, one can't expect them to cover everything in an hour, can one.
Also read the new Rolling Stone this weekend.
Interesting story on our Gitmo S&M camp. Just more of our efforts to help people answer God's call through pain.
Bill Maher pointed out that Bush has "balls" & he's "a leader."
He was just following a flawed plan.
If Bill Maher says it, it must be true, eh?
The review for Stone's World Trade Center pointed out how glad they were that Ollie wasn't wearing his geeky conspiracy theorist hat while making his little film.
My favorite part of reading Rolling Stone is the way they balance their hip "anti-corporate" ethos with page after page of ads shilling corporate America's useless shit to another generation of shop-a-holics.
I think it's time for a new rock anthem:
People try to give us c-credit (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we shop around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they sell look awful n-n-neat(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I buy before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
richard -
What you say about Rolling Stone reminds me of when I was a kid and my father suggested I should temper my enthusiasm for the New Yorker (and this was in the days of Rachel Carson and Hannah Arendt) by recognizing that their advertisers started with Rolls-Royce and went on from there.
(I swear, though they may not have done it on purpose, my parents seem to have spent much of my childhood tag-teaming to teach me not to trust the media. And I'm talking late 50's-early 60's. Though it hurt at the time, I suppose I was the better for it in the long run . . . probably wouldn't be hanging around here with you guys otherwise.)
Does the New Yorker still run Rolls-Royce ads alongside Sy Hersh's columns? Or is it some latter-day equivalent?
I hate it when work is slow, and I'm sitting around staring at negative FX losses..but at least there's a sunny side-Richard's singing.
"Jesus loves you this I know! For the bible tells me so..
Little ones to him belong,
all the others we will bomb.
Yea, Jesus loves me!
Too bad He doesn't love you.
Yea, Jesus Loves me!
For the Bible tells me so."
Do I win the neat toaster and what's behind door #2?
Shrub, you said,
"I don't know about Richard, but the Nuns in my school would force me to perform Kahn A. Linghas on them.
It was awful, I tell you."
Christ, if they looked like the nuns in my school, "awful" is one humongous understatement, pal.
Although it does go a long ways towards explaining why your personality split into me & jules & jon & aj, doesn't it?
Those damn Catholics!
"The horror....the horror."
Col. Kurtz( obviously another Kahn A Linghas survivor.)
In all fairness to Catholics, I remember once, yes- a long time ago when I was in 1st grade or so, we all had religious class and this was in public school on Wed.
The Catholics would depart separately as would the others-anyone who wasn't which I was a part of.
On one fine winters day I could not resist making a snowball and hurling it at the girls in front of me. I believe this was the first time I did such an evil thing, Christ, we were boys ya know-I was a model student-never got in trouble.
So of course that was the time that the Lord decided to open the eyes of our Non-Catholic pastor that just happened to see ME, then yanked me out of line very physically and chastised me in front of God and everyone.
May his Protestant Anti-Catholic soul burn in ever lasting torment and decay as he writhes with the eternal ecstasy of having several Demons mounting him at once, twice a week and three times on Wednesday....
But I think I've finally gotten over it.
Starroute, I'm as guilty as your parents. I've pretty much trained my kids to associate commercials with lying.
Also, regarding your New Yorker comment, I had the same thought while watching meet the press.
All of their advertisers are investment bankers, brokerage firms & corporations hunting for investors. Is it any wonder they spend the entire show kissing ass & bullshitting people like me. I am, quite obviously, not the target audience.
& shrub, remember our Santa circus act from a few weeks ago?
It appears my 9 year old is wising up. His plan to prove that Santa doesn't exist involves asking ol' Saint Nick for these 2 $4000 dollar resin cast duplicates of a T-Rex & triceratops skull he saw on the internet.
He reasons that I would never buy them so if he gets them Santa exists, & if he doesn't, Santa is a huuuuuuge load of crap.
So, what do you think the odds are that Santa's going to his grave this year?
Yep, I think you pegged it, Richard.
Sister Allota Fagina had a traumatic impact on us.
Mojo Filter should be ashamed of himself.
So now we venture into the mind of Bush…what will we find there? Does he share a fond nostalgia for The Wonder Years with his friend Osama? Surely he’s too old to have been shaped by the incessant bloodletting of the videodrome that Doris Colmes describes in her postcard from the front in the growth of American fascism:
When I was a kid in Nazi Germany, everyone had to stand and listen to propaganda blaring from loudspeakers at all the bus stops. If you were caught walking away, you got “disappeared” and being “a kid” was no excuse.
Here, in the USA, we do not need any of that. We do not need Storm Troopers, we do not need parades, we do not need the smashed glass of minority-owned businesses littering the streets. All we have to do is turn on the TV, shake our heads sadly, say, “Tsk Tsk,” and switch channels to a reality show, leaving reality behind. And away we all go. It’s the same story, only with modern technology instead of loudspeakers at bus stops.
Back in Nazi Germany, all boys, at age eight, became members of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), a kind of boy scout organization, designed to teach kids the true value of physically destroying all sub-humans such as Jews, Gypsies, dissenters, homosexuals and retarded persons. Physical violence against such persons was seen as true heroism, and the indoctrination process included actual physical training. Kids grew up believing in the correctness of this training, which made them become excellent Gestapo or SS troopers.
But the USA propaganda machine is so truly sophisticated, that none of the above is even necessary. We have something just as effective, called “Video Games.” We teach brutality via such games as “Grand Theft Auto” where evisceration, stabbing and even beheading are approved as ways to get away with stealing a car. Copious amounts are depicted, along with detailed views -- and sounds -- of bodies writhing in obvious terminal agony. And, these grizzly murders are actually rewarded with sex... the player gets to hear the moans of sexual intercourse and watch the stolen car shake in appropriate rhythm. And “Grand Theft Auto” isn’t unique. There are dozens more just as gruesome. What makes this interesting is that the government refuses to intervene by equating these games with pornography, which is targeted as “obscene” and not allowed to be purchased by children. But, hey, “Grand Theft Auto” is currently seen as quite appropriate for any age whatsoever.
Is this effective? You decide: In an interview with a soldier in Fallujah, the trooper stated, “Driving down the streets, watching the flames, watching the killing, was kinda just like playing a video game, only real.”
But Bush personally, he's too old to have had his brain altered in this way, right? I suppose having to sleep with a corpse in a coffin for your Skull & Bones initiation might make some "imprint" on the psyche, but how does that experience explain his presence in Hunter S. Thompson's bathtub?
"He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humor. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away." -on meeting George W Bush at Thompson's Super Bowl party in Houston in 1974
Perhaps Thompson's bathtub offered the buffoonish Shrubster some sort of refuge from what haunted him. So, what haunts him now? Before he died, in the fog of mysterious causes that seems to follow the critics of W, Thompson gave us some clues:
"If we get chased out of Iraq with our tail between our legs, that will be the fifth consecutive Third-world country with no hint of a Navy or an Air Force to have whipped us in the past 40 years."
Maybe it is the fallout from his own brutal ineptitude that follows hapless George around; if we're not immune to the storm, then maybe he's not either. Thompson describes W's Ministry of Terror as a sort of cross between a storm and a pressure-cooker:
"[T]his blizzard of mind-warping war propaganda out of Washington is building up steam. Monday is Anthrax, Tuesday is Bankruptcy, Friday is Child-Rape, Thursday is Bomb-scares, etc., etc., etc.... If we believed all the brutal, frat-boy threats coming out of the White House, we would be dead before Sunday. It is pure and savage terrorism reminiscent of Nazi Germany...We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear -- fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.
Fear is the order of the day, and hiding in a bathtub when your empire splutters is an understandable response if you're not endowed with Bismarck's famous nerves of steel. The shrinks always want to look back to the larval stage for signs of latent pathologies, which, if Betty Bowers, America's best Christian, is right, could indeed hold the key to understanding our enigmatic Leader. In a dashing piece of psychological examination called Is President Bush a Girly Man?, Betty describes something of what life was like for young George:
a younger, tenderer shrubbery
"I don't give a good goddamn if you want to be a cheerleader. Your father and I have decided you are going to play sports, like all the other little boys, mister sissy britches. Now get your hands off of your damned hips, you little pansy, and fetch me a scotch on the rocks!"
-- Mrs. George H. W. (Barbara) Bush, 1954
Repression is a terrible thing; etymologically speaking, it's got pressure at its core. Perhaps this explains the Leader's fondness for Camus' The Stranger. Monsieur Meursault is only seeking release after all, something by which to define himself. This would also explain the Leader's attachment to his i-pod--if you're miidly dyslexic, haunted by your own ghosts and can't find a good bathtub of solace, you don't even have to read Camus' gritty book. You can just listen to the Cure's version of it:
Killing an Arab
Standing on the beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the arab on the ground
See his open mouth
But I hear no sound
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm a stranger
Killing an arab
I can turn
And walk away
Or I can fire the gun
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sun
Whichever I choose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm a stranger
Killing an arab
I feel the silver jump
Smooth in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring at myself
Reflected in the eyes
Of the dead man on the beach
The dead man on the beach
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab
Dear Iridecadent Rothschild:
Nice touch.
You start with the gestapo and end with an ode to killing an Arab?
Could your agenda be any more transparent?
I think not.
O, and don't tell me it was "irony."
Doublethink is as newspeak does.
Why not just print on the outside of your holocaust hairshirt:
"I am a whore for the rulers and I loath the useless feeders, er uh, readers."
C'est tu. C'est tout.
Once more, Anony: huh? You interpreted my humorously -intended look inside the Leader's brain as an homage to him? I somehow think he wouldn't find it such a handsome portrait. Are you intentionally obtuse, or is it some impairment in your perceptional apparatus?
Calm now IC,
Anony wasn't rocked to sleep by mommy when he was a child.
Your portrait was well received.
WMR has reason to believe Betty has insiders within the beltway.
...See, it's simple, the suffering in the world is worthwhile because it can be offered up as penance for everyone who isn't suffering.
Sounds like necromancy to me, and the God who accepts the offering a Dark Lord at best.
Iridecadent Rothschild asks:
"Are you intentionally obtuse....?"
Projection again............
What goes around comes around.
Why don't YOU pick some names for the "anony"s in your bloglife?
Here are a couple of suggestions:
Harry Tuttle*
&
Emmanuel Goldstein**
*from Terry Gilliam's Brazil and
**from Orwell's 1984
for those who might not recognize the allusions, they were bugaboo names to which the writers for the totalitarian governments attributed the terrorism that the governments themselves propagated as black ops.
Kind of like al-CIAduh
Anony -
It would seem that in this Brazil, the Cuttlefish is but Harry Buttle, and you are the fly causing the typo......
"I Scream. You Scream. We All Scream For Ice Cream."
WMTW.com news story August 14, 2006
Ice Cream Man Shot To Death In Chicago.
Someone shot and killed an ice cream man in Chicago Sunday night.
Police said he was shot as he drove his ice scream truck through the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side.
As the vehicle came to a rest, music that's typically deployed to draw the attention of children and their parents continued to play over the truck's loudspeakers.
One resident said the man came by the neighborhood every day in his truck and that kids would line up to buy ice cream from him. Isabell Williams said he was a nice man.
Williams--who heard the truck crash into a car--said she doesn't think any children witnessed the shooting.
Police say they have no motive and no one has been arrested.
There is a horror movie coming out soon directed by Tom Holland entitled "We Scream for Ice Scream." Based on the short story written by John Farris. Maybe thrill seeking copycats is the motive for the slaying.
