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been having some tekkie probs nothing serious.
did u miss our little island of sanity ?
UP!
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u cant understand the world without innerstanding yourself
up! 0006 // aug 23, 05
A Popular War
la- la- la- lap-toppling da system!
u cant innerstand yourself without understanding the world
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'The operation in Iraq has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life' is the funniest/ saddest/ worthiest pun i've heard in a long time.
H.R.H Kailash Elmer, Berlin.
>> id call it the saddest pun in my entire life
and it will absolutely amaze and baffle future generations how so many people could ignore the phenomenon, could fail to ask themselves what must be driving their fellow human brothers and sisters to such straits!
UP!
Assassinate All Dangers
Its Cheaper Than A War
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.
Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil to the United States. The CIA estimates that U.S. markets absorb almost 59% of Venezuela's total exports.
Venezuela's government has demanded in the past that the United States crack down on Cuban and Venezuelan "terrorists " in Florida who they say are conspiring against Chavez.
Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."
[Associated Press]
UP!
London: JUNE 5, 1857
A Popular War
They Kidnap And Kill Every Foreigner Within Their Reach
Frederick Engels, New York Daily Tribune
&& There is evidently a different spirit among the Chinese now to what they showed in the 1840-42 war. Then, the people left the Emperors soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after a defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy.
But now, the mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hong Kong wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation. (Liebig found large quantities of arsenic pervading all parts of them, showing that it had already been worked into the dough. The dose, however, was so strong that it must have acted as an emetic, and thereby counteracted the effects of the poison.)
They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kidnap and kill every foreigner within their reach. The very coolies emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames.
Even out of China, the Chinese colonists, the most submissive and meek of subjects hitherto, conspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection, as at Sarawak; or, as at Singapore, they are held down by main force and vigilance only. The piratical policy of the British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners, and marked it as a war of extermination.
What is an army to do against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemys country, how to maintain itself there? Civilization-mongers who throw hot shell on a defenceless city and add rape to murder, may call the system cowardly, barbarous, atrocious; but what matters it to the Chinese if it be only successful? Since the British treat them as barbarians, they cannot deny to them the full benefit of their barbarism. If their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres are what we call cowardly, the civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.
In short, instead of moralising on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese, as the chivalrous English press does, we had better recognise that this is a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war. And in a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the commonly recognised rules of warfare, nor by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilisation only attained by that insurgent nation.
[New York Daily Tribune, No. 5032, 5 June 1857]
UP! why chicken cross rd? Adolph Hitler: Because it was his racial destiny to expand his Chickensraum.
Is Bush Out of Control?
by Doug Thompson
Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting, and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.
They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him, and ends meetings in the Oval Office with ³get out of here!²
In fact, George W. Bushıs mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain ³weather reports² to warn of the President ıs demeanor. Calm seas means hes calm while Tornado alert is a warning that he is pissed at the world.
Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the Presidentıs paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a god-damned traitor for opposing him on stem-cell research.
Thereıs real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it, a high-level aide told me recently.
A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the Presidentıs wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity. The reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
Dr. Frank diagnosed the president as a paranoid megalomaniac and untreated alcoholic whose lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of baghdad showcase Bushıs instabilities. I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed. He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.
Dr. Frankıs conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.
Conversations over the last few weeks with longtime friends who work in the Bush White House confirm even more what Dr. Frank says and others have suggested.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS OUT OF CONTROL. HOW LONG CAN THE SHIP OF STATE CONTINUE TO SAIL WITH A MADMAN AT THE HELM?
http://tinyurl.com/a9w6p
UP!
I'm thinking hard about this new twist in the light of finding myself being recruited to work for the US Army as a civilian Social Worker (I one of those) doing family advocacy with those poor blokes who signed themselves up for God knows what reason.
You think there is any chance my crawling into the lion's den will help make any difference? That I who am totally disgusted by Dubya and his neocon agenda keepers and cannot bear to see his face much less listen to him rant, would be able to do a dime's worth of good working on an army base?
Ruth-Claire, Miami.