"Hot off the press. Get your paper. Ice Cream man shot to death. Get your paper right here."
Was the ice cream man's shooter having hir own "Stranger" moment. Is life more real for hir now?
Anony(whichever):
I like that Gilliam notion, except if I'm the one assigning you names, wouldn't I be fulfilling your role? I pretty much assume that Shrub is not Lupo, etc, and it just wouldn't sit right for me to usurp the valued role of a valued poster here...By the way, that Cure song? It's about Camus' book, which you should really have been able to figure out if you had followed the link from Deconsumption...or is the literary allusion an elitist, Rothschildian pastime?
There were some kids that stood up to the nuns. Not very many but some did. I did several times. Got slapped around for it but at least I stood my ground. I used to make fun of the vice principal nun. Would rebuke her when she scoulded me calling her an old crone. My buddy actually physically attacked a raging nun by kicking her repeatedly in the shin backing her off. This in elementary school.
In basic training standing up to the sergeant is a whole different world. If you could stand up to him you accomplished a rare feat indeed.
"If you could stand up to him.."
Big if. I seem to remember they relished the ones who were cocky enough to think that. Even if they got the Sarge, they would laugh it off until the moron was asleep and he would have to sleep sooner or later.
After they mopped his face off the floor the next day, presuming he wasn't dead or damaged and if they still felt he was worthwhile, they might offer him a two stripe promotion and introduction into the Airborne Rangers.
Psy-ops.
Seamus Oblimey said....
Yeah Willow, It sounds like your flights are justified but something like 100,000 flights are made by UK politicos and hangers on every year. They pretend to be web savvy but spend months on holiday jetting around (between secure videoconf. sites?).
We in the west and increasingly in the east take for granted our ability to hop between cities but it is ovbiously unsustainable.. especially if the idea is to be expanded globally.
That kinda activity can only be available to a few.. and fewer as prices get higher. Where does that lead us?
A very good point raised by Seamus here. Maybe it will force us to focus on our communities rather than being constant strangers in a distant locale. It could be a good thing. Less planes pouring filth into the sky is definitely a good thing. We don't need to travel by air as much as we do.
Moslem "jinn" and the UFO phenom:
http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/i-dream-of-jinni/
Life can be quite rewarding without indulging in modern machinations...
Oh, I agree....in fact, I would say life is rewarding without a lot of the distracting techno-gadgetry used to overstimulate and distract us. Those things tend to take the reward out of it.
Cell phones, for example. We have one, but we only carry it for emergency purposes, or as a last resort. I let my wife keep it most of the time. I deplore the people, who are most people, who have them plastered to their head 24/7. I want to grab it off of them and smash it on the ground and scream at them to pay attention to the world around them rather than blathering on about the shit they took that morning.
Get off the freakin phone you morons and use your God Damned senses the way they were intended to be used.
I've witnessed people in public restrooms in the stall taking a shit talking on their freakin cell phones. I am so tempted to get a jug of hot water and throw it over the door on them, the freakin uncouth scums. Get off the phone and wipe your ass properly, you pieces of shit.
And then there's the Suburban Mom in her 6000 Lb. Ford Excursion that gets 0.5 miles to the gallon flying down the road at break-neck speed accross the line in your lane coming right at you with her make-up in one hand and her Cell Phone in the other with her head turned trying to put a DVD in the DVD Player to appease the two dusgusting, greedy, screaming brats in the back seat.
God help us......no, on second thought, don't help us....please just take them all away and put them on an a little planet in the corner of the Universe they can call home and shit on each other rather than us.
Thanks in advance.
Is it any wonder we have dissonance when all we get are lies. Start the presses. Yet another heart stopper hits the news and why not. We've been had before and we will be had again. Consider tptb have been tptb for a very long time. Have they been crunching the numbers; polling the depth; meeting in secret and sharing their knowlege is power for a very long time?
What if I told you that America was discovered? Would you believe it? Apparently we did.
Have I said lately how much I appreciate and rely on Jeff's RI stories and comments? I really appreciate all of it, even the bizarre arguments. When Jeff takes a few days off, my life is not quite as interesting.
Jeff, take care and come back soon!
Just not that much said......
I pity you if this, or any, website is what makes your life interesting.
Maybe you should GET A LIFE!!!!
Archibald Leach said....
It's probably relatively meaningless to suggest this on a website that some sad people use to make their lives more interesting, and where all the yes-men and trolls pipe up in favor of eschewing travel for, (what?), tv and disinfo blogs...? BUT........
To choose not to travel outside the U.S., or to endorse that as some kind of neo-isolationist, culturally Luddite solution to false flag terror warnings, is not merely ill-informed, but playing right into the hands of our own government terrormeisters.
How does anyone think you can possibly learn the truth of what exists beyond the borders of the US? How does anyone think you can find out how other peoples in the world actually live, what they actually think and feal, whether they 'love death' as the terrormeisters would have us believe, or whether they love life and strive for peace?
There is only one way.
TRAVEL.
Go there, anywhere outside of these borders, and find out for yourselves. You can't trust the disinfo newsmakers.
Go there. Anywhere. By all means.
And find out what people in other parts of the world truly believe, how they truly live.
You will be amazed how much more intelligent, thoughtful, and better-informed is the average third world peasant, than most college-educated Americans.
The scales would fall from your eyes.
And understanding between disparate peoples is the greatest antidote to those leaders and newsmedia who would keep peoples at a distance and at odds with one another, all in furtherance of the goals of war and chaos, profits and power.
In order to seek knowledge, travel, even unto China.
"And I denounce as communist inspired rumours that the dollar collapsed in 1959. I pledge myself to turn the clock back to 1899 when a silver dollar bought a steakdinner and a good piece of ass. (thunderous applause as a plane writes September 17th 1899 in the sky in smoke). I have heard it said that this is a lawless nation, that if all the laws in the land were enforced truly we would have thirty percent of the population in jail, and the remaining 70% in the cops. I say to you if there is infection in this great land it must be cut out by the roots. I pledge myself to uphold the laws of America and to enforce these hallowed statutes on all violators regardless of race creed colour or religion... (thunderous applause)... We will overcome all our enemies foreign and domestic and stay armed to the teeth for years decades centuries."
Homer Mandrill
i don't hear anyone "eschewing" travel--shrub said we could do with less "a-i-r" travel and its accompanying pollution.
besides, i think that our media condition us to wring our hands over shit that goes BOOM on the other side of the globe because it is of interest to Big Money--how do you explain so much public support for this madcap safari that bush&co sent us on? support back in 2003, i mean? because we have been--since the end of WWII--indoctrinated thru non-stop reels of propaganda to CARE whether or not, for example, vietnam became communist. when it did, did it turn out to be the lynchpin to southeast asia we were told, over and over, it would? of course not! we have some anonymous idiot on here *still* trying to convince us to beware 'big, bad communism'! bullshit!
shrub is right in paraphrasing voltaire: il faut cultiver notre propre jardin like we used to, before we were sold the LIE that it was our duty, nay, our *responsibility* to police the globe (and now space!)... our infrastructure in this country is in ruins, for God's sakes! visit new orleans, if you want to travel so much! what the FUCK do i care if bolivia nationalizes its resources to keep uncle sam from pilfering them? americans are still, at their core, isolationists, and that *doesn't* have to mean they are provincial.
in fact, it is--imo--precisely *because* we were sold on the "white man's burden" BS that we are so freakishly arrogant.
Check out Iranian President Ahmadinejad's "personal" blog here:
http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/
(click on US/UK flags for English translation...)
I can't say as i am a fan of the Lahaye left behind series, I tried to read one of the books once out of curiosity, but couldn't stomach more than a few pages. I thought ho hum each to thier own. I came across this article where the author submits his questions about the upcoming left behind video game. Just when I thought the rapture couldn't get much weirder, what next?
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/LBG.htm
TOM HORN: In one article I read recently, the reader is asked to name "one other wholesome ‘Christian’ video game for children in which Christian commandos shoot nurses in the head and leave their bodies to rot on the streets of New York City." They then provide a screen shot of that scene. Why were options like this included in the game?
RESPONSE : No response
TOM HORN: Critics also say this game reflects a black-and-white polarization of good and evil. Anybody who is not Christian – whether they be Jew, Muslim, Hindu, whatever - is faced with a single choice: Convert to Christianity or be killed by Christians.
RESPONSE : No response
TOM HORN: What about complaints by some that this game will hurt the war on terror by giving terrorist recruiters "talking points" about Christians who are depicted as killing anyone that doesn’t convert to Christianity?
RESPONSE : No response
TOM HORN: A related criticism of the game is that it exploits what happened on 9/11 by setting the game in New York City and using imagery such as "911" on ambulance roofs. Have developers of Left Behind: Eternal Forces misused the tragedy of 9-11 for financial gain in selecting New York as a virtual reality into which players can be immersed?
TOM HORN: Here’s a multi-layered tuffy for you, which is certain to be on the lips of ministers, theologians, and reporters like me. When I asked [Producer's name removed] the same question above – "why did Left Behind Games believe it necessary to give Christian Kids the ‘option’ to join the antichrist and to kill Christians?" - he said it was so kids could "dialogue both sides of the issue." Using that rationale, I can imagine people saying, "Okay then, why not develop a game encouraging Christian kids to roll-play sex from different sides of the issue, including group, porn, animal, rape, prostitution and other possibilities? Girls could try on virtual ‘hooker’ apparel while boys learn to be pimps. Making love is more in line with Christian values than killing another human, isn’t it? Or what about Christian’s roll-playing baby-trafficking, drug use, presidential assassination and other antisocial behavior? All of the above is sure to worsen during the Great Tribulation, correct? Why not dialogue both sides of those issues?" Defenders might argue at this point that there is a difference between killing in defensive battle for the soul, and dialoguing about sex. But this is the kind of hairsplitting with regard to a rationale that could fail to convince ethicists and come back to malign LBG, LaHaye, Jenkins, Tyndale, the Christian Booksellers Association and the collective testimony of those parties.
Anonymous One,maybe someone is trying to snap the synapsis,check out this flash from synapsisdigital.com.Be warned there is more than what you think you see,later.
Dear Dumshit Jonshrub:
How do you expect to get from Australia to most of the rest of the world if not by air, hmm?
By ship?
As if.
And, from the US, going to Canada (the only easy drive) is hardly much different culturally. How many people will drive TO Mexico, no less through it to the rest of Central and South America?
And I suppose we'll all take fast boats to Africa or Europe, and a slow boat to China, no doubt.
Yes, ds, air travel is what it takes to get to most of these places for something in the hundreds rather than thousands of dollars, and in hours rather than weeks.
If you can't or won't buy a clue, why not just place your collective Jon/Jules/Richard/Shrubageddon/Luposapien "head" back up that dark hole where it is typically lodged and maintain a respectful silence on behalf of the thinking members of humanity amongst us?
There's a good boy.
anon, you're *exactly* why i loathe traveling overseas at all. overweight, loudmouthed american fucks like you sporting their ballcaps and tennis shoes everywhere and embarrassing the shit out of me when i'm abroad proves that travel doesn't necessarily make the man, so to speak.
i remember seeing you--yes, YOU--in rome, in st. peter's square, when you blurted to your wife in texas twang, "you brought me all the way over here to show me *this*?" remember? and then they wouldn't let you in the place b/c you had shorts on? my, we all had a good laugh at your expense... or the time it looked like someone picked your pocket in santiago, chile and you were too stupid not to try and get into a fisticuffs with the cop in the middle of the street! you accused him of being "in on it"! **LOL** god, what good times! no, no,--the best had to be the time i saw you in the paris metro--right around pere lachaise--and you were drunk and asking the street guitarist (in english, naturally) to play you a johnny cash song and only got madder b/c he ignored you altogether!! shit, i've *never* been prouder that you took the time to fill out the necessary forms and get yourself a passport to the world! never!
yes, yes--i've only been TOO impressed with the quality of americans like you i've seen 'o'er there'. see ya soon, dumfuck--see ya soon!