>> very difficult. i know people who'd tell you youre actually ENCOURAGING bush if you do what you're planning
everything you do (with real heart) is bound to do some good. i reckon the real question we should each be asking ourselves is what is my main way to help? continuing with what you've been doing is not necessarily enough these days. we must all do more in some way. yes? and we need to look at what we're doing with a more critical eye. it COULD even be that we need to drop what we normally do, our whole normal lifestyle, to participate in the main emergency. obviously i can't make that decision for you and i might even have a slightly different opinion tomorrow
i don't think so tho
UP!
MANY MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN (FURTHER) RADICALISED BY THE IRAQ WAR,
BRITAIN'S MANIFEST DISREGARD FOR LIVES THERE,
THE ILLEGAL REASONS, AND THE LIES!
Iraq Has Descended Into Chaos
Way Beyond The West's Worst-Case Scenario
Patrick Cockburn
http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=1042&fArticleId=2637594
A soon-to-be-published investigation of 300 young Saudis caught and interrogated by Saudi intelligence on their way to Iraq to fight or blow themselves up shows that very few had any previous contact with al-Qaeda or any other terror organisation before 2003. The invasion of Iraq made them decide to die.
Some 36 Saudis who did blow themselves up in Iraq did so for similar reasons, according to the same study commissioned by the Saudi government and carried out by US-trained Saudi researcher Nawaf Obaid, who was given permission to speak to Saudi intelligence officers.
A separate Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters in Iraq, carried out by the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Israel, also concluded that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq alone.
It is odd that even Israel agrees that the war in Iraq has been a major contributing factor to the present day events.
Best wishes, and keep up the good work, Fraser!
Tamzin Jans, Marseilles.
UP! why chicken cross rd? H.P. Lovecraft: They say my head has been cut off, but the blind fools will soon know the eldritch horror of the abominable Pukpuklathop who froths with loathsome ecstasy in unspeakable slime beyond the NOW OPENED PORTALS TO THE OTHER SIDE!!!
Return To Newstyle Iraq-Contra Days
Venezuelas President Chavez is blowing the whistle on a return to the Iran-contra days of U.S. involvement in covert activities, mercenaries, and narcotics and weapons smuggling in Latin America. These activities now involve Iraq.
Venezuelan authorities are investigating the activities of DEA agents attached to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. The government has revoked their diplomatic immunity.
Now comes word that Ecuador's Minister of Information has ordered an immediate investigation into the activities of U.S. firm EPI Security and Investigation in recruiting activities at the U.S. counter-narcotics base at Manta, Ecuador. According to Bogotás El Tiempo and Mexico City's La Jornada, the firms been involved in recruiting 1,000 former Colombian military and police personnel for contract work in Iraq.
Many of the former policemen and military members were trained by U.S. Special Forces in Latin America, including trainers from the infamous School of the Americas (now Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), once based in Panama and now in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Three other U.S. mercenary companies are also reportedly active in recruiting at the Manta airbase. They are Dyncorp, Blackwater, and Halliburton . EPI Security, headed by a former US Air Force officer and former Dyncorp official named Jeffrey Shippy, also maintains a representative in Baghdad and an office in Bogota.
UP!
The American Dollar is phoney fiat money backed by nothing but perception and confidence .
War is the last gasp of the U.S. Empire.
Taking present values as of fiscal year end 2002 and interpreting the policies in the federal budget for fiscal year 2004 as current policies, the federal government's total fiscal imbalance is equal to $44.2 trillion.
UP!
SILENCE FOR THE MAYOR !!
HES GOT 3 WAYS TO MAKE US ALL SAFER
Support the police, treat Muslims with respect and pull out of Iraq
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London.
Protecting London requires the best possible policing - which, in turn, needs the greatest possible flow of information from all communities. It also demands that we shrink the pool of the alienated that bombers draw on by treating all communities as equal parts of British society - not only theoretically, but in reality. And it means withdrawing from Iraq. All are interrelated.
Acceptance that the invasion of Iraq increased the likelihood of a terrorist attack on London now extends to a majority of the British public. If the invasion of Iraq had been justified, it would be possible to argue that we must bear the sacrifices necessary to achieve a just outcome. However, it is evident that the war in Iraq was not justified. It has made the situation worse. The illusions with which it was launched are collapsing.
The reason the US is not able to stabilise Iraq is related to the same critical issue that affects policing in Britain: information . Which is simply another way of saying the attitude of the population .