Travel...better to "live" in other cultures/countries for a while than to travel...travel just gives you TV with sweat and flies...you still don't have time to adjust and really see/feel/grok what's going on...how people think...and LANGUAGE...a tough nut to crack...
nunnatsunega makes an important distinction here. It's this living somewhere else for awhile that helps break down the programming that produces ugly Americans. nunnatsunega, you've lived outside the US longer than I have: does the urge to pretend you're not an American when the next drunken oaf tries to pinch the mayor's wife ever go away?
Jon & Nunnatsunega:
Excellent points. I agree with both of you. My experience has been that the majority of people travel for the wrong reasons, both domestically and internationally, and that is such a terrible waste.
I treat the quality of travel and sustainability of travel as mutually exclusive issues, however, for purposes of evaluation. With dwindling resources and the exponential destruction of our habitat, I agree with Seamus in that Air Travel, as currently maintained, is not sustainable. It will be available to only a few in the not too distant future. So, when that time comes, and we do decide to travel/visit/live in distant locales, both doemtically and internationally, we will have a greater incentive to maximize the quality of that experience as Jon and Nunnatsunega have mentioned.
Thanks, once again, for your most valuable comments. It was exactly what I hoped for when I posted Seamus' comments from the main board.
Iridescent,
I agree with Nunnatsunega, completely. With proper motivation and discipline, you can deprogram and reprogram by immersing yourself in another culture, or cultures, and the best way to do that is via extended stays, i.e. years...if not decades.
I think it's interesting how Anony contradicts himself. He rails against Totalitarianism, however, he advocates for Worldwide Homogeneity by promoting cross-culture relationships which could serve to water down and neutralize an otherwise varietal representation.
Hmmmm....
Hugh Manatee Wins said...
We all know that W is irrelevent regarding policies. He's just a hood ornament.
But more and more it seems to me that the way he distracts, disturbs, and unsettles us is actually a form of psychological warfare, like the magician's other hand.
He serves to disorient us while our pockets are picked and more of our kids are deployed to kill or die.
Don't watch the monkey. Watch the Grinder.
Exactly, Hugh. I couldn't agree more. He's part of the Smoke n Mirrors, nothing more.
Anybody else care to comment? Please share.
Black female fresident anyone?
You mean pemale, don't you?
BURN THE BOOKS
shun KNOWLEDGE.
WHEN FACT MEETS FICTION,you must burn the books.
SCIENCE VERSUS Ancient Scriptures
March 22, 2005
Religion and Natural History Clash Among the Ultra-Orthodox
By ALEX MINDLIN
It was early January when the posters went up in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's largest ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, and they signaled the start of a bad year for Rabbi Nosson Slifkin.
Twenty-three ultra-Orthodox rabbis had signed an open letter denouncing the books of Rabbi Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli scholar and science writer. The letter read, in part: "He believes that the world is millions of years old - all nonsense! - and many other things that should not be heard and certainly not believed. His books must be kept at a distance and may not be possessed or distributed." Rabbi Slifkin, the letter-writers continued, should "burn all his writings."
Fundamentalist Christians have long championed a literal reading of the Bible that suggests the planet is thousands of years old, rather than millions. But the denunciation of Rabbi Slifkin has publicized a parallel strain of thought among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a subset of the Orthodox Jewish community that is deeply skeptical of modern culture, avoiding television and the Web and often disdaining college education.
Rabbi Slifkin has made a career of reconciling Jewish Scripture with modern natural history. He teaches a course in biblical and talmudic zoology at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah, near Jerusalem, and gives frequent lectures, sometimes wearing a boa constrictor along with his black hat and jacket. With nine books to his name at age 29, he is a young up-and-comer in the sober world of Jewish scholarship.
The controversy surrounding him has pitted Jews who are skeptical of science against their more cosmopolitan brethren, who may follow ultra-Orthodox traditions but hold jobs as doctors or teachers. "My sense is there are literally tens of thousands of people who are upset about the ban," said Dr. Andrew Klafter, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, who is ultra-Orthodox. "I'm very, very puzzled by it."
In the days after the ban, Rabbi Slifkin's publisher and distributor dropped the three books mentioned in the open letter. He himself lost several speaking engagements and saw his own rabbi pressured to expel him from his synagogue. "He was crushed," said a friend, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "Do you know what it's like to walk through the street and see posters branding you a heretic?"
Three of Rabbi Slifkin's books, published from 2001 to 2004, were singled out in the letter or in related materials: "Mysterious Creatures," "The Science of Torah" and "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax."
Predictably, the banned books have become hits. A copy of "Science of Torah" recently sold on eBay for $125, or five times its cover price. And Rabbi Gil Student, whose company, Yashar Books, has taken over the distribution of the other two books, said he had done a year's business in a month selling them.
Rabbi Slifkin's books seek to reconcile, rather than to contrast, sacred texts with modern knowledge of the natural world.
But in the process, he has sometimes cast a critical eye on those texts. In "Mysterious Creatures," Rabbi Slifkin discussed fantastic animals mentioned in the Torah and the Talmud - among them, the unicorn and the phoenix - and suggested that, in reporting their existence, Jewish sages might have relied on the erroneous writings of ancient naturalists.
He gently debunked the claim, found in a medieval text, that geese grow on trees, explaining that it was "based on the peculiar anatomy of a certain seashell." And he examined the Talmudic doctrine that lice, alone of all animals, may be killed on the Sabbath because they do not sexually reproduce - a premise now known to be false.
In "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax," Rabbi Slifkin examined the difficult separation of animals into kosher and nonkosher, and discussed apparent exceptions and contradictions to the claims of Jewish law. (The aardvark and the rhinoceros, for example, meet one test for being kosher but not another.)
And in "The Science of Torah," he took a scientist's eye to the Torah. Evolution, he wrote, did not disprove God's existence and was consistent with Jewish thought. He suggested that the Big Bang theory paralleled the account of the universe's creation given by the medieval Spanish-Jewish sage Ramban. And Rabbi Slifkin wrote, to quote his own later paraphrase, that "tree-ring chronology, ice layers and sediment layers in riverbeds all show clear proof to the naked eye that the world is much more than 5,765 years old."
The latter statement was particularly galling to the rabbi's critics, who support a literal reading of Genesis that they say puts the earth's age at 5,765.
The rabbis who signed the letter denouncing Rabbi Slifkin are widely respected Torah authorities; one of them, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 91, is a leader of Israel's United Torah Judaism Party and one of the most respected scholars in Orthodox Ashkenazi Judaism. As a result, the letter has had repercussions far beyond the congregations of those who signed it. Rabbi Slifkin's publisher, Targum Press, and his distributor, Feldheim Publishers, have stopped carrying the books. Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox outreach organization, has removed most of his articles from its Web site.
Revered though they are, however, most of the rabbis signing the letter are not known as community leaders or public voices; only one of the Americans, for example, sits on the eight-member Council of Torah Sages at the head of Agudath Israel of America, an influential national Orthodox organization. Rather, they represent the most unworldly segment of the ultra-Orthodox community, in which learning is prized and contact with the secular world, including secular education, is shunned.
The letter against Rabbi Slifkin is not the only recent outburst against science among the ultra-Orthodox. Last November, during the annual conference of Agudath Israel, Rabbi Uren Reich, the dean of Yeshiva of Woodlake Village in New Jersey, said, "These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened 65 million years ago - ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks' time."
Many science-minded ultra-Orthodox Jews say it is spiritually wrenching to see leaders they revere endorsing views they oppose.
Rabbi Adlerstein of Loyola said: "I know rabbis, I know teens in yeshivas who were on the verge of quitting" when the letter first came out. "They look at themselves in the mirror and they say, 'What have I been representing?' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/science/22rabbi.html?ei=5088&en=71c12004b0b30b0a&ex=1269147600&partner=rssnyt&pagewanted=print&position=
Chandra Independently Determines Hubble Constant
The value for the Hubble constant derived from this method, which is independent of previous techniques, was found to be 76.9 in its traditional units of kilometers per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is equal to 3.26 million light years.) Taking into account the small uncertainties, this result agrees with the values determined by other techniques, and fixes the age of the Universe between 12 and 14 billion years.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/clusters/
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
hahahah, yeah Shrubageddon, should be ;)
what a careless typo.
Bootstrap ( Anonymous - 9:43 AM )
In honor of religious stupidity & S&M spirituality &, basically, to aid you heathen bastards to see the light, I offer a few humble prayers:
Hail Mary, punch my face
the knuckles of brass are with thee;
blessed art thou amongst dominatrixes,
and blessed is thy corset & thy stiletto heels, OOOOOOOOOO Jesus
Holy Paddler, Enforcer of God, spank we sinners,
now and until the hour of our death.
Amen.
Our Father, leatherboy in heaven, Spanking be thy Game.
Until we cum. Thy swats be done, On bums as well as on knuckles.
Give us this day our paddling. And give us our bare ass bloodying, As we rub our bare ass against you. And lead us not into bondage gear, But deliver us from ball-gags. For thine is the kinkdom, and the cower, and the x-rated story, for ever and ever. Amen.
1Yahweh is my master: I shall question nothing.
2 He makes me lie down bare bum skyward. He ball-gags me astride new leather.
3 He restores my shackles. He guides His riding crop into me for his amusements sake
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of a good sound thwacking, I will fear no paddle, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they pummel me.
5 You prepare a table for me to be bound to as a present for my enemies. You anoint my bumhole with oil. My cum runs over.
6 Surely good spankings and loving kindness of the whip shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in Yahweh's house of pain forever
Amen
Richard:
You have talent, regardless of what Mojo Filter says.
I wonder what Rabbi Slipitin and Father Ramitupurass and Sister Cumaloerme would say about your contrite prayers?
"Who wants to die taking Hill 103 when you know full well that Hill 103 will be given back next month, or that in 20 years Hill 103 will be a Pizza Hut? Who wants to die for thin crust?"
LOL, so true
Just wanted to see that a second time. Thanks.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience."
--George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
vortex egg
Jon,
Thanks for clarifying so much for me. As you have observed I am new to this blog and actually to blogging all together. (I have been a reader of Mr. Wells for about two years)
The below stated quote from you says so much about the affinity you have with shrub and cuttle.
“ we have some anonymous idiot on here *still* trying to convince us to beware 'big, bad communism'! bullshit!”
I am still waiting for cuttle to respond to my last two posts directed to his attention on “Time Bomb”. (the latter is solid evidence that communism is alive and kicking) www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060410-094710-4817r.htm
A nice place to visit if you want to know who your masters are, takes a little reading between the lines and understanding of the agenda. www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/index.htm
I think that there are many great and noble concepts found in socialism, but if it something so great why does it have to be implemented with force? There is blood on the hands of any political movement, but the movement you endorse is drowning in it.
Good day mate.
Someone needs to direct this former British ambassador to scenic Uzbekistan to a good tinfoil hat manufacturer.
He's sounding like some kind of...of....conspiracy geek.
Rolling Stone would be very, very, very disappointed.
I, on the other hand, like the guy.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.