US forces are ineffective because the great bulk of the population will not give them intelligence voluntarily. Therefore elements within the US military are led to resort to ritual humiliation and torture. This does not yield remotely sufficient information. Therefore US forces are led to relatively blind strikes against those opposing them - inevitably killing innocent civilians. This, of course, has the effect of alienating the population further.
The Iraqi people see US policy in practice. Successive US administrations showed no interest in Iraqi democracy - so long as Saddam Hussein gassed Iranians, Kurds or other US opponents he was supplied with weapons and other support. Only when he struck a US ally was he opposed.
After the 2003 invasion, when US troops were deployed to protect the oil ministry while looting gripped Iraq, when key reconstruction contracts were awarded to US companies, Iraqis understood what was in store for them. US forces cannot win over Iraq's population because the formally stated democratic goals of the forces have nothing to do with the actual policy pursued.
That is also why al-Qaida , previously without a presence in Iraq, now has a strong base there - damaging the fight against international terrorism.
Nevertheless, I want to make the point to some opponents of the war. It is not a policy simply to explain to people: "You are dying because Britain is in Iraq." The bombers came to kill indiscriminately. As one Londoner put it to me: "I am a Muslim and scared - and my first fear is being blown up ." I supported action against the Iraq war and I support measures to stop Londoners being bombed.
Right now, only the police can stop bombers. Anyone who tries to avoid this is not dealing with what are literally life and death matters. But the police can only be effective if they get community cooperation . Opponents of the war should continue to oppose it. But they also have to say to London's communities: " Cooperate with the police to catch terrorists " - and explain that the quality of information the police get will be decisively affected by the degree to which communities are treated with respect.
The London bombings, demand clear thinking, not rhetoric. People's lives depend on the decisions made. These must be for every community to aid the police in preventing attacks; to treat Britain's Muslim community with respect, both because it is right and to shrink the pools terrorists operate in; and for Britain to withdraw from Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1542020,00.html
UP! why chicken cross rd? F. Scott Fitzgerald: Because he believed in the green light, the orgiastic chicken-run that year by year recedes before us. It eluded him then, but that's no matter; tomorrow he will scurry faster, poke out his beak further, and one fine day....
Intelligence Tests for Computers
Since traditional measures of human intelligence would often be inappropriate for systems that have very different senses, environments, and cognitive capacities from our own, Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter at the Swiss Institute for
Artificial Intelligence in Manno-Lugano, have drafted an idea for an alternative Intelligence Test for computers which would measure the AI's ability to carry out complex tasks within its particular environment and then comparing the complexity of its environment with those of a wide range of other AI systems.
NewScientist.com
up!
Pocket-Sized Computer 'Soul ' Developed
IBM has developed a way to carry a powerful, personalised virtual computer from one PC to the next, without losing the user's work, by using a USB key or other portable device. The virtual computer's "soul " - as the researchers dub it - can then be uploaded to a new PC simply by plugging in the device.
NewScientist.com
>> what will this have become 100 years from now?
UP!
Ex US Health Sec Plans Verichip Insertion In Arm!
President Bush's former health secretary Tommy Thompson proposes that US citizens have an RFID chip inserted under their skin. He plans to have a VeriChip inserted in his own arm. The RFID capsules would be linked to a database being created by the Department of Health and Human Services to store and manage the nation's health records.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=4734&m=5435
>> the problems with these things are always the same. everything depends on whos in charge. if u cant trust your government you cant trust any new breakthrough they offer.
up!
Medics Braced for Fresh Superbug
Nature reports that medical experts are concerned that if antibiotic overuse in hospitals is not curbed, drug-resistant strains of the Acinetobacter baumannii bacterium could become a serious killer in intensive-care wards worldwide. "We have calculated that 40% of our patients who become infected with A. baumannii die because of it."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=4748&m=5435
>> the truth begins to emerge. its got nothing to do with dirty wards and all that cover story. Deep Surgery, as well as antibiotics, might have to go, and well look back on this era in amazement and horror: why in goddess name were they cutting up each others living bodies and dousing them with killer chemicals?!!!.
UP!
George Galloway:
UK And America Raping Baghdad
BBC News
"It can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world against American hegemony&
"These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable.
"We don't know who they are, we don't know their names, we never saw their faces, they don't put up photographs of their martyrs, we don't know the names of their leaders."
He told Syrian Television: "Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters."