In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do with terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
"If you can't or won't buy a clue, why not just place your collective Jon/Jules/Richard/Shrubageddon/Luposapien "head" back up that dark hole where it is typically lodged and maintain a respectful silence on behalf of the thinking members of humanity amongst us?"
Dunno who of the other 4 live in Australia, none I suspect, but they probably live on planet earth in this reality unlike you you worthless piece of frog puke.
I mean at least most frog puke feeds even bacteria.
You couldn't think your way out of a wet paper bag.
Hows that, first post for at lelast a week and I get to flame some cockhead.
Sorry everyone else.
Richard evidence from a Pakistani prison interrogation was used to convict "Jihad Jack" thomas in Australia. he claims the info was extracted under torture and ther duress, ie he was told to say what he was told or wear a bullet in the head.
This evidence was still allowed to be presented as valid at his trial, despite the obvious difficulties it raised re getting a fair trial. in the end the gubbers desire for a result and an appearance of being "tough on terror" won out. The evidence was accepted without question.
Similar evidence keeps David Hicks and probably everyone else at Gitmo locked in cages.
its a complete croc.
BTW Unless you are coming to Australia in a plane you should probably be prepared to spend a period of time in a detention centre in the desert or on some island in the Pacific or Indian ocean somewhere.
If you can't or won't buy a clue, why not just place your collective Jon/Jules/Richard/Shrubageddon/Luposapien "head" back up that dark hole where it is typically lodged and maintain a respectful silence on behalf of the thinking members of humanity amongst us?
Fat chance.
Our resident 'Sybil' is through the looking-glass by this point.
With a different personna for every attitude it needs to project, it has fully infested the comment section and is now resurecting onto the disscussion board as well, in the guise of 'yesferatu' and a few other new instigating personalities of cognitive dissonance.
Vapid mumbleings and insulting profanity are some of it's hallmarks.
'Get a life'? R.I. IS it's life.
Pathetic, but that's the price we must pay when visiting this popular blog.
sigh.
I posted something on a blog.
Woo Hoo
Thanks to HMK Grey for kicking me in the arse enough to get organised. And for the encouraging words.
http://tohellwithculture.blogspot.com/
Read it and weep. (I did from embarassment or something).
To Anon 11:27 I must offer my most sincere congratulations.
To suffer from such extreme psychosis yet still attain the economic means to obtain a computer is really an amazing accomplishment.
You sir, are an inspiration to us all.
One small bit of advice from someone who has a wee bit of experience in these matters...
...the next time you decide to 'skip the med pass,' you just maaaaaaaaaaay want to hide those kitchen utensils along with any other sharp object.
Emergency room visits can be soooooooooo expensive these days.
Be seeing you.
Fat chance.
Our resident 'Sybil' is through the looking-glass by this point.
With a different personna for every attitude it needs to project, it has fully infested the comment section and is now resurecting onto the disscussion board as well, in the guise of 'yesferatu' and a few other new instigating personalities of cognitive dissonance.
Vapid mumbleings and insulting profanity are some of it's hallmarks.
'Get a life'? R.I. IS it's life.
Pathetic, but that's the price we must pay when visiting this popular blog.
sigh.
just repeating this so it is always there
I am not gonna turn this into a dis/cuss-ing board.
Please visit the link above and have a look at what shrub, lupo, yesfer, Richard and the rest wrote.
or don't.
I guess that different attitude for every different personality is a dead give away isn't it.
Must be the same entity.
Ignore me people, I am just posting in the hope my word verification thing says cthulu.
Richard...good work and good words on all fronts. I knew when I posted George Galloway's TV interview that we were going to have to "level" the debate. It is interesting for all of you to realize that the "balance" we are seeing is "us".
Chris Floyd in counterpunch:
It's bigger than the neo-cons
" ... to accuse them of playing the central role in America's on-going Götterdämmerung gives them an importance they don't deserve--and unduly mitigates the guilt of the true culprits: the good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon boardroom buccaneers of the American Establishment, bred for generations to feast on war and rumors of war, and to regard the hoi polloi as mere cannon fodder and cash cows to be mulched and milked as needed."
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd08152006.html
dumbed down,
I had to wonder whether you were aware that you were quoting from a far rightwing rag (The Washington Times), but given your animosity toward socialism, and the strange concept of it that you seem to have picked up from the Rense & Icke Stormfront Show, I suppose that quoting from a Bush-supporting neocon organ seems “legitimate” to someone with such views. I was, therefore a bit shocked to hear you say:
I think that there are many great and noble concepts found in socialism. You really do? Which ones? I wouldn’t have guessed from any of your “communism is gonna get you” remarks. So what is it, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, or is it one of the lesser known hits? Unfortunately, you didn’t elaborate (but please do when the mood strikes you) and you very quickly returned to form with but if it something so great why does it have to be implemented with force? There is blood on the hands of any political movement, but the movement you endorse is drowning in it. Now you’re talking, I thought; that’s why Jon and Jeff and I are psychopathic socialists—bring on the blood!
Sadly, when I followed your link (will those cookies come back to bite me? I mean, I don’t want the kids reading any John Birch Society pamphlets that might get mailed to me now) I was utterly disappointed. Here’s what the Times had to say about the bloodthirsty socialists in question (those evil socialists):
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, which also has proposed a nationwide boycott on May 1 to protest congressional efforts at immigration reform and border security, is an offshoot of the International Action Coalition, an anti-capitalism group founded by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. (Is it still legal to say things like that? Stop War? End Racism?! Now, c’mon—it can’t be legal to use an adjective like anti-capitalism, can it? Is there no moral compass left in our great nation?! The infamy!)
But then I smelled the blood that got you all excited, and I knew I had found the filth:
Founded three days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the organization describes itself as a "coalition of hundreds of organizations and prominent individuals and scores of organizing centers in cities and towns across the country" that have campaigned against "U.S. intervention in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia ... and for civil rights and for social and economic justice for working and poor people inside the United States."
Is there nothing these socialists won’t stop at? Will they rape Grandma’s apple pie next? I do have to confess that until I read that, I was under the horrible, horrible misapprehension that our own government had blown up those towers. I’m so sorry! (In my defense, I had been reading a lot of commie-pinko propaganda recently…) But now I get it! These same monsters who want to prevent us from exercising our divinely-ordained manifest destiny down there in those mudblood countries (even the ones that President Monroe gave us that doctrine thingy to intervene in) must have been the real terrorists on 9/11! First they attack our freedom towers, then they organize a political movement to stop our brave freedom fighters in our CIA from doing the job they need to do to keep us safe and free. You’re right, dumbed down, these socialists have got to go! But how, when our capitalist system is so undefended?
Wait a minute, wasn’t there an article at that great Dark Secrets of the Talmud site that explained how those torah scientists brought some Jew back to life? All we gotta do is find Joe McCarthy’s grave…
I've been mulling over the idea that's been floating round the Net today -- I think it originated with Greg Palast -- that the real reason there hasn't been another 9/11 is that Bush gave Osama everything he wanted by pulling US bases out of Saudi Arabia in April 2003, having found an alternative location in Iraq.
Somehow, every time this thought passes through my mind, it gets a bit more baroquely conspiratorial. For starters, did Bush merely slink out of Arabia like a whipped puppydog -- or did he and Osama cut a deal?
And if they did cut a deal, is it possible that the real reason for invading Iraq was to provide that alternative base of operations to make the deal possible?
And beyond that, given that we know for a fact that the Bush family and the bin Laden family have been tight since the early 1990's, just how contrived could the whole thing have been?
Could 9/11 have been entirely a Bush/bin Laden collusion in the name of mutual profit?
Of course, W, the village idiot, wouldn't have to know what was really going on. Perhaps neither would Osama, the family fanatic. Let the grownups handle the business matters and nudge the unruly children into place.
And, no, I don't know how it would have worked. These are midnight flights of fancy and such things don't have to be logically supported. At least not until the next morning, when you examine them in the cold light of day and they either take on greater solidity or fly into fragments and float away on the breeze.
But a Bush/bin Laden plot could explain a lot, especially in terms of some of the more niggling loose ends of 9/11 conspiracy theory.
Okay, now tell me five other people have already thought of this and worked it out in detail... but if you do, be sure to provide links.
please go out and rent "Why We Fight" if you haven't already seen it.
Its all the same bag dude no matter how you slice it, its not one or the other "commies" or CIA, Freemasons or Alquida Illuminati or pharisees. Its the same group of internationals following a simple plan of world revolution,as inspired by the oral tradition. Mr. Cuttlefish you have class, your not as abbrasive as your brother jon and you sir are king of the convoluted.
my exercise in futility is complete
Cheers.
This is freaking hilarous. Talk about a cover up of never going like they said!
NASA loses original videotape of first moon landing
FPF-intro + Staff and Wire Reports
fpf@chello.nl
When too many journalists, researchers and other curious people insisted on seeing the original NASA films, more and more requests came in under the 'Freedom of Information Act' to force NASA to show the original material. The answer now is: the originals are lost.
Actually, you can see the "real originals" (the multiple outtakes of "not going to the moon", classified film reels of SCRIPTED MOON MISSIONS AND TRANSPARENCIES OF THE EARTH PLACED OVER THE IN ORBIT WINDOWS to make them look like it was far away,--they were accidentally given to a researching journalist) here:
The whole "space race" was a US/USSR lie to get people all divided up and warring against each other, while their governmetns cooperated on technological issues behind the scenes. However, the zealous Nazi leaning Nixonians wanted to stage a public relations coup about the "moon missions" that they found by the end of the 1960s they were unable to do--so they just make a movie about it, and showed that to the world.
I will say one thing I disagree with about the following links presentation. He acts like the Yuri Gregarin stuff was real as well, when there is interesting stuff about that being totally scripted as well.
It's all about hiding the black projects, baby, that all Illuminati governments have been working on for generations together while they pretend they are "gosh darn it" really fighting each other to keep their sheep in line.
Nothing organizes subservience than the artifice of perpetual war. Orwell should have set his book in WWI, when all the fake global wars started...
Flash animation introduction, inline to the brower, watch the scared astroNOUGHT being cornered and RUNNING AWAY!
www.moonmovie.com
and read _Best Enemy Money Can Buy, by Doctor of Economics, Antony Sutton (topic: U.S. miltary aid to the Soviet Union side, during Vietnam)
Jeff here are some links that might provide a starting point for the festiness that can come to the surface in south australia.
I missed the predator class part 2 post so I am posting them here.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/snowtown/horror_2.html
Thats a start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevan_Spencer_von_Einem
And the gaia guys
http://www.gaiaguys.net/sa.3.3.05abc.htm
http://www.gaiaguys.net/sa.6.3.05Mail.htm
I dunno who brought them up on The predator class P2, but that was interesting. I wish they would provide some names and evidence re the Northern Rivers, cos it would be interesting to compare some notes.
(Thats where I live BTW)
Anyway thats a start...
Back to the issue of air travel and the latest security crack down. They are now allowing liquid medication (Insulin) on board for Diabetics. I don't have a problem with that if it is for people who have Type I Diabetes, however, if it is Type II, brought on by poor diet and no exericise, then they shouldn't be allowed to bring it on board. And, if they risk the chance of slipping into a diabetic coma without it, then they should refrain from air travel. They should deal with the implications of their greedy, grubby, gluttonous lifestyle.