Mr Galloway said Tony Blair's idea of a "war on terrorism" was absurd as terrorism was a tactic, not a strategy. He also said it is clear that the US and UK are losing the war.
"It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick. It's not the Muslims who need to be cured. It's the imperialist countries that need to be cured."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4744685.stm
UP! why chicken cross rd? Oprah Winfrey: He was reacting to a repressed traumatic caponisation in his childhood which he will now share with us in detail..
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T EX T J OC KE Y // TJ PHRASER (Fraser Clark) & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION
MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD
@ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP *
* Ideas Per Paragraph
TO SUBSCRIBE SOMEONE, WRITE I wanna get UP! TO fraser@parallel-youniversity.com
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, HIT REPLY WITH REMOVE IN THE SUBJECT BOX
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Iraq War Costs May Top Vietnam 's
Dave Zweifel
"Osama bin Laden doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death."
That was the prediction to a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle last week of Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who was in charge of the pursuit of bin Laden before retiring last year.
The total now stands at $314 billion and if things continue, costs will amount to another $450 billion over the next 10 years. That would make what the Bush administration calls the "war on terror" the most expensive U.S. military effort in the last 60 years, according to the Chronicle's report.
In today's dollars, the Korean War cost $430 billion, while Vietnam cost $600 billion. The cost of Iraq will probably hit $700 billion.
But that's only part of the story. Already the Department of Defence is making noises about needing more money for pay and incentives just to keep the military strength where it needs to be.
If the White House doesn't increase military spending, James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation told the Chronicle, the United States could end up with both a looming disaster in Iraq and a weaker military.
That's the mess this administration has got us in.
UP! why chicken cross rd? William Faulkner: Because the inbreeding which had reduced his once proud line to alcoholic degenerates brooding among the magnolias serpentine with kudzu as the Mississippi sun poured its withering scorn on the abandoned cotton fields where his deranged father had pecked in dusty vain for forty years had driven him to the point where he no longer knew when to stop or whether in fact it was a good idea to stop since in his rare moments of lucidity he could see not even a semicolon for miles and miles and then some.......
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the UP! is a global edutainment round-up, broadcast weekly to =[13,580]=
Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age// Peace folks
recommended to the Parallel YOUniversity// Megatripolis Dance Dept as
"showing signs of life".
Since recipients forward it widely to their own lists & sites,
we conservatively estimate 50,000+ direct recipients.
A further 40,000 read it on the YOUniversity's site.
And, because of its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content,
it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide,
making an estimated total weekly readership of =[275,000]=
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Al Qaeda To West: It's About Your Policies
The last al Qaeda video, broadcast by Ayman al-Zawahiri, is another message apparently intended to turn Western democracies against their leaders by explaining acts of terrorism as rational decisions from a group with specific political goals. It challenges Blair and Bushs insistence that terror attacks will continue regardless of policy.
While some of his audio and video tapes seem generally targeted at mobilising al Qaeda's "base," filled with Islamic illusions and glorification of martyrs designed to reassure adherents and draw new members, this communication falls into a category of tapes that targets primarily a Western audience.
Rather than casting his jihad as an inevitable clash of civilisations, he frames acts of terrorism as justified by the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and offers to end attacks on the West if a full withdrawal is made from "Muslim lands."
"Blair has brought to you destruction in central London, and he will bring you more destruction, God willing.
As for you Americans, what you have seen in New York and Washington, what losses you see in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the media blackout, are merely the losses of the initial clashes. If you go on with the same policy of aggression against Muslims, you will see, God willing, things that will make you forget the horrors of Vietnam and Afghanistan.
To the people of the Crusader Coalition ... our blessed Sheikh Osama has offered you a truce so that you leave Muslim land. As he said, you will not dream of security until we live it as a reality in Palestine.
Our message to you is clear, strong and final: There will be no salvation until you withdraw from our land, stop stealing our oil and resources, and end support for infidel [Arab] rulers."
UP! why chicken cross rd? Al Gore: Because I designed the Information Superhighway so that all chickens, especially American ones, can cross under our benevolent supervision.
I am really concerned and baffled by the tone of some of the stuff on these latest UP! letters. Its as if while lamenting the plight of the oppressed nations across the earth, many of you are simultaneously extolling sympathy for the "reasons" of suicide bombers. Saying that "we" have pushed and oppressed for years and now this is the backlash. Baby, that's the history of the fuggin world, no more and no less and today is no different than a thousand years ago.
>> but thats just the problem! we HAVE to go beyond that. and only our side can do it.
You have to resist the urge to get into the "well they did this because these others did that and these others did that because...." and so on ad nausea. It doesn't matter in the end because the only people dying over any of this, on either side, are ordinary sods like you and me, and not world leaders or dictators or masterminds.
>> exactly! they put pressure on us innocent citizens who live on the hog because of our governing elite and who are actually paying for all the slaughter.
Workers, as usual, are getting it left and right and women and children remain the number one victims of war, religion, law and everything else, come to think of it. The only solution, I guess is enlightenment. Fat chance, sadly.
You cannot condone over here and condemn over there or you are doing EXACTLY the same justification game as the leaders who get us into all these messes.
>> youre surely not saying that we are over there as a reactionto something they did!
After all, they use terrorist attacks to justify wars and now you are justifying the terrorist attacks by saying "it's because of the war". It's just too simplistic of a view point and ignores the fact that seriously mind-warping brainwashing techniques and distortions of the koran are being used to turn misguided men into human weapons. Do you really think an unexceptional English 18 year old lad from Leeds has any kind of sophisticated understanding of the forces that drive world economies, wars, etc. Do you actually believe that it was an analysis of the situation in Palestine, Afghanistan, or Iraq that motivated said teenager to become a jihadist?
>> thats precisely what i believe. all i do is imagine its scotland and the americans and english armies have fellujahed edinburgh. how would i feel? if i was 17?! simple enuff?
Or isn't it really just the fact that after a stint in Pakistan, the kid discovered one way he could become, for a brief second, an exceptional person, even if posthumously, and vent his anger and despair at life in general, all in one go?
The person who warped his mind may have had "reasons" but yet didn't commit suicide himself, interestingly
enough. Why do you suppose that is? Same reason the generals send the kids to their deaths.
>> u said it! only the generals get top pay and retirement benefits for life. why do you imagine their equivalents do it? just mad are they?
Just as it is horrifically wrong to convince a young man in the West that dying a "hero's death" is just grand, it's despicably evil to convince an impressionable or desperate or even hateful mind that he will find glory in the afterlife by committing hideous acts of violence and ending his own life.
>> i wish wed drop this demonisation argument. christians expect to go to Heaven. and meet Mary, the Virgin!
These people go to their death expecting to be instantly jettisoned into paradise. They don't give a fuck about most of the shit you guys ascribe to them and I wish you would try to get off the agenda and look into what this whole crazy chain of events says about humanity overall.
>> more and more people are utterly scunnered by what theyre seeing the old dinosaurs among us are doing. this is not depressing. this is hopeful. its always been thus, as you say, but its changing. how can that be depressing?
You are really over-reaching lately and it worries me a lot. You are over-simplifying extremely complex political knots as if there is a plain and simple causality at work here. I'm afraid I have to tell you that there is not. We have now descended into sheer madness. Shed a tear for the tragic death of the young Brazilian shot by the police instead. The ultimate innocent victim.
To quote David Byrne, Stop Making Sense - it doesn't and you can't make it.
Feeling rather hopeless and wanting to get out of London at this point. Get down, make love.
Dianarama, London.
UP! why chicken cross rd? Dr. Johnson: To refute Berkeley's assertion that to be on the other side of the road is to appear to be there.
"No sage or saviour has ever endorsed greed and gluttony as a path toward social justice or personal fulfillment. These sane and enlightened people come to us from all cultures and all eras, sometimes knowing of each other but more often not. Socrates and Jesus, Lao Tsu and Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Buber -- no one can find in their lives and words a jot of support for a political and economic regime that encourages the acquisition of wealth far beyond what is needed for the necessaries -- or even the restorative pleasures -- of life while consigning the masses to live and work in squalor." Stephen J. Fortunato, Associate Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court.
UP!
We Are the Web !
The Web, a planet-sized computer, is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (web pages). Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks. That adds up to a trillion " synapses."
Wired August 2005
>> yeah, comparable, until our next metaphor comes along. i sometimes think the YOUniverse or at least the FYOUture is set to be several stages of complexity beyond wherever we happen to have reached. but no more than that! cos that would be hugely uneconomical. and the one thing we can be sure about the world is that its an economic universe.