Oh, and overweight and obese people should be charged a per pound surcharge when they fly. Let's call it the Fat Fuck Tax. They should be required to stand on a scale at check in. Their height will be measured and a maximum weight assigned for that height. For every pound over that maximum, they should be charged a Fat Fuck Tax. Above the scale, there should be a huge neon sign that luminates Fat Fuck Tax and the amount. A 350 lb Fat Fuck should have to pay twice what I pay to fly considering the cost of fuel these days.
I hope that wasn't too harsh. It's my Socialistic Tendencies coming out. We should all be free to be as fat as we fucking want, right? But wait, we are already free to be as fat as we fucking want........and we are as fat as all that......but our collective corpulence renders us unhealthy and immobile, thus restricting our freedom.....so, who's really free....and who's really not free?
Screw that......bottom line, don't subsidize obesity by allowing Fat Fucks to fly without paying their fare share. It's not an admirable lifestyle, and it should be shunned at every turn, rather than supported, as it is in Americana today.
Thanks for listening.
Love, Peace and Understanding to All
Dear Friends-
radically different subject. This morning ( Wednesday )one of the lead stories on the newscasts is that of the planets. It seems that "they" ( whoever is in charge of these things) are planning to add three more planets to the original NINE already in our solar system, bringing the total to TWELVE. Personally, I believe there is probably an occult reason for this, or at least one that bears a mystical element which most people wouldn't usually consider. Has anyone here heard about this? And what do you think? I'd love to hear your opinions.
Thrace-
Hey Jules:
What you are experiencing on the discussion board with Yesfer what ever his/her name is, is exactly the reason I don't post to discussion boards. IMHO, a great many of the posters to such forums are a bunch of groupies who hide behind a veil of Authoritarianism.
Yesfer's reaction to you is a classic case in point. Don't bother with him/her....just know that some of us understand your point...indeed, all of your points...and don't hold it against you for positing your thoughts in whatever form.
Shrubageddon
One question I have is where did these 3 planets come from?
Did someone put them there, or just fail to notice them.
But if you want some sort of occult something what about this.
7 planets for years.
Then after the discovery of the ninth planet this enters our worldview.
The concept of the Nine. (And for that matter the 9 nazgul of lotr)
And now with 12 planets
Well some thought from the new age world (where the nine "reisde") seems to indicate our 2 strand dna will be replaced with 12 strand dna and facilitate our majestic ascension into cosmic consciousness.
Pretty easy to build an occult structure out of that process:
>>You know 12 degrees corresponding to each of the planets moving through various forms of bullshit symbology until you achieve unity with the cosmos in the mystical 13th degree, achieving cosmic christ consciousness.
Or moving the other way inward to the sun/son as 13th degree.
Or corresponding this process with an activation of our 12 strand DNA.
Say 2 strands, mercury and venus are activated and we are here on earth waiting to transcend it by activating the 3rd strand of our DNA potential, at which point we will access mars, hence the war thing going so crazy now, we are transferring our psychic energy to mars as a preparation for the psychic shift to 3 strand dna.
it also corresponds with our leaving planet earth as another event that activates and reflects these psychic energies.
of course any more and you have send me 500 bucks for the introductary pamphlet "Mars here we come: The relationship between the war god, 3 strand ascension and the US president Bush annoucing that he intends to put a man on mars by 2020."
And for an extra $200 "Activating your Mars self. How to invoke the war God within and get whatever you desire. (And as a bonus if you follow our program properly you get a chance to be in the new reality TV show to pick the model for dennis Leary's new song "I am even more of an arsehole now.")<<
See easy as, and pretty easy to sell too if you think about it a bit.
"But wait there's more..."
The particles of control are embedded in every part of your body, you have been inhaling the "true" matrix. Full spectrum dominance means also the ability to modulate immune system activity.
The most pathetic part of it all is that people think something can still be done, but there is nothing which can stop the agenda.
Any notion of individual destiny is but an illusion. Entire cross sections of populations have patterned their existence, internal and external, after the shared media hallucinations injected into their consciousness. The celebrities stole their futures and those of their children...the movie studios replaced their imaginations...
In 3 to 10 years, most people and their children will be dead. And if you are still alive, you will wish you were dead.
cheers shrub
cheers shrub
To Anon 10:43
Are you referring to whatever it is they have been spraying in the skies over these past years, we have breathed it in and it sits in us, waiting to be activated?
It would explain why so many athletes are dropping dead during practice sessions in unprecedented numbers.
I think the shit screws with the rhythm of your heart.
love, peace and understanding to all;
except for fat fucks.
....and chronic cell phones user who use the device like an additional appendage.....there are more exceptions.....can anyone guess what they are?
And if you are still alive, you will wish you were dead.
I wouldn't put it past them at that point to keep you from dying, or killing yourself, just as they attempted to do at Gitmo, but failed.
Or, maybe it was the other way around. It's difficult to know what is, and what isn't, these days.
There is something to the question of whether planetary numbers are deliberately established to make a point -- especially considering that the "7 planets" and the "9 planets" were tallied in very different ways.
The count of 7 planets was based on a geocentric system -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, plus the Sun and Moon. It's very deeply embedded in our culture -- the 7 days of the week (explicitly named after the planets), the 7-note scale, the Seven Seas, etc.
The geocentric system was on its way out as far as scientists and philosophers were concerned by the early 1600's. As John Donne complained:
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
But after this period of initial perplexity, the astrologers managed to hold onto to a virtual geocentrism -- as they do to this day. So it really wouldn't have been until the discovery of Uranus in 1781 that the count of 7 was decisively upset. Neptune followed in 1846 but Pluto not until 1930. And it was only at that point that the new heliocentric count of 9 planets (now including Earth but excluding the sun and moon) became iconic.
So what was going on between 1781 and 1930, when neither the geocentric system of 7 nor the heliocentric system of 9 was in place?
Well, an enormous upsurge in occultism, for one thing -- which began around the 1780's and concluded right about 1930, with the collapse of 19th century style occultism (and romanticism) and the hardening of the Western worldview into strict materialism, mechanistic science, neo-Darwinism, behavioral psychology, and existentialism. Not to mention a general upsurge in fascism and authoritarianism, midwifed by the Great Depression.
In fact, that period between about 1781 and 1930 was marked by an amazing flowering of both science and democracy in general -- compared to which the years since have been a time of fossilization at best and retrogression at worst.
So...would adding Ceres, Charon, and Xena to the count (with the option of more in the future) bust us out of the descent into hell that has been the last 3/4 of a century? Perhaps not -- but at this point, it certainly can't hurt to try.
I've just heard there has been an arrest regarding the Jon Benet Ramsey case....The arrest was made in Thailand. If so,how appropriate the title of this open thread.
Here's an article about the planets.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2314926,00.html
Actually pluto would be demoted to'dwarf planet' status (kinda throws off the woo-woo nine thing...) and join Ceres (upgraded asteroid) and just discovered Xena (I hope they keep that name!)...So eight major ones right now, three minor and a shitload of space debris. I'd imagine the number of planets a sun has is determined by the magnitude of it's gravitational attraction to keep 'em in orbit, rather than some purposeful symbology established by the NWO here on earth, hell if they wanted to call everything that orbited this sun a planet we'd have thousands, but some number like 10,682 probably would tend to be a little confusing. It WAS seven once,if you count our moon and sun, like the ancients did, geocentric, hmmm, just a little discredited scientifically, eh? Nine fit a theory for awile, but it just ain't so, supposedly there's more behind Xena, they think, maybe even planet X, I know they're still trying to figure out pluto's wonky orbit....All I'm saying is I doubt there's anything too 'esoteric' going on with the planet 'reclassification' It's eggheads clapping one hand, pretty much...BTW, Ceres has been here the whole time, and most good astrologers use her too :)...Take care, all J
INNER SPACE
OR why are at the top of the food chain.
The Inside Story
Understanding the structure of the brain
by Robert Gilman
One of the articles in The Way Of Learning (IC#6)
Summer 1984, Page 4
Copyright (c)1984, 1997 by Context Institute
DURING THE PAST FEW YEARS momentum has been building around a major shift in our understanding of how the brain/mind system works. In the old view, the brain was a large, but basically simple-minded computer. Some areas of the brain were specifically connected to each sense or to particular muscle groups, but the rest of it came into the world as a "blank slate" waiting to make connections between some specific stimulus and its specific response. Some people seemed better at making these connections than others, and this difference in skill could be described by one number known as the intelligence quotient (IQ). These connections and associations were one form of memory, and it was assumed that most of the brain was devoted to the rote recording of experience.
The new view turns much of this upside down. Researchers have been finding that the brain comes into the world with much more structure, behavioral as well as anatomical, than had been thought. This structure is mostly concerned with how experience and information is processed, and indeed the brain is a very sophisticated analyzer of the information it receives. Different parts of our brain deal with different perceptions and behaviors and/or "think" in different ways. Because of this, there is no one number that can characterize the diverse range of mental talents each of us possesses. And then the seemingly simplest mental operation, "memory", turns out to be much more mysterious than anyone expected. Extensive studies of brain damaged patients who regain most of their memory have led most researchers to give up on the idea that specific memories have a specific "location" in the brain. There is even growing evidence that much of our memory is not stored in our brain at all, but I'm getting ahead of the story.
Let us begin by looking at some of the basic processes that are involved throughout the brain. We will then turn to the larger scale "structure" of the brain/mind system.
Basic Processes
The basic building block of our whole nervous system is the nerve cell, and its structure reveals a great deal about the way the brain works. A typical nerve cell looks like a spidery octopus with many branches on each of its arms. Some of these branches and arms receive input (dendrites) while the others send output (axons). The nerve cell integrates the input from its dendrites, and if these have the right pattern, it sends an impulse of output. I say "right pattern" because some of the input encourages response while other types actively inhibit it. So each nerve cell functions like a little logical decision maker: if A and B but not C, send an impulse; otherwise keep quiet.
These nerve cells connect up with each other in complex networks, with each cell often receiving input from many sources and then sending its impulse to many other cells. Consider, for example, vision. The nerve impulses from the eye go through many steps on their way to the higher levels of the brain. The first step connects many receptors (rods or cones) in a circular area of the eye to one integrative nerve cell. This cell may be activated by light at the center of that circle and inhibited by light in the outer parts, or vice versa. In any case, these cells use comparison to detect contrast. They then pass their information on to higher order cells that detect particular kinds of patterns, like lines. The process repeats, but at the next level the integrative cells can put together the information about lines, curves, etc. into the detection of specific kinds of shapes.
Our brains thus work on the basis of patterns (with each integrative nerve cell assessing if its special conditions are met) and programs (or chains of decisions and actions with results at one level moving on to the next). Computers also operate on the basis of programs, but there is at least one major difference between the brain and a conventional electronic computer. In a computer, all of the processing, all of the decisions, are handled in one place, while in the brain, millions of decisions are being made at the same time throughout the system. This is called parallel processing and it is what makes the brain so good at recognizing patterns.
Where do these patterns and programs come from? Some of them are built-in, like the lower integrative levels in the vision system, but many are also learned. At least part of learning seems to involve the alteration of existing patterns of connection between nerve cells and/or the building of new connections. Our brains start out with more neural connections than we eventually use, with the density of connections being about 50% greater between ages 1 to 2 than in the adult brain. As we grow, many of these connections atrophy, and it is believed that part of learning involves a selective atrophy which leaves behind the patterns we have learned. More subtle chemical changes at these connections also change their strength. In addition, brain cells can continue to extend their "arms" throughout life, making new connections. How these cells know where to extend to, however, remains a mystery.