UP!
Here Is The BBC Propaganda
On the Six o Clock news today, the BBC announcer referred to Allied plans for dropping the Atom bomb on Hiroshima in the hope of saving hundreds of thousands of lives. He then added that the plan worked.
This is a highly controversial subject in which no less a personage than General Eisenhower has acknowledged that the Japanese were on the point of surrender anyway and the bomb was unnecessary.
It is your function to tell the truth however badly it might reflect on US/UK, not to peddle Allied propaganda.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/complaints/handle_complaint.pl
UP!
'Huge Response' To Bush Insiders Claim
That WTC Collapse Was Bogus
by Greg Szymanski8
When Morgan Reynolds called the official story about 9/11 bogus, it seemed like the whole world stopped for a moment to listen.
It seemed like a lighting bolt hit the heart of the government story, cracking it into a million unexplainable pieces.
And when the dust settled, the highest-ranking member of the Bush team to make such an accusation said he wasn't expecting any "invitations to the White House anytime soon."
3 weeks ago, the former Chief Economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term announced that the WTC fell from a controlled demolition, indicating 9/11 was "an inside government job."
Reynolds, a respected economist and former Republican conservative, made his claims after researching many aspects of 9/11, including scientific and engineering data for and against the government story.
He presented his findings on the Internet in a long, detailed article, concluding: "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and Building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either.
"The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.
"More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right."
Considering his place among the Republican faithful, once the media got its "claws into his controversial remarks," his words quickly spread with the help of cyberspace like an out of control wildfire.
But they also drew instant attention from numerous mainstream newspapers, radio and television stations, including UPI, MSNBC, FOX News and over a dozen other major market local radio and TV stations. It was a story that "grew wings," a story Reynolds never expected would get so much attention and such a large audience.
"I had a huge response and it really was amazing. I never expected so many people to respond so passionately," said Reynolds this week in a telephone interview. "I literally received hundreds and hundred of emails, about 5 to 1 in favor of what I was saying. I never imagined how much support there was out there for what I was suggesting."
Without mincing words, as he did in his article, Reynolds quickly changed the subject, again placing the blame squarely on the government for not coming clean about what happened on 9/11, saying it's important to get to the bottom of a story that dwarfs all others in comparison."
"What it boils down to is that the government and the mainstream media are not digging into the 9/11 controversy because they are hiding something," said Reynolds. "From a media point of view, it's the story of the century and they are not even trying to connect the dots."
Continuing to throw some punches at his former employer, he added:
"It's nothing new. The government has always lied about so many things. Look at the Downing Street Memo, for example, the document confirming that the Bush administration lied to us about its motives for getting into the war. If they lied to us about this, what else? Well, 9/11 is just another example."
www.arcticbeacon.com
UP! why chicken cross rd? Nasruddin: To check that he wasn't on the other side..
How Strong Is The Arab Claim To Palestine?
by Lawrence Auster
There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian issue: the myth that this land was "Arab" land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution to the problems of the Middle East, let's get a few things straight:
1. As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn't take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for 30 years prior to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don't want it back.
2. If you consider the British illegitimate usurpers, fine. In that case, this territory is not Arab but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917. And the Turks don't want it back.
3. If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. And the Mamluks don't even exist any more, so they can't want it back.
So, going back 800 years, there's no particularly clear chain of title that makes Israel's title to the land inferior to that of any of the previous owners.
FrontPageMagazine.com
>> of course the only involved claimant who insists the State owner be exclusively of their religion are the Israelis.
UP!
Yahoo Passes Google In Search Index Capacity
Yahoo says it now indexes more than 20 billion documents and images.
That's almost twice the 11.3 billion which Google publicly says it currently spans.
Of the 20 billion elements in Yahoo's database, 19 billion are documents, 1.5 billion images and more than 50 million are audio and video files.
CNET News.com
UP!
Carbon Copy Canines Reignites Ethical Debate
The world's first cloning of a dog has raised concerns that scientists are one step closer to replicating human beings. Some experts say the cloning of a dog demonstrates that most of the key techniques needed to clone humans are now available -
>> and there, in a nutshell, is the problem with todays runaway Science.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=4728&m=5435
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a l l g o o d t h i n g s c o m e t o a n e n d
which don't justify nuttin'
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I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!