The above description of learning applies to what might best be called training - the acquiring of essentially automatic responses, patterns, and programs. It usually takes time and repeated exposure for these new patterns to become "wired" into the nervous system. There is, however, another kind of "learning" that is illustrated by simple recall of some fact or experience. Especially for subjects we are interested in, this kind of learning often takes only one exposure, and it is this kind of memory that has been impossible to localize in the brain. We will explore this in greater detail in the article on memory.
Horizontal Structure
The larger scale structure in the brain can be thought of as having two "dimensions," a "vertical" dimension of evolutionary age and a "horizontal" dimension of parallel capacities. The best known horizontal distinction is between the left and right sides of the outer part of the brain (the neocortex). Physically, they are identical mirror images of each other, but functionally they have developed an important division of labor. The first clues to this came from the work of Roger Sperry and his students at CalTech during the 1950s. Their initial focus was to understand the function of the corpus callosum, the thick bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two halves of the brain. The corpus callosum was clearly a major and strategically located part of the brain, yet research up to that time had shown that it could be completely severed without any apparent effect on behavior. By a series of ingenious experiments with animals that taught one pattern of behavior to one side of the brain (via one eye with the other eye covered with a patch), and then the opposite pattern to the other side, they were able to show that this nerve bundle was essential for communication between the two halves. But in the process they also found that the two sides could function independently. Their interest then shifted to exploring the capabilities of each side of the brain. Starting in the 60s, they were able to study human patients who had had their corpus callosum surgically severed as a (successful) means of controlling otherwise severe epileptic seizures. What they found was yet another surprise. Not only could each side of the brain work independently, each side seemed to use a different mode of thinking.
Studies with these "split-brain" patients as well as studies of the electrical activity from each side of the brain in normal subjects indicate that the left side is dominantly involved in speech, the use of symbols, analysis and logic, and keeping track of time, while the right brain is dominantly involved in visual, spatial, and musical activities, and the insight and synthesis that go on through imagination and daydreaming. The right brain also seems to have an important role to play in the translation of ideas into physical action. These are the normal pattern, but it is important to note that they are not universal, and when brain damage disables one side, the other can (depending on age) take over many of the damaged side's normal functions.
These differences were initially interpreted to mean that the left brain style was analytic and step-by-step linear while the right brain was wholistic. More recent research by Justine Sergent at McGill suggests, however, that the distinction is more one of speed and detail. Both sides analyze and both perceive wholes, but the left brain is better at detailed processing while the right is better at quick "broad brush stroke" pattern recognition. Working together, they can be a very powerful team.
One of the major effects of this research has been a new appreciation for the right brain mode of thinking and the realization that we do very little in our current educational systems to systematically develop the skills of the right brain or, even more so, to develop the coordinated functioning of both sides. Yet where attempts have been made to "educate the whole brain," the speed of learning and the level of achievement are often astounding.
The idea that we have more than one mode of thinking has been carried further by Howard Gardner of Harvard in his recent book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. His goal was to find those major patterns of intellectual capabilities that can stand on their own and so form an independent area of mental competence. He used clues from selective brain damage, the existence of idiot savants and prodigies, and psychological studies to come up with six types of intelligence: mathematical, linguistic, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and inter and intra-personal. He does not attempt to locate these in any particular part of the brain, but it would appear that the first two would be associated with the left brain, the next three with the right brain, while the last may be associated with the prefrontal cortex (see below).
Whether or not Gardner's particular groupings are the best ones remains to be seen, but it does seem clear that our potentialities are too complex to be measured by a single number (IQ) or for education to think it is doing an adequate job by addressing only some of these capabilities. Indeed, given the fundamental role of parallel processing throughout the brain, the surprise is not this multiplicity, it is that we experience as much unity of personality as we do!
Vertical Structure
The multiple talents we have been discussing are mostly associated with the outer layers of the brain - the neocortex - but they all depend on activities that are handled by older, lower level structures. One of the main explorers of this vertical dimension of the brain is Dr. Paul D. MacLean, Chief of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health. What he and others have found is that, in evolving from simple organisms to humans, the brain has not simply grown bigger - like an expanding balloon. Rather, each new evolutionary development has added on to - but not replaced - the previous step. The human brain has four major levels. The oldest level, at the core of the brain, is what MacLean describes as reptilian or the R-Complex. The neurological structure and functioning of this part of the brain is very similar to that found in the complete brains of reptiles and in the core part of other mammals. The next level is called the old mammalian or limbic system, and is characteristic of most mammals. The third level, the new mammalian or neocortex, is found in the higher mammals, especially the primates. Finally, the prefrontal cortex is uniquely human, coming in with the transition from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon humans.
What difference does all this make? The important thing about our four level brain is that each level has special functions and seems to be associated with particular kinds of behavior. Each level is able to operate somewhat independently, even in opposition to the others, although effective functioning (and especially learning) requires good coordination among the various levels. Let's look now more closely at each level:
The Reptilian Brain Reptiles are creatures of habit and instinct, but they are nevertheless fully functioning, complex organisms. The reptilian brain has a lot to take care of. First there are the basic functions such as regulating internal body processes, coordinating muscular activity, and sensing the external environment (although indications are that reptilian senses are fairly crude). But there are also more specific patterns of complex behavior. MacLean suggests the following list of primal behaviors that occur in a wide range of land animals and are probably associated with the reptilian part of the brain:
1) Territorial Behavior: Establishing, "marking", and patrolling of territory; selection and preparation of homesite; showing place-preferences; defense of territory with ritualistic display, formalized intraspecies fighting, triumphal display with success, and the assumption of distinctive postures and coloration in signaling surrender; hoarding; and use of defecation posts.
2) Travel Behavior: Trail making; foraging; hunting; homing; and migration.
3) Social Behavior: Formation of social groups; establishment of social hierarchy by ritualistic display and other means; greeting; "grooming"; courtship, with displays using coloration and adornments, mating, breeding and flocking.
The reptilian brain is a great lover of order, familiarity, and automatic responses. It is always on the look out for danger, is quick to react, but is slow to learn.
The Old Mammalian Brain From the point of view of brain evolution, probably the most important difference between mammals and reptiles is that young mammals have a childhood, a period of dependence during which they must rely on their parents for survival. This new phase of life is intimately associated with those forms of behavior that mammals do not share with reptiles - emotionally based bonding, a sense of responsibility on the part of the strong to care for the weak, play, and a more significant role for learned behavior. It is not surprising then that the old mammalian brain is centrally involved in the expression of emotion, the bonding aspects of sexuality, and the elaboration of sense perceptions, especially smell and taste. The old mammalian brain is focused both inwardly, sensing the body's internal feelings and closely connected to the hormonal system, and outwardIy, gathering sense input. It is the place where feeling is associated with experience, with all the implications that has for learning.
Robin Beebe says of this part of our brain that "It wants to be assured of nurturing, of belonging to a group, of emotional security, of sexual desirability. It is aroused or enlivened by touch, by stroking, by smells, by food, by music, by social contact, and, most basically, by love."
The New Mammalian Brain The initial step that the early mammals took into the greater flexibility that learned behavior permits proved to be a great evolutionary success. So much so, that the opportunities soon outgrew the capacity of the two older brains. The third level in the brain, the neocortex, is nature's answer, and it is devoted primarily to learning and learned behaviors. To enable this capacity for learning required further elaboration and refinement of the senses, especially sight, hearing and tactile. In humans, the neocortex is the site of most of what we call "mental capacity" - language, abstract thought, imagination, the ability to give meaning to new experiences, etc. It is occupied primarily with events in the outside world, and functions like a coldly reasoning computer.
In direct opposition to the reptilian brain's love of order, this part of our brain is always curious, always in search of novelty, new experience, and new meanings. It tends to see itself as the ruler of the mind, but it can't act without the cooperation of the older brains, and is in many ways more dispensable than they are. Experiments with rats and hamsters raised without their neocortex show them to be capable of mostly normal lives. The other possibility - neocortex left intact while the connections from the body to the older brains are cut - has been explored in experiments with monkeys. They are able to recover the ability to move around and eat, but most normal monkey behavior simply disappears.
The Newest Brain The fourth level of the brain - the prefrontal cortex - occurs only in humans and is sometimes considered a part of the neocortex. But its functions are different enough from most of the neocortex to consider it as a separate level. It is the place where we are able to combine imagination (especially the ability to plan) with feeling (for both empathy and motivation). It has strong connections with both the neocortex and the old mammalian brain (especially the areas associated with parental care). As such it is the part of the brain that is most strongly focused on the integration of rationality and emotionality in such things as altruism and cooperative activities. Through it, we are able to identify with a large whole.
As we go though our daily lives, we tend to move back and forth among these levels. For example, as I write this, I am focused mostly in the neocortex and prefrontal cortex, with the old mammal providing underlying supportive motivation and the reptile placidly helping to coordinate my fingers as I type. All goes smoothly until I hear my two-year old cry. Immediately, the reptile is alerted (simply by the loud noise) and sets off the alarm. Lagging by only a split second, the old mammal has identified the sound as one of its special cues, and all the parental protection programs are rushing into place. Somewhat more slowly, the neocortex begins to gather sense information and analyze the situation. It turns out to be a cry of frustration, not hurt, so the old mammal is able to relax a bit. The prefrontal cortex is finally able to come into play, empathizing with the child and also seeing the opportunity that this situation offers for growth toward future abilities. Together with the neocortex it then envisions a plan of response that will help the child to learn most effectively and comfortably through this situation. Had the cry been one of genuine hurt, the old mammal would have flown into action, likely running well ahead of the newer parts of the brain. Only gradually or later would I "stop to think" about what was going on. Leslie Hart refers to this process as "downshifting" - going from more sophisticated but slower modes to the faster behaviors of the older brains when we are under stress - and it helps to explain why we sometimes behave in such different ways according to the level of stress we feel.
The implications of all this for learning is something we will explore in a following article, but first we shall turn - experientially - to re-integrating our brains.
In addition to being the editor of IN CONTEXT, Robert Gilman is one of the co-authors of At The Crossroads. Ten years ago, before he decided that "the stars could wait, but the planet couldn't," Dr. Gilman spent a number of years teaching and doing research as a theoretical astrophysicist. Since then he has been exploring the development of a humane sustainable culture at a personal and community level, including building a solar home and founding a local "living lightly" association.
By the way NASA has New Horizons SPACE PROBE going to the "Kuiper Belt" .
( some say that is where the PLANET X is located now in interstellar space.
and no I do not mean Xena one of the new objects called a planet with the other two should be there in 2015 , will we still be
here though?
2012 coming signs in the sky.
In case you did not hear about this rare event which make a hexagram (star of david)
NOVEMBER 8th 2003 -- HARMONIC CONCORDANCE
On August 28, 1998, John Mirehiel (pronounced Ma-RAY-he-el), astrologer, first identified a still-to-come moment of great Astrological potential. While he was surfing the future, using a sophisticated software program that displayed planetary positions around a horoscope wheel, his attention was drawn to the patterns forming in early November of 2003.
As he watched the shifting planets, they began to align themselves in a planetary pattern known to astrologers as The Grand Sextile, (star tetrahedron ) thought to be highly beneficial when it appears in the chart of an individual . In this instance, however, the horoscope Mirehiel was seeing was not one for an individual, but rather it was a global one, for Mother Earth herself. It was a unique astrological chart, representing a moment in time during which we can change the world we see, and ourselves, if we so choose. It has been called the Harmonic Concordance of 2003.The context in which the Harmonic Concordance information is presented happens to arrive in the language of western, geocentric, tropical astrology. The chart for that moment is rife with astrological details encoded in this specific date. The metaphors to which those details refer describe a moment in which a great shift in conscious awareness may well take place. It is very interesting to note, however, that this year (2003) and this day (November 8th or 9th depending on where you are located in relation to the International Date Line), if not this exact clock moment, have clearly been anticipated within the framework of other traditions as well.
The Shifting World of 2003 In the years since the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, José Argüelles and his wife, Lloydine, have been campaigning for a calendar reform that would place us on a Thirteen-Moon Calendar, to complete the necessary realignment of humanity to the cycles naturally experienced by the Earth. They believe that this is necessary if we are to avoid crashing into "the wall" of the 2012 necrosphere. Interestingly, they tell me that on November 8, 2003, we will have exactly one galactic spin cycle left (as reckoned in the Mayan Calendar) to complete the realignment
13lunar months X 28days = 364 days
1 extra day is 365 exactly.
And lots of new telescopes in Antartica , the eye sees only a small sliver of the spectrum.
The they have a view comparable to the Hubble.
Plus in Orion the found five planets, that is the home of the Anu.
So we have been busy.
WE
I like sharing info, not personal thoughts...ok
NASA's Spitzer Digs Up Troves of Possible Solar Systems in Orion
For Release: August 14, 2006
Orion Nebula
Astronomers have long scrutinized the vast and layered clouds of the Orion nebula, an industrious star-making factory visible to the naked eye in the sword of the famous hunter constellation. Yet, Orion is still full of secrets.
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope probes deep into the clouds of dust that permeate the nebula and its surrounding regions. The striking false-color picture shows pinkish swirls of dust speckled with stars, some of which are orbited by disks of planet-forming dust.
Spitzer, with its powerful infrared vision, was able to unearth nearly 2,300 such planet-forming disks in the Orion cloud complex, a collection of turbulent star-forming clouds that includes the well-known Orion nebula.
The disks -- made of gas and dust that whirl around young suns -- are too small and distant to be seen by visible-light telescopes; however, the infrared glow of their warm dust is easily spotted by Spitzer's infrared detectors. Each disk has the potential to form planets and its own solar system.
"This is the most complete census of young stars with disks in the Orion cloud complex," said Dr. Thomas Megeath of the University of Toledo, Ohio, who led the research. "Basically, we have a census of potential solar systems, and we want to know how many are born in the cities, how many in small towns, and how many out in the countryside."
A look at Orion's demographics reveals that the potential solar systems populate a variety of environments. Megeath and his colleagues found that about 60 percent of the disk-sporting stars in the Orion cloud complex inhabit its bustling "cities," or clusters, containing hundreds of young stars. About 15 percent reside in small outer communities, and a surprising 25 percent prefer to go it alone, living in isolation.
Prior to the Spitzer observations, scientists thought that up to 90 percent of young stars, both with and without disks, dwelled in cities like those of Orion.
"The Orion image shows that many stars also appear to form in isolation or in groups of just a few stars," said team member Dr. John Stauffer of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "These new data may help us to determine the type of environment in which our sun formed."
Astronomers do not know whether our middle-aged sun grew up in the stellar equivalent of the city or countryside, though most favor a large city scenario. Newborn stars like the ones in Orion tend to drift away from their siblings over time, so it is hard to trace an adult star's origins.
Megeath and his colleagues estimate that about 60 to 70 percent of the stars in the Orion cloud complex have disks. "It is an interesting question why this number isn't 100 percent. Eventually, we may be able to understand why some stars don't have disks," said Megeath.
Spitzer's infrared vision also dug up 200 stellar embryos in the Orion cloud complex, most of which had never been seen before. Stellar embryos are still too young to have developed disks.
The Orion cloud complex is about 1,450 light-years from Earth and spans about 240 light-years of space. Spitzer's wide field of view allowed it to survey most of the complex, an area of the sky equivalent to 28 full moons. The featured image shows a slice of this survey, the equivalent of four full moons-worth of sky, and includes the Orion nebula itself.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which made the observations, was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal investigator is Dr. Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
as Kurt says on the Voyagers:
"As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth. I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us and it is with humility and hope that we take this step."
We are a grain of sand in an infinite universe.
Oui
"There shall be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars." - Jesus Christ, Luke 21:25
The Bible is filled with references to astrology. This is because astrology was widely accepted as truth in Biblical times. Christians who believe that astrology is Satanic would be surprised to learn that the Bible is filled with astrology and even Jesus himself made numerous references to astrology.
People believed in the study of the stars in Biblical times. Everyone knew the influence of the sun on the earth, and the sun was a star. It certainly made a pattern, so far as life on earth was concerned - it shaped everything, or at least nourished everything - and the shape had to be such as to allow the sun to give life to it.
One of the great astrological stories in the Bible is the story of the star of Bethlehem. It is written that the star was a sign from God signaling the birth of the Messiah into the world. The three Magi, Persian astrologer-kings, determined the time of this birth by the position of this star. In 1600, Johannes Kepler hypothesized that this star was actually a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Confirmed by modern astrology, this symbolism ties in with the prophecies of that era concerning a Messiah amongst the Jews. The conjunctions occurred at the end of Pisces, ruled by Jupiter. Jupiter is the planet of kings. Saturn is the planet that rules the Jews, thereby giving the king of the Jews. This was a very infrequent triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and it occurred in the year 7 B.C.
The following are some of the most interesting Biblical references to astrology.
"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the THIRD HEAVEN. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this person - whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that humans are not permitted to tell." (2 Cor. 12:1-4)
The phrase, "I know a person," is a euphemism people used in those days to refer to themselves in a humble manner. Paul explained that he was taken to the "third heaven." The phrase, "third heaven," is a reference to the multi-level realms of the afterlife. This is an astrological/religious concept believed by Jews, Christians, Gnostic Christians, Platonists, and other people in those days. A correlation with Paul's third heaven can be found in the Gnostic book entitled "The Apocalypse of Paul."
The Apocalypse of Paul also describes Paul's afterlife visit to the third heaven. It also describes how Paul travels through a hierarchy of heavenly realms all the way to the "tenth heaven."
According to Flavius Josephus, the famed Jewish historian, the Jewish temple at Jerusalem had the twelve signs of the zodiac inlaid in its floor. Josephus also stated that the twelve loaves of showbread in the temple was a reference to the zodiac. In modern times, Israel issued stamps with the zodiac signs identified with the twelve tribes of Israel and the astrological symbolism of the temple.
The Bible states that God made the heavenly bodies to show us "signs" of his intentions. These signs can be read by anyone who knows how to interpret them. Astrology is about interpreting these signs in the motions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars.
"And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as SIGNS to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth." And it was so." (Gen. 1:14-15)
"And there shall be SIGNS in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the Earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the Earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." (Luke 21:25-27)
In the verse above, Christ uses astrology to reveal the "signs" in the sky of his coming.
The Bible states that the first communication from God came from the stars. David writes in his Psalm:
"The HEAVENS declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day after day utters his speech and night after night shows his knowledge. There is no tongue or language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the Earth and their words to the ends of the world. In them (the heavens) he has set a tabernacle for the sun." (Psalm 19:1-4)
"Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth (the zodiac) in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? (an astrological constellation)" (Job 38:32)
This Bible verse shows God using astrology to answer Job.
The Bible also describes an astrological sign called the "Morning Star" which is a reference to the planet Venus. The Morning Star, also known as the "light bringer", is also an astrological symbol that functions as a sign for the onset of dawn. It appears as a brilliant "star" at night just before the sun rises and brings light each morning to earth. The greatest function of this "light bringer" is as a symbolic reference to the Messiah who brings the light of God to the people. The Bible also uses the term "Morning Star" as a reference to all sons of God including Lucifer, the "light bearer".
"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright MORNING STAR." (Rev. 22:16)
"And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the MORNING STAR rises in your hearts." (2 Peter 1:19)
"Just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the MORNING STAR." (Rev. 2:27-29)
"How you have fallen from heaven, O MORNING STAR, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the Earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." (Isaiah 14:12-14)
"After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. He said: "May the day of my birth perish ... May its MORNING STARS become dark; may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn, for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes." (Job 3:1-10)
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? ... On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the MORNING STARS sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7)
In one of the prophetic dreams of Joseph, he saw eleven stars bowing down to his star. The interpretation of this dream was obvious and that was that Joseph's brothers will bow down to him.
"Then he (Joseph) had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. "Listen," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me." When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, "What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?" (Gen. 37:9-11)
Of course, we all know the rest of the story that they indeed had to bow down to Joseph when Pharaoh made him a prince because of his ability to interpret dreams.
Here is an excellent Bible passage that describes the astrological influences on humanity:
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." (Eccl. 3:1-8)
Astrology refers to every 2160 years as a new "AGE" which is a different sign of the zodiac that comes into position to influence the Earth. The Bible describes events that will occur according to the signs of the astrological "ages".
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the AGE.” (Matt. 28:20)
“Anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this AGE or in the AGE to come.” (Matt. 12:32)
“The harvest is the end of the AGE, and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the AGE.” (Matt. 13:39-40)
“What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the AGE?” (Matt. 24:3)
“No one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this AGE and, in the AGE to come, eternal life.” (Luke 18:29-30)
“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this AGE or of the rulers of this AGE ... None of the rulers of this AGE understood it.” (1 Cor. 3:6-8)
“These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the AGES has come.” (1 Cor. 10:11)
"[Christ was raised] far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present AGE but also in the one to come.” (Eph. 1:21)
“... who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming AGE.” (Heb. 6:5)
“Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the AGE of the ages.” (Heb. 9:26)
“Just and true are your ways, King of the AGES.” (Rev. 15:3)
All these Bible verses are referring to the end of the AGE of Pisces (the fish, the Church age) and the beginning of the AGE of Aquarius (the water-bearer, Christ).
Jesus was born under the end of the age of Aries (the ram or lamb) and this may explain why he called himself the "lamb of God." By the time Jesus began his ministry, it was the beginning of the age of Pisces (the fish, the Church age). The sign of the fish has special significance to Christianity because the sign of the fish has been known throughout the millennia to be the sign of Christianity. Jesus recruited "fishermen" as disciples to make them "fishers of men." He fed the masses with a miraculous draft of fishes. His followers were know in Latin as "pisciculi", the "little fishes." A commonly used icon in Christian churches is the "Vesica Piscis", which is Latin for "mouth of the fish". Its shape resembles a fish without a tail. It can be seen in the shape of stained glass windows in many churches and cathedrals. The Pope wears a ceremonial hat in the shape of a fish head.
Around the year 2300 A.D., the end of the age of Pisces will occur. The world will then enter a new age, the age of Aquarius (the Water-Bearer). It should be obvious to Christians that the identity of this "Water-Bearer" is the one who (1) came from the waters of Galilee (2) baptized with water (3) changed water into wine (4) walked on the water (5) washed the feet of others with water (6) calmed the ocean waters (7) gives living water (8) says we must be born of water (9) drank the cup from the Father.
Sometime before the age of Aquarius arrives, major earth changes were foretold by Jesus and Cayce to occur. Jesus said that before this happens, there will be wonders in the sun, moon, and stars signaling this coming age of the Christ consciousness. This is a good reason why every Christian should study astrology so that these heavenly signs can be interpreted.
Another astrological reference concerning Christianity deals with the winter solstice which begins on December 21. It is the day of the year when the night is longest and the daytime shortest. The ancient Egyptians noticed that on the autumn equinox, the sun does not set farther south and sets in the same place on the horizon for three days. This is an astrological reference to when the sun (Son) goes down for three days (dies) and then begins to rise again (resurrection). Using the crude instruments available, ancient astronomers were able to detect by December 25th of each year that the daytime had become noticeably longer. This date was chosen, and remains, the traditional date for followers of many different religions to celebrate the "rebirth" of the sun. Following the equinox, each succeeding day has slightly more sunlight than the previous day. It was seen as a promise that warmth would return once more to the earth. Numerous pre-Christian religions honored their gods' birth or rebirth on or about that day.
The ancient Egyptians knew that as long as the sun rose in the morning, life would continue on the Earth. This explains why the Egyptians used the sun as their symbol for the eternal life of the cycle of the seasons. In many Christian churches today, the symbol of the cross with a circle in the center of it appears on church steeples. This icon of the circle as representing the sun, comes from the Egyptian belief that the sun represents eternal life.
In the Book of Revelation, the following symbolism is used to describe the appearance of the Son:
“Behold, he comes with clouds and every eye shall see him.” (Rev. 1:7) The Son (sun) is the “light of the world” and is seen by everyone.
“The Son (sun) of righteousness arises with healing in his wings.” (Malachi 4:2)
The Egyptian religion held that the Sun of God, Horus, was killed under the sign of Virgo (the virgin) but was resurrected in the age of Leo (the lion). This is why the Egyptians built the Sphinx with the head of a woman (Virgo) and the body of a lion (Leo).
During the days of Moses, the Hebrews were subject to the religion of Egypt. Before the worship of Amen-Ra (God) was instituted, Egyptians worshipped Isis (the Mother of God). When the Hebrews left Egypt and arrived in Canaan, their religion was influenced by the Canaanite religion whose God was named El (the planet of Saturn). The Star of David is a symbol which comes from the “star” of Saturn (El) which is the planet the ancients used to refer to the Hebrews.
With the influence of the religions of Isis, Ra and El, or:
Is(is) Ra El(Elohim-Lord) or Mother Father Son(Sun)
The Hebrews named their nation Is-Ra-El, or Israel. The Hebrews adopted Saturday (from Saturn's day) as their day of worship. Christians, whose astrological influence was the sun (also from Egyptian origin), worshipped on Sunday (or the sun's day).
The story of Jonah (Semetic for "sun") is about a man who is swallowed by a whale (death) and remains in it's belly for three days at which time the man is freed (resurrection). This story is another symbolic of the astrological account of how the sun remains still for three days during the winter equinox. It is also symbolic of the resurrection of Christ.
When Moses came down from the mountain, he saw the people worshipping a golden calf. This idol came from the Egyptians astrological worship of the sun. Golden represents the color of the sun. The calf (Taurus the bull) represents the age in which the Moses lived when he wrote the Torah. When history moved into the next sign (Aries the ram), the Hebrews celebrated the approach of their Messiah by blowing rams horns. The sign of Aries influenced many religions to adopt the “lamb of God” concept.
The concept of the zodiac is very ancient, with roots in the early cited cultures of Mesopotamia. Astrology is, more than likely, the oldest religion created by humans. The first twelve-sign zodiacs were named after the gods of these cultures. The Greeks adopted astrology from the Babylonians, and the Romans, in turn, adopted astrology from the Greeks. These cultures renamed the signs of the Mesopotamian zodiac to symbols of their own mythologies. This is why the familiar zodiac of the contemporary West bears names out of Mediterranean mythology.
The concept of reincarnation is a necessary tenet of astrology. The notions of reincarnation and karma together explain why some people are born into lucky circumstances and others into unfortunate conditions. For astrologers concerned with the question of why some people are born into a life of hardship written large across their horoscopes and other people seem to be born under a lucky star, reincarnation and karma prove important explanatory tools to understand divine justice. Reincarnation also provides a framework for explaining why a person has certain personality traits. They are carryovers from past lifetimes.
"There shall be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars." - Jesus Christ, Luke 21:25
Astrology is the highest form of divination.
Cycles of time (how we have seasons)
and linear time 2006 ,2007, 2008...ad infinitum.
So, let me ask. Are you the same anonymous who rebuked my call for less air travel?
If so, how the hell am I to get in touvh with the stars with all the sit clogging the skys and obscuring the view? The beauty of the universe, at least what can viewed with the naked eye is being obscured from us on an exponential basis. Light Pollution, Satellites, Air Traffic and shields the magnificence from our eyes.......yet you condone more air travel. If you are not that Anonymous, forgive me......it's hard to tell one from the other these days.
I imagine the night sky looked vastly different 2000-3000 years prior. If we could experience that view today, I'm certain the majority of us would have an epithany, of sorts. The shame of it all.
Shrubbery,
AS ABOVE SO BELOW maxim applies for yor mindless drive.
Your brain must be stuck in first gear,
Knight of Ni
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4799835.stm
Since 11 September 2001, it is standard procedure to send fighter jets to intercept commercial flights that may have become terrorist threats
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I'm with Bible Bob, the answer is definitely written in the good book.
Although it has nothing to do with prophecy.
Prophecy-shmophecy I say.
The real reason we're neck deep in our own feces is just a simple Biblical cause & effect.
The Big Cahuna said it plain & simple in Leviticus 15:19-30
And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean. And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean. And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if it run beyond the time of her separation; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she shall be unclean. Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her issue shall be unto her as the bed of her separation: and whatsoever she sitteth upon shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her separation. And whosoever toucheth those things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.
You see, God, in His infinite wisdom, has given us the answer, yet we continue to ignore it.
Menstrual blood, my friends.
That is what turns this rosy God created Disneyland into the rancid shitheap that it is.
& I fear that, until we see a huuuuuuuuuuuge mothereffin increase in toasted pidgeons, things are only going to go from bad to worse.
You have been warned.
Richard, if you only knew what effect that passage has had upon me. It's pure mind control, I tell you.
True story. It is in regards to the birth of our first child, our 7, soon to be 8, year old daughter. My wife had two pieces of homemade lemon cake the night she went into labor....she attributes the cake to inducing the labor, but that's beside the point.
Anyhow, she started having repeated contractions early in the evening. We measured the interval between and determined it was too soon to jump the gun, so we managed to go to sleep knowing she would awaken if the contractions got worse and the interval shortened.
Well, lo and behold, I wake up to the sound of a giant water baloon bursting and the sound of water gushing out in douching fashion. Of course, I knew right away her water broke, and incidentally, so did she (knew her water broke). She rolled out of bed, because jumping at this late stage was quite impossible, and made a beeline to the shower. I went into shock.
While she was readying herself for the trip to the hospital (she already had her bag packed) all I could focus on was cleaning up the "unclean" embryonic fluid that had rushed out of her womb. She prompted me several times, whilst she is in severe pain and the contractions are coming sooner and sooner, to "come on," but I couldn't hear her, because I had to get the bed and carpet sanitized.
Somehow, she was finally able to penetrate my trance and get my attention. I attribute my Manchurian Candidate like fixation on cleaning the supposed "uncleanliness" to this very passage.
The Bible is, no doubt, MK Ultra/Occultist Mind Control material.
Thanks for reminding me.
Richard,
On the other side of the spectrum from what you posted, I had several friends in College, who considered it a Right of Passage to perform cunnilingus on a girl when she was menstruating. They called it, get this, "getting your wings." Apparently, when they are finished, and look in the mirror before wiping their faces, they have what appears to be Red Wings on either cheek.
That's screwed up, wouldn't you say?
The Bible tells us that God thinks that any discharge from the sex organs is unclean. Primitive man believed that when a woman had a menstrual cycle, she was getting rid of "bad blood." God apparently believed the same thing because, according to God's laws, a woman who was on her menstrual cycle was considered "unclean" for seven days. This uncleanliness was apparently contagious, since anyone who touched her while she was on her period was also considered unclean (Leviticus 15:19). In another passage, the Bible states that if a man has sex with a woman on her period, both he and the bed they did it on will be unclean (Leviticus 15:24). Later in the chapter this uncleanliness was considered to be so bad that the death penalty was demanded for any couple who had sexual intercourse while the woman was having her period (Leviticus 18:19, 20:18). Not only people, but things could catch this uncleanliness, including everything she layed on or sat on. And if anyone touched something which she layed or sat on, that person was also considered to be unclean (Leviticus 15:20-28). While she was unclean, the menstruating woman had to participate in purification rites, staying isolated and hidden, often outside the city or camp, until she had cleaned her menstrual rags. After the menstruating woman had completed her seven days of purification rites, she was required to bring two animals, for a burnt offering and a sin offering, to the priest, to atone for her "sin" of uncleanliness. The New Testament also mentions how a woman with a twelve year long menstrual flow (probably as a result of veneral disease due to its description -see Mark 5:26) was healed after she touched Jesus' garment (Matt. 9:20, Mark 5:25-29, Luke 8:43). It's amazing to think that any educated person would believe that the creator of all the universe would exhibit such ignorance concerning the natural reproductive function of the female body.
God's word tells us that the very act of conception is "sin" (Psalms 51:3-5) and that when a woman conceives, it is in sin. It also said that God made childbirth painful as a form of punishment (Genesis 3:16). Believers rationalize that Eve's reproductive functions were cursed because Eve succumbed to temptation and partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. Ask any woman today what she did to deserve pain and suffering during childbirth. If she is a rational human, she will tell you that nothing that any of her ancestors did should condemn her to a life of suffering. For some reason, God decided to tell Moses that the miraculous and beautiful act of childbirth makes a woman "unclean" (Leviticus 12:1-8). Again it is the blood which accompanies the birth which supposedly makes her unclean (Lev. 12:7). If she delivered a male child she was considered unclean for 40 days and if she delivered a female child she would be unclean for 80 days. As we stated earlier, it was probably the blood sacrifice of human flesh (circumcision) that her shortened her period of uncleanliness, although some experts have theorized that the difference may have been due to the increased value of a male child over a female in Hebrew society.
Women weren't the only ones with unclean discharges in the Bible. A man's "issue" or seminal discharge was considered "unclean." According to God's laws, after engaging in sexual intercourse, both the man and the woman were supposed to clean the semen off themselves with water. Even after doing that they were considered unclean for the rest of that day (Leviticus 15:18). Moses went so far as to command the men in his group to keep clean by washing their clothes and not having sex with their wives for three days (Exodus 19:14-15).
Ejaculation, whether by masturbation or nocturnal emission was considered to be dirty by God, who lumped it in the same category as handling rotten meat (Leviticus 22:4-7). If a man masturbated and his ejaculate got on his clothes or the carpet, those things had to be washed and were also considered unclean until the evening (Leviticus 15:16-17). Also, if a man had a wet dream, he had to leave the camp and couldn't come back in until the next evening (Deuteronomy 23:10-11). What a sticky situation to be in!
Just makes me wanna praise that Jesus! So useful and relevent. It just makes that Islam stuff look craaaaazzzy.
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Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.
six (see also numbers, star od david) Allendy regards siesas basically indicating'The indefiniely counterpoised confronyayion of creature and creator'. This confrontation is not conflictual, and may only indicate a simple difference, but nevertheless be the source of all the ambivalences in the number six since, in fact, it embraces the network of actions embodied in two groups of three. It may have as strong a tendency towards evil as towards good, towards rebellion against God as towards union with him. It is perfection in the form of power, pictorially expressed by the symbolism of six equilateral triangles within a circle. Each side of each triangle equals the radius of the circle and six is almost exactly the ration of the circumference to the radius. However, this potential perfection may come to grief, and this danger makes six the number of the trial betwen good and evil. The Penquin.
